any views on life?

In the remark “The universe is choatic” I wanted it to carry a duelistic meaning within it. Firstly I wanted it to allude to the existential view that the world and indeed the cosmos is devoid of any meaning, in this context I wanted meaninglessness to equated with the choatic. While on a quantum level it been suggested that that the building blocks of matter are described as being unpredicable in their nature and this seems to be the case with the electron. In this context I wanted the notion of this unpredictablity to be equated with the notion of the choatic.

does that make sense.
DS

Sorry Magius that I structured that opening sentence in the form of barb to hook u in. I just wanted to stimulate a responce nothing more so i do apologise for teasing u in that way ok…

I do apreciate ur feed back … well most of it …lol
DS

Hi Magius,

Thank you for the reply. I’m pleased to meet you, and always pleased to discuss philosophical ideas.

This entire business, ultimately, is an intensely personal process of coming to terms with our own mortality. I suspect that we don’t really even have to get it right; wise men lose their lives the same as fools. Whatever notion of death we take in our head, be it profound or silly, matters naught beyond our last heartbeat. Philosophical speculations on the nature of mortality are sought as a comfort to the living; the dead have no need of them.

While the value of our speculation lies in its ability to bring us comfort rather than truth; it’s clear that to lie to ourselves is utterly useless. If I were surrounded by hungry lions it would be of no comfort to tell myself that they were merely kittens. If I am starving it would be of no comfort to imagine that my belly is distended as a result of a feast rather than famine. It matters not in the least that you, or anyone else adopt my own ideas about death. Your personal belief will be of precious little use to me when my own time comes. What I come to believe has to square with me, and me alone. All right, enough with the disclaimer…

I fear my own dying, but not my death. Besides the fact that dying is often painful, saying goodbye is always a sad thing. But death, pfft! Death itself is nothing to me! I’m already something of an expert at death. I’ve already got death down to perfection. The fact that a brief life was sandwiched between two eternities of death does not change the nature of my death in the least. But again, there is no such thing as “my” death. There is only my dying. I shall die, but I will never “be” dead. Unfortunately, language throws a tantrum when we force it to speak of what is not. Even when we speak of nothingness, the nothingness we speak of is something. But death is not a “something.” So, I take heart in knowing that though oneday I shall have to say goodbye forever to those I love, I’ll never be dead. It took a while for the fullness of this thought to soak into my head.

Magius, you wrote about ashes-to-ashes, and the fact that our molecules dissipate from our body to become new life. Do you remember the little ditty recited by kids?

Man eats bird
Bird eats worm
Worm eats man

Indeed it’s true. Well, actually I’m a vegetarian, but that’s no matter. My body is made up of organic and inorganic molecules that have already passed through countless other lives, just the same. One day these same molecules will become part of new life.

It’s a statistical fact that at this moment I’ve molecules of water in my stomach that once were in Julius Ceasar. Similarly, I’ve molecules of air in my lungs that were once part of Charlemain and Ghengis Khan. If you simply allow enough time for complete mixing of the molecules around the planet, you may safely assert that molecules from any historical figure you care to remember are part of your body at this moment.

This was lifted from a physics exam on the Internet:

[i]"Assuming that the atmosphere has become completely mixed over the last 2000 years, how many molecules from Julius Ceasar’s last breath are in your lungs at the current moment?

Estimate the volume of the lungs as two cylinders 30cm in length, 5cm in radius; V = 2 lungs x Pi x (0.05m)2 x 0.3m = 0.005 m3.
Julius Caesar’s last gasp had
(1.3x10^44)x(0.005 m3)/(5x10^18m3) = 1023 molecules,
of which (1023)x(0.005 m3)/(5x10^18m3)
(about 100) are in your lungs right now."[/i]

I think about this when I shovel snow in the Winter. Perhaps it’s only boredom (we have lot’s of snow), but I like to wonder at how many molecules of all my distant ancestors are contained in each shovel full of snow I toss over my shoulder. The same thought occurs to me when I stand next to the brook near my house and watch the molecules of my ancestors flow by me.

Well Magius, there’s a good deal more to be said on this subject, but since I don’t expect my death is imminent, I’ve time to let it rest for the moment and get some rest myself.

