[hilariouswhip]

The mind-body problem sounds too Cartesian. A dualism that is a bit too outdated.

I personally have a weird intuition considering my cultural background: it makes sense to me that my consciousness would be “born” somewhere else when I die. This in contrast to most people of my cultural background, who either believe in annihilism or an ever-lasting afterlife. I don’t really understand why a little more people don’t at least find it philosophically (what’s the word?) plausible, or something.

[amalcon]

This kind of idea tends to lead to debates on what the self even is: what is "my" consciousness? How would even a hypothetical omniscient determine that my consciousness had been "born" somewhere (and/or somewhen) else? It's a ship of theseus problem: what is the attribute that makes the consciousness "mine"?

This is not to say you're wrong (by any means!). It's just to say that we'd need to have a really long discussion before getting to the part where we discuss plausibility. I actually find the concept of reincarnation fascinating -- especially temporally nonlinear versions, where e.g. a past life might happen in a future year. One's consciousness might read about historical events that it will "later" participate in. Could lead to some interesting fiction if nothing else.

It unfortunately seems to take a while to get to the part that's interesting.

[IanKerr]

I've tried to grapple with questions like this by imagining having woken up with total amnesia. Without any memories or understanding of who I am, or what I've done, I would have absolutely no connection to the person I am today, I would be a stranger to myself. Yet, there's still a sense in which "my" consciousness has persisted, in theory, as "I" would still be seeing through my own eyes.

I'm not sure how to fully reconcile this except to give up and say that full amnesia is as good as having died and "someone else" is now inhabiting my body, but that doesn't seem quite right.

Continuity of experience is part of what seems to make "my" consciousness mine.

[tshaddox]

Another clearly relevant thought experiment is if your entire consciousness could be duplicated. For a fascinating (and horrifying) take on this: https://qntm.org/mmacevedo

[pksebben]

thanks for sharing, this was great.

I even tried to click on the "further reading" links at the bottom

[candiddevmike]

You assume that YOU were the one who lived yesterday, when it could very well be some other consciousness that ended when you fell asleep and you're rev $(days_since_birth).

[pixl97]

I have a feeling that any moment p-zombies are going brought into this conversation.

Doh, I brought p-zombies into this conversation.

[pksebben]

had to look it up. it's kind of interesting. like someone took solipsism and turned it inside out.

[pksebben]

Isn't there continuity there? you're in the same body, which has to have some bearing on a consciousness.

for example, my knees are shot. part of being me is having to put up with that, which causes a sort of pattern in my experience. were I to get amnesia, those patterns would persist.

[kweingar]

I strongly encourage you to read the later chapters of Derek Parfit's Reasons and Persons. It is entirely dedicated to the question of personal identity, or more accurately, what "matters" when it comes to personal identity.

He doesn't really address the question of reincarnation specifically, but I think you would still find it interesting. He challenges typical notions of personhood ("What makes me different from you is the physical continuity of my body over time") by pointing out that this is only a technological limitation. We could imagine a world with teleportation or brain transplants where this wouldn't necessarily be true.

[drdec]

You don't even need to get to the point where your consciousness is inhabiting other people to get into this. Today's you is different from yesterday's you and tomorrow's you - you all have different experiences and memories. The you of this moment only exists in this moment and is already gone.

[komali2]

I am definitely not as well read as I like here but I do think about this subject a lot and in particular I've been chewing on Time.

Lately I was thinking, why don't I feel more anger right now at past me or future me? Like you say, those could be seen as different people than me.

Past me made present me fat. Future me implicitly prevents me from enjoying this cake by pressuring me to do things that won't result with him also being fat.

When I start work in the morning, I've been assigned a task according to the goals of past me. Why should I care what that guy wanted? I want to play Elden Ring. Ah but there's future me again, mad that he can't play Elden Ring because he had to rush to finish work I was supposed to do. Well fuck that guy, I might die of an aneurysm before his time, then none of us get to play videogames!

But I don't really feel mad at past or future me because I recognize them as me and our goals are mostly consistently aligned. I'm thinking that my identity and Mind is very deeply rooted in the Time dimension, though not clear on all the implications there. I do at least feel that memory is a critical part of Mind. The continuation of my memory timeline seems most likely to be what Me is.

[pksebben]

I have fairly strong opinions for both of those other mes. Keeps us all aligned, really.

'Mad' would be a misnomer, though. mad seems counterproductive.

[hilariouswhip]

This only says that consciousness is ever-mutating. Most would agree on that. But most would disagree on the death question: afterlife, another life, or annihilation.

[sshine]

More precisely, it says that one's notion of individual self is ever-mutating.

The self is only part of consciousness.

[amalcon]

Indeed! This is another one of the fascinating paths to which this idea may lead.

[hilariouswhip]

I didn’t mention the self or omniscience.

[hkpack]

When I was thinking about the same concept, I wanted to make another leap - that everyone else is also different instances of you / me. There is actually no need to die, to “reborn”. Your consciousness can exist in multiple instances!

[SamPatt]

The older I get the more I believe some version of this.

It's related to empathy somehow. I think we're inherently self-centered, but that we also recognize ourselves within others, and don't desire suffering for ourselves, hence we don't desire it for others.

Also I've had a few moments of something similar to deja vu in my life, except it was the realization that I was the continuation of my father's life. And I catch glimpses of this in my children (though I don't believe they're yet consciously aware of it).

[sshine]

> the realization that I was the continuation of my father's life

I've had it a lot with friends.

Realizing a part of me is them.

For example, reflections on how one's body ages:

The experience is always personal, but predictable and shared.

