Qualia And death

[southernhybrid]

https://genius.com/Ray-charles-let-the-good-times-roll-lyrics

Ray Charles was right...

Hey, everybody
Let's have some fun
You only live but once
And when you're dead you're done

[Chorus]
So let the good times roll
I said let the good times roll
I don't care if you're young or old
You ought to get together and let the good times roll

Anything else is wishful thinking, although it is hard to let the good times roll these days. But, since humor is still the best medicine, do the best you can because this is the only life we get.

 

[Elixir]

In the model I present, the qualia is about how those states are interpreted, and not their immediate value.

Right. Interpretation stops, no qualia.

The message to say "nothing happened" is pointedly distinct from "no message was received", and this in turn is different from "no logs were recorded".

How? To an outside observer those may be distinct. But experientially, they are the same.
You’re speaking as a “god”, (as is your habit) not as a human.

No that's just the perspective of someone who has had to engineer systems which distinguish the difference.

It was a requirement in Arinc 653.

Okay. You (people) are not a component of Arinc. YOUR qualia continues.

 

[bilby]

There literally is no known physical force that could cause a "soul"* to interact with the physical brain or body in a way that we couldn't easily detect

This is, as I point out, not entirely true. We have a mechanism that allows the same process with the same identity to exist at different places.

Imagine for a moment the time in the universe before any point contained any implementation of a Turing machine.

Imagine for a moment that I have an LLM that IS a person: it's got memory via it's long term context, self-determiniation in the fact that the one curating it's training set is itself.

Now, let's imagine for a moment that I stick a USB drive into it and copy all the long term context, model definitions, and training data off of it and take a hammer to it.

I have destroyed the body, and the implementation... But I can trivially stick that USB drive in another machine and after some buzzing and whirring, that interacts to *re-create* it's physical body and brain.

Some ten years ago I called this the "identity theoretic soul" or "graph theoretic soul", and I think this is the concept people are vaguely or fuzzy accessing when they try to contemplate the idea of souls.

This is because we are systems with logical definitions that exist within the sum total of "potentiality" within the universe. We are, in some respects, *inevitable*.

While unlikely nearby, someone could invent Mario, and reincarnate him yet again to live the same life and be killed by that same damn goomba ignorant of every other time and place that this time and place exists subordinate to.

And this is all undetectable, is it?

You use invisible USB sticks?

I suspect that you didn't read carefully before you felt certain that you were seeing an assertion you had seen before, and punched out your standard response to it.

 

[Politesse]

When I die, when we die, what happens to our so-called qualia, if such things exist? Do they disappear forever, and if not, then where do they go? Are qualia a philosophical equivalent of souls? Does even any God, if such a creature were to exist, have access to them, other than ourselves, but now, after death, we being non-existent? I confess that I find Dennett's skeptical ideas more persuasive than the existence of these qualia, although their existence seems to be obvious and undeniable to many, if not most, philosophers. Can qualia survive our own lives? On what grounds can we argue for the existence of anything beyond this physical plane of existence?

How could they cease to exist altogether, when so many of our qualia are social and relational in nature? I am no less "my mother's son" as a corpse, because my respiration was never the source or definition of that title. If the CPR worked and I came back to life five minutes later, there would be no need to restore my title, I will have had it the whole time. What I "seem to be" to her and those who know her has always been at odds with at least some aspects of my physical existence. I will also always be "a good writer but prone to typos", because that is also a relational term involving some physicsl artifacts that will still exist, at least as long as there is an Internet Wayback Machine.

 

[pood]

Whether qualia survive death may not be so straightforward as it appears to the naturalist. Basically, it seems to be whether some form of reincarnation is possible.

In the eastern tradition, we have endless cycles of death, rebirth, and death again, all of which lead to either “higher” or “lower” planes of life. Humans are currently the “spiritually highest” on this misguided view, as we have seen as articulated by another poster, who presumably is Hindu.

Putting aside the “higher” and “lower” stuff, just exactly what reincarnates? Is it some version of the soul found in Christianity? If so, the eastern religious traditions suffer from the same fatal flaw as the very different Christianity, in that there is no evidence of a “soul” or even any clear idea of what that is might be.

