Might I exist again after I die? Need I be concerned about what will happen to me in this life?
This thread is a spin-off of the "How do I know I'm going to stay dead?" thread started by @dukkha.
Most of have strong intuitive responses to both questions in this thread's title: Obviously, I won't exist again after I die. Obviously, I have no choice but to be concerned about what will happen to me in this life.*
My wager is that it's tricky to defend the second intuition without eroding certainty in the first. The thought experiment I introduced in Dukkha's thread is simple (though I've tweaked the language a bit):
Explain why it makes sense for someone who knows he will soon be tortured - but isn't being tortured yet - to fear the impending event.
It may seem like a dumb question, because it's so obvious, but I'm hoping people can respond in the spirit of that old 'explain step-by-step how to make PB&J to someone who takes everything literally' game.
*Maybe you could sidle around this by invoking some stoic principle of accepting anything one way or the other. Then consider, instead, someone dear to you undergoing the same thing, who hasn't been graced with such stoic insight.
Most of have strong intuitive responses to both questions in this thread's title: Obviously, I won't exist again after I die. Obviously, I have no choice but to be concerned about what will happen to me in this life.*
My wager is that it's tricky to defend the second intuition without eroding certainty in the first. The thought experiment I introduced in Dukkha's thread is simple (though I've tweaked the language a bit):
Explain why it makes sense for someone who knows he will soon be tortured - but isn't being tortured yet - to fear the impending event.
It may seem like a dumb question, because it's so obvious, but I'm hoping people can respond in the spirit of that old 'explain step-by-step how to make PB&J to someone who takes everything literally' game.
*Maybe you could sidle around this by invoking some stoic principle of accepting anything one way or the other. Then consider, instead, someone dear to you undergoing the same thing, who hasn't been graced with such stoic insight.
Comments (117)
As to why I should fear being tortured in the future when I think I have every reason to believe that I will be, I'd say I would fear it due to a present identification with my future self.
Fear of death is a fear of life. Ghosts have "unfinished business". When you've done everything that you've wanted to, you won't mind.
In any case I'd like to focus more on the second question. Identification with a future self is a good start. I think, actually I'm going to shift the question a little, if you're ok with that - I don't think it changes the essential point, but I think it brings things into even greater relief. Imagine, instead, you have an infant child that a bizarrely sadistic regime has sentenced to some sort of torture tomorrow. You've already been sentenced to death at midnight. The child can't identify with a future self. Do you still worry for the child you're looking at now or only for the future child who will be tortured?
(If you think this change is bogus, I'll recant and start again according to the original question.)
Because it's impending? Does indeed seem a dumb question. Back in my day, we used to get caned for infractions at school - a practice long since banned - I have a vivid recollection of standing in the corridor outside the headmaster's office for about 15 minutes. That wait was an important part of the punishment.
As for 'whether I exist after death' - as I responded in the other thread on this question, who am I but a chain of dependent causes? Again the Buddhist attitude is instructive in this matter. The Buddha teaches that there is 'no self that migrates from life to life'. But nevertheless beings are reborn according to their karma! So karma itself gives rise to future existences, which takes form as a being with a sense of 'me and mine'.
I rationalise it from a secular perspective as follows: when I first studied prehistoric anthropology, I got some insight into how long our ancestors lived on the ancient plains. H. Sapiens appeared on the scene about 100,000 years back. And that is many generations ago! Who were those people who lived and died all those lifetimes? I believe in a real sense, they were earlier versions of myself. They too went through all the things that we go through now - birth, marriage, survival, old age and death (although I think they probably had a much, much higher pain threshold.)
There's a poignant passage in the early Buddhist texts, where the Buddha is explaining to the sangha, how long they have been in the realm of samsara.
Assu Sutta
Is that really so obvious? Depending on your metaphysical presuppositions, this claim may or may not be so.
You ask this as though you have a choice in the matter. You will be concerned about what happens to you regardless of whether you ought to. As to whether you ought to, irrespective of whether you have any choice, I think you ought to. To be concerned with what will happen to you in this life, to be concerned with suffering, is show moral awareness.
Quoting csalisbury
Well, given that one cannot but fear potential harm, and having dismissed the possibility of the stoicism of the sage, then it is perfectly rational to feel in such a way. It would irrational not to fear harm.
But why were you worrying? After all, no one was caning you in the hallway. Caning may have been impending but it wasn't happening then. So why worry about it? (Again, I know these questions seem stupid)
I would say you worry about the child you're looking at now and for the future child that will be tortured because you understand them to be one and the same. You worry for the child you see now because you believe she or he will be tortured.
That's true. But for the people for whom it's not obvious, it's usually not obvious for religious/mythological reasons. & I'm not saying they're wrong. I'm just trying to meet people who don't buy into those views on their own terms.
I probably failed to phrase things right, then, because this is exactly what I wanted to emphasize (this is why I tried to footnote away any shallow stoic response and shifted the question, with John, to concerns about one's infant child, not oneself.)
Agreed, but harm to oneself. What does the suffering of someone in the future have to do with me?
Because it would appear that there is personal identity over time. The very same 'thing' (I don't really know what word to use here, self? subjectivity?) which is having this current experience is the same thing which will experience the pain of torture in the future.
I recently broke my hand and had to get it reset. I was sitting on the hospital bed (huffing nitrous thank god) dreading the pain I was about to experience. Why? Isn't that a problem for the person in the future, isn't that something which the 'future me' will have to deal with? Why should I be concerned?
Because it is the same 'subjectivity' (?) which persists through the changing experience (persists through time). The 'thing' which is having the experience of dreading one person grabbing my elbow and the other grabbing my fingers and them both pulling extremely hard in opposite directions while the doctor smushes my hand bone back into alignment in the future, is the very same thing which undergoes that experience in the future. Whatever 'it' (scare quotes because "it" kind of makes it sound like it's an object in the world) is, it persists through the changing present experience.
Right?
It's like if we swapped experiences/lives. Even though the experience would have the same content if I were having it or you were having it, it would be an entirely different 'subjectivity' which is having the experience. That is, our experiences are not these free existing things which nothing has or owns. Some sort of 'thing' has or undergoes the experience.
It has to, right? Because it hurt like a itch! If there wasn't something which persists through the changing experience (a 'haver' of the experience we might say) then how is it that 'I' felt both the dreading experience and the pain experience? Easiest way to account for this is to just posit a 'subject' of experience, a being which exists in some sense that felt both. It's hard to talk about whatever it is without making it seem like I think there is some sort of separate object which has the experience.
I think there is this access issue, which is why I am having some much trouble thinking about or describing this 'thing', and that's that you wouldn't be able to find it within your conscious experience (because if you did, the thing would be the thing which has found the thing, ha). As in you can't consciously experience it (and therefore have some empirical idea of what it is) because it would be the thing which is having the conscious experience, and therefore not what is being consciously experienced. It can't be found within or accessed with conscious experience. Kind of like how an arrow can't shoot at itself.
Why don't we just bite the bullet and start believing in souls, is it really that absurd?
Quoting csalisbury
The former, because personal identity through time does not depend on memories of the past or projections into the future. It doesn't matter the *content* of your conscious experience (eg, memory, projections into the future), because the thing which persists through time is outside of the contents of the conscious experience - it is what is experiencing the content. Sometimes I imagine animals like this (not claiming they are) - as having no experience of memory nor projection of themselves into the future. However even in this case I feel it would still be the same 'being' which has the experience at T1 as has the experience at T2.
I already explicitly anticipated and addressed that response though, in the OP. Imagine it's someone you love who wasn't, for whatever reason, 'completely free of any self-concern' (and, of course, though you appreciate the ideal, I have deep doubts, no disrespect, about whether you're at that level. I'm certainly not.)
But they're not the same person, are they? How could the present child be identical to the child in the future? Has literally nothing changed in the interval? What makes them the same person? (again, I have to emphasize, I'm playing the dumb person following the step-by-step instructions of the person explaining how you make PB&J - not to troll, just to draw out explicit explanations of implicitly understood ideas)
But then I'm back at, of course you'd be concerned, and that is a dumb question. Beings obviously are frightened of death and pain. What's your point?
We know intuitively they are the same person, we just can't explain to ourselves how it is possible that they are. I guess my answer would be that it is a spiritual truth that they are the same, and as such it is not something that can be analyzed and given comprehensive (or for some inquirers, even satisfactory) account of in objective terms,
Also, another question is, what do you mean when you say the future child is not identical with the present child? Do you mean her body will be different; will have grown, for example? If so, it must nonetheless be her body, and not someone else's that has grown, no? I think it is true that we cannot claim the two temporal instantiations (present and future) of the child are identical ( in the sense of absolutely identical); but rather that it is a case of their being two (obviously different) temporal instantiations of the same identity.
