On eternal oblivion

Quoting Zebeden

What bothers me, though, is that there is no reason to believe that consciousness cannot reoccur again. It already happened once – I’m conscious now. Why wouldn’t this phenomenon occur again?

But would the fact that it can happen again be any different from the fact that it has happened for both you as well as me (it has happened "again" spatially rather than temporally, as it were), only I cannot experience what you experience because wwr are two different individuals?

Also, what are the merits of eternal reincarnation. You and I probably have it pretty good right now - not just pretty good considering this isn't neolithic era or 14th century France or something like that. Then you look at how lukcy we are to be humans over other organisms.

Surely, it is only overwhelmingly likely to go downhill after this life? Or if not downhill, to another form of life one wouldn't necessarily want to live. I am not sure about life as an aphid. I guess they probably don't live very long anyway.

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Quoting tim wood

Consciousness genus seems to be one of the tricks the Universe performs, mine and yours (species) being examples. But I think it's the mineness and yoursness that having come, will soon enough go.

We are more or less of one mind about this. :joke:

The way I usually think about it is that it is a question of Identity, or rather, of identification. If oneself is that blank emptiness that is aware of whatever it happens to be aware of, then perhaps there is no difference between one self and another, aside from the particulars that it happens to be aware of from time to time.

What connects the child to the adult to the old man is memory, a narrative that can be recited, and that particular narrative cannot be repeated, because even if another life occurs that is exactly identical, it will not connect, and so will not continue the narrative that ended. No more than identical twins are the same person.

Quoting Zebeden

Actually, because of my rather materialistic worldview, it’s even more bothersome to me that eternal oblivion seems unlikely, as I wrote above.

I wonder if you find such considerations reassuring or not?

Quoting unenlightened

What connects the child to the adult to the old man is memory, a narrative that can be recited,

I've heard this trope expressed often enough. I think it was Lock (?) who first articulated this as being pivotal to the sense of self.

But consider that many out there do not have memories of their early childhood. Or else those with amnesia, or maybe even more extreme, advanced Alzheimer's. The sense of self yet persists even in Alzheimer's (via, for one example, listening to certain music). And even when not related to past events, certainly the sense of self persists in terms of "mine" and "yours".

I've tended to instead ground the core aspect of a sense of self on one's affinities and aversions. This, as one example, being a plausible reason why identical twins separated at birth or during early childhood can be found brushing their teeth when in their 60s with the same toothpaste, etc.

Reply to Zebeden

This makes full-blown sense to me. Consider that in all of humanity's history there probabilistically is one former human whose intrinsic, genome-inherited predispositions and whose first 7 or so years of life (a very formative time period for humans) are more alike to your own than any other. In terms of affinities and aversions to environmental factors and thereby core attitudes toward existence, their life would be as identical to your own as - via analogy - one's life one day is identical to one's own life on another day (separated by periods of sleep). And this same general outlook can then be further abstracted to a multitude of former lives.

The same roles (personas) playing out the same general interactions on the stage of life but at different times and in different contexts. And hence the same core self that ever evolves into different realities.

The tricky issue in so contemplating is when considering things not historically but in terms of the present moment. Same could be claimed of another human on the planet (who might look utterly different) that lives while you live. Here, the notion of reincarnation would be off. Nevertheless, there then would yet remain the notion of kindred spirits: someone you might see things eye to eye with to an extreme extent.

Quoting javra

the sense of self persists in terms of "mine" and "yours".

And how does one know what is mine and yours, except through memory? Dementia becomes fatal when it extends to losing the function that controls breathing. "My lungs?" "My wife?" "My children?" "My home?" "My name?" Such are the identifications one can lose.

Quoting unenlightened

And how does one know what is mine and yours, except through memory?

Not an easy question to answer. I've worked with Alzheimer's patients, some in rather extreme conditions. One such I presume mistook packaging styrofoam for popcorn and began eating it, such that I had to struggle taking it out of the patient's mouth. There was still an understood notion of things like "my mouth" "my food" "my will", etc.

I'll just point to the fact that ameba have a sense of self in the sense of being able to distinguish self from other, not to mention other as predator or prey. And they do not have anything resembling what we term memory.