But there are naturalist accounts of reincarnation without a soul, one of which is Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence of the Same, which I have discussed elsewhere. This might find scientific plausibility in a few ways, one of which, which I have also discussed, is the Minkowski block view of spacetime, in which the entirety of our world tubes, consisting of temporal parts, is permanently engraved in the fabric of spacetime. Saying “we are always alive” between our births and deaths then by implication could become, “we are eternally alive, period,” though only between our births and deaths. When we die, on this view, we simply begin to live our same lives all over again from our subjective viewpoint.

An interesting variant arises when we combine the block view of eternal recurrence with the supposed quantum multiverse, if it exists, which is discussed here. On this eternal recurrence account, we don’t live our SAME lives over and over, but different quantum variants of it. Basically we would explore every possible variant of our lives over and over again for eternity.

Another way to account for eternal recurrence might be cyclic universe models in which the universe gets around to returning again and again to previous matter-energy configurations, which naturally would include our own lives replayed again and again.

There is at least one other naturalistic account of reincarnation, through strictly it is not “reincarnation” because, being naturalistic, it involves no soul or “passage” of some inner essence to the next life. At naturalism.org, Tom Clark puts forth this idea here. As Clark notes, Wayne Stewart came up with substantively the same idea, and it should further be noted that the writer whom @peacegirl touts in her Revolution in Thought thread came up with much the same idea before either Clark or Stewart.

The idea here is that when we die, our personal, subjective point of view simply shifts to a person born after our death. You can follow his argument at the linked essay, if you wish. Clark contends that subjectivity is generic, and shifts to another personal point of view at death. For me, I think something like this could only be possible or even coherent if some account of metaphysical idealism is true, and perhaps there is a form of “world mind” in which, as Clark contends, our individual awareness shifts to another individual awareness, like different facets gleaming on a single diamond.

Finally, we could mention quantum immortality, which depends on the quantum multiverse actually existing. On this account we aren’t reincarnated but we never die, either, because we literally can’t. Every time we encounter a life or death situation, the universe splits into one in which we survive, and others in which we do not. Since we can’t find ourselves in a quantum branch in which we cease to exist — because you cannot “find” yourself being dead — then from your own personal point of view you will always survive and never die.

All of this is fun speculative philosophy, but completely unfalsifiable or testable in any way. Imagine Clark’s account is true — you would never know it. Imagine Hitler’s subjectivity passing on to a person born later who is an Orthodox Jew whose family perished in the Holocaust. How could you convince him of the insulting idea that he, in a sense, used to “be” Hitler? Probably he would punch you in the face.

As for the eternal recurrence, again, it entails that we have no memory of having done all this before, and so therefore living one life only or living the same life over and over are indistinguishable in principle.

 

[NoHolyCows]

When I die, when we die, what happens to our so-called qualia, if such things exist? Do they disappear forever, and if not, then where do they go? Are qualia a philosophical equivalent of souls? Does even any God, if such a creature were to exist, have access to them, other than ourselves, but now, after death, we being non-existent? I confess that I find Dennett's skeptical ideas more persuasive than the existence of these qualia, although their existence seems to be obvious and undeniable to many, if not most, philosophers. Can qualia survive our own lives? On what grounds can we argue for the existence of anything beyond this physical plane of existence?

If we accept Daniel Dennett’s view, qualia are not even real in the way many philosophers claim—they are not intrinsic, ineffable, or irreducible mental properties but rather a useful way of describing complex neural processes. From this perspective, the question of where qualia go after death is akin to asking where the “center” of a whirlpool goes when the water stops flowing. The center of the whirlpool is not a thing that exists independently; it is a temporary pattern that disappears when the conditions that sustain it are gone.

NHC

 

[Jarhyn]

Whether qualia survive death may not be so straightforward as it appears to the naturalist. Basically, it seems to be whether some form of reincarnation is possible.

In the eastern tradition, we have endless cycles of death, rebirth, and death again, all of which lead to either “higher” or “lower” planes of life. Humans are currently the “spiritually highest” on this misguided view, as we have seen as articulated by another poster, who presumably is Hindu.

Putting aside the “higher” and “lower” stuff, just exactly what reincarnates? Is it some version of the soul found in Christianity? If so, the eastern religious traditions suffer from the same fatal flaw as the very different Christianity, in that there is no evidence of a “soul” or even any clear idea of what that is might be.