Michael

As for the reason why I contend that consciousness is prior to the world will take a little longer to explain…

I can begin by describing what I believe is the defining characteristic of consciousness. Its intentionality. All consciousness is structured intentionally. In other words consciousness always has an object. For when we hate, we hate something. When we judge, we are in judgement concerning something and so on. (It could be argued that consciousness only comes into being when engaged with an object). Whether the object of consciousness is real or imaginary is of no concern to me as a phenomenologist. For I focus purely on the lived-experience of that object. I suspend the existential status of the object itself. The theories and assumtions of everyday common sense made manifest through the natural attitude are also suspended in this eidetic reduction.

Will try to finish this description later I do need some sleep, my eyes are beginning to close by themselves …lol take care
DS

hey sorry about changing user names so much .the stupid system is f***** up.every time i log in it just resets and i have to change my e-mail ad. every time i log in.well could life be like we may be part of a universal spirt kinda and each individual is like a leaf of the 'tree’of the universal.and when we die we become earth and we help new trees grow and in that time we are as david said in a flux of unconsionous and we may come back around to aa leaf agin like in nature.this also can be compared to my circle of life anology i used in latter forum.

Don quijote had the most meaningful life.

Do we even know that the afterlife is the end? How can you say that it is the end to our possibilities? It might be… it might not be.

Hi again Cba,

Well, that half-eternity of nothingness before I was born was a useful clue. The pattern has been:

No body=No life, Body=Life, No body= ???

Hmm…how do you think I should fill in the rest of this pattern? Do you really think it should be:

No body=No life, Body=Life, No body=Life

or does it make more sense to suppose it will be:

No body=No life, Body=Life, No body=No life

There is no absolute proof for anything in this world. Euclid’s geometry was accepted as the the explanation of space for two thousand years before anyone had the slightest notion of non-Euclidean geometry. Now we think that space appears to be structured more like non-Eulcidean rather than Euclidean geometry. I further suspect the future will bring new ideas to light on this matter.

It’s induction that leads me to believe that the sun will rise tomorrow. There’s a funny story about inductive thinking.

It seems some chickens noticed that each morning a man came out to feed them. Their accepted hypothesis was that morning invariably produces a man with food. However, one morning eventually produced the man with an axe instead of food.

With that in mind, the above pattern that I suggest is the correct pattern might be false. Likewise, I have no absolute certitude that I will live till midnight tonight. I think it’s probable that I will. And I also think it’s probable that my pattern above is correct. None of us lives according to certitudes. We make our judgements according to probabilities.

“A common defect of the mind is that it craves either complete certainty or complete disbelief.” R. A. Lyttleton

Regards,
Michael

I actually agree with the idea that after we lose our bodies that we don’t continue living but for the sake of argueing I’m going to be annoying.

You can’t really base a pattern on two variables.

1, 3, ? could be 5, 7 … and more

It’s just there are so many theories out there. I’d hate the truth to be an ending.

Greetings Sublimed&mad,

That’s an interesting idea, Sublimed. I occasionally think a similar thing.

Each cell in my body has an individual life of its own, but in their billions they act in concert to produce one single organism known as Me. At any moment individual cells in my body are dying while others are being born. Individual cells have fairly short lifespans, but as a composite organism, I live much longer.

Then I think how our tiny planet would appear from a great distance out in space. From a distance, individual humans might be thought of more as individual living cells which act in concert to produce one single organism known as Humanity. At any moment individual human cells are dying, while others are being born. Individual human cells have rather short lifespans, but as a composite organism, Humanity lives much longer.

I generally like this thought because I prefer to see other men as my brothers. I also prefer to think of myself as part of something greater than just me. I’m built from the dust of earlier lives and future life will be built upon my dust. I also like to think I have a duty to the entire organism of Humanity. I’m speaking here of a moral duty towards others, and towards the whole of Humanity.

I’m not so sure if other people like this idea. I suspect that a lot of other people wouldn’t like to think of themselves as a cog in the mechanism of a larger lifeform. What do you think?

Michael

You’re not being annoying. It’s a good topic, one worth our grinding the mental gears over.