Pretty sure Mr. Sid was just utterly confused on this point. There must be personal identity through time if you come back into existence again reincarnated. Something must be racking up the karma. It just doesn't make sense it's like someone saying, "nothing persists through time, there's nothing which is having this experience, no soul exists which is racking up karma but... my next lifetime is going to be as a person in a lower caste because I was bad throughout my life".
I think there are Hindu strands of 'dharma' which do believe in a soul, which makes far more sense if you believe in samsara. I really can't make sense of nothing existing and yet it comes back in the next lifetime.
Oh, right, well there's a great opportunity for you there, D, you can start a movement explaining to Buddhists what the Buddha got wrong.
If you are reborn in a different body and with no memory of your past (that is, no memory of what is for you now, your present) identity, would you say that it would be a case of a self or identity that has "migrated"?
If we imagine ourselves as just say, a collection of biological and physical processes (I don't actually believe this). The collection of processes at Time 2 is different than the collection at Time 1 (or we might say "the state of the processes at T1, or even, "the arrangement of matter at T1"), point is it's not the same at all. So from the perspective of you being at Time 1 why are you worrying about what the conscious experience will be at Time 2, because it will be an entirely different arrangement of matter, or state of processes, or etc. What is persisting through all these dynamic biological and physical processes such that whatever feels the experience at T1 feels the experience at T2?
Or even if we forget materialism and just talk about phenomenology. Conscious experience is in a constant process of change. The conscious experience at T2 is entirely different than that at T1. But, with conscious experience in a constant state of change, how is it that the same thing which dreads the torture is the same thing which feels the torture? How do you feel/have both experiences if there is NOT something which persists through the constant change of conscious experience? How are both experiences undergone or known to you, if you didn't persist from T1 to T2?
He was just a human like you and me, not some infallible god. And I'm pretty sure people were already doing this - to the very Buddha himself - while he was alive. What makes the Buddha right about everything he said?
It's not 'a thing which anticipates torture'. There is obviously a process, a stream, if you like, of memories and anticipations, acting as a coherent whole, which is a self. But there is nothing specifically in that which can be said to be constant, unchanging, and existing apart from the chain of causes and conditions.
[quote=John]Also, another question is, what do you mean when you say the future child is not identical with the present child? Do you mean her body will be different; will have grown, for example? If so, it must nonetheless be her body, and not someone else's that has grown, no? I think it is true that we cannot claim the two temporal instantiations (present and future) of the child are identical ( in the sense of absolutely identical); but rather that it is a case of their being two (obviously different) temporal instantiations of the same identity.[/quote]
Yes, the insistence on the two bodies being absolutely identical is facile, I agree, but it's how you bridge the gap. Again, though, you've already provided an answer (the spiritual connection) so I can't agree or disagree.
But you weren't experiencing pain or death (beyond the pain of anxious apprehension) waiting. in the hallway, to be caned. So why be frightened? What did the suffering of a boy, not in the hallway, have to do with you?
(I have no point - I'm just asking you to explain why you were concerned about a future state of suffering?)
I'm sorry I couldn't have been more help to your inquiry csalisbury; I'd love to be able to say something more, but every attempt I have made over many years to analyze personal identity has fallen into aporia. :’(
That's just it though! I'm trying to make the aporia obvious and explicit, no matter what your spiritual background. (I agree that there's no way to avoid aporia.) My swoony dream suitor for this thread is an intelligent, but aporia-averse respondent who will tussle all the way. (that's a challenge! if there's anyone listening.)
I have no anwer, other than 'anticipation'.
It's really hard to talk about a future lifetime which has nothing to do with this life, while in this life. I'd say it would be the same 'being' which is experiencing this lifetime, with its human sense of ego, memories, etc, that would be experiencing the next lifetime. Because whatever it is, it is 'prior' to the experience of memory, human ego, projection into the future - personal identity (I don't mean this in the sense of "I am a male, I am x age, I have these political views", I mean in the sense of the same thing having/feeling the experience at T1 as feels T2) doesn't arise from, or is derived from those things, rather, identity must already be there for these things to all be known to or experienced by the same 'being'. In order for one to have an experience, and then remember that experience, identity through time must already be in place, it can't therefore be derived from those things.
It would be the same 'prior to ego, memory, human identity' being which undergoes this life as feels the next. Not sure whether "migrated" would be the right word. I would think in this sort of poetic language it would be the persisting through time 'being' which is stationary (doesn't migrate anywhere) while this lifetime experience ends and then the next one starts. That's just how I'd characterise it anyway.
I really can't think of the word to use here, 'being' makes it sound way too much like an object/thing. "Subjectivity" sounds better I'll start using that.
Should we think this is a conceptual impasse?
OK, so you say that identity is not a matter of having a particular body, idea about oneself or set of memories. And yet all you know of your self (at least all that you can speak about, anyway) consists in those. Even if you have some ineffable inner sense of yourself, that sense must be the same or similar enough across time to constitute a sense of self, and the possibility for that would seem to be reliant on memory.
'You never step in the same river twice' ~ Heraclitus
We could separate the two into say the human sense of self - which is a sort of ego with an identity and a collection of memories, and gains knowledge and understandings of the world - from a more ontologically prior sense of "subjectivity/sameness" which (I believe) must exist in order for the human sense of self to come about.
So in order to have this human sense of self through time, one must already be the same 'subjectivity' which had the past experiences and which remembers them. Imagine a human which has no memories. If there's only this human sense of self, and it's derived from memories and the like -things which form the contents of conscious experience - then the human without memories etc would have no sense of self. And so if there's no more fundamental sense of sameness/subjectivity, how could this human begin to form memories? If there's no subjectivity persisting through time already in existence, how can it be the very same 'self' which has the prior experience which the human without any memory undergoes, and then remembers, in order to form it's first memory? There must be a more prior sene of ownership of experience than that *derived* from the contents of experience like human identity, memory, future anticipation, etc. It can't be derived from memories because it must already exist for the idea of memories (recollections of *prior* experience - there must already be the same subjectivity in order to have had a prior experience to form memories of) to be coherent.
So, the problem here seems to be that the sense of "sameness/ identity" which is purportedly prior to memory, and in fact to be responsible for its very possibility, would seem to be itself impossible without memory. Maybe we can say that it is memory itself, and not any specific memories, which enables a sense of unity to develop such that particular memories can subsequently be connected to, associated with, that unity.
Can we say that there could be a persistent subject (other than the body) even if there is no sense of there being a persistent subject? This raises the problem of whether there is any persistent objective identity, and not just in regards to humans, but in relation to any object you care to consider. (The identity we consider other objects to possess across time is actually a projected subjective identity, and that's why we refer to the 'object itself'. Although in this case the subjective identity does not belong to the object as a subjective identity, but is projected by us as a purported objective identity).
The main problem with your question is that it can be interpreted in two ways:
(1) assuming "you" is your person as we see it with distinctive behaviour and look
(2) assuming "you" is your "self" abstracted from your specific person as it is, the entity (or maybe entities?) that is continuously percieving experience through your body, the entity that would continue to be the same even if your personality and behaviour would change abrubtly into someone else's
With the first interpretation the answer to your question is "no"... unless we are in a universe which has a periodic motion returning again and again in the same states.
With the second interpretation the answer can be yes or no depending on the solution of the hard problem of consciousness: if panpsychism is true then the answer is "yes" (you would never stop existing and experiencing, although in a more elementary way), if emergentism is true you are probably forced into an eliminative materialist position and the question wouldn't make sense because there would be no "self".
Fear is uncertainty. Uncertainty of the outcome.
We seek security all our life, and when we face something uncertain we fear it because we don't know how to respond to it.
So fear arises when you don't have control over something ( like death - it's coming no matter what ) and Taxes :))) thats why people fear the IRS like the Devil :)
Your atoms still exist after you die, so there is something going on. I wonder however why do we fear so much the ending? The ending of what? Our memories, our possesions, our ideology, our friends - who will die too :)
Human consciousness if you like is too immature to take responsibility for this connection.
Some would say rigid designators are the tool for handling stuff like that. But I've recently come to the conclusion that that's just an elaborate game. Explaining our confidence in contiguity past to future requires getting a little Kantian. I don't think there's any way around it.
Let's get some clarification on terminology here. Worry implies anxiety. Anxiety implies anticipation. So Wayfarer is very consistent here:
Quoting Wayfarer
The difficulty here is that the relationship between anticipation and worry, through the medium of "anxiety", is an irrational relationship. In other words, worry is an irrational response to anticipation. When anxiety takes hold, and we pass from intelligible anticipation, to unintelligible worry, we can no longer make sense of our anticipations.