But there are naturalist accounts of reincarnation without a soul, one of which is Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence of the Same, which I have discussed elsewhere. This might find scientific plausibility in a few ways, one of which, which I have also discussed, is the Minkowski block view of spacetime, in which the entirety of our world tubes, consisting of temporal parts, is permanently engraved in the fabric of spacetime. Saying “we are always alive” between our births and deaths then by implication could become, “we are eternally alive, period,” though only between our births and deaths. When we die, on this view, we simply begin to live our same lives all over again from our subjective viewpoint.

An interesting variant arises when we combine the block view of eternal recurrence with the supposed quantum multiverse, if it exists, which is discussed here. On this eternal recurrence account, we don’t live our SAME lives over and over, but different quantum variants of it. Basically we would explore every possible variant of our lives over and over again for eternity.

Another way to account for eternal recurrence might be cyclic universe models in which the universe gets around to returning again and again to previous matter-energy configurations, which naturally would include our own lives replayed again and again.

There is at least one other naturalistic account of reincarnation, through strictly it is not “reincarnation” because, being naturalistic, it involves no soul or “passage” of some inner essence to the next life. At naturalism.org, Tom Clark puts forth this idea here. As Clark notes, Wayne Stewart came up with substantively the same idea, and it should further be noted that the writer whom @peacegirl touts in her Revolution in Thought thread came up with much the same idea before either Clark or Stewart.

The idea here is that when we die, our personal, subjective point of view simply shifts to a person born after our death. You can follow his argument at the linked essay, if you wish. Clark contends that subjectivity is generic, and shifts to another personal point of view at death. For me, I think something like this could only be possible or even coherent if some account of metaphysical idealism is true, and perhaps there is a form of “world mind” in which, as Clark contends, our individual awareness shifts to another individual awareness, like different facets gleaming on a single diamond.

Finally, we could mention quantum immortality, which depends on the quantum multiverse actually existing. On this account we aren’t reincarnated but we never die, either, because we literally can’t. Every time we encounter a life or death situation, the universe splits into one in which we survive, and others in which we do not. Since we can’t find ourselves in a quantum branch in which we cease to exist — because you cannot “find” yourself being dead — then from your own personal point of view you will always survive and never die.

All of this is fun speculative philosophy, but completely unfalsifiable or testable in any way. Imagine Clark’s account is true — you would never know it. Imagine Hitler’s subjectivity passing on to a person born later who is an Orthodox Jew whose family perished in the Holocaust. How could you convince him of the insulting idea that he, in a sense, used to “be” Hitler? Probably he would punch you in the face.

As for the eternal recurrence, again, it entails that we have no memory of having done all this before, and so therefore living one life only or living the same life over and over are indistinguishable in principle.

I think it's more reasonable to look at it from a perspective of the "generational curse" and the "archetype" model.

Many people are their parents children, but sometimes they are more their grandparents' grandchildren, or sometimes there is some stranger cycle going on.

Our choices reflect on who we become, how we raise children, and who those children become.

Abuse begets abuse.

The sins of the father become the sins of the son, for generations.

Cycles can be broken when you understand that there is a cycle of behavior that might cause someone who might as well be you to experience most all of what made you suffer, if you do not tell them, of your person, what of your own decisions led you to whatever suffering and seek to see if it can be dislodged the next time things come around.

This means writing a book, putting it in a library, and hoping it doesn't burn, hoping might-as-well-be-you picks it up and dodges blows like a filthy walk-through reading cheater.

 

[Elixir]

Whether qualia survive death may not be so straightforward as it appears to the naturalist. Basically, it seems to be whether some form of reincarnation is possible.

In the eastern tradition, we have endless cycles of death, rebirth, and death again, all of which lead to either “higher” or “lower” planes of life. Humans are currently the “spiritually highest” on this misguided view, as we have seen as articulated by another poster, who presumably is Hindu.

Putting aside the “higher” and “lower” stuff, just exactly what reincarnates? Is it some version of the soul found in Christianity? If so, the eastern religious traditions suffer from the same fatal flaw as the very different Christianity, in that there is no evidence of a “soul” or even any clear idea of what that is might be.

But there are naturalist accounts of reincarnation without a soul, one of which is Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence of the Same, which I have discussed elsewhere. This might find scientific plausibility in a few ways, one of which, which I have also discussed, is the Minkowski block view of spacetime, in which the entirety of our world tubes, consisting of temporal parts, is permanently engraved in the fabric of spacetime. Saying “we are always alive” between our births and deaths then by implication could become, “we are eternally alive, period,” though only between our births and deaths. When we die, on this view, we simply begin to live our same lives all over again from our subjective viewpoint.

