Is there life after Death?

I've been thinking allot about linear time, things happening in physical reality in a sequence of perceived events (perceived by me and anyone else I've talked to).

I've been trying to think what it would be like when I'm dead. Don't get me wrong, I do not believe in a heaven or hell, or reincarnation, or anything like that. Why? Because none of it coheres with anything I know about existence and some of those theories conflicts with what I know about existence. In my view they are stories told to keep unreflective (and maybe simpler and better) people on the straight and narrow.

So I figure (right now) that nothing must happen. The physical organization of my brain matter at some point will be sufficiently altered so that rational thought is no longer possible (of which right now I think a certain organization of brain matter is required to generate reflective thought, because evidence sugests it (thought) is hampered by physical things (IE: beer) therefore it must be effected by physical things and reasonably maybe even completely negated by enough of a physical influence), and as such with that loss of possibility of thought so too will end this existence I have been remembering for some time. What will happen to my consciousness then?

Nothing, for it wouldn't exist, if what I think is correct is indeed the case. But, and this may sound funny, but I simply cannot conceive of such a possibility. I don't mean I can't think of dying or the fact that I will die (I am fairly certain that will happen) or I don't want to think of it. Nor do I mean that it would be impossible for me to conceive of not conceiving of anything (ie: the impossibility of thinking of no thoughts, blackness (I guess, I wouldn't really know), no thoughts, no memory of that time passing, kind of like sleep).

No. What I mean is think of when you wake up, and you realize that you have a gap in your memory of some time, a kind of internal chronometer that tells you time has passed but I have no idea how much, of which time you have no recollection at all. You may remember some dreams, you may not. You are only certain you must have slept because you remember being tired before you blacked out and blacking out has happened to you before. But you don't actually remember sleeping itself, that time is lost to you - you remember or realize the absence of thought or reflection for that unknown period of time only. You actually don't remember sleeping at all. That's why, of course, it's called being unconscious.

What's my point? My point is that I was thinking death must be like that - absolutely no thought, including our memory of our mental construction of linear time. And that's what I simply cannot comprehend. That lack of thinking. Not only can I not imagine what that would be like, but I can't even conceive how that state would be possible. The mind is ... "there". It, or ME, I, am always there. The mind cannot conceive of its non-existence. Thought is active, it conceives. Conceiving non-conception seems to be an impossible paradox. Yet, that's what I judge death must be - the lack of the sufficient and necessary conditions required to generate and render a thing capable of making such judgements.

Perhaps this is nothing interesting and I think its quite striking, but this could possibly explain a few things and raises a few (what I think to be) interesting questions. And seeings that this blog is entirely for my reflective purposes, I am going to opine about them:

This could be part of the reason why people need to believe in life after death, because the computer program which is our minds is not capable of conceiving of a state in which it does not exist - that just doesn't make sense.

5 minutes before I am dead what am I? A thinking thing, that remembers, wills, issues thoughts and reflects about some of them. 5 minutes after, and the brain matter which is the computer upon which I run (like software) can no longer sustain me, what am I then? How can I exist one moment and not exist in the next moment? The difference is a certain organization of matter organized in the proper sequence. But if organization and sequence of matter is the only difference between reflective thought and absence of reflective thought, and organization and sequence as concepts exist unto themselves as concepts, then I must exist unto myself as a concept, and therefore maybe I do exist forever. Perhaps I have a soul?

Perhaps this is Nous (Thought itself, of which Logos (or my rational thought) is a copy or a sub-process of, or a running process of in linear time, running which is different than the stored or saved main program in absolute or eternal or non-time where there are no sequences, nothing "happens", and everything just Is)? Perhaps this is what the classical Greeks thought was the Divinity, and why they thought the divinity could only conceive of universals and not particulars. Because the particulars of my life would not, could not live on, because those are just accidents which happened in linear time. They are stored in my memory, which dies when the brain dies.

But I think that line of reasoning is flawed. Just because I cannot conceive of a thing not being so does not make it so. That's ad ignorantum. Just because it is an impossibility for me to conceive of non-thought doesn't mean it's an impossibility for that to happen. Further, the things organization and sequence track and represent in our minds (matter and other things) exist without humans around (as far as the evidence suggests) but organization and sequence themselves don't - they are a human construction, a construct we place on existence in order to exist in it. We evolved (or were created) to automatically consider things in that way, probably at random - although its probably the best way to exist as a thinking thing in linear time in order to serve our biological purpose and pass on our accident (our genes). Just like my extended, continued consciousness - its an idea I have (of myself) that it automatically made in order to consider myself "alive", when in reality I have a broken bunch of disjointed memories and no certain continuity between thoughts, feeling, inferences, and life over time (which is another construct my mind makes up in order to exist) except the idea of a consciousness whihc really isn't the same thing from thought to thought, but only the same because it has a rememberd identity. A remembered form (skills and dispositions) and content (individual memories of things happening to me).

In that line of reasoning its easy to imagine myself dead because I never really existed at all - the illusory constructs of time, consciousness, organization, sequence, etc. mental constructs the likes of which my mind has evolved into a complex program in whcih it generates these concepts by accident aren't really real (do not exist as eternal or particular things unto themselves) but only for a running program (my mind) that functions accidentally, only to allow me to replicate my matter, as if that was important or something. It's all just an accident. Everything. Which reallity is the illusion our psychologies convince ourselves of in order to cover that up (which Nietzsche called the Abyss).

Reality is an illusion, but if it is the basis of all cognition, and I must think to perceive reality, then it is irrelevant if it is not really "real" unto itself because it is the only reality available to me. Much like there is no reason why the principle of contradiction (the rule in logic symbolized as ~(A & ~A)) or the other laws of thought (a misnomer in my opinion) is necessarily true, until one utters an assertion or thinks in terms of an assertion. The nature of an assertion is that it cannot truthfully be true and false simultaneously. But that is necessary only in so far rational thought exists to assert. There is no certain rule why assertions cannot be any other way, or no way at all. It is a necessary rule yes, but only in an arbitrary system - that doesn't "exist" floating out in space somewhere, but only if and when someone asserts something, because that is the way assertion and truth works, ie: in binary. True or False. Nice clean easy concepts. The way our mind needs them to make sense of all the data it perceives.

And that necessary binary of True or False is not just simply because our minds only work in binary, but also because we don't generally observe too many paradoxes in physical reality either - there is a happy correlation between the binary of our thought ("hmmmm, she went up the stairs, better follow her" rather than "hmmmm, she went up the stairs and down the stairs simultaneously without splitting in two but staying as one - this is a mathematical and physical paradox". Humans could never have survived if we had to understand the state of all affairs as they really or truly are, instead of contructing them into the state of all affairs as we do.

Ah, but in that last sentence displays the contradiction in my views. Either there is a real reallity or there is not. Either there is true state of all affairs or there is not. If truth is constructed, then that does no less make it truth. It does not make it any less either the case or not. For it must be the case or not - it cannot be A and not A for that does not make any sense.

And perhaps that's where Nous comes in - like our thought, which is active, it asserts when it asserts. So too does Nous. Or Thought itself. It simply is. And as such, we are simply a part of it - we partake of it. Our temporal thoughts partakes of Thought timeless.

I think; as such I am. As such Thought is and must be. As such thought after death must be. But the particulars of I may not.

josh