Unless you have multiple reincarnations in mind, the entire pattern only consists of three elements, two-thirds of which are already in place. The important bit of the pattern to match is:

No Body=No Life

You see, that part is already “a given” in our case. We already know that piece of the puzzle. It would be vastly more difficult to match the following pattern:

No body=No life, Body= ???, No body=No Life

Gads, that would be a tough one (Not the least of which is how do you solve a puzzle without a life at all?). So be of good cheer Cba, the puzzle could be much worse to solve!

Ah, now this part I understand. I love my life and share your wish that our life might somehow last longer than 75 years. Despite the fact that some insects only live a matter of weeks, I feel somewhat cheated with only 75 years. My life lasts a couple of thousand times longer than some insects, yet still I complain of its brevity. Some men manage to put a good life behind them by age 25, while others never come to terms with it by age 85. Age does not automatically bring wisdom. Age only brings age. We hear lots of pretty statements about our “golden years,” but I think Charles DeGaul was simply being honest when he said:

“Old age is a train wreck.”

Death only deprives us of a future which does not yet exist. I think Spinoza might have first made that observation. In any case, Arthur Schopenhauer hit the nail squarely when he noted:

“Every moment of our life belongs to the present for only a moment. Then it belongs forever to the past.”

And Marcel Proust commented on our possession of these past moments when he said:

“Death take us though it will, cannot take from us what we have lived.”

I did want to comment briefly on the fact that we must be especially careful not to let what we want to be true influence what we think is true. If one is not careful, this slippery slope can lead to religion, among other things. Religion tells us that exactly what we long for, is magically just how it is. We want immortality. You’ve got it. We desire to see justice for the wicked and a reward for the good. Religion gives that to us as well. So why would anyone in his right mind not believe in religion? The answer is that religion promises us what it does not possess to give to us. Religion is a device for making your dreams come true. If you don’t mind replacing reason with fairy-tales, it can work for you as well. You have to choose. Do you prefer a pleasant work of fiction, or can you handle a stark truth?

The world is wonderful, but not everything in it is to our liking. Dying and injustice come prepackaged along with the same life that makes possible love and joy. I’ve decided that the love and joy bits, far and away, make up for the dying and despair-at-injustice bits. The highs are far higher than the lows are low. And while I don’t like the idea of dying one little bit, if I have to accept dying to get a swing at love and joy, which I do, I’ll take the deal in a New York second.

Gotta run,
Michael

David stated:

Cosmos devoid of meaning, meaninglessness equal to chaotic? Lastly, you tie Hiezenberg’s (Spelling?) Uncertainty Principle into a web of nothing along with the chaotic and meaning. Because something is unpredictable, does it mean that it has no meaning? Could unpredictableness have a meaning? I would like to think that many things appear unpredictable, but aren’t, especially people. This electron location uncertainty is still only a theory, this clarification is quite important. As Polemarchus has illustrated with quotes, the human mind likes to believe completely or not at all. We don’t know what meaing lies in the uncertainty of an electron - relatively it has not been a long time since quarks were discovered (in theory). Given fifty more years, atleast two other particles may be found within the atom that we never knew of, the more particles the more sense will be brought to the happenings of the atom and everything in it.
Moreover, how is the cosmos devoid of any meaning, I think the one thing that acts most devoid of meaning are human beings. The planets, solar systems, and galaxies move in rules of math that are not yet synthesized enough to explain everything, but it’s getting there. There is everything BUT lack of meaning in the cosmos. I hope I’m not being too hard, I’m just expressing my disagreement with your view. Nothing personal.

What’s your take?