So, let's focus on anticipation, perhaps we can determine why it leads from intelligibility to unintelligibility through anxiety to worry. What csalisbury appears to point to is an assumed continuity. There is an identity, an assumed continuity between myself right here, now, and myself at a future time. That assumed identity ensures that these are the same person. Further, through empathy or similar means, we can also create an identity between ourselves and others, and this assumed identity, between us and others is produced by our anticipation of what will happen to others, involving a continuity between us and others. Notice that my claim is that anticipation creates this assumption of continuity. We assume a continuity between us and others because it is necessary in order to account for anticipation concerning what will happen to others. This makes that anticipation intelligible, just like the continuity between me now and me later makes that anticipation intelligible. That is what TGW points to:
Quoting The Great Whatever
We feel anticipation, we create, within our minds' a continuity, and this continuity justifies the anticipation, rendering it intelligible. The anticipation becomes intelligible based on the assumed reality of this assumed continuity. But stemming from within, in its raw form, anticipation is unintelligible. In reality then anticipation leads from unintelligible to intelligible.
The problem with anxiety and worry is that it is a failure of our capacity to make anticipation intelligible. When we fail, anticipation remains unintelligible, and proceeds to anxiety and worry. So in response to your question csalisbury, it is the continuity of identity, between myself, here and now, and myself at a future time, which justifies or validates the anticipation. If the continuity is real, the anticipation is valid. The continuity between myself and another does not do so well to justify anticipation as does the continuity between myself now and myself later. If the event is imminent, and in my future, anticipation is highly justified. How I deal with this anticipation, in my mind, determines whether I go into an irrational anxiety and worry or not. If the event is immanent, but in someone else's future, anticipation is may not be so highly justified because the continuity between myself and another, may not be so well justified.
What do you mean by "makes sense"? I mean, there's a fairly cogent story we can tell rooted in evolutionary theory that "makes sense" of why organisms feel, anticipate and attempt to avoid pain. Do we need more than that?
Derivative of the phenomenology of of the past as well? I project backwards a past and think of myself as the same self now as was then. I think of my memories as being of my prior experiences.
But your experience is present, and it continues to be present. Pinch your arm twice, you felt it both times. Your experience is constantly changing and yet it's always present. You are continuing to exist. How? That conscious experience is ongoing is not derivative of the phenomenology of the future.
There's a more fundamental self/identity, which allows you to have any sensations at all in the first place.
A slight quibble in the scenario. You start with the person knowing he will be tortured, but then ask why it makes sense for them when they haven't been tortured yet, aren't being tortured now.
But if the person knows it to be true, then it will happen. The person will feel undesired pain, and knows that they will feel undesired pain.
Though maybe this isn't that important, actually -- what else is fear other than a product of desire, after all? One would only need to believe they will feel undesired pain tomorrow and the fear would seep in.
I think I would say that it makes sense because the person believes that an (intensely) undesired event will take place tomorrow. Perhaps they believe that torture will result in losses in other ways, too, like a lack of being able to walk. But let's take it a step further then -- the scenario is in some future society where people who are inclined towards sadistic torture are tortured, and then the conscious memory is wiped. Maybe the state has been convinced that this is how to combat sadism, by implanting visceral non-conscious impressions into the brain the sadist begins to feel empathy without realizing it (so the theory goes).
It would make sense, even in that scenario, to fear the pain. And I think that it makes sense because of the desires a person has.
Without the desire -- say the same future society, in developing the above experiment, decided to re-arrange the mind so that the desire for comfort was simply not able to be felt -- then there would not be fear.
That we don't die right now doesn't seem derived from our future or past phenomenology. I am stabbing my fingernail Into my forehead and wondering why the sensation of pain keeps persisting. It is continuing to hurt, therefore I am continuing to exist through the (or we might say, "as the") changing/ongoing sensation.
I don't see how that's related to the question you're asking in the subject line of the thread.
Anyway, it would only be unexplainable to one why someone might worry about future events if one has no understanding of the phenomenon of psychological continuity.
Don't start drooling, too, or men in white coats might haul you away.
Reason is the slave, not the master, so your question has no rational answer. One might say that psychological time is created by identification; and identity becomes the centre of experience. Anticipation just is identification with an imagined future - myself continues. The alternative is to live now completely and end now completely, to be dying all the time. Then there is no fear but the immediate.
I understand (I think) that your line of questioning has to do with the question of personal identity and its continuity through time (or lack thereof). But like others here I find the questions you choose to ask to be confusing, and perhaps confused. What sort of answer to you expect here? Are we supposed to rationally justify our feelings? Do you mean to imply that feelings of fear, anxiety or empathy need to have a rational justification? Rooted in what?
So, yes, you're right - it's about the continuity of the self (for lack of a better term) over time. So the first step is: we understand our self to be continuous - we understand that there's something that remains the same, despite other personal changes (I use the torture example because I think it really drives this point home, lends it an existential weight.)
So, well & good. but personal continuity is an explanandum, not an explanans. We might posit some sort of soul (which, having been posited, drastically lowers any assurance one might have about the impossibility of one's existing after death.) But if, on the other hand, one rejects the idea of a soul, then another explanation must be put forth.
That second explanation is what I was hoping to draw out.
I think this is an interesting direction to go on. Can you expand on what you mean by memory itself though?
I don't think that there's anything that remains literally the same. I think that it's simply a matter of being connected to and developing out of previous states in particular ways. One thing that's pertinent to that is that we're talking about connections and development, at least insofar as senses of self go, in a particular brain.
I haven't really thought extensively along this line yet, but at first strike I would probably say that memory itself would be the sense of unity and continuity. What would isolated memories be if there were no sense that they were images of life events which were interrelated and integrated within a continuous and seamless stream of life? They would not be memories at all but would be just isolated context-less thought-pictures.
So, on this line of approach memory itself would be the stream in which individual memories are related and integrated. Sometimes I have thought that identity is a purely logical matter; and I have thought that when it comes to our imputations of identity to 'external' objects it is so. But in the context of the apprehension of our own selves there is a sense of identity which would seem to be constituted by memory itself. And it would even seem that the imputed identities of external objects are abstractions projected from this sense of identity, although on the other hand it may be true to say that we actually feel the identity of external objects, but surely not with the same intensity as we feel our own identities.
I did try.
In Buddhist psychology, there is no separately-exising self or '?tman' which stands apart from and is witness to the stream of psychological and physical events that comprise human existence. The nature of being is understood in terms of the principle of dependent origination, and the five aggregates or constituents of experience, those being name-and-form, sensation, perception, mental formations and consciousness.
These are the constituents of experience and therefore of identity. In some sense, they persist from life to life, but not by way of being embodied in an ego or soul; they propagate as causes and then give rise to effects in future lives.
Obviously the metaphysics of who it is that lives, who suffers and dies, is central to that, and is the basis of considerable debate and elaboration. Eventually it gave rise to the idea of the alayavijnana, the 'storehouse consciousness', which is comparable to Jung's idea of the collective unconscious, in the school of Buddhism called Yog?c?ra (mind-only). This is also associated with the concept of the citta-santana, the 'mind-stream', which constitutes the identity of the individual up until their liberation from samsara.
I think the question of continuing identity is a red-herring. To fear to to be worried about what is to come. We run or eliminate a threat to avoid damage of destruction which has happened yet. The present individual is never what fear is concerned about. Worrying about future events was to be concerned about someone else all along.
Suggesting fear's concern for the future is dependent on the present is to miss the point entirely. The point is difference, not continuity. One worries not for themselves, but for a person who is yet to come.
I've come across the idea of a "storehouse consciousness' before. It seems to be the idea of something like a universal memory. The interesting question for me is how the individual memories or memory streams within the storehouse are thought to be inter-related. My understanding is that in denying that there is any individual spirit Buddhist thought conceives of Karma or action as the interrelating force. I find this problematic because it introduces the idea of a deterministic causality operating within the spiritual dimension. I think this is a projection of our understanding of the natural world, and therefore an objectification of the spiritual. I am reminded of Kant's denial that causality operates outside of the empirical. The problem is that to say that causality operates in the spiritual dimension seems to deny the possibility of personal freedom.
Karma is a sound ethical principle in my view. After all it is simply saying that 'all intentional actions have consequences'. When it becomes grounds for allocating blame, or rationalising failure, then it is pernicious and can easily turn into fatalism. Otherwise what's not to like?
"By their fruits shall ye know them".
The problem I have with the idea of "consequences" is just that to the extent that is not a kind of deterministic notion of cause and effect, then it would seem to become vague and ultimately just a notion of 'influence' in the broadest and most indeterminate sense.