You can argue for eternal oblivion or eternal consciousness, depending on what has been lost or gained. Without memory there is no way to know what has already occurred, if that occurrence technically does not belong to you.

You can't read the same book twice if it has been erased before the second reading.

You can't step in the same river twice, unless the river suffices as the same river you remember stepping in.

You can't remember stepping in a river you know you've never stepped in.

As Wittgenstein pointed out, being dead is not something that will happen to you; when you are dead, there is no longer a "you". Death is no more a part of your life than the space two inches past a ruler is part of the ruler.

Reply to Banno I agree, yet I do think death, as opposed to being dead, is very much part of our lives. We experience the death of loved ones, including our beloved animal companions.

And thinking of death in a broader sense, we experience the loss of our mature capacities and faculties. We all face the posibility of an agonising, or at least an unpleasant, death, meaning not 'being dead' but dying.

Reply to Janus I quite agree.

This is a different topic to "eternal oblivion", which is not something to be feared. One might not be anxious about being dead, so much as about how one gets there.

And then there is the considerable discussion about whether being dead amounts to a bad thing, in that it deprives one of ongoing experiences. I'd like to know what happens next, although I expect I would not much like it.

Reply to Banno Exactly...eternal oblivion is not to be (rationally speaking at least) feared. Perhaps it can be, on an arational level, troubling because the idea of our own non-existence is difficult to grasp.

I think that difficulty, at least in part, is involved in the idea of death being a deprivation of experience.

I'm certainly with you in thinking I would not much like what seems likely to come after, if not before, my own death.

Quoting Janus

I would not much like what seems likely to come after

Once one is dead, one is no longer a player, as it were, and so inevitably things cannot go in one's favour. The particular interests that make you who you are will inevitably dissipate in your absence; the papers you wrote will no longer be cited, the events in the lives of your dozens or hundreds of descendants will not have relevance to you, and what belonged to you will belong to others or end up in landfill.

That's what it is to be a ghost.

Reply to Zebeden I’ve always had the belief that what is understood in the east as Sa?s?ra - the eternal cycle of birth and death - captures some fundamental truth about existence, even if allegorical in some sense. The process that drives the cycle of life and death and of which individual beings are the product continues after individual death, and countless individual beings will continue to be born and to perish, each one of them taking form, from their own perspective, as ‘myself’ or ‘I’. In those belief systems, it is desire or clinging to existence which causes the birth of the individual, and only through the cessation of that desire or clinging is liberation from the cycle (Mok?a) attained. The natural corollary of that is belief in rebirth, although in Buddhist culture, it is without the belief that there is an individual soul as such, but a stream of consciousness which manifests across many lifetimes. However it clearly requires that that there are planes of existence beyond the physical in which karma (the consequences of acts) is accumulated and transmitted.

In Western culture there is no such belief, instead it is thought that living beings are aggregates of material elements which are born as a consequence of physical processes which cease when those comprising physical elements disperse at death. It is a view seems intuitively obvious when viewed ‘from the outside’ or from a third-person or scientific perspective. However from the ‘eastern’ viewpoint it is a nihilistic attitude.

Where it sits uneasily with me is a sense I have had since I became conscious of memories from a previous life. That too could be understood allegorically, as the inheritance from or a transmission of the collective unconscious. I can’t say that I know it’s true, but on balance of probabilities I think it is more likely than not. I’m mindful of the fact that in those Eastern cultures, the prospects for a future existence are often said to be grim, as we inherit the consequences of acts carried out with no awareness of their eventual consequences.

Reply to Wayfarer Wishful thinking?

What remains of the Wayfarer from previous lives? In what sense are you still them, and not just someone else who happens to have memories of the life of a different person? What is it that is continuous from one metempsychosis to another?

If there is a collective unconscious - whatever that might be - why do you have the memories of particular individuals, and not of some amalgam of all past consciousness?

Again, when one turns a critical eye on these ideas, it is difficult to see how they can be made coherent.

Reply to Banno I was responding to the OP, not to you.


....although I will say that individuals are born into specific times and places, with some kinds of apparently-innate abilities and proclivities, which are then subject to further influences and changes throughout their early childhood and adulthood. Some genetic inheritance, some cultural inheritance, but some elements of which can be quite subtle.