Polemarchus stated:

I don’t mean to be insulting when I say that the former part of the above statement is made from projection. Otherwise why would you think so. Are you not open to the idea that there may be a person out there that doesn’t seek philosophical speculation on the nature of mortality for anything other then the comfort to the living? I hope you are, cause I am one of them. I, like you do not fear death, nor do I fear living a life of hardship (although I do not strive for it either). I also believe that the greatest power in the universe is information. One could take this statement and put it through the Nietzchian assembly line to make it look as though life is only a struggle for power in the end, but I assure you this is not what I am driving at. Information, whether bad or good, to me, is the point of life. One of Polemarchus’ quotes again hit the nail on the head of this one too, where I forget who but someone said that Information is good, and ignorance the only evil…or something like that. I do not attain any pleasure or comfort to the living knowing that my being mortal means I have to keep my mouth shut about matters of truth in certain circles of society or else my mortality may be altered into a state which we call ‘hurt’, ‘unconscious’, or worse ‘dead’. Yet I know this and philosophically speculate about the corrupt government and the state of matters in the more wealthy circles of society. I do agree, that many people do commit the wrong of speculating about mortality only to somehow edge their existance into a coherent and somehow pleasant painting of life with everyone else. But I, and I profess my belief that others too, are not like this.

Polemarchus stated:

I agree, but I wish to bring up the topic of a book in reference to lying to oneself. I am near completing my read of Dostojevski’ “Crime and Punishment” (Unabridged) and found a statement (accompanied by an profound explanation) most interesting, the character Svidrigaylov states that those who are able to lie to themselves best, or deceive themselves best, are the happiest. The statement was in reference to things that bother one to think about and only seize to irritate when one is absent minded of the topic. Many examples in life create quite the dilemma in disproving this, atleast for myself. What do you think?

Polemarchus stated:

In my previous post I bequethed you for an explanation as to your rationale of these two eternities of death, specifically the former eternity. Could you articulate in more detail?

What’s your take?

“Ignorance is bliss”

Which reminds me of a question I constantly ask myself. It’s kind of off topic though so I’ll start another post.

The proof of what happens after death doesn’t really matter to the discussion at hand: there are at least two kinds of death.

The first is physical death (hearts stop beating, lungs stop working, the flat line kind of thing) and death as a definition. In the first kind, people who come back from the Great Beyond are coming back from death; in the second kind, you can’t come back by definition.

The funniest way to look at this is from an incredibly bad movie I saw recently, “Spawn”. As the situation is explained, the main character must conserve his power (his thanonuematic energy or some such thing) because when it is used up he dies, but those powers come to him precisely because he’s already dead. So what happens when he dies again? Does he go back to hell and the whole thing starts over again? Or does he really die, or can he really die now and only now after he’s dead?

If we concentrate on the second kind, death as a definition, then this makes a kind of sense and I think that’s what should be focused on in discussions of this type.

Polemarchus, there is a problem with your series:

in that your premise cannot be verified and therefore it is useless to base anything else upon it. You cannot know in any verifiable sense that because you did not have a body before you were born, you also did not possess a life of some kind. You have reached your conclusion, to write your series to verify your conclusion. This is not a worthwile way of disproving an afterlife in my opinion.

That said, your point that one can never be dead amazed me, I had never thought of that and I found it very interesting.

One further point. If we define death as the cessation of existence, and existence as the source of meaning, then is it not a waste of existence, and hence potential meaning to discuss death? Why are we doing so?

Alex,
Thanks for the reply. It’s nice to hear from you. I’ve enjoyed reading your posts on this Forum.

My mother tells me that she had to change my diapers (nappies to you) when I was young. Imagine that. If my life on Earth were merely a resumption of an earlier life, isn’t it a wonder that of all the great knowledge acquired in my earlier incarnations, I still had to be re-taught not to shit in my britches? I might have been as clever as a Newton, talented as a Mozart, and as articulate as a Shakespeare in my earlier life (or lives), nonetheless, I arrived in this world drooling saliva out of my mouth.

For the sake of argument, let’s suppose that I did have an earlier existence. Despite the fact that I remember none of it, could it be that I’ve already lived millions of prior lives? Alex, you might argue at this point that it doesn’t matter if I remember my earlier lives. You might say that the fact that I don’t remember them does not preclude the possibility that I had earlier lives. I say it does preclude the possibility, and here is my argument.

My argument revolves around the notion of what makes you, you, and me, me. Also of pivotal importance is the concept of the continuity-of-life.