That's a tall order, asking someone to put forth an account of the continuity of existence. We see that inanimate objects, as well as the living, continue to exist through time, so we can rule out the soul as the source of continuity. What next?
There is a sense in which freedom really comprises no longer being bound by any habits, positive or negative. I think of that in terms of breaking through to the unconditional. That is the domain of spontaneous action, the ability to act or create without reference to habit-patterns and 'typical ways of doing things'. So freedom doesn't come as a consequence of karma, but if one's karma is such that one is bound up in the consequences of previous actions, then clearly it is hard to act freely or spontaneously.
The underlying principle of anatta, no-self, is that one's self-conception, who you think you are, is like a magnet which attracts iron filings. They cling to the magnet, because of magnetic field effects (allegorically speaking). But when the false idea of 'ego, separate self, personality' is dispersed through clear seeing into the causal nexus which gives rise to karma, then the 'magnetic field' ceases operating, and there is freedom from karma. But, nobody to be free! And that is reflected in 'self-abnegation' or renunciation; the enlightened are said not to be 'karma-creating' beings, hence beyond the cycle of birth and death.
It "makes sense" because "someone" is, by definition, a creature developed to survive over time. Creatures or things which aren't developed to survive, or persist over time, have already ceased to exist, long ago. This is a world of the persistent. Creatures persist longer when they develop behavioural strategies derived from analysis of experiences.
It looks as though you are also asking something along the lines of Karma, or being, independent of a creatures current instantiation of behaviour. Well like some of the other posters I don't see how we can address it in any real sense apart from our common conditioned knowledge and understanding. This is not to say there aren't other ways of knowing, but rather that all indications are, around us, that there is none. So karma (or its equivalent) and reincarnation (or its equivalent) are human ideas and sentiments present in the face of clear evidence(on the surface at least) to the contrary.
Just as all experiences have an intentional aspect, and a temporal aspect, I believe they all have this aspect of pre-reflective subjectivity - a felt quality of 'mineness'.
In the past I considered this theory that there is nothing to 'ourselves' over and above this felt quality of mine ness. What do I mean? Well, because conscious experience is ongoing, what we experience is an ongoing pre-reflective sense of subjectivity. This is because built into all different types of conscious experience is that pre-reflective quality. So what I mean is that there is no self independent if conscious experience, nothing is actually having or undergoing your conscious experience. All that's happening is there's an ongoing felt quality of 'mineness', which because it is all pervasive makes us feel as though that experiential quality is actually something far more fundamental than it is.
So we can think of conscious experience as being sort of free floating ontologically 'un-owned' things. We might say that experiences experience themselves. So let's take the example of pain. Imagine the experience of pain, but lacking the felt quality of 'my pain, 'a subjects pain', 'I am being pained'. So we drop that aspect of the pain experience, what remains. Something like the pure sensation of pain which exists without an owner or subject, it's just sort of there in existence experiencing itself.
So the idea here is that all conscious experience is fundamentally ownerless. Nobody or thing has or undergoes the experience. The experience just exists by itself through brute force. The only reason we think there is a subject/haver of all these experiences, is because what is actually a contingent part/aspect of the conscious experience itself (pre-reflective subjectivity), is built into the nature of all experiences. So, experience exists ownerless, and by brute force, they're sort of just in existence experiencing themselves. But part of how all experience exists is with this aspect of mineness. Because conscious experience is ongoing - so they exist by brute force in an ongoing present process - and all have as part of their nature a felt quality of mineness, there exists this pervasive illusion of mineness, of subjectivity. We have this higher order thought experience (post reflective) that there must exists a haver or feeler of conscious experience.
So all that exists is an ownerless experience, it just sort of exists there by itself and through its own force, experiencing itself, the experience qualia sensations feelings just sort of exist. But all aspects of this ownerless experience have as part of their make up an experiential quality of 'mine ness'. This causes higher order reflective thoughts to form about a pre existent/before subject or haver of experience, a self or actual subjectivity. But it's just an ongoing illusion. The ownerless experience is just sort of tricking itself through its pervasive felt quality of 'mine ness' into forming higher order thoughts about something having or feeling the experience.
Do you see what I'm saying? This pre-reflective mineness is a contingent part of the experience. It could be stripped away and what would exist would be a pure experience which didn't feel owned or had.
So what I am saying is there is no actual self. All that actually exists is unowned experience, which is what we are. All we exist as is this unowned conscious experience. But because all aspects of what we are - which is un owned brute existing experience - contains a felt quality of mineness, there exists an illusion both pre and post reflective (ones the all pervasive quality of mineness, the other are the reflective higher order thoughts about being a self and a subject having or feeling the experience) that something has or undergoes the experience, when in actuality the experience is there just existing by, and experiencing, itself.
Hope I'm being clear. Any thoughts?
One problem which strikes me is if this is true, how do we account for the unified nature of conscious experience, what combines all the various sensations into a sort of cohesive whole. And so there's no me and no you really, do we just say there's a cluster of brute fact existing experiences over here, and another over there?
Seems like any theory of a self has insurmountable problems. Whether it's an illusion, or it exists in x, y, or z way, it's extreme difficult to make sense of it.
Well, that's a plausible answer to the question "Why should you be worried about something that's only going to happen to you." The answer you give is that it's going to happen to you. But I would object that that's not why we are worried; we don't actually reason this way. There is no why, it's just something we do instinctively. You might speculate though that it's the same instinct that makes us believe in the invariance, or at any rate, continuity of the self over time. Maybe.
Quoting csalisbury
My explanation is deflationary (but not eliminativist). I do not think that personal identity constitutes a sharp metaphysical unit. I think that it is a psycho-social construct, rather than some independently existing entity, like a soul. (Which is not to say that it is not real: psycho-social constructs are as real as anything else.)
This is a broader, less specific answer than John's idea of an integrated memory stream. That is one possible psychological mechanism, but it at most addresses the sense of one's own identity; there is also a recognition of personal identity in others, which would have to have some other explanation. I suspect that, our evolved psychology being a terrific mess that has accumulated many ad hoc patches, crutches and shortcuts over the ages, there is no one simple and elegant mechanism to account for all aspects of our self-identification.
If personal identity is a psycho-social construct, it is to some extent a product of our biological makeup, and to some extent a matter of cultural tradition and even personal preference. Therefore, to come to the title question, there is no objectively right or wrong answer to the question of whether your self can continue or to reemerge after your death. Our common intuitions with regard to personal identity are based on our common experiences. But of course, we none of us have afterlife experiences - at least none that could be shared with our mortal selves. Nor do we have experiences that could shape our intuitions with regard to any number of other fantastical thought experiments that are often trotted out in order to explore issues related to personal identity: teleporters, matter duplicators, etc. Such thought experiments, rather than providing an insight, defeat their purpose by being too extraordinary.
Fortunately, nothing important is at stake when considering such questions - unlike the realities of our existence that have shaped our intuitions with regard to personal identity: contemplating our own "selves" and the "selves" of people around us. So if you must answer the question, then knock yourself out, believe whatever strikes your fancy. There are no consequences to having such an opinion, nor is there any way to put it to the test.
Cases of the kind you cite are, for me, cases of cause and effect operating in the empirical world. I haven't denied. or even questioned, those. My question was about the purported spiritual consequences of intentional acts.
I agree with what you write about freedom in the second paragraph. But I see things pretty much the opposite way to how you express it in your third paragraph. For me, there is no self when we are caught up in the objectified world of deterministic actions and having rather than being. We lose ourselves in this world; that is why it understood to be a fallen world. Freedom belongs to persons; it is the self, not the no-self that is free. However this apparent disagreement is probably more a matter of preferred terminologies, locutions and emphasis than anything else.
So, I don't, for example, see Buddhism as contradicting Christianity, but rather as expressing a different emphasis; namely an emphasis on detachment and non-action instead of love and engaged action. Different emphases have been more or less appropriate in different times and cultures. For me, it comes down to a question of which emphasis is more spiritually appropriate to the contemporary world.
May be going off-topic here. :-O
There is no hard-and-fast barrier between the empirical world and the 'domain of the transcendent'; it's more like a porous membrane, although in our culture it has been hardened into a concrete barrier.
But the point is, in relation to the subject at hand, if karma doesn't provide a connective principle between past actions and future states, then what does? If karma isn't central to the notion of identity, then what is?
Well, we forget outselves, in the sense of becoming identified with our circumstances and then taking ourselves to be something we're not. That's a universal teaching in philosophy and the subject of many parables even in popular culture (e.g.The Lion King, Star Wars. And I think that's also the meaning of 'anamnesia' in Plato.)