I will also note that there's a distinction between critical thinking and antagonism, and that these kinds of discussions will invariably generate the latter, as there are longstanding cultural taboos around this topic.

Reply to Wayfarer Yep. I was responding to that response. I do understand that you do not like what I have to say. You are of course not under any obligation to respond to my critique. But my critique of your response to the OP, is also, thereby, addressing the OP.

Quoting Wayfarer

I will also note that there's a distinction between critical thinking and antagonism

As Sir Bernard Woolley might say, I'm critical, you are antagonistic, he is a right bastard...

Reply to Banno Yep, so I guess for some the idea of being out of the game will be disturbing, even though when you are out of the game nothing will disturb you because there will be no 'you' to be disturbed.

Quoting Zebeden

Therefore, I see no reason to commit to eternal oblivion, although it would seem likely from the material point of view.

When there is no mind to perceive, is eternal oblivion possible?

Quoting Janus

...the idea of being out of the game will be disturbing...

Comforting, then, to think that some part of each of us returns in another. But what that part is, and how to formulate that return, remains obscure.

Quoting Corvus

When there is no mind to perceive, is eternal oblivion possible?

This again is the problem of confounding what you believe with what is true. That you will not know that you are oblivious does not mean you are not oblivious... Rather the opposite.

Quoting Banno

But what that part is, and how to formulate that return, remains obscure.

Do you mean something like influences we might have had on others, or our works that survive us or our physical components reconfigured after dissolution? I take it you are not referring to consciousness.

Reply to Janus A nod back to Reply to Wayfarer.

Given that I was oblivious to much of what occurred last night, only finding out about it after I woke, I'm not too concerned about oblivion.

So I find the Wittgenstein's approach amiable, especially as it fits in with other ideas as to the nature of measurement - the official metre rule in Paris and so on. One's death is not a part of one.

Quoting Wayfarer

In Western culture there is no such belief, instead it is thought that living beings are aggregates of material elements which are born as a consequence of physical processes which cease when those comprising physical elements disperse at death. It is a view seems intuitively obvious when viewed ‘from the outside’ or from a third-person or scientific perspective. However from the ‘eastern’ viewpoint it is a nihilistic attitude.

What about those centuries when you could change your prospects in the afterlife by getting with the winning team?

There is a large distance to travel from visiting Hades to get playbacks from souls by pouring blood into their cups and the descent and ascent of a particular soul as described by Plotinus. The arguments of authority from the latter have had much to do with the secular as such.

Quoting Paine

What about those centuries when you could change your prospects in the afterlife by getting with the winning team?

I'm not sure if you're being serious.

Reply to Banno OK, I get it now. My disposition on this is similar to yours—I don't find myself concerned about oblivion either. The concern about the quality of one's rebirth, given that in Buddhism at least, the reborn person is not you, seems completely incoherent. Why would I be more concerned about the quality of life my reborn person enjoys than I would be over the quality of life your reborn person enjoys, since neither of them have any conscious connection to me?

The Wetsern idea of the eternal life in heaven that awaits the good or the eternal life in Hell that awaits the evil is at least, if believed, rationally motivating. That said the Buddhist have their own hells to motivate the believers, but if it is not to be you who will suffer in them, it would seem far less rationally motivating.

Quoting Wayfarer

I'm not sure if you're being serious.

The precursor to the 'materialistic' age was people saying they knew what your deal would be after you died.

Luther said no human could be involved with deciding that outcome. That question regarding human authority led to others.

So, pretty serious about the afterlife question.

Quoting Janus

The concern about the quality of one's rebirth, given that in Buddhism at least, the reborn person is not you, seems completely incoherent. Why would I be more concerned about the quality of life my reborn person enjoys than I would be over the quality of life your reborn person enjoys, since neither of them have any conscious connection to me?

Nice. Yes, this is the issue with reincarnation. It is at best a very minor consideration.

Quoting Wayfarer

In Western culture there is no such belief, instead it is thought that living beings are aggregates of material elements which are born as a consequence of physical processes which cease when those comprising physical elements disperse at death... However from the ‘eastern’ viewpoint it is a nihilistic attitude.

So is it nihilistic? I don't see that it is. That "aggregate of material elements" is the very source of value.

