Exploring Immortality: A Conscious Being's Perspective

[veij0]

I am conscious being (cogito ergo sum). The things that observe build my reality. Only the things that I observe build my conscious reality. The effect of Pluto´s gravity might have an effect on me but not in my conscious reality. Because I do not conciously observe the effect. The things that I do not conciously observe are not part of my reality. I did not observe my birth (it would philophically impossible because even if I actually remembered my birth I could not remember the moment I gained conciousness. Back then I was not aware of myself, concious. And if I was not aware of my existence there is no way I could have actually observed the moment that I gained conciousness.) so in my reality I have never born. I also cannot observe the moment that I die (loose conciousness). To me my own birth and death do not exist. So in my own reality I am immortal. And I also have never born. I have always been. In my conscious reality (the reality in which I live and observe). So I am immortal.

I have some counter arguments here but I don't not if they are quite valid. I haven't really decided if am really am immortal or not. I think I am. Or maybe not. I have many times presented these arguments proving why conscious being sees himself as immortal. I have never received any comment except confused looks. Sorry about my english, see it is not my native language. It might be a bit stiff to your eye. And the terminology...

 

[selfAdjoint]

Seems to be that your immortality is sequential or discrete, since you can't consciously examine yourself in REM sleep.

 

[veij0]

In conscious reality REM sleep does not exist (to you). Cause you can't observe it.

 

[selfAdjoint]

In conscious reality REM sleep does not exist (to you). Cause you can't observe it.

I put it to you that when I wake up, I am internally aware of time having passed since my last remembered consciousness before falling asleep. Aren't you?

 

[veij0]

Perhaps because you know that time has passed. Through experience. When you have checked the clock before you went to sleep and after you wake you check the clock again. you notice that time has passed. Through these experience every time you wake you assume that time passed. It isn't necessarily an internal process. Sometimes when you wake you assume time has passed but have no idea how much. Once, I passed out and thought that I was down merely a second and did not loose conciousness at all but later I found out that I was passed out for a few minutes. Or perhaps you just have an internal clock that tells you that time has passed but cannot be specific with the amount. Either way you have not been concious. You assume that time has passed when you wake up according to previous observings. You might say that when I wake up in the morning I know I have slept. So doesn't that make it reality. I would have to say no. Because that is only the name for the state of unconciousness that you experience (or actually do not experience) when going to bed at night and waking up in the morning. Who knows if you have actually been knocked out or in any other state of unconciousness which are all indistinguishable to the conscious mind. Conciousness makes only assumptions regarding to the state of unconcousness. You remember that you have been in bed an so on, the logical assumption is that you have slept. You remember a guy hitting you with a baseball bat, the logical explanation would be that you got knocked out. What if these actions cross? You remember a guy hitting you with a baseball bat but you woke up in your own bed. Or remember going to bed at night and wake up tied to chair with horrible headache. You don't know what has happened. You assume that time has passed. It was night when you went to bed and morning when you got up. And so on.

And just for the record, during REM sleep you might be concious. That is the phase in our sleep when we dream. And you can be conscious when dreaming you have to conscious to dream. Or at least to remember those dreams. Moreover, in the phase of deep sleep we loose our conciousness. What is also interesting is that we have many levels of conciousness.

 

[sameandnot]

why have "i" remained unchanged in my awareness, though "my" perceptions/mind and body have changed?

in order for there to be change, there must be an unchanging "thing" that is Aware of the changes taking place.

perceptions are the channeling of awareness through particular bodily and mental experiences, no? does awareness, strictly speaking, ever change? or is it the change of the perceptions, which act as the lens over awareness, that are subject to birth and death?

 

[veij0]

Im sorry since english is not native language I didnt quite catch everything. I´ll take a wild stab in the dark, if you may. This is exactly the very interesting part of all this, I believe. If someone would create an identical copy of your brains. It would have your memory and so on. Who are you? Are you both or the original? Is there really an original version since both are identical? Would it cause someone to die? Or if then you would be killed what would happen. Do you continue your life the copy? Or would you just die and the other would live, just like that? Basically the problem is same as if we would extract your brain into a machine. Are you then you in the machine? If you are why wasnt the copy brain. It had exactly similar capabilities as your brain. Actually it was your brain. Just like the we extracted to the machine. Are you confused? Hope you are, because this cannot be explained without the existence of some kind of spirit or soul or just barely saying that we have no conciousness. That an avalanche share our amount of conciousness. That is quite logical concidering the fact that universe is (if it is) determined. We are not concious. The thoughts that we are conscious comes from other thoughts etc. I can say that I am conscious but that does not make me concious.

Every time a moment passes by you actually die. Every moment. Cause you are not the same you were the last moment. That reflects what I have written here a few lines upper. When you go to sleep you especially die. Compare to the situation where your brains are extracted to another system. Does it make wheter you are conscious during the process? Or the situation where your brains are copied. If you arent conscious in which system you wake up? In computer or in your body? Can you wake up in both? If you are conscious during this tranfer operation what happens?