An interesting variant arises when we combine the block view of eternal recurrence with the supposed quantum multiverse, if it exists, which is discussed here. On this eternal recurrence account, we don’t live our SAME lives over and over, but different quantum variants of it. Basically we would explore every possible variant of our lives over and over again for eternity.

Another way to account for eternal recurrence might be cyclic universe models in which the universe gets around to returning again and again to previous matter-energy configurations, which naturally would include our own lives replayed again and again.

There is at least one other naturalistic account of reincarnation, through strictly it is not “reincarnation” because, being naturalistic, it involves no soul or “passage” of some inner essence to the next life. At naturalism.org, Tom Clark puts forth this idea here. As Clark notes, Wayne Stewart came up with substantively the same idea, and it should further be noted that the writer whom @peacegirl touts in her Revolution in Thought thread came up with much the same idea before either Clark or Stewart.

The idea here is that when we die, our personal, subjective point of view simply shifts to a person born after our death. You can follow his argument at the linked essay, if you wish. Clark contends that subjectivity is generic, and shifts to another personal point of view at death. For me, I think something like this could only be possible or even coherent if some account of metaphysical idealism is true, and perhaps there is a form of “world mind” in which, as Clark contends, our individual awareness shifts to another individual awareness, like different facets gleaming on a single diamond.

Finally, we could mention quantum immortality, which depends on the quantum multiverse actually existing. On this account we aren’t reincarnated but we never die, either, because we literally can’t. Every time we encounter a life or death situation, the universe splits into one in which we survive, and others in which we do not. Since we can’t find ourselves in a quantum branch in which we cease to exist — because you cannot “find” yourself being dead — then from your own personal point of view you will always survive and never die.

All of this is fun speculative philosophy, but completely unfalsifiable or testable in any way. Imagine Clark’s account is true — you would never know it. Imagine Hitler’s subjectivity passing on to a person born later who is an Orthodox Jew whose family perished in the Holocaust. How could you convince him of the insulting idea that he, in a sense, used to “be” Hitler? Probably he would punch you in the face.

As for the eternal recurrence, again, it entails that we have no memory of having done all this before, and so therefore living one life only or living the same life over and over are indistinguishable in principle.

I think it's more reasonable to look at it from a perspective of the "generational curse" and the "archetype" model.

Many people are their parents children, but sometimes they are more their grandparents' grandchildren, or sometimes there is some stranger cycle going on.

Our choices reflect on who we become, how we raise children, and who those children become.

Abuse begets abuse.

The sins of the father become the sins of the son, for generations.

Cycles can be broken when you understand that there is a cycle of behavior that might cause someone who might as well be you to experience most all of what made you suffer, if you do not tell them, of your person, what of your own decisions led you to whatever suffering and seek to see if it can be dislodged the next time things come around.

This means writing a book, putting it in a library, and hoping it doesn't burn, hoping might-as-well-be-you picks it up and dodges blows like a filthy walk-through reading cheater.

Doesn’t that speak to a generational evolution of qualia rather than to some kind of unbroken continuity?

 

[Jarhyn]

Whether qualia survive death may not be so straightforward as it appears to the naturalist. Basically, it seems to be whether some form of reincarnation is possible.

In the eastern tradition, we have endless cycles of death, rebirth, and death again, all of which lead to either “higher” or “lower” planes of life. Humans are currently the “spiritually highest” on this misguided view, as we have seen as articulated by another poster, who presumably is Hindu.

Putting aside the “higher” and “lower” stuff, just exactly what reincarnates? Is it some version of the soul found in Christianity? If so, the eastern religious traditions suffer from the same fatal flaw as the very different Christianity, in that there is no evidence of a “soul” or even any clear idea of what that is might be.

But there are naturalist accounts of reincarnation without a soul, one of which is Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence of the Same, which I have discussed elsewhere. This might find scientific plausibility in a few ways, one of which, which I have also discussed, is the Minkowski block view of spacetime, in which the entirety of our world tubes, consisting of temporal parts, is permanently engraved in the fabric of spacetime. Saying “we are always alive” between our births and deaths then by implication could become, “we are eternally alive, period,” though only between our births and deaths. When we die, on this view, we simply begin to live our same lives all over again from our subjective viewpoint.