All right, let’s imagine what it might be like to have a very specific earlier life. Let’s erase from your mind everything you have learned since you were conceived in this present life. Yes, I know, you’d be back to drooling and messing your pants. So let’s make you a mature man. Your name is Simplicus Simplicissimus. Let’s drop you into the world in what is present–day Germany, say in the year AD 1669. Despite the fact that you’re an earthy character; you still manage to “humiliate the mighty, confound the gods, and ridicule the pretentious.” You’re something of a rustic version of James Bond. You live in a time and place of incredible upheaval and turmoil, the time of “The 30 Years War,” to be exact. Simplicus doesn’t just go to the office after his breakfast of orange juice and Wheaties. Simplicus has to fight daily for his very life. He uses his wit to survive. If he wins, he is allowed a bit of “rape and pillage.” If he loses, he gets a pike in the belly. Now please remember Alex, this isn’t just your ancestor we are talking about, this is you, in everything but the flesh.

So, we have you born to parents you now don’t remember, living in a distant time you now know little of, and speaking an old dialect of German which would sound much the same as Greek to you today. You have had incredible memories that you now cannot remember, as well as friends and loves whom you couldn’t today even recognize. You perpetually had a bad haircut and smelled like the monkey house. Yes I know, this guy doesn’t look, think, or speak like you do today. Still, despite the fact that you’ve no recollection of it, and despite the fact that nothing Simplicus thought or did in his entire life changes a single moment of your present life, I’m supposing for the sake of argument that he is as much you, as you are you today.

But wait. If Simplicus bequeathed you nothing; not his genes, not his memories, and not his ideas, then Simplicus could have just as easily been me in a former life as he was you! What claim do you have of him that I could not equally make? Actually, neither of us could make a credible claim that one over the other were Simplicus.

You and I are each the direct product of our individual genetic, environmental, and random histories. Part of what makes me who I am is the scar on my forehead I got when I fell down the steps as a kid. Part of what makes me was my thrill of climbing with a girl into the backseat of my old Chevy. It’s also the fact that my eyes are blue and my arms were too short to throw a baseball from the outfield to home plate. Part of what makes me who I am was as a kid coming across a novel by Albert Camus, and my early chance hearing of a sonata for violin by J.S. Bach.

If you remove from me all I’ve experienced in this life, I’d be back to chewing on my buttons and throwing my food across the table. I’d have to begin again to make myself; partly from the world as I find it, and partly as I make it. I’d still have the same parents, the same siblings, and the same body, yet I’d become a different person. Simplicus had neither the same parents nor the same memories as you and I. Well, I have a term for people with different bodies and different minds than mine. I call them other people. Simplicus’ entire life of struggle means far less to you or I than the most insignificant and random event of our life here.

One Random Event
One morning as a kid at summer camp, my friends and I decided to practice archery just after breakfast. We were screwing around as usual when we walked up to the range. I was the first to put an arrow in my bow. I aimed, released, and watched my arrow skim just over the top of the bales of hay that held the target. I heard a scream. My legs were barely strong enough to carry me behind the wall of hay to see a woman lying on the ground. She clutched her left arm up near her shoulder and cried hysterically. I nearly wet my pants. Her husband appeared, insane with fright and anger. My arrow wasn’t sticking in her arm. It had struck her and bounced out. I suppose the blunt target head had something to do with that. It did however, make a gouge to the bone. An ambulance took her away, and I never saw her again. I should explain that the two of them had been searching for their own errant arrow behind the wall of hay, as we walked up to begin shooting. I worried for years what would have happened if my aim were just a tiny bit to the left. I would have sent the arrow into the woman’s heart. I might have killed a young woman if only I’d turned my body a single degree to the left. On the other hand, if I’d aimed a degree lower, I’d have hit the bale of hay instead of the woman. Doubtless, I’d be a somewhat different person today if that arrow had hit the target instead of the woman. An individual life is filled with millions of such “could have” events. The totality of these millions of “could haves” makes you what you are.

My life has a continuity about it that may be traced back to the first replicating organism on this planet. The climate and food supply of my ape-like ancestors some millions of years ago continues to have a profound effect on what I am today. Each moment since my own birth has had a part in shaping the person that now sits before this keyboard. The next sentence I write is a result of the totality of this history. The stars that exploded billions of years to produce the atoms that give me my body have as much to do with the next sentence I write as does the fact that the mushroom I had for dinner last night wasn’t toxic. Life is a major result of a near infinity of minor details. Herr Simplicus simply wasn’t one of those minor details! My life is mine, his was his, and yours is yours. That I aimed my bow a bit too high back in summer camp, means far more to my life than if “I” were the Pharaoh of Egypt in a previous life.

