Philosophically immature but not totally wrong. I am called to write and effort-post.
QueerCommie
joined 3 years ago
Even if you are not dreaming? Idk
Not even logically sound, because the brain is still working when you’re asleep, but you do you.
You referenced anesthesia though, so more consistently, moments without conscious experience do not have conscious experience. Otherwise, deep sleep and spiritual “reset” experiences are “the brain not functioning.” I suppose that’s linguistically complementary with death as “sleep from which you do not wake” except perhaps you do.
Probably not if they don’t eat the brain :(. Bit idea: convincing reactionary raw meat weirdos that the brain is the best part of the body for food and it will make them more intelligent or something.
Sure. If you give a mystical explanation the benefit of the doubt. An explanation in obvious conflict with “brain qualia” and “if it feels like me.”
Then why should the next life feel like it is a continuation of this one?
I understand your odd western philosophical assumptions. I know what the process of thought identification feels like. But that doesn’t make it logical or correct to experience. “This feels like me” is a fleeting thought based on changing memories that are not a real experience of the past. That feeling is not “literally the physical system that is your brain.” You cannot feel your brain. Scientifically all experience including apparent external physical sensations are artificially jumbled together electrical signals turned into an illusory unified moment. You cannot feel directly your brain or tell me how that feels. What you probably mean is the feeling suggested by temporary thoughts that there is an eternal thinker behind them.
my brain is functioning properly
This is a statement with a lot of assumptions tied in with it. I’m not trying to name call, I have nothing against you, but it’s a bit ableist. If one is dissociating, having an out of body experience, meditating, on drugs, being depressed, having adhd, having amnesia etc is that same continuous awareness not there? Is one not conscious? How do you define “properly” anyway? The conscious mind is doing something different from each moment to the next and same with the physical mind, always dying and renewing.
I can't see it any other way
With a little spiritual practice or mental illness you would.
even if two such brains exist in the same space through some weird happenstance then I guess my consciousness is in a superposition of two locations.
This is a very odd statement from both a scientific and philosophical perspective. Do you suppose you have an eternal soul? That said soul is bound to any body of a certain sort? Human bodies are very similar and your own body is always different from one moment to the next. What an odd combination of Christian doctrine with vague science.
I’m genuinely curious how you answer these questions and what other underlying assumptions and beliefs are behind such statements.
That’s an odd idea. Eternal recurrence multiverse version. If that were the case there would have to be so many factors identical to this world and then suddenly the universe decides to do something different preventing someone’s death temporarily? Ignoring the question of whether that would just be a clone, I find it hard to believe identical conditions would produce different results.
I agree it’s absurd if there’s an assumption memories are maintained. But it’s more plausible if you just forget everything and have a whole new life in the samsaric fashion.
Yeah, the idea that space dust could randomly form a brain for a moment is pretty odd. We are products of infinite causal factors including millions of years of stable life, and I’d have to guess are consciousnesses reformation would occur under vaguely similar circumstances. “This happened once so within infinity it will happen again” is a little absurd if you think it will happen again in totally different circumstances.
On Nihilism
For all the nihilism haters and lovers (and people who don’t know much about it): here’s my nuanced take as someone who’s grappled with it too much.Knowledge is possible. It is difficult to have solid conceptual understandings of reality because language is a conditioned social phenomenon that imprecisely attempts to reflect a reality that is always moving. Yet we know reality by experiencing it. Though memories may change we truly know this real experiential moment and form useful assumptions as to what to do within it. We can form those assumptions socially, expanding beyond what we know from our own experience.
Human values are not a science. Reality is infinitely complex and there are infinite perspectives on it, so we cannot find context-independent maxims for how people should act. Still, we know generally that all beings seek to avoid pain and seek pleasure. Yes it doesn’t matter because we will all die and pleasure is fleeting, but generally it feels nice to help ourselves and others feel better. There are skillful and unskillful ways to do so, and we are alive now so we might is well do what we can to make life more tolerable to the best of our abilities.
Beyond morals, what is “the point” of this life? That is an inherently flawed question because nature has no teleology. Chuds will take this and say they need to have as many kids as possible. It is an odd linguistic conception thought to follow from the cultural belief that all should be done for god. But god is dead, right?
Purposes can be more or less grand but they are generally socially imposed and offered. There are ideas about perfect lifestyles and families, secular and religious that people strive for. They may not question it, but most are oriented to certain social and personal goals and values. These have the power to enhance one’s life or increase one’s suffering.
A Christian may be a happy saint, led by their morals to help people. They could be miserable constantly worrying about going to hell. They could do horrible things in the name of their values. Someone may take joy in their care for body, or may be constantly fearful that they are not doing enough. Generally it feels better to run toward good things than away from bad ones.
There are also philosophical answers that can be comforting in how to live one’s “meaningless” life. Living it to the fullest and embracing suffering as if you will live the same life repeatedly forever (Nietzsche). Finding wonder in how odd things are and choosing your own goals to arbitrarily follow in spite (Camus). Surrendering occasionally to the infinite in acceptance of your own limits in a true (not superficial) religious fashion (Nishitani). There are also of course literary perspectives.
Most people who “succumb to nihilism” in the west default to either embracing misery and a lack of agency or simple hedonism. The former is not fun and not necessarily implied by nihilism. You will die anyway whether you live your life to the fullest or not. Thus you are free. Capitalist consumer society tends to ingrain in people the underlying assumption that pleasing oneself is the greatest good and the value system of satisfying immediate urges is all that is left when we realize all else is meaningless. Although, there is an inherent tendency to try to become satisfied in all humans, self-gratification meets its end in the hedonic treadmill and is ultimately rather unskillful. We can skillfully go about seeking ease, including with the use of semi-arbitrary value systems.
It is my opinion that nihilism - dwelling in the lack of objective certainty in many things taken for granted - has great destructive as well as constructive possibilities. Many do not have the chance to assess things in this way, and one going through it can learn a lot from it and come out a greater understanding of the limitations of their experience and knowledge, and a thoughtful path forward in considering what one values. Just like how facing death can help one appreciate life.
Nihilism is not something that must obliterated in whatever fashion. It’s an emotion that can be processed well or not.
We lefties generally say believe what you will but we have a project of preserving and enhancing human and non-human life in a certain non-hierarchical way that intends to relieve material suffering and give access to greater, not alienated but purposeful, joy and satisfaction. Going through phases of nihilism can enhance our ability to understand our relationships to each other and to truth that can allow us to organize collectively to achieve our aims.
spoiler
@Wendy_Pleakley@hexbear.net @Thallo@hexbear.net @Yukiko@hexbear.net @imogen_underscore@hexbear.net whatcha think