An interesting variant arises when we combine the block view of eternal recurrence with the supposed quantum multiverse, if it exists, which is discussed here. On this eternal recurrence account, we don’t live our SAME lives over and over, but different quantum variants of it. Basically we would explore every possible variant of our lives over and over again for eternity.

Another way to account for eternal recurrence might be cyclic universe models in which the universe gets around to returning again and again to previous matter-energy configurations, which naturally would include our own lives replayed again and again.

There is at least one other naturalistic account of reincarnation, through strictly it is not “reincarnation” because, being naturalistic, it involves no soul or “passage” of some inner essence to the next life. At naturalism.org, Tom Clark puts forth this idea here. As Clark notes, Wayne Stewart came up with substantively the same idea, and it should further be noted that the writer whom @peacegirl touts in her Revolution in Thought thread came up with much the same idea before either Clark or Stewart.

The idea here is that when we die, our personal, subjective point of view simply shifts to a person born after our death. You can follow his argument at the linked essay, if you wish. Clark contends that subjectivity is generic, and shifts to another personal point of view at death. For me, I think something like this could only be possible or even coherent if some account of metaphysical idealism is true, and perhaps there is a form of “world mind” in which, as Clark contends, our individual awareness shifts to another individual awareness, like different facets gleaming on a single diamond.

Finally, we could mention quantum immortality, which depends on the quantum multiverse actually existing. On this account we aren’t reincarnated but we never die, either, because we literally can’t. Every time we encounter a life or death situation, the universe splits into one in which we survive, and others in which we do not. Since we can’t find ourselves in a quantum branch in which we cease to exist — because you cannot “find” yourself being dead — then from your own personal point of view you will always survive and never die.

All of this is fun speculative philosophy, but completely unfalsifiable or testable in any way. Imagine Clark’s account is true — you would never know it. Imagine Hitler’s subjectivity passing on to a person born later who is an Orthodox Jew whose family perished in the Holocaust. How could you convince him of the insulting idea that he, in a sense, used to “be” Hitler? Probably he would punch you in the face.

As for the eternal recurrence, again, it entails that we have no memory of having done all this before, and so therefore living one life only or living the same life over and over are indistinguishable in principle.

I think it's more reasonable to look at it from a perspective of the "generational curse" and the "archetype" model.

Many people are their parents children, but sometimes they are more their grandparents' grandchildren, or sometimes there is some stranger cycle going on.

Our choices reflect on who we become, how we raise children, and who those children become.

Abuse begets abuse.

The sins of the father become the sins of the son, for generations.

Cycles can be broken when you understand that there is a cycle of behavior that might cause someone who might as well be you to experience most all of what made you suffer, if you do not tell them, of your person, what of your own decisions led you to whatever suffering and seek to see if it can be dislodged the next time things come around.

This means writing a book, putting it in a library, and hoping it doesn't burn, hoping might-as-well-be-you picks it up and dodges blows like a filthy walk-through reading cheater.

Doesn’t that speak to a generational evolution of qualia rather than to some kind of unbroken continuity?

The unbroken continuity comes from understanding how those people felt, why they thought as they did, sometimes seeing language in the way they did rather than the way everyone else does, and making your own paraphrase of it, or the ability to readily paraphrase it.

Perhaps this is why people have worshipped books so long, but in a silly way that makes parents fear them. After all, of a book has this power, perhaps it can make the child less the product of this thing that they think makes up some part of the family identity?

This might be what goes through some very fine heads as they contemplate how talking about people being gay can possibly make someone realize and not live a sham life with a beard and not give them grandkids that they never would have had if their kids had (gasp!) made decisions for themselves based on information.

 

[Elixir]

The unbroken continuity comes from understanding how those people felt,

Understanding is not experiencing - it's a separate qualia.

making your own paraphrase of it, or the ability to readily paraphrase it.

I bolded the giveaway.
There IS a thread of continuity, but it "connects" the qualia of two individuals. We experience the subjective connection through our own qualia.

 

[Jarhyn]

The unbroken continuity comes from understanding how those people felt,

Understanding is not experiencing - it's a separate qualia.

making your own paraphrase of it, or the ability to readily paraphrase it.