A distinction between consciousness and identity might be helpful. Consciousness continues, but bert1 doesn't. If I (where 'I' is the conscious subject) persist, it's not as bert1.

Reply to bert1 If it's not my consciousness that continues, what is the point? Other consciousnesses will continue after you are dead - is that the recompense? But we don't need reincarnation for that.

Reply to bert1 Inclined to agree. But most will mistake consciousness for one's own conscious self-awareness, which is but the tip of a very large iceberg.

Quoting Banno

That "aggregate of material elements" is the very source of value.

In Buddhist philosophy the five skandha are the aggregates of

1. Name and form (R?pa)
2. Feelings or sensations (Vedan?)
3. Perceptions/Cognition (Sa?jñ?, saññ?, samjfia or sanjna)
4. Mental formations, volition, habits, or fabrications. (Sa?kh?ra, samskarah, or sa?sk?ra). ...
5. Consciousness awareness (Vijnana, vijfianam or Vinanna) (ref)

All of which are said to be empty of own-being, i.e. not possessing their own causal principle, and therefore incapable of providing anything of lasting value, being impermanent, devoid of self, and unsatisfying.

From our point of view, they must be of value, as there is nothing else, nothing beyond. But from the Buddhist perspective, the reason this is seen as nihilistic is the implication that at death, the deeds of the most heinous criminal and those of the most altruistic philanthropist are all equally negated as there are no consequences for them (although of course there are consequences for others).

But then I'm also reminded of these aphorisms, with which you're no doubt familiar.

The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no value—and if there were, it would be of no value.

If there is a value which is of value, it must lie outside all happening and being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental.

What makes it non-accidental cannot lie in the world, for otherwise this would again be accidental.

It must lie outside the world.

Quoting Wayfarer

the deeds of the most heinous criminal and those the most altruistic philanthropist are all equally negated as there are no consequences for them

So Indian religion is an elaborate confabulation from the yearning for justice? Fine - as Lennon sang, whatever gets you through the night, it's alright.



There's more than just the Tractatus, from where your quotes come, to consider. We make it so with the games we play. What we value is - well, valuable. We are the source of value. And the "we" is intentional, not the "I" of Nietzsche.

Quoting Banno

So Indian religion is an elaborate confabulation from the yearning for justice? Fine - as Lennon sang, whatever gets you through the night, it's alright.

There's a book by an analytical philosopher, Mark Johnston (Princeton, from memory) - Surviving Death. He attempts to stay firmly within the naturalist lane.

Johnston’s argument challenges the Cartesian idea that an enduring ego or soul is required for meaningful survival. He proposes instead that re-birth could consist in the continuation of one’s moral concerns and commitments in future personas. He confronts the common Western objection: If I don’t persist as a distinct person, how can that future person be me? He argues that this objection rests on a mistaken notion of identity fixed, rather than recognizing identity as a dynamic pattern of values, intentions, and relationships. Johnston’s account connects survival to the persistence of what we care about. This echoes Buddhist ethics, where moral causation is the primary thread linking past and future lives. His focus on love, moral concern, and relational continuity offers a powerful secular counterpart to Buddhist teachings on compassionate action as a means of transcending the egoic self.
gives meaning to the idea of survival without postulating a supernatural soul.

Quoting Wayfarer

...re-birth could consist in the continuation of one’s moral concerns and commitments in future personas.

...which may well happen without any recourse to mystical notions... those with whom you have interacted may carry on in kind; see Hofstadter's I am a strange loop, an odd but quite appealing little book.

But that is not what you are gesturing towards, is it? Again, if that is all you are saying, then there is little with which I might disagree.

Reply to Banno Only that all this might be for real, and that at my age, it is a prospect that is beginning to gnaw at me.

how swifty the conversation moves on to something easier to circumscribe.

I prefer the original topic about impending death.

Reply to Paine We are still on that topic.

Reply to Banno
Okay. I will try to stay with it.

Quoting Zebeden

Another popular position is so-called eternal oblivion. Simply put, there’s nothing at all after we die. After all, if it’s the body that produces consciousness, there’s no reason to believe in any continuity of life once the body ceases to function.

Its not a popular position, its the only rational conclusion we can draw at this point in science and history.