I am not saying that the self is merely or simply unreal, but is something that is to be transcended; we 'loose ourselves to find ourselves'. In the Christian idiom: 'he that saves his own life will lose it; he who loses his life for My sake will be saved'. So 'saving your own life' is maintaining your worldly identity. The Buddhist equivalent would be 'he who clings to [self and world] will not realise Nirv??a; he who renounces [self and world] for the sake of Nirv??a will find it.' The false sense of self is what has to be transcended; which demands sacrifice. (Not making any claims on my part here. X-) )
But I understand how some interpretations of 'no-self' can lead to nihilism and have had debates on this subject on dharmawheel. I think there's a tendency towards nihilism or indifference amongst some Buddhists, but I don't believe it's representative of the real meaning of their teaching, any more than dogmatism and bigotry are of Christianity.
Nowadays I don't think in terms of barriers or membranes or separation of any kind between the empirical and the transcendent. I see them as two different orders, with the empirical being the symbolic (or semiotic if you like) expression of the transcendent. This has a parallel with the contemporary physical idea of the 'virtual' giving rise to the concrete.
Since we can know nothing whatsoever of of the virtual outside its effects, the big philosophical question becomes 'what should we think about the virtual?'. This is where faith, intuition and, if you believe it, revelation, come in, or you can just sit in the fence.
I would say that it is memory and the sense of unity, that is soul and not so much karma, that is central to the notion of identity.
In Christianity it is always the soul that is saved by the truth of the spirit. "And the truth shall set you free". In Christianity the individual soul, the person, is understood to be a unique and eternal manifestation of the spirit; and hence immortal. So the appropriate metaphor is always one of finding, not one of losing, the self. Losing the life in order to find the Life is not losing the self, because there is no self in the life to be lost. Of course, in this way of thinking the ego is not the self, but an illusion that grows out of separation of and from the self.
Perhaps it would have been better translated as "God is no respecter of personages".
But, doesn't something have to be already in existence that's experiencing those memories and that sense of unity. Otherwise it would be like, no self exists, then memories of prior experiences are had, and the self arises as a sort of construct based on this.
That doesn't make sense because there already must be a continuos experience in existence, in order for one to have had prior experiences that one is remembering. The experience must already be having had by a continuos identity, *before* one forms and has memories. Otherwise you couldn't have had the prior experience that you are remembering, because you wouldn't have existed.
It's like saying "the self arises from a continuous ongoing experience." But, in order for experience to be ongoing some sort of identity/subject must already be in existence. Otherwise the experience could not be continuous. An ongoing experience means that whatever experiences at T1 must be the same thing experiencing at T2.
How can we understand periods of non consciousness? If you actually cease being conscious entirely when you're knocked out, or when in deep sleep, or under anaesthesia, how is it that you survive the gap in conscious experience? Why don't you just stay unconscious and then something else experiences waking up? Because you do survive the gap, so doesn't that mean that you must continue to exist in some way through periods of non consciousness? Otherwise you'd be popping in and out of existence, and yet it's still the very same identity/self/'you' having the experience.
How do we explain the persistence of self/identity through gaps in conscious experience? The same 'thing' feels or knows about or undergoes the experience before the gap, as does after the gap. You experience pain before you are anaesthetised, and then you experience pain after you come to. Why do you not just cease to exist and then something else experiences the pain after the gap?
This suggests to me that perhaps the self/subject/identity/'thing which is undergoing conscious experience, is not itself experiential, or arises from experience. Seems like it must exist outside conscious experience in order to survive the gap. If the self is a construct, then wouldn't it be a different/separate construct after the gap than before? How could a construct of self arise through say memory, then cease to exist at the moment of unconsciousness, and then another construct of self arises after the period of non consciousness, but it's also the same construct as the first one, because you felt the pain before the gap and now you're feeling it after.
We experience right now, here in this present. We experience a memory in the present and project a past behind us, as if we existed before the present. We project a future ahead of us, as if we are going to reach the future, and be the same self in the future. "It will be me that has the experiences in the future."
We think of time as this linear track, which actually exists outside our present experience, and our present experience is travelling along this track leaving behind it a past (containing facts) and heading into a future ahead. As if we are a train carriage travelling along a railway track. I think it's more like we are the railway carriage, and we're stationary, and the track we are travelling along supposedly, is just an idea in our minds. A projection of the same identity behind us, and the same identity which we will be, ahead of us. But even if this is the case, there must still exist some sort of fundamental identity, right? Because the present is a constant change, and yet we persist through (as?) it.
Dukkha raises some interesting points above but I'm on an iPhone here, will return later.
Yes, that is what we know as the soul. The existence of the soul is not like the existence of a thing; a satisfactory analytical account of it cannot be given. But it seems obvious that the existence of the soul at least must consist in memory and unity. Freedom, memory, unity and the spirit are intrinsic to the soul and the soul is intrinsic to freedom, memory and unity and the spirit; as well as all the other permutations. There you have it.
But these are experiential. Isn't the soul that which is undergoing the experience?
There is memory (as faculty) which is not experienced but thought, and there are memories which are experienced, or rather, are experiences.
There is unity, which is not experienced but thought, and then there is the sense of unity, which is experienced, or rather is an experience, and underlies all experience.
There is the self, which is not experienced but thought, and then there is the sense of self, which is experienced, or rather is an experience, and underlies all experience.
Of course you will be able to find inconsistencies and inadequacies in what I have written here, just as you will be able to find them in any verbal formulation.
If memory is to serve as a condition for selfhood, then it must circumscribe some region - it must draw a line and say: that which happens within this boundary will be preserved in the memory of entity x. If memory is to be the eminence grise behind selfhood, it must also be a drawer of boundaries. And that makes things difficult. Because that which draws the boundary is also that which is to be bounded.
This brings me back to another point of Dukkha's: The idea of 'ownerless' experience. It seems to me that 'mineness' is essential (even if it's a lower karma-compromised calcification of a deeper experiential stream or storehouse ( @Wayfarer ) ) because that's precisely what explains the apprehension felt at our own impending torture. If all experience is ownerless, then everyone should be well afeared of anyone's torture, past or present. (Though I'm sure there's some mystic out there who claims we're all participating in the crucifixion of christ: approaching it asymptotically or converging on it from different angles; or that the crucifixion is an event which we all experience ripples of, in a kind of twisted neoplatonic theory of emanation; or that the crucifixion itself is a kind of singularity of suffering which gathers into itself each and every worldly travail, making them equal...the crucifixion as a mystic-metaphysical zero-point that recollects, anticipates and embraces all instances of suffering, forges them into one, and requires each of us to experience the same thing through a glass darkly in a kind of prismatic distribution ---- ) So you could go on, there are a lot of ways to truss this up, but no matter how acrobatic you get, you still need to explain the vulgar experience of mundane selfhood, even if its only an illusion
And in any case, I don't think the thought experiment I've posed is all that extraordinary. Throughout history, many people have awaited torture. This is a far cry from teleportation.
I'm sure personal identity is a psycho-social construct, but such a construct requires a lower-level continuity in order to even get off the ground - The construction of a self-narrative requires some kind of spatio/temporal/experiential boundary (boundary-process?) which excludes certain experiences/elements as candidates for integration in a self-construct and includes others.
In other words, calling it a construct doesn't really get at the heart of the issue. Boundary drawing is a little closer. I'm not sure if even that is quite there.
Must it be memory that circumscribes or is it not the thought of 'self and other"? The circumscription, though, the very thought of self and other must be enabled by memory, no?
So, I don't think the experience of memory, of remembering and of memories is a matter of circumscription, but a matter of [i]owning [i] which is primordially implicit, and is only made explicit in the process of explicit circumscription.
It is the ontological ownership of experience and therefore memory which makes possible the explicit circumscription of the self and what it owns, including memories themselves. In a way the soul does not own the faculty of memory though, that is a gift from the spirit, or from God, if you like.
This is a little unclear, but do you see where I'm going?
When it's me, I will, for one thing, not really know what torture is even like, and will probably be imagining it to be a lot worse than it is, be worried about long term effects, or perhaps death. Like for spies, they don't teach you how to resist torture, they teach you how to deal with being broken. The only reason one would want to resist spilling the beans is if you are reasonably sure they're going to kill you afterwards, then you should probably keep them lips sealed for as long as you can. In both cases you're putting off the inevitable, but when they just want the info, and aren't going to kill you, and it will stop the torture, then you might as well give it up. If they're going to kill you afterwords, then you might as well tell them nothing, and make them break you.