[Gupie]

If the alternative is true, then I think how fortunate/strange that I, this consciousness, exists at all, considering the fast length of time preceding my birth during which I was not conscious, considering the fast number of conscious entities that have existed on earth during that time, assuming animals are to some varying extent conscious, and considering the vast number conscious entities on other inhabitable planets in all the vast number of galaxies. The universe could easily have carried on until heat death without me myself being a conscious entity in it.

[weard_beard]

Supposing the speed of light is a hard limit. How might a sufficiently advanced society explore the universe? Construct vessels from what is already there.

My body is a tour guide.

[candiddevmike]

You're a vessel between two places you've never been.

[MathMonkeyMan]

The mystery of The Other.

[hilariouswhip]

Sure. But concurrent consciousness is too advanced for me to think about. All I know is serial consciousness.

There are all kinds of possibilities, but that barrier of Death is a clear cut-off from my perspective. What’s beyond that? I for sure could imagine annihilation, too. After all I can be knocked unconscious.

[heisenzombie]

Perhaps like the Wheeler/Feynman one-electron universe!

Hm, except that would require anti-consciousness to exist… On second thought, this makes me uncomfortable.

[powerset]

At some point in the long to infinite history of the universe there will eventually be born a creature with a configuration of neurons sort of similar to the configuration you had before you died. So it's sort of reasonable to say that's you. Plus time passes quickly when you're dead, so to you it will feel like no time at all.

[fsckboy]

what you're talking about was called the Boltzmann brain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain

[rileyphone]

Heat death is coming soon enough - now is all there is.

[hilariouswhip]

Sort of a if-everything-can-happen-it-will-happen scenario. But not what I was talking about.

[larryfreeman]

If "consciousness" is "born" somewhere else when you die, you would still need to explain how "consciousness" is bound to a physical body while you are alive.

Your view implies dualism since you are suggesting that "consciousness" is more than just the physical body. You don't need to be a Cartesian to be a dualist but you do need to be dualist if you believe that consciousness is somehow immaterial in that it can survive the body after death.

[wk_end]

I've had this same thought too...something like, if there's an infinite number of possibilities of ways to be experiencing something, why should "I" (untethered from everything that made me "I" of course) ever be "experiencing" nothing?

[hilariouswhip]

Yep, something like that!

[candiddevmike]

What if you don't want to be reborn into a possibly horrifying/painful/miserable existence? What is option B? An eternity of watching? At some point time has to stop, and then what, things just repeat?

[User23]

What makes you think you have optionality?

[candiddevmike]

Getting philosophical, if there isn't an option, then you could extend that to say free will doesn't exist at all. At some point you will run out of "lives" to respawn into, at least intelligent ones.

[komali2]

I don't know if that tracks that lacking some optionality indicates total lack of free will. You lack infinity options compared to the ones you have but you can still make plausible arguments for free will.

For example you can't teleport to Mars. You can still choose what you want on your pizza.

[User23]

Right. You might not be able to pick your afterlife. Atheist materialists believe that you definitely can't. Except maybe for some kind of digital upload shenanigans maybe, but I don't see how that's an afterlife and not just a copy that is its own separate entity. Christians like me believe that you have a binary option for your afterlife. Buddhists and Hindus believe that you have a continuum of options. Bear in mind I mean specifically believing that you have optionality. Socrates for example was agnostic on what happens after death, but he never indicated, at least not that I recall reading in Plato, that he thought he had a choice. Rather he thought none of the possibilities were worse than capitulating to the court.

[irrational]

> Christians like me believe that you have a binary option for your afterlife.

But other Christians, obviously not like you, believe in more than a binary option for your afterlife.

This is one of the annoying thing about religions. Not all true Christians (even Scottish Christians) hold the same beliefs, even about something like heaven and hell.

[hilariouswhip]

I didn’t say that this was good or bad.

I think it’s bad and hope that the Fourth Noble Truth of Buddhism is true.

[layer8]

Why does time have to stop? How would that even work?

[simonsquiff]

Yes I’ve been having the same thoughts - essentially ‘reincarnation without the woo’.

It starts with: why do you have a first person experience from the creature that is reading these words? Why are you not having a first person experience from the body of Elon Musk (maybe you are, hi Elon!) or a particular sparrow in the New Forest?

And then, when your body dies, does that mean no more first person experiences again for ‘you’? Or, will some other creature create a first person experience for ‘you’ again (for whatever reason this current creature is creating a first person experience for ‘you’?)

There is no need for a ‘woo’ part ie no memories are retained, no ‘new game+’, no element of karma. Just the concept that first person experiences may not end with death of this current creature.

If this is correct - and we perhaps we should act in a way that assumes it is - what would be the implications?

Many creatures have minimal agency over their experiences. Humans are different, not just with more agency of themselves but of others - at a minimal level of their family and pets and immediate connections, but wider too esp in more developed countries and moving up the influence and power in society.

If you were a cow, you would look at humans and saying ‘if I was one of those I could impact this shitty situation’. Well congratulations, you are! How do you, as a first world human, use that power to mean that if you do have a first person experience from another creature, that future experience is…not utterly horrific?

That idea if embraced ties all living things together. Selfishness disappears - you might literally be in anyones (or anything’s) shoes in the future, so do anything you can to not deliver horrible experiences to anything. It’s to your own benefit! But it’s also a bit of an info hazard - you don’t want to be born into an unpleasant experience, and the thought of that possibility is unsettling.

[hilariouswhip]

Woo is merely the output of 100+ fireside retellings of a theory by someone who tried to construct a metaphysical theory without the woo.

[throw7]

Maybe you were born in the mind of God?