Quoting Zebeden

What bothers me, though, is that there is no reason to believe that consciousness cannot reoccur again. It already happened once – I’m conscious now. Why wouldn’t this phenomenon occur again? But if it can happen, then it’s no longer eternal oblivion. It appears to me as some sort of reincarnation.

Not quite. You are conscious because of the way matter and energy is arranged. In theory if we could copy your exact physical make up we could reproduce your consciousness. The funny thing is, "you" wouldn't be you. If you still existed there would be two different consciousnesses, one in each body. Meaning that if you died and we reconstructed you...it wouldn't be you either.

Even if there's a heaven, its merely a reproduction of you here. It would be a new body and brain constructed with the pertinent memories of your now dead body. Which, if that's the case, why wait for you to die at all? If you were good, wouldn't heaven just reproduce you up there at your prime? Its not like your old shell will ever know. Why wait until you're old? Maybe if you're really good heaven makes a few copies of you as you age, each needed for different purposes.

The thing is, there is only one 'you'. This is it. It can't actually be reproduced as you in that location and moment in time is a seminal event of irreproducibility. So...better live well. There is no do over, no eternal reward or punishment. There is only now and how far you can carry the future version of you after present you dies.

Quoting Wayfarer

Only that all this might be for real, and that at my age, it is a prospect that is beginning to gnaw at me.

What difference to you would it actually make if it was "for real"?

Quoting Zebeden

As death is inevitable, one of the main questions any person can ask themselves is what awaits us when we die.

Quoting Banno

when you are dead, there is no longer a "you".

Quoting Janus

when you are out of the game nothing will disturb you because there will be no 'you' to be disturbed.

:fire:

[quote=Zebeden]What bothers me, though, is that there is no reason to believe that consciousness cannot reoccur again.[/quote]
On the contrary, all impersonal evidence suggests that, even while alive, "self-consciousness" is the river one cannot step in twice. What you/we "believe" doesn't change this fundamental fact of nature. (Re: "afterlife" from a 2023 post)

:death: :flower:
[quote=Ludwig Wittgenstein]If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.[/quote]

Quoting 180 Proof

If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.

:up:

Quoting Banno

This again is the problem of confounding what you believe with what is true. That you will not know that you are oblivious does not mean you are not oblivious... Rather the opposite.

Does it mean you are oblivious, even if you will not know you are oblivious?

Quoting Banno

If it's not my consciousness that continues, what is the point?

We're talking about what is actually true, not what we want to be true, no? There may be no point from bert1's point of view. I enjoy talking about myself in the third person.

Quoting Banno

Other consciousnesses will continue after you are dead

I'm not sure they do. Other identities continue after I'm dead. I'm not sure there can be more than one consciousness. Insulation between 'consciousnesses' is a function of identity it seems to me.

Quoting bert1

I'm not sure they do.

Ok. Others will be. :wink:

Reply to Banno That's a possibility, but it's question begging. It sounds like we just disagree about there being a distinction between self and consciousness.

'You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the ocean in a drop' ~ Rumi

Quoting Nils Loc

You can't read the same book twice if it has been erased before the second reading.

That is the kind of oblivion that I fear.

It applies to memory of information and events but most keenly to my life as homo faber. I have learned a number of trades and there is always a period of disconnection when I have been away too long.

When the art returns, it is like coming back to a forgotten life. The ability frees me from numb ineffectual gestures made in dreams against imagined opponents.

Quoting Paine

That is the kind of oblivion that I fear.

There is no such thing as eternal oblivion. Even when you fall asleep at night, you don't notice time while you were sleeping. You close and open the eyes, momentarily it is next morning.

If you were spending a whole night without sleeping and fully being awake, a night would be very a long time till next morning. Without mind, there is no time i.e. no past, no present, no future and definitely no eternity.

And when one dies, the mind will be totally cut off from the rest of the world, and other minds too in any relation it has made with them due to nonexistence of the mind.

Reply to Corvus
I am not claiming what returns or not in the frame of some future {maybe} possible world. My life dissolves before my eyes.

On the other hand, your last statement is a declaration of fact that is beyond yours or my experience.

Reply to Paine No. It is not a declaration.