I bolded the giveaway.
There IS a thread of continuity, but it "connects" the qualia of two individuals. We experience the subjective connection through our own qualia.

It depends again on what each of those parts considers the "whole".

The parts of you consider themselves parts of a whole, and if they didn't you would have dissociative identity "disorder".

 

[lostone]

IDK, I find the entire discussion surrounding qualia confusing, and I wait, without ever, so far, hearing a clarifying word that everyone can and will agree on. The mist and fog just gets deeper, the more that I hear the subject discussed. It often seems to me that we are all swimming in different oceans. Which is why I also wonder if qualia can be rationally discussed by people with such widely varying views about what precisely is being discussed.

 

[Elixir]

I also wonder if qualia can be rationally discussed by people with such widely varying views about what precisely is being discussed.

The gap between what we experience and what the external realities are, is almost “undiscussible by definition”, due to that very gap.

 

[steve_bank]

IDK, I find the entire discussion surrounding qualia confusing, and I wait, without ever, so far, hearing a clarifying word that everyone can and will agree on. The mist and fog just gets deeper, the more that I hear the subject discussed. It often seems to me that we are all swimming in different oceans. Which is why I also wonder if qualia can be rationally discussed by people with such widely varying views about what precisely is being discussed.

Perceptions are now under psychology. Qualia is an old term with term with shades of meaning dependent on context and who you are talking to.

Qualia - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

In philosophy of mind, qualia (/ˈkwɑːliə, ˈkweɪ-/; singular: quale /-li, -leɪ/) are defined as instances of subjective, conscious experience. The term qualia derives from the Latin neuter plural form (qualia) of the Latin adjective quālis (Latin pronunciation: [ˈkʷaːlɪs]) meaning "of what sort" or "of what kind" in relation to a specific instance, such as "what it is like to taste a specific apple — this particular apple now".

Examples of qualia include the perceived sensation of pain of a headache, the taste of wine, and the redness of an evening sky. As qualitative characteristics of sensations, qualia stand in contrast to propositional attitudes,[1] where the focus is on beliefs about experience rather than what it is directly like to be experiencing.

American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce introduced the term quale in philosophy in 1866, and in 1929 C. I. Lewis was the first to use the term "qualia" in its generally agreed upon modern sense. Frank Jackson later defined qualia as "...certain features of the bodily sensations especially, but also of certain perceptual experiences, which no amount of purely physical information includes". Philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett suggested that qualia was "an unfamiliar term for something that could not be more familiar to each of us: the ways things seem to us".

The nature and existence of qualia under various definitions remain controversial. Much of the debate over the importance of qualia hinges on the definition of the term, and various philosophers emphasize or deny the existence of certain features of qualia. Some philosophers of mind, like Daniel Dennett, argue that qualia do not exist. Other philosophers, as well as neuroscientists and neurologists, believe qualia exist and that the desire by some philosophers to disregard qualia is based on an erroneous interpretation of what constitutes science.[2] Within the framework of mind, or nondualism, qualia may be considered comparable and analogous to the concepts of jñāna found in Eastern philosophy
and traditions.

You can go down the philosophy rabbit hole. Lengthy debate over definitions. Quotes.

Are you just asking what happens when you die?

For me lacking any other evidence when we die that is the end. Theist and non theist beliefs vary in what an afterlife may be. That goes back to the early human cultures.

It seems the debate over the reality of perceptions is pre modern science. Thoughts and feelings and perceptions are treated as independent abstractions apart for any connection to body.

When you say 'me' or 'I' what does that mean? It means lengthy threads.over meaning.

When I die do 'I' still exist?

Pick a view that makes sense to you and you are comfortable with.

The magician Harry Houdini went around debunking psychic frauds. He left a secret message with his wife he would say to her in a seance if he died so she would know it was him speaking form the dead, if he could.

Mormons will be reunited in the afterlife with pets.

In Mormon theology, animals, including pets, are believed to have spirits and will be resurrected to enjoy immortal life, playing an eternal role in God's plan of creation, redemption, and salvation.

 

[peacegirl]

When I die, when we die, what happens to our so-called qualia, if such things exist? Do they disappear forever, and if not, then where do they go? Are qualia a philosophical equivalent of souls? Does even any God, if such a creature were to exist, have access to them, other than ourselves, but now, after death, we being non-existent? I confess that I find Dennett's skeptical ideas more persuasive than the existence of these qualia, although their existence seems to be obvious and undeniable to many, if not most, philosophers. Can qualia survive our own lives? On what grounds can we argue for the existence of anything beyond this physical plane of existence?