If you're just sitting in the cell, then even if you're absolutely obsessed with the impending torture, you'll still forget about it and think about something else at least once, and then you'll notice in that moment that right now, you're fine. Maybe even feeling pretty good. Well rested, full of gruel or whatever, and everything's fine. Thinking about all of those things you won't get to do, and all of the future horrors is just what you do all of the time right now anyway. The only difference is that you imagine the physical torment of torture to be so much worse than psychological pain, but is it?
The Buddhist answer is that the self is not a permanently existing entity; in fact the self neither exists nor doesn't exist. To say 'it exists' is to declare the reality of something changeless, something that always remains as it is - which is the 'fallacy of eternalism'. But to say 'it doesn't exist' is the opposite fallacy of nihilism. The reality is, everything that exists, including us, does so as the dynamic interplay of causes and conditions, and in relationship to others. There is nothing within it that is fixed and immutable, or exists in its own right; but at the same time, actions have consequences, and identities have continuity; karma definitely happens, you can't laugh it off or dodge it. But it is like a whirlpool in a stream. (As many have noted, in this respect Buddhism has some similarities with process philosophy and modern systems theory).
So this doesn't posit 'a self that appears', although it is true that the school of Buddhism that proposed the storehouse consciousness, was sometimes criticized by other Buddhists for being too much like the Hindu view of ?tman. But again, it isn't exactly that, because the process, the being, is dynamic. It doesn't deny the phenomenal reality of individual lives, but it does deny there is something fixed, changeless and immutable, which is what the ?tman is supposed to be.
What is beyond change and decay, is Nirv??a; but it is an error to objectify or reify that as a target or object. This leads to the 'negative dialectic' of Buddhist philosophy - to awaken to the truth is to 'realise the emptiness' (??nyat?) of all composite existence. Thich Naht Hanh describes emptiness as 'inter-being'; nothing exists in its own right; everything co-arises. Nothing absolutely is, or is not; everything exists dependent on causes and conditions. That is the central truth of Buddhism.
So in this view, is not as if the self is one thing, and its attributes another. Alan Watts used to ask, when we say 'it is raining', what is 'it'? When lightning flashes, are the lightning and the flash separate things? That is the sense in which the Budda radically diverges from the Aristotelean paradigm of 'substance and attribute'; there are no substances; the underlying reality of existence is constant change. (Recall Wittgenstein's remark from his Notebooks, 'I am my world'.) The aim of the Buddhist analysis is to understand how the wrong perception of that process leads to suffering by causing us to cling to what is inherently unstable and unsatisfying. Not that this is an easy thing to understand or undergo.
What's way more interesting is that we're fucking doing it on purpose. We are things, and have certain forms because we will it, work on it, strive for it, and make it happen.
I told a self-proclaimed prophet that I know the other day, after he was talking lottery winnings, and prophetic dreams that I don't wish, or hope for a particular future, I demand it. create it. I make it happen. I don't hope, I intend.
Point being that that is clearly a one way parts sans wholes view of things. The problem is just flatly denied, or attributed to "convention". There's a real problem of universals and continuity that cannot be coherently denied.
That doesn't seem like a sincere 'good luck,' indeed it seems like a bitter sarcastic one. Why?
The trouble is people begin a the rejection of universality and difference in the first instance. Both become lost in an attempt to define each other in the basis of the other.
Are we humans? Well, that universal (or rather similarity) is thought to be given by difference-- have the arms, the legs, the DNA, etc.,etc. and one is human. Lack them and one is not. Yet, this narrative always bashes up against are usage and values. We claim the genocidal manic is not human. We pronounce the entity with experiences and intelligence like us belong to humanity. The difference we thought defined the universal of human doesn't so at all-- turns out we may human robots and inhuman homo sapiens.
A similar mistake is made with difference. How do people usually think difference is defined? By a universal of some sort. Humans are not animals because they always have this particular sort of brain with intelligence. To understand and spot difference, it is thought we pick out a universal form an then note the different states of the world it constrains. Yet, this is never satisfactory because we find it is different beings who are similar.
Supposedly, the universal (Willow) defines the difference (to be tortured Willow and tortured Willow) and is needed for me to care about a difference (tortured Willow), but we can see this doesn't make sense, for the two Willows are different. My to be tortured self will never experience torture. By difference it has no torture to fear.
The fear only make sense when tortured Willow matters. Concern not for the universal, but for difference. When tortured Willow matters, it's to different Willows that proceed them. I do not fear my present self, but for the person who comes after me. Identity over time is not a universal that constrains the world, but difference expressing some sort of link or similarity-- the body, actions and experiences of the to be tortured person are linked to the difference of tortured person.
Over time, I am many different people who's actions affect those to come, who follow from my present body and experiences. If I care which person exists in the future, I have to be careful about what's happening in the present. To be condemned to torture means that, barring some cultural change, pardon or incompetent guards, a future person linked to my body an experiences will experience torture. If I want to avoid that fate for the person who comes after me, my fear makes perfect sense.
The "problem of universals and continuity" is an illusion generated by not accepting difference and universality for themselves.
It seems there's already a boundary inherent in the notion of a soul entering a world. I suppose I would have to say the soul enters at the moment of conception. If the soul is just the basic 'beingness', then it must be infused with the spirit in order for personality to develop. Part of that obviously seems to involve spirit as culture, as per Hegel.
True, 'ego' is an equivocal term, as is 'personality'. We can speak about the personal ego, meaning the social personality and sense of self within and as defined by a social milieu. We can speak about the transcendental ego as the principle unifying experience. It's arguable that more than half the misunderstandings and disagreements that arise in these kinds of discussions stem from equivocities of all the terms.
In the physical vehicle, memories of experience and living in the physical world. In the soul vehicle, memories of soul business.
Actually the Buddhist attitude is that this habit of reflexive grasping is the main problem in human existence. We automatically see life from a self-centred viewpoint, and so everything is unconsciously related to our own self-interest. You can see that being acted out on many levels, even the political and social level (especially in today's 'politics of identity'.)
The antidote to that is not consciously trying to be totally saint-like and pure - that usually doesn't work, because it becomes just another ego-trip - it is getting insight into how the mind is making those connections all the time. It has become an automatic process, something we do without being aware that we're doing it.
That is why there is an emphasis on 'insight meditation' - through insight meditation you actually learn to see the processes of 'I-making and mine-making' unfolding in real time, so to speak, in the laboratory of your own mind and body.
Then the freedom from that automatic reflexive state starts to become a spontaneous process. This is what is called 'realisation', as distinct from a contrived attempt to be something. And that is the process of liberation. And that leads to a state of 'unboundedness' - where there is no longer such a sense of self-and-other, 'me here' vs 'that there'. One can still function perfectly soundly in a day-to-day basis - it's not as if you forget who you are - but there is a much greater sense of spaciousness and ease.
http://a.co/ggDNFIK
We don't even need continuity of self. Wanting something now is enough.
We could draw a distinction between ontological ownership, and experiential ownership. So an ownerless experience would have no ontological 'owner' (eg a soul, Cartesian ego, something like that), but would have the experiential felt quality of 'mineness'.
So it wouldn't be the same thing which dreads the torture and then experiences it. Because there isn't actually 'multiple' experiences, we don't actually have an experience at T1 and then another at T2. We don't actually exist at two different times. We do think about the past as if "I existed then, and had x experience at y time". Or even "I didn't exist then" in the case of the world before our births. But in reality we never leave the present, we exist here, present, in an ongoing process of experience.
This is why I think we're making some big mistake in conceiving of time as linear. We might practice some mindfulness and be aware of the contents of our experience, and then ask ourselves what is persisting from one moment to the next, and be stumped. But it could just be the case that the question is ill formed, because it assumes a linear type existence. The same type of question as say "what's infinity x 19?" Where the question seems legitimate, but we're stumped for the answer, but really that's not how maths works making the question non sensical.
We do think of ourselves as linear, as being the same 'undergoer' of experience now that underwent experience in the past, and will do so in the future. Perhaps experience is not ontologically linear, but yet it feels that way experientially. There exists the presence of experience. A past and history of this experience is in a sense mentally projected behind/before the present, and mentally projected forward, as we will experience *then*. But we never actually will get to the future, we don't exist other than now. So what I mean is that the present doesn't actually move anywhere, it doesn't go toward a future, coming from the past, ontologically. Rather, the future and past are entirely experiential, built from our mental projections ahead and behind (ok it's more complicated than it just being an 'idea in your head' especially with history, with all the things in the world seeming to have their own history, but the point is this is not ontological but rather experiential).
