[guerrilla]

> What are the odds of waking up? I think it's with 100% certainty that you become conscious.

I'm not sure what you mean here, can you explain what you mean by "you"? What remains to be "you" if your atoms are spread out (happens in life too), your memories are gone and your consciousness is also temporarily gone? Isn't it more like just random parts of the universe coming to life and turning into someone? In what way could it be "you"?

[aschismatic]

I think if you were to believe in becoming someone or something once again, then yes, like your memories, your consciousness would be gone. I think this because I think your consciousness is inherently tied to how you sense the universe and your own being, and that will obviously be different if you once again exist as someone or something else.

As a result, if you choose to believe you will one day exist again after you die, in order to make a connection between one or more consciousnesses or lives, you would need to invent something to explain it. Like a soul.

You could make thinking about all this even more wild by thinking about how time is involved in all of this. We are assuming if that you exist again it must be some time after you cease to exist. What if you exist "again," but at the same time you exist now? Are you also another person somewhere else? Is there another universe with another you? When you die do you then relive the same existence again? The questions are as limitless as our imaginations because we have no answers.

[guerrilla]

I'm not sure the last questions could be answered without determining more about this new kind of soul, which by the way reminds me of Locke's substances. A substance for Locke is like an object with no properties whatsoever, it's that which bears all the properties that we observe but which maintains its identity through space and time. I guess we'd need something like that to be 'us' before we're reanimated. The problem though is that none of that is really observable by 'us' being it or anyone living since it really has no characteristics. Doesn't mean it's not real, but not that helpful after all :/

[aschismatic]

Thanks for mentioning Locke's substances. It sounds like quite an intriguing idea. I have not read nearly as much philosophy as I would like, and that gives me a great indication of where to look when I pursue reading more of it.

[guerrilla]

Sure thing, I've just been thinking about object identity recently and they come up quite often. Tthe article in SEP can help you avoid the arcane English of his writings btw.

1. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/substance/

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

I don't know. I mean how people always say life is rare. What were my odds of being born? I think somehow it was 100% certain that I'd be born. Why didn't I awaken as a grasshopper?

[guerrilla]

Check my reply to the sibbling here but I think we'd have to pin down exactly what you are that's reborn.