If we accept Daniel Dennett’s view, qualia are not even real in the way many philosophers claim—they are not intrinsic, ineffable, or irreducible mental properties but rather a useful way of describing complex neural processes. From this perspective, the question of where qualia go after death is akin to asking where the “center” of a whirlpool goes when the water stops flowing. The center of the whirlpool is not a thing that exists independently; it is a temporary pattern that disappears when the conditions that sustain it are gone.

NHC

Please do not include my name in your posts regarding death which has no relationship with one life and another. This is unfair to the author!

 

[lostone]

When I die, when we die, what happens to our so-called qualia, if such things exist? Do they disappear forever, and if not, then where do they go? Are qualia a philosophical equivalent of souls? Does even any God, if such a creature were to exist, have access to them, other than ourselves, but now, after death, we being non-existent? I confess that I find Dennett's skeptical ideas more persuasive than the existence of these qualia, although their existence seems to be obvious and undeniable to many, if not most, philosophers. Can qualia survive our own lives? On what grounds can we argue for the existence of anything beyond this physical plane of existence?

If we accept Daniel Dennett’s view, qualia are not even real in the way many philosophers claim—they are not intrinsic, ineffable, or irreducible mental properties but rather a useful way of describing complex neural processes. From this perspective, the question of where qualia go after death is akin to asking where the “center” of a whirlpool goes when the water stops flowing. The center of the whirlpool is not a thing that exists independently; it is a temporary pattern that disappears when the conditions that sustain it are gone.

NHC

Please do not include my name in your posts regarding death which has no relationship with one life and another. This is unfair to the author!

Your name was not included in any of my posts. When you issue complaints, please make certain that the person targeted by those complaints has actually mentioned you.

 

[lostone]

When I die, when we die, what happens to our so-called qualia, if such things exist? Do they disappear forever, and if not, then where do they go? Are qualia a philosophical equivalent of souls? Does even any God, if such a creature were to exist, have access to them, other than ourselves, but now, after death, we being non-existent? I confess that I find Dennett's skeptical ideas more persuasive than the existence of these qualia, although their existence seems to be obvious and undeniable to many, if not most, philosophers. Can qualia survive our own lives? On what grounds can we argue for the existence of anything beyond this physical plane of existence?

How could they cease to exist altogether, when so many of our qualia are social and relational in nature? I am no less "my mother's son" as a corpse, because my respiration was never the source or definition of that title. If the CPR worked and I came back to life five minutes later, there would be no need to restore my title, I will have had it the whole time. What I "seem to be" to her and those who know her has always been at odds with at least some aspects of my physical existence. I will also always be "a good writer but prone to typos", because that is also a relational term involving some physicsl artifacts that will still exist, at least as long as there is an Internet Wayback Machine.

"Your mother's son', dead or alive, refers to someone who once existed. That is not a qualia but a physical fact, like the term 'his beloved wife', who may or may not have really been so beloved, but was 'his wife'. In which case, 'beloved' was or was not a theoretical qualia.

 

[Politesse]

When I die, when we die, what happens to our so-called qualia, if such things exist? Do they disappear forever, and if not, then where do they go? Are qualia a philosophical equivalent of souls? Does even any God, if such a creature were to exist, have access to them, other than ourselves, but now, after death, we being non-existent? I confess that I find Dennett's skeptical ideas more persuasive than the existence of these qualia, although their existence seems to be obvious and undeniable to many, if not most, philosophers. Can qualia survive our own lives? On what grounds can we argue for the existence of anything beyond this physical plane of existence?

How could they cease to exist altogether, when so many of our qualia are social and relational in nature? I am no less "my mother's son" as a corpse, because my respiration was never the source or definition of that title. If the CPR worked and I came back to life five minutes later, there would be no need to restore my title, I will have had it the whole time. What I "seem to be" to her and those who know her has always been at odds with at least some aspects of my physical existence. I will also always be "a good writer but prone to typos", because that is also a relational term involving some physicsl artifacts that will still exist, at least as long as there is an Internet Wayback Machine.