So we are present, and the present we might say is ontologically stationary (it doesn't move ahead like a travelling arrow), we merely project a future ahead of our presence, and project a past behind/before this present experience right now, and this builds the linearity of time and ourselves. As if we exist over a linear expanse. So if we imagine a piece of white string, and someone has got a highlighter and coloured the string in a morse code like pattern. A long dash coloured with highlighter, a short dash of just plain strain, another longer dash, a small dash of plain string, etc. And so the part of the string which has been highlighted represents our periods of consciousness, and the plain string represents periods of non consciousness (deep sleep, anaesthesia etc). The string itself represents linear time. So if we imagine the direction of time from left to right, where we exist is the point on the string which is currently being drawn on with highlighter, travelling from left to right. As we move from left to right we leave behind facts, like a record of when in time we were conscious, and we weren't. The string exists ahead of us waiting to drawn on with highlighter. Hopefully I'm making this analogy clear.
The point being, that this conception of the way we exist, I suspect, is completely wrong. In this torture scenario, we think of ourselves as being at the point on the string which is currently being highlighted, in a left to right progression. We think of the present as existing within an expanse of time which transcends it ahead and behind, and is moving from the past and into the future, leaving behind a record of itself as it travels along. From our position on the string, we think that we existed in the past, so we existed to the left of where we are on the string at an expanse of the string which represents say yesterday, and we think we existed across that expanse of string and experienced fear and dread of the torture experience which will be some time in the future which the present, where we currently are on the string is travelling towards. All parts on the string which are coloured with highlighter represent the times which we existed/experienced/were conscious.
So again the point is that this entire way of conceptualising time is not correct. We didn't actually exist in the past (there is no highlighted string which transcends *this* present experience(ing)), nor will we exist in the (ontological) future. We exist here, present, as an ownerless experiencing (verb). An aspect of how this ownerless experience exists is the (mental) creation of linear time. Which is created by a projection of 'me/myself/mineness' ahead into a linear future ahead of us, and behind us into a past where we existed up until the present. We mentally build our existence through time, making it an experiential/mental thing rather than time actually existing outside our experience (a past and future actually existing, a past which contains facts about what happened).
So he question, why do I dread tomorrow's torture, is because, all that exists is an ontologically ownerless experiencing, an aspect of which is a mental projection of a tomorrow which exists ahead of what's present (the experience) and towards which this experience is travelling. What's projected is a sense of me/myself/mineness/my experience/the same haver or undergoes of experience, both behind into a linear past and ahead into a linear future. This projection of ahead and behind creates and builds this illusion of existence across time, of existing in a yesterday, and a 'will exist still in a tomorrow'. We say that it will be the same me/subject of experience/self which felt yesterday's fear experience of future torture, and will feel tomorrow's experience of future. But ontologically there is not future or past, today nor tomorrow. These do not exist other than as aspects of an ownerless experience. Now there's still questions to answer such as, what separates one ownerless 'experiencing' from another. And how is the experience unified, or if that too is an illusion it needs to be explained.
So to sum up another rambling post :) : time is not ontologically linear, so therefore any questions about existing now and in the past, or now and in the future, and per the OP; now and in a future lifetime are conceptually wrong. Any questions which assumes an existence of ourselves anywhere other than *this* present 'experiencing' make no sense and can't be answered (much like infinity divided by twelve). We fear the future because we project a future ahead of ourselves in which we exist, we likewise project ourselves into a past behind us. This projection of a self builds/creates this notion of continued existence through time. But In reality (ontologically) neither exists. All that exists is the presence of 'experiencing'. An ownerless process/doing/verb.
Thoughts on this? I'm not fully committed to this idea but I think there's sense in it. Time not being linear dissolves all the questions like surviving gaps in consciousness, existence through time, the question of existing again after this lifetime. A lifetime is under this theory nothing more than the sum of the mental projection of a self back until a birth before and ahead up until a death. We do project a past behind our births as well, but that projection loses the sense of "I existed then", it's a more objective type of time projection. A Christian might project back objective time 6000 years, and project back his own existence/himself x number of years depending on how long he understands himself to be alive. A person who takes scientific theories to be true would project backwards 12 billion years of objective time, and then his own self in the same manner as the Christian. There would be no sense of existence through time, of the 'same self', of continuing to exist as the same 'undergoer of experience' without these projections. There would just be the presence of experiencing, which is also all there I seven with those projections, but the difference when they are taken away is it doesn't even *feel* like there's a continuing me which exists through time. So ontologically in neither case does a persisting self exist, but experientially it is built when those projections are done/experienced. All that ontologically exists is a ownerless experience, so by that I mean let's take the visual field as an example. There isn't a seer, owner or a looker, nobody nor nothing is having that sense experience, rather that sense experience - the raw qualia you could say, just exists there as a brute fact of the universe (in the same way a physicalist thinks the physical world exists - nothing holds the physical world in existence, nothing causes atoms to exist, they just sort of exist by their own will, holding their own selves in existence). And in the same way two atoms can be in existence as a brute fact/thing according to the physicalist, so too can multiple visual fields.
The difficulty there is, the soul, the 'cogito', is never an object of experience. To say that it is 'something' is precisely to reify an abstraction. Why? Because the Cartesian 'res cogitans' was an abstraction which then became reified, i.e. treated as an actual object or something that exists. There is no such thing, but that doesn't mean 'the soul doesn't exist'.
What has an experiential felt quality of 'mineness'? Actually, nothing does. It is wholly and solely a quality in consciousness. Talking about it as a 'something' projects it as 'existing', which just results in confusion, because there is no such thing 'out there somewhere'.
Source
I think it's important to break out of the linear narrative etc.. to quest, as I used to say. But once free of it I find that one is required to focus back on the empirical world again to find ones path And to look to how ourselves as a witness is present or enthralled in this world.
I have tried for nearly forty years, admittedly somewhat sporadically (although I did meditate daily for about 15 years at my longest stretch) to see such things via meditation, but I just never could even begin to get a glimpse. I have come to the conclusion that sitting meditation is not a useful method for me personally. I find that through the arts and everyday activities and even reading I am able to enter states of absorption and release feelings of attachment far more effectively than I ever could in seated meditation, which usually makes me feel as though I am wasting time. That said, I have, while meditating (although not only when meditating) had several experiences of what I guess you would call beatitude. It is mostly these experiences which convince me that transcendence is possible. I don't believe it matters what you do so much as how you do it. No special methods are required; grace and inspiration is available to everyone who sincerely wants it. Faith is the one thing most needful. At least that's my take these days.
And a good saying it is. Note the etymological relationship between 'quest' and 'question'. Philosophical questions, you might say, are 'questions you ask with your life'.
On two occasions I meditated at length in India for 4 or 5 hours a day for weeks on end. The second time in the Buddhist cave temple at the achealogical site at Ellora near Puna, 3hrs at dawn and 2hrs at dusk each day.
Both occasions were fruitful, but the results were subtle and permeated my being gradually and largely imperceptibly. The way in which it was revealed to me was not in changes I noticed in myself, but rather the way that I noticed how I differed from my piers, who had not undergone the same practice. In ways like a clarity and stability in mental focus, perception, along with an abundance of what I will describe as grace( I expect you know what I mean). Along with a freedom from the psychological states and conditioning which they were inexorably subject to.
Quoting csalisbury
I don't understand your difficulty. Memory doesn't have to draw any boundaries: it's not like it can choose a different scope or perspective than that which is given by the conditions in which its bearer finds itself. To put it simply, you can't have memories of what you (your body, for lack of a better term) haven't experienced.
Of course, that's assuming we are talking about ordinary, common-sense memory. If you want to widen the notion beyond the evident, then, like I said, all bets are off - imagination is your only limit.
Quoting csalisbury
No, your thought experiment is not extraordinary. It is indeed so ordinary that it does not present a problem that you think it does.
Our prior experience of pain reminds us of its inescapability, how it obliterates the dualism between mind & body, how we become an unreflective one in it. It's the trauma we relive again and again as if we could change it. It goes against our bias towards the future. The anticipation of pain creates a discordance between our desires, which are future headed and the inescapable reality we know we will experience, as we have in the past. Its power over our consciousness invokes the a real sensation of fear. Our body, our closest ally, reacts instinctively and we seek transcendence which we are denied.
I think we are constructed by others who provide the foundation for what we shape and mold as ourself, those closest and dearest to us provide the bricks and mortar, we lay brick.
I don't think this is true. Our memories are often inaccurate, especially concerning things distant in time. It's as if we tend to remember things the way we want to remember them, then when we check to corroborate with others, we find big discrepancies. The imagination may be actively involved in the memorizing process. So it's quite false to say that we can't have memories of what we haven't experienced. And I think csalisbury's point is accurate, that there is a type of selection process involved in remembering. When whatever it is which is selecting, selects from the imagination, then we have the problems I refer to.
