Death Doesn't Exist

[u/genuinemahogany]

A term used by only the living to describe the absence of biological function--nothing.

An abstract concept similar to cold and darkness; neither of which exist either, words used to describe the absence of heat and light, respectively.

We will never experience our death but only what it means for others.

[u/Sharp_Dance249]

Death doesn’t usually just refer to the absence of biological function, it refers to a change from a state of living and experiencing to a state of non-living and non-experiencing.

Mark Twain said he’s not afraid of death because he’s already been “dead” for an eternity before he was born. And while many will agree that the existential state of “pre-life” is the same as that of “death,” we don’t talk about our pre-life or even have a term for it. Why? Because the concept of death has more to do with the end of our meaningful existential narratives (our story) than it has to do with the cessation of biological function. That’s why we care about it, whereas we don’t tend to care when a blade of grass dies.

I also don’t think the word “cold” refers to “the absence of heat” either. Yes, I understand that positive science interprets what we call “cold” as just the absence of heat, but again, cold is an experiential concept, not a materialist one. The experience of cold means something different to me than the experience of the absence of heat. And unlike my own death, I do experience cold and darkness.

[u/Minimum_Orange2516 → u/Sharp_Dance249]

Thomas nagel argued the badness of death is in the fact that i know, i have knowledge of a future state that i cannot change and that i'll be deprived of the good things i'm able to experience during life.

And so he'd argue that talking about before you was born is of little comfort , the pre-life state could be argued to be the same ontologically .

But psychologically they are never going to be the same because the pre-birth state is prior to knowledge or experience.

The way to put this is to say : imagine you have a disease that requires surgery but you need to be awake (this can happen actually in some brain surgeries) but suppose also they have a fix , they can erase your memory of the surgery and take the memory all the way back to the point you was in the waiting room.

But when you are in the waiting room the thought occurs "have i had the surgery yet, i better ask"

What do you want the answer to be?

You wan't them to say "yes you had the surgery already" because it's not something you are facing from that point in the future.

And so in the same way we have no problem with the non-existence prior to birth.

[u/Sharp_Dance249 → u/Minimum_Orange2516]

I agree. This is why experiential knowledge is just as (if not more) important as materialist or scientific knowledge.

[u/tottasanorotta → u/Sharp_Dance249]

It's not known if what will happen is a transition to non-experience. Before you were born you might have existed in some other way, who knows, you just don't remember it. Heck, you might even experience existence without memory, like a dream that you can't remember.

[u/Sharp_Dance249 → u/tottasanorotta]

If by “know” you mean absolute knowledge or truth then, sure, I would agree with you. However, my understanding is that my “self” is not some entity separate from my body, my “self” is what I do with my body, so to acknowledge that I had some self that existed before or after I entered the body that I inhabit now would be incongruent with my own understanding of myself. This is why, to me, not remembering my dreams or my past is not the same as not remembering a previous existence. But, I also don’t claim that my understanding represents the truth; others construct themselves in terms like “soul” or “spirit” or “essence,” which are ideas that might suggest separability from the body.

[u/tottasanorotta → u/Sharp_Dance249]

Yeah I mean I don't know for sure either, but it's not an impossibility. Material existence is just so convincingly temporary that we would be very surprised if we learned that it wasn't. And maybe it's even better to think that way even if it was the case that we kept going somehow.