The exploding stars that produced my body were not “me.” My millions of ancestors whose lives had so much to do with who I am at this moment, were not “me.” If some nebulous spirit descended from the heavens to further impregnate the moment of my Earthly conception, that spirit was not “me.” The single celled zygote that attached itself to my mother’s womb and began the process that eventually resulted in my sitting at this keyboard was not “me.” The microscopic dot of ultra-dense matter that triggered the Big-Bang might be the ultimate zygote of life. Still, that tiny ultra-dense dot of everything wasn’t “me.” Take a way a cell here, a memory there, turn up the heat to high, or turn on the wrong gene, and you will destroy “me.” Human life is characterized far more by its delicacy rather than by its robustness. If upon my death a spirit should rise out of my body to take flight; well, that spirit won’t be “me” either. I’m no more a spirit than I’m an arm, a leg, or even an entire collection of body parts. I am a specific, composite biological organism endowed with a unique history.

Let me make one last point. Suppose that we somehow could transcend our own death, and manage to retain our own identity. Which version of me becomes immortal? Perhaps I should better explain my question.

Suppose a man has a normal life, with the usual birth, adolescence, maturity, and old age followed by death. Let’s say that at his maturity he was a happy, successful and respected man, but in his later years he fell ill with Alzheimer’s disease. His last years in were spent in a nursing home, unable to recognize his wife and children, unable even to dress or feed himself. My question to you is, which version of this man flies away with the Angels to become immortal? I suppose we might first think that the man that exists at the moment of his death is the one to fly away. To take the man at any other place in his life would be arbitrary, besides, to preserve the man as he was in his earlier life is to discount a portion of the man’s entire life. If this were permissible, the Angels might as well “rewind” the man at his death, and thus preserve the man as he was at birth. But the “man” at birth is nothing at all like same man at his death! To preserve the man as he was at birth would say that the details of his life were not important. You might suggest that the man as he was at the height of his life should be preserved. Yes, but which point in his life would that be? Would it be when he is 21 and able to play a 90 minute soccer game, or is it when he is 50 and at the height of his successful business and social network? I would point out that even though his Alzheimer’s prevents him from recognizing his wife, even while ill he might have still enjoyed contemplating a vase of roses, or taken some secret delight in hearing a Mozart piano concerto. The day before his death might have held a moment for him that was the most beautiful of his entire life. So my question is; Which version of this ever-changing man would the Angels choose to wisk away so as to preserve his immortality? If they take the eldery and sick man, they leave behind most of his memories. If they take the young man they leave behind most of his life experience.

Alex, along with nearly everything else in this life, my premise can never be absolutely verified. I have however, attempted to explain how it makes sense to me. The subject matter is not at all simple, and despite the fact that language wasn’t designed for discussing philosophy, it will have to do. Wittgenstein remarked that:

“Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.”

The validity of my viewpoint is one thing, my ability to express it is another thing, and your abilty to understand what I have written is something else altogether. It’s a wonder that few of us ever feel we are truly understood.

Michael

Alex I would differ from u on the point that “existence is the source of meaning” rather existence is the vehicle which allows us to arrive at meaning. thats all

DS

Polemarcus,

Pretty much agree with everything you just said there.

Polemarchus I like the way you write and I like the way that you argued your point of view there but I still feel that you have made assumptions based on your knowledge, which is inevitable, to prove what you already believe given your knowledge. I would agree that life experiences are crucial to form individuals. Character is created from experience but are you suggesting that we are little more than what has happenned to us at earlier points in our life? This could be seen as reductive to the nature of character. I know that at times what I say is not based on my experiences and how I behave does not correlate in anyway to how I have behaved before. I would instead argue that we are continually changing, in a process of flux and reflux. How we behave at any given moment depends in part on our history but also on the stimuli of the moment. So where am I trying to go with this?

We are never the same at any point in our life (as was discussed elsewhere, change is the only constant) and so we shouldn’t