I'm quite certain Descartes thought the 'thinking thing/substance' actually existed, and wasn't just some non-existent abstraction he falsely believed exists. I can't tell whether you're arguing against my understanding of Descartes, or agreeing with the post?
[quote=]Talking about it as a 'something' projects it as 'existing', which just results in confusion, because there is no such thing 'out there somewhere'.[/quote]
To be fair nobody actually knows this. If the 'thinking thing' is out there beyond what we can experience and access, then we cannot know for sure whether it exists or not.
But the classical notion of the soul as eudaimon or genius or chi, a personal guardian spirit that is simultaneously one's own character and a guardian spirit watching over one and determining one's fate, has a lot to be said for it. It is both outside of one's self, out of one's own control, and a part of oneself. Some notion of character being fate is very old in many world traditions. That is always the guiding thread of 'who I am,' personal destiny, which is never either outside of one's control or in it. This notion is one that is prior to crude numerical identity, and may be impossible to understand without it – the continuation of 'who one is,' 'the one' who will be tortured, or what have you. Only after grasping that is the notion of a future as a distinct point in time possible.
It's a difficult point. What Descartes (and his contemporaries) meant by 'substance' is very different to how 'substance' is nowadays defined. The Greek term that 'substance' was translated from, was 'ouisia', which is nearer in meaning to 'essence' or 'being'. And in Descartes' day, the criterion for 'what is real' was 'that which is in greater proximity to its source'. So there was only one 'uncreated substance', namely, the Divine Intellect. Human subjects - souls - were created directly by the Divine Intelligence and so where of a higher degree of reality than created things.
Descartes' was on the cusp of medieval and modern - when I studied philosophy, Descartes was the very first unit, under the title 'the first modern philosopher', and aptly named. But the enormous problem with his legacy, is the consequences of the dualistic model which defined (or abstracted) 'matter' and 'mind' in opposition to one another. And that's because, even though he was self-consciously trying to break with the past, many of the assumptions that underpinned his philosophical model were still from medieval scholasticism, notably that hierarchical model of 'substance and mode'. Accordingly, his method has introduced certain assumptions into the way we think about very fundamental issues, especially this kind of issue, which we're often not conscious of having, but which have problematical consequences. That blog post I linked to, from neo-Scholastic philosopher Edward Feser, elaborates on that. (And no, I myself am not neo-scholastic or 'Aristotelean-Thomist', as he describes himself, but he's one of the few current philosophers who analyses the problem properly. Here it is again. Note the first iteration of this post linked to the wrong article, it has since been updated.)
Given the function of desire I tend to think that the latter is easier than the former, at least in terms of scaling back from forward. it's easy to "give in" to desire because it produces itself, in many ways. The desire for some thing is often followed by the desire for novelty, or the confusion between the desire for the thing and the desire for novelty or the desire for extremity. In this manner desire is also productive in that it reproduces itself and feeds back into itself to hunger for more, at least if we are not attentive to these tendencies within ourselves and actively work against them (out of a desire for, say, peace and tranquility).
I say desire simply is the self because of a hypothetical, more than anything. What would a self be if it does not desire? What would it do? What characteristics could we attribute to it? A rock is the characteristic object used to contrast with persons -- and it seems to fit said hypothetical. And clearly a rock doesn't have a self. (even abnormally, because 'the self' is largely a normative concept of both ourselves and others and who or what we include in it)
Now, I will say there are difficulties in differentiating other parts of nature from this self if desire is both necessary and sufficient. Perhaps this overreaches a bit. (plants, in some respects, as Aristotle notes, follow appetitive desires, for instance). I think these difficulties could be overcome by understanding how it is that people are able to place other desires above appetitive desires (as in the case of fasting, or hunger strikes, or simply wanting to find happiness when you don't have enough to satisfy these desires).
I think it's great that you have found it works for you. That's the most important thing in life; to find things that actually work; whether it be relationships, methods of learning whatever you want to learn, making a livelihood, and of course, most important of all, spiritual life. And it aint always easy!! 8-)
I think everything is a work in progress. The alternative could only be a work in stagnation! :’(
The post on memory which you've quoted was a response to John who, at that time, was tentatively suggesting an approach that would make memory the condition of (self) identity, rather than the other way around.. Responding to this line of thought (which he has since qualified and elaborated) I suggested that this would imply a kind of circularity. "You can't have memories of what you haven't experienced" sums up this circularity nicely. If we preclude the idea of a self which pre-exists memory - of any self that isn't created through memory - then memory would have to indeed create its own boundaries.
Of course if we futz with the meaning of 'you' such that it refers, unconventionally, to a body rather than a person, things change. You've gestured in this direction. Which could be a fine direction to go in. It would provide precisely the lower-level continuity that I claimed would be necessary for a psycho-social construct. Could you expand on what you mean? (again, your use of 'you' to mean 'your body' is certainly not conventional.)
Would you be willing to sum up the problem presented as you see it? I'd like to measure my intent against the actual effect, in order to revise and tweak.
I do not mean some kind of self-body identity (a la mind-brain identity). I do mean to naturalize selfhood though, which intention I thought would be obvious. Therefore, I do not start from a blank slate in Descartes's fashion, because I don't think that is possible or sensible - as illustrated by Descartes's own failure. Likewise, the silliness of the OP to which this thread was a followup was to pretend that we know nothing about the world except for the fact that something referred to as "I" came into existence at some point and persisted for some time. If we truly knew nothing else, then it wouldn't be unreasonable to suppose that such events could have occurred multiple times instead of just once. But speculating in near-total ignorance is fruitless: all we are warranted in doing is acknowledging such bare logical possibilities. We can't go any further from there. We can't even say whether one possibility is more or less plausible than another.
No, I start off as an unapologetic naturalist and I do not intend to build all of my background knowledge and assumptions from scratch. Some things I take for granted, such as the existence of an organism, a self-sustaining homeostatic system. This I presume to be the substratum upon which consciousness operates, and where the sense and understanding of "self" emerges. Memory would then be an important factor, a biological and psychological mechanism that is crucial to shaping this sense of sustained "self" collocated with the body.
Quoting csalisbury
The "problem" is that there is supposedly a question that cries out for an explanation: why do I care about something that is going to happen to me in the future?
Yeah, I wasn't as clear I ought to have been (and I lost sight myself of my initial strategy.) It's not that the fear of impending torture is a 'problem' itself - the idea is to elicit an explanation of why we should be afraid of such a thing that wouldn't apply equally to a fear of life after death.
And it looks like you have an answer (your intent to naturalize has indeed been obvious, I note neutrally) - self-identity is supervenient on bodily identity (& extrapolating: since the body loses its identity after death, there's nothing left to supervene on.) It will be my body that is tortured; there will be no body after I die.
Is that fair?
My intuition is that bodily integrity plays a visceral role in such possibilities. If I know, or just fear that I will be reborn into a war zone, I am not all that concerned in this life, because my corporeality is removed, or seperate from that reality. In that reality, it might not actually be me, or not the me I am now.
OK, but what kind of an explanation are we looking for? If we are looking for a motivation (why ought we be afraid), that's one thing. If we are looking for a "third-person" explanation of the phenomenon - that's another thing, or rather a number of things, depending on the chosen framework for the explanation - psychology, evolutionary biology, neurophysiology, non-naturalist metaphysics.
Quoting csalisbury
Not quite. I proposed earlier that self-identity is a mental construct, partly innate, partly a product of culture, personal development and even preference. As such, it doesn't have to strictly supervene on the body, the way, say, cognition presumably supervenes on the neurophysiology of the nervous system. However, the body does provide a natural preexisting "boundary" (as you put it) that most ordinary conceptions of self-identity respect at least in part. Certainly, the raw feeling of the continuity of self that we experience moment-to-waking moment goes along with the normal functioning of the body with its given boundaries. But the more abstract intellectual concept of self-identity can and often does extend beyond that boundary - in the hypothesized afterlife, for instance, or a reincarnation. Or sometimes in other directions as well: the ancestors, the tribe or the country, or even the world.
It's much simpler than all this - It's me who is going to be tortured, not someone else. Motivations come after - that it's me who will be tortured is the presupposition on which any other motivation must be founded. I'm not fishing for an account of fear (of distant events) but of that identity or mineness which must ground any such fear.
But you do think cognition supervenes on the neurophysiology of the nervous system and an 'abstract intellectual concept of self-identity' seems thoroughly cognitive to me. I'm going to assume that you think there would cease to be any such abstract concepts in the absence of cognition (correct me if I'm wrong). So I think the answer I've ascribed to you is still good. There's no me without my body. It's my body that's tortured. There's no body left after I die.