Damn I´m confused. Perhaps some might say that it is useless to think these kind things since identical copy can't be created. I must remind those that this is only a hypothetical situation.

 

[Serene_Chaos]

i was going to say "how can you be sure that you lose consciousness when you die?" but then i realized that that would only strengthen the argument of immortality.
so good work

 

[sameandnot]

are you your memories? or, are you That which has memories? are you a body? or are you that which has a body? are you a mind? or that which has a mind?

have you ever changed? or, have your body and mind and memories changed? If "I" were dying at every moment (that is to say, ever-changing, like a body or mind or memories) could I even be aware that I had once been? would there be a continuity to memories, or a "flow", unless "i" didn't change? isn't this similar to a movie? there must be one who "watches" the still-frames, flickering fast enough to be perceived as motion. this is a similar example (the one of the movie).

you are not the body or mind. you are AWARE of having both. the great thing about human consciousness is that you can be aware of That which is aware! is my cat aware that it's aware? most likely not. are planets aware that they are aware of other planets, and therefore, are aware of themselves being aware that they are attracted to them? or is there awareness occurring simultaneously with the attraction? with no self-awareness of that taking place?

 

[sameandnot]

see? what "i" am is ineffible, but it is surely there, or here, no doubt. it is merely, not what i had assumed it to be. we must look very deeply, within, to Know. you follow?

 

[loseyourname]

Have you ever heard of Epicureanism, veij0? Their arguments are similar to yours. The philosophy of Epicurus centered on the desire to remove all fear from human life. As death was one of the major fears, Epicurus alleviated this fear through a strict materialism, arguing that a physical being broken down into its constituent pieces (as we will be upon biological death) experiences no sensations. Since we never experience death, it may as well not exist for us. In a nutshell, a paraphrase might go something like this:

Part of what it is to be human is to be alive.
Something that is dead is not alive.
Therefore, something that is dead is not human.
Therefore, no human is ever dead.

It should be noted that this does not amount to a claim that human never die, but only that we are never dead. Phenomenologically, we are all immortal, alive for every moment of time that exists in our phenomenological universe. That seems to be what you are saying.

 

[scott1]

I am conscious being (cogito ergo sum). The things that observe build my reality. Only the things that I observe build my conscious reality. The effect of Pluto´s gravity might have an effect on me but not in my conscious reality. Because I do not conciously observe the effect. The things that I do not conciously observe are not part of my reality. I did not observe my birth (it would philophically impossible because even if I actually remembered my birth I could not remember the moment I gained conciousness. Back then I was not aware of myself, concious. And if I was not aware of my existence there is no way I could have actually observed the moment that I gained conciousness.) so in my reality I have never born. I also cannot observe the moment that I die (loose conciousness). To me my own birth and death do not exist. So in my own reality I am immortal. And I also have never born. I have always been. In my conscious reality (the reality in which I live and observe). So I am immortal.
I have some counter arguments here but I don't not if they are quite valid. I haven't really decided if am really am immortal or not. I think I am. Or maybe not. I have many times presented these arguments proving why conscious being sees himself as immortal. I have never received any comment except confused looks. Sorry about my english, see it is not my native language. It might be a bit stiff to your eye. And the terminology...

Es vos certus veij0 Immortalis? EGO sententia latin eram a mortuus Lingua quod it's vos narro it's vestri paternus lingua?

 

[franznietzsche]

I am conscious being (cogito ergo sum). The things that observe build my reality. Only the things that I observe build my conscious reality. The effect of Pluto´s gravity might have an effect on me but not in my conscious reality. Because I do not conciously observe the effect. The things that I do not conciously observe are not part of my reality. I did not observe my birth (it would philophically impossible because even if I actually remembered my birth I could not remember the moment I gained conciousness. Back then I was not aware of myself, concious. And if I was not aware of my existence there is no way I could have actually observed the moment that I gained conciousness.) so in my reality I have never born. I also cannot observe the moment that I die (loose conciousness). To me my own birth and death do not exist. So in my own reality I am immortal. And I also have never born. I have always been. In my conscious reality (the reality in which I live and observe). So I am immortal.

An open interval is not the same as an unbounded interval. For example, take the set of real numbers in (0,100). Neither 0 (your birth) or 100 (your death) is included. Let this set be the set of moments you are conscious of. Just because neither your birth nor death is included does not make this set infinite or unbounded. Its not. So you're still mortal.

 

[QuantumTheory]

An open interval is not the same as an unbounded interval. For example, take the set of real numbers in (0,100). Neither 0 (your birth) or 100 (your death) is included. Let this set be the set of moments you are conscious of. Just because neither your birth nor death is included does not make this set infinite or unbounded. Its not. So you're still mortal.

This is ridiculous. Are you saying youre' not human? Are you sayingl ife doesn't exist and it's not a dream? In that case, life is pointless just 'die' and 'wake up' heh. I hate ridiculous threads like these. Reminds me of the other one, "Prove existence"..that is quite lame.

 

[van gogh]

i think that this is very interesting argument