It is only an inference from what we see from the dead, and we also reason and infer the same situation to the ultimate fate of the living including us.

Reply to Corvus
I was not questioning why you claimed what you did. Claiming what minds are is another matter. Literally.

Reply to Paine You seem to have misunderstood the inference as a declaration, hence pointed it out.

Reply to Corvus
Or you misunderstood the context of expressing my limited understanding of our experience.

Reply to Paine I knew what you meant. No misunderstanding there at all.
At the point where experience is limited, inference takes place.

Reply to Corvus
Plato addressed that better than I can.

Reply to Paine What was his view on it?

Quoting Zebeden

Another popular position is so-called eternal oblivion. Simply put, there’s nothing at all after we die. After all, if it’s the body that produces consciousness, there’s no reason to believe in any continuity of life once the body ceases to function.

Some religions teach that the body is merely a temporary receptacle for the eternal soul --- which is temporarily oblivious to its heavenly history. Since I don't buy that unfalsifiable notion, I'll accept your implication that the conscious Mind is dependent on the sensory Body for Life, to extend the Mind over time, and to provide sensory inputs from which the Mind can create a worldview. In that case, Life, as we experience it, and Mind, as we know it, are dependent on a functioning World as a viable habitat for the body. Hence, no physical World, no metaphysical Mind.

The most generally accepted scientific hypothesis for the beginning of space-time is the Big Bang theory. But some thinkers are not satisfied with the something-from-nothing implication of that sudden emergence of Space (matter) and Time (change) from who-knows-where-&-why. So they ask a child-like question : what happened before the Bang? Those who do not believe in God or magical creation typically answer with a shrug : that the question is meaningless ; no Time = no Before. Likewise, what happens after Heat Death of the universe is unintelligible and incomprehensible.

Yet others may imagine that the timeline of our temporary universe is bounded on one end with eternal nowhereness and on the other end with infinite nothingness. However, in between those absent book-ends of the Space-Time-Line is a brief era of self-aware Mind (300,000 years and counting), whereas in the previous 14 billion years there was only Matter-occupying-space and Change-wasting-time, but zero Self-making-memories. That amounts to 0.00002142857 percent of Time with no knowledge of anything, including Myself. Nevertheless, during the current period of memory-making there must be a lot of meaning to forget, when the body ceases to support its brain functions. And some believe that I am what I remember. Hence, no remembrance, no Self : a zombie ghost.

If so, the possibility of "eternal oblivion" (absence of awareness) may be a valid philosophical topic for speculation, but with no scientific data to provide a grounding from which to conjecture. Hence, if "eternal oblivion" is possible-but-unprovable, why bother to worry about it? Unfortunately, most of us have been indoctrinated, not with abstract notions of nothingness, but with myths of eternal agonizing punishment, from which oblivion or obliteration would be a blessing, and not something to fret about. Yet, traditions of post-life oblivion or perpetual pain typically offer only blind faith, leap into the abyss, as the saving grace to avoid the void and the inferno. Does that make sense? :worry:

@Zebeden
[quote=Gnomon]The most generally accepted scientific hypothesis for the beginning of space-time is the Big Bang theory[/quote]
False.

And some believe that I am what I remember. Hence, no remembrance, no Self ...

Some deduce that embodied self-continuity is fundamentally what "I am", and therefore if no embodied continuity (i.e. no substrate functionality), then no self-continuity (i.e no PSM or user/introspection-illusion) and no self-aware identity (i.e. no autobiographical subject). Re: Buddha, Epicurus, Spinoza, Hume ... :fire:

Quoting Zebeden

what awaits us when we die

As far as I can tell, all life is inseparable from the physical body. Life is a function of a certain physical arrangement. Why would my life be different?

If the body stops functioning, the body stops living; why would I think there is anything left to live on after this body stops functioning, or why would I think some function of my body (my mind for instance), would be able to persist or be sustained, when the other functioning of my body (my breathing for instance, or my brain activity) stops functioning?

Eternal oblivion is a poetic way of simply saying “not here anymore.”

I am a body. When the body dies and decays, everything about me, everything particular to “me”, is gone.

Life after death would be a miracle.
Because it is by definition physically impossible.

I personally believe in miracles. My cousin just died last week and I hope God saved him from his death as I hope for all of you. But this is a belief in the impossible.