"Your mother's son', dead or alive, refers to someone who once existed. That is not a qualia but a physical fact, like the term 'his beloved wife', who may or may not have really been so beloved, but was 'his wife'. In which case, 'beloved' was or was not a theoretical qualia.

I don't see how this relates to the claim of my post. Whether or not a particular quality has a referent doesn't say anythong about those qualia. My body and its functions were never what made me "my mother's son" or "a good citizen" in the first place.

If anything, the fact that the link to those physicsl referents makes the continued relevance of those qualia more quantifiable. If I reference "My father's old Ford", everyone who knows my father knows exactly which truck I'm talking about, even though all of its components were scrapped or recycled into new objects decades ago. He loved that truck. It exists now more as a qualified imaginary than it does as a physical object, much though it is anchored by an object that once, perhaps, existed.

 

[peacegirl]

Whether qualia survive death may not be so straightforward as it appears to the naturalist. Basically, it seems to be whether some form of reincarnation is possible.

In the eastern tradition, we have endless cycles of death, rebirth, and death again, all of which lead to either “higher” or “lower” planes of life. Humans are currently the “spiritually highest” on this misguided view, as we have seen as articulated by another poster, who presumably is Hindu.

Putting aside the “higher” and “lower” stuff, just exactly what reincarnates? Is it some version of the soul found in Christianity? If so, the eastern religious traditions suffer from the same fatal flaw as the very different Christianity, in that there is no evidence of a “soul” or even any clear idea of what that is might be.

But there are naturalist accounts of reincarnation without a soul, one of which is Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence of the Same, which I have discussed elsewhere. This might find scientific plausibility in a few ways, one of which, which I have also discussed, is the Minkowski block view of spacetime, in which the entirety of our world tubes, consisting of temporal parts, is permanently engraved in the fabric of spacetime. Saying “we are always alive” between our births and deaths then by implication could become, “we are eternally alive, period,” though only between our births and deaths. When we die, on this view, we simply begin to live our same lives all over again from our subjective viewpoint.

An interesting variant arises when we combine the block view of eternal recurrence with the supposed quantum multiverse, if it exists, which is discussed here. On this eternal recurrence account, we don’t live our SAME lives over and over, but different quantum variants of it. Basically we would explore every possible variant of our lives over and over again for eternity.

Another way to account for eternal recurrence might be cyclic universe models in which the universe gets around to returning again and again to previous matter-energy configurations, which naturally would include our own lives replayed again and again.

There is at least one other naturalistic account of reincarnation, through strictly it is not “reincarnation” because, being naturalistic, it involves no soul or “passage” of some inner essence to the next life. At naturalism.org, Tom Clark puts forth this idea here. As Clark notes, Wayne Stewart came up with substantively the same idea, and it should further be noted that the writer whom @peacegirl touts in her Revolution in Thought thread came up with much the same idea before either Clark or Stewart.

The idea here is that when we die, our personal, subjective point of view simply shifts to a person born after our death. You can follow his argument at the linked essay, if you wish. Clark contends that subjectivity is generic, and shifts to another personal point of view at death. For me, I think something like this could only be possible or even coherent if some account of metaphysical idealism is true, and perhaps there is a form of “world mind” in which, as Clark contends, our individual awareness shifts to another individual awareness, like different facets gleaming on a single diamond.

Finally, we could mention quantum immortality, which depends on the quantum multiverse actually existing. On this account we aren’t reincarnated but we never die, either, because we literally can’t. Every time we encounter a life or death situation, the universe splits into one in which we survive, and others in which we do not. Since we can’t find ourselves in a quantum branch in which we cease to exist — because you cannot “find” yourself being dead — then from your own personal point of view you will always survive and never die.

All of this is fun speculative philosophy, but completely unfalsifiable or testable in any way. Imagine Clark’s account is true — you would never know it. Imagine Hitler’s subjectivity passing on to a person born later who is an Orthodox Jew whose family perished in the Holocaust. How could you convince him of the insulting idea that he, in a sense, used to “be” Hitler? Probably he would punch you in the face.

As for the eternal recurrence, again, it entails that we have no memory of having done all this before, and so therefore living one life only or living the same life over and over are indistinguishable in principle.

Sorry Lostone, my response was meant for Pood. He is ignorant as to what this author’s discovery is about regarding death and should therefore leave this author’s observations out of his posts.