https://annakaharris.com/does-consciousness-end/
What i linked was one of his articles about it, tho im not convinced. What if the entire universe ended? Then all subjective continuity would end
https://pdfhost.io/v/SQ24ADLh_Lovecraft_HP_Miscellaneous_Writings_ssc_v40.pdf <- btw here is Lovecraft's defense of Dagon to counterbalance
https://old.reddit.com/user/TheodoreBolha <- this guy was ESPECIALLY passionate about it
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I'm not sure i get the article (me am philosophy brainlet) and im not sure the tautology that consciousness can only experience existence implies that there would be continuity of experience in general.
But theres a couple sci-fi books that deal with this. Greg Egan (this guy is crazy, on his website there's an elegant exploration of gravity in non-simply connected spaces) has a short story anthology called Axiomatic. There's a couple stories about how people get a tiny indestructible computer implanted in their brain. It records every experience and at some point in their lives, your brain shuts off and the computer takes over. The stories are about your experience of continuity and also how brain melting feels in terms of continuity (as some point YOU cease to exist but the you/them hybrid never notices).
There's also Blindsight whose main thesis is "is consciousness necessary for intelligence," and whether or not its even evolutionarily beneficial. But the main character gets half his brain removed as a child and he talks about the semi-discontinuity of personal existence(but not necessarily generic existence).
Good post even without the drama
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yea i really think that if i have religious beliefs, i feel that this one makes the most sense to me. when i experience sleep i experience small pockets of non-existence, but i dont experience them so is it possible i could never experience non-existence? idk i could be coping but the atheist pov of death is a little bit centered on western ideas of finality and certainty whereas eastern values would view something like that as radical. like buddhism sort of views life as suffering forever until you break the cycle. but then i do realize my biases in being afraid of non-existence so i dont like to consider it as a possibility, tho that also brings to mind that if i dont consider it a possibility it helps me mentally because theres no way to win or lose if thats death
i was thinking about what makes someone "dead". people are unconscious before they are dead. they never experience death before their body fully shuts down because they go offline before it happens. scary thought. there are brain dead people with alive hearts, there are people with stopped hearts but working brains. when both are offline the body technically isnt dead yet, because it's possible for both to be recovered in theory. i read about organex, where they managed to bring a pig's brain back online but drugged it so it was unconscious. if we were to turn a human back on would they be the same human or a different one, from a 1st person perspective? if the latter, to what extent can the human be the same or different before they experience the 1st person perspective again as if they were either reborn or teleported?
so to me it's entirely possible, both because i had to exist in order to observe the universe and because the universe is doing everything infinitely while reusing the same matter that technically can never be destroyed, to what extent can i just wake up in a new body? is it possible to rebuild my body atom by atom, neuron by neuron, with the same memories, positioning and momentum but restoring what needs to be restored cell-wise before turning me back on and restoring my subjective 1st person experience? maybe not but the idea is something i think should be looked into for future technologists
i think if there was a way to prove this theory, say by scanning every brain ever and trying to find if anyone has ever by coincidence gotten the "same brain" or at least what's necessary for continuing a formerly dead person's 1st person continuity i think the debunking or confirming of the theory could comfort a lot of people. im not sure people want to lose their entire identities even if they'd continue to live but at the same time at least life goes on? it also begs the question of to what extent does the universe need to start to subtract in order to start to lose consciousness? could that ever be possible?
and i dont want to take multiverses into account because at that point you can just imagine there's a universe where God and Heaven is real and God would by definition be so powerful he could cross dimensions. im open to God, because i think there's only one universe, hence im not open to multiple universes
i think this theory would help a lot of people if opened up to them. it'd definitely help the edgy internet agnostics who dont want to die. i also think of it like this: i was never nothing, how can i become nothing? and if everything in the universe happens an infinite amount of times why not not only "me" as in my persona divorced from my consciousness but also my 1st person continuity and even both at the same time? obviously memories cant cross over because those are stored on neurons and atoms which are then wiped but to what extent are those specific stored atoms and neurons necessary for consciousness? i technically didnt need them before right? but if i did, wouldnt infinity sort it out that those exact memories on that neuron could happen again? it's all cosmically spooky
what does endear me to the idea being real is that it makes sense, but isnt TOO good to be true. to some extent i think my soul sleeping for all eternity is better than this shit of constantly dying and coming back with my identity being put to waste. i do know if it's tru im on cycle one tho because ive spent so much time in this body. then again a Christian Heaven or just plain ole technological immortality with my dead loved ones and even their 1st person perspective revived via some sort of space bullshit would be my ideal lol
do you think consciousness, as in 1st person continuity, would ever become measured or is it purely immaterial? some people suggest it's an illusion to keep the brain going
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No, don't reply like this, please do another wall of unhinged rant please.
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The universe cannot end for the same reasons Clark gave for generic continuity not ending.
Thanks for linking that article. Very insightful conclusions and it rings true in the same way basic truths tend to do. The only criticism I would give it is that he never addressed the similarities of his theory with reincarnation. If your personal subjective continuity ends at the moment of death but generic continuity continues infinitely, then does he imply we will live the lives of every creature in the universe?
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the universe cannot end for the same reason long covid can't end.
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thanks for posting. i am wondering about this theory and one of the other things i was thinking (his site includes some good counterarguments and then counterarguments to the counterarguments which is cool) was just because we expect to wake up again every day doesnt mean thatll always happen and that we dont know enough about childhood amnesia to not only say thats compatible with the theory but to even say that this will lead to us always existing. in fact childhood amnesia could be the reason why we seem to think this
but then there's also the idea of at what point is "death" something that has happened? at what point is turning ourselves back on irreversible? even brain death might be treatable at some point. if we are the emergent property of matter and neurons firing at a specific way given infinite combinations could we then be reincarnated without our memories? if we cant imagine not existing do we ever not-exist?
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Snapshots:
https://annakaharris.com/does-consciousness-end/:
ghostarchive.org
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
https://pdfhost.io/v/SQ24ADLh_Lovecraft_HP_Miscellaneous_Writings_ssc_v40.pdf:
ghostarchive.org
archive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
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