Quoting Fire Ologist

belief in the impossible

aka "religious faith"

When the body dies and decays, everything about me, everything particular to “me”, is gone.

Yes; like when an orchestra disbands, their music stops.

:fire:

Quoting 180 Proof

Yes; like when an orchestra disbands, their music stops.

If you make an orchestra playing music a metaphor for a human body living and conscious, then yes, I guess an orchestra disbanding would be like a human body breaking down and dying…into eternal oblivion, to round out all the poetry.

Quoting Fire Ologist

Eternal oblivion is a poetic way of simply saying “not here anymore.”

Where is the place for the religious belief or faith in life after death?

Quoting Corvus

Where is the place for the religious belief or faith in life after death?

Seems like there would be a different answer to that question for every believer.

The same place for a belief that a miracle ever happens.

Just last week was Ash Wednesday when Christians are reminded from dust they came and to dust they will return.

No reason to believe otherwise, unless willing to believe in the impossible.

Quoting Fire Ologist

No reason to believe otherwise, unless willing to believe in the impossible.

Believing in certainty and high possibility would be trust. Isn't believing in impossibility faith?

Quoting Corvus

What was his (Plato's) view on it?

A close reading of the Phaedo is a start. There is a discussion put forward by Fooloso4 that frames the different reactions to the text made here and elsewhere. All the opinions expressed 4 years ago are regularly repeated here since then.

I do not want to revive any of that in this discussion because that would hijack this OP.

Reply to Paine Quoting Fooloso4

according to the dialogue (Phaedo) knowledge of the good can only be attained in death if at all.

I recently watched an interesting documentary on Mt Athos, the Orthodox monastery complex. Towards the end, the head monk re-affirms that final union with God can only be realised at death, and that their life-long residency at the monastery is all by way of 'practicing for death' - exactly as Plato says in Phaedo. Then again, Orthodox Christianity incorporated much of Plato early in their development, hence the designation 'Christian Platonism', which especially characterises Orthodox spirituality.

Reply to Wayfarer
That leaves out the "if at all" which consumed much of that discussion.

Reply to Paine Sure. The monks don't entertain such doubts.

Reply to Wayfarer
Unlike Plato?

Edit to add: Here we are, repeating the discussion of four years ago.

Reply to Paine It’s the myth of the Eternal Return

Quoting Corvus

Isn't believing in impossibility faith?

It would take faith to believe in something one’s own reason found to be impossible. I only mentioned my belief because there’s an open wound right now, talking about life after death with a bunch of sad folks recently.

But on a philosophy forum, life after death seems like pure conjecture. We can’t even say what a mind is, let alone how it could exist absent a body.

Reply to Wayfarer
Perhaps so.

I will leave you be.

Quoting Wayfarer

I recently watched an interesting documentary on Mt Athos, the Orthodox monastery complex. Towards the end, the head monk re-affirms that final union with God can only be realised at death, and that their life-long residency at the monastery is all by way of 'practicing for death' - exactly as Plato says in Phaedo.

Though unorthodox of me to do so, it's how I like to interpret the Christian jargon of "till death do us (we) part".

Of course, death can also be construed as ego-death. And for those who so uphold, becoming or else being one with the Good - this rather then merely holding any form of understanding regarding it - could viably only occur on the obliteration of any and all dualistic ego.

Yes, ego-death inevitably occurs upon corporeal death to this world. For those who don't subscribe to an instant transcendence from being while alive to a state of absolute nonbeing upon corporeal death, however, what might occur afterwards cannot logically be that of becoming one with the Good for as long as there might yet remain any semblance of a dualistic ego (here thinking of angels playing their harps, kind of thing, which necessitates a dualistic ego wherein there is oneself and other) - this, at least, when associating the Good with the divinely simple neoplatonic notion of the One.

I also find this outlook accordant to at least some Buddhist understanding of possible afterlives - this via my somewhat vague recollections of things I've read in The Tibetan Book of the Dead.

Reply to javra I agree. There is a sense in the great traditions that being born is itself a kind of fall. Plato says as much in a number of dialogues. In Buddhist lore, the first link in the chain of dependent origination is ignorance, which is what leads to birth in the human realm (although a human birth is also a unique opportunity to escape the cycle of re-birth.) Many critics of Buddhism (even highly educated critics) view it as nihilistic, in that the Nirv??a of the Buddha is said to be the ‘eternal oblivion’ that the OP speaks about. But a close reading of the texts doesn’t suggest that - they say the Tathagatha passes beyond the dualities of existence and non-existence. In any case, the salient point in all of those traditions is that the sense of separateness, the ‘I and mine’, is the real obstacle to realising the ‘supreme identity’ to use Alan Watts’ term.

Alan Watts says that our apparent individuality is a kind of illusion created by the limitations of perception and conceptual thought. The true nature of reality is an undivided whole in which subject and object, self and world, are not utterly separate but poles in an underlying reality which transcends both. This realization, often associated with enlightenment or awakening, dissolves the artificial boundaries between self and world, leading to liberation from the ego’s illusion of separateness.

(Although suffice to say, the whole subject has become somewhat cheapened by the commodification of enlightenment, a social trend for which Alan Watts, despite his talents, was regrettably responsible for in some ways. But regardless, the best of Watts’ books are very good on these subjects, as he was able to communicate some very deep ideas in an accessible way. Link).

Quoting Fire Ologist

Just last week was Ash Wednesday when Christians are reminded from dust they came and to dust they will return.

Nothing solid to work with here, but from the movie Gladiator (I did say nothing solid to work with) I gather the possible motif if not actual ancient saying of "we are shadows and dust" or something to the like. From which could be inferred something along the lines of our selves as personas (masks in one sense) as being the shadows of our nonduaistic egos (itself in pure form potentially being equated to (a current aspect or fragment of) the Good as absolute nondualiistic being. For some this being maybe equivalent with God.

This seems in keeping with a recurrent theme in mythological accounts of us being "sparks" or "emendations" of the divine. Such that "shadows to shadows" and "dust to dust" (here assuming "shadows" to represent our spiritual being and "dust" to represent physicality).

Semi-random musings on the subject of "earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust", for what its worth.

Quoting Wayfarer

Many critics of Buddhism (even highly educated critics) view it as nihilistic, in that the Nirv??a of the Buddha is said to be the ‘eternal oblivion’ that the OP speaks about. But a close reading of the texts doesn’t suggest that - they say the Tathagatha passes beyond the dualities of existence and non-existence.

Interesting: the same can be expressed of the neoplatonic notion of the One (its being beyond the dualities of existence and non-existence). In honesty, my reasoning aside (it gets quite metaphysical), I'm driven to believe that Nirvana (without remainder) and the One / the Good are the same ontic thing expressed in different scaffoldings of thought, with each such applying its own at times disparate mythoi. In only some ways, a bit like how one can be reminded of both Lucifer (the lucid one) and Venus (love in all its myriad aspects) when looking up at the exact same physical star.

Reply to Zebeden

It is not oblivion if no one is there.

If the human body, like all other bodies in nature, decomposes and disintegrates into the soil, then no body is there.

That leaves Mind (maybe the body was organically conscious, aware of its sensations, feelings and drives, and that disintegrates with the organs). Mind is the reason we go forward into imaginary time dreaming of an afterlife.

So the question is really, what is Mind? If it's a soul or spirit--there is no evidence of that outside of Minds own constructions--then why oblivion? We construct complex Narratives to suggest it will go on constructing.

But how? As long as there is the organic infrastructure and energy, Mind constructs. How does it continue when the Body is gone?

I think it's not eternal oblivion, because the Mind too just stops.

For the body it's the eternal presence: Nature. There never is an individual experiencer of any Narrative.

For Mind, it's History. That’s what Mind is even while in the living: just the progression of Narrative we evolved to construct, and we do it as a species. So, any individual contribution remains forever in the afterlife of History. Oblivion is irrelevant because the Subject of the body's Narrative was never there, not the experiencer. "I" was just a tool, just stood in for the body, projected as the experiencer in the Narrative. In reality, the Narrative triggered feelings, constructed meaning for sensations, and triggered actions in the body; the only real thing. The body was the experiencer of stories; and it returns from where it always is: Nature
And the stories have made their contributionsto The Story; and like this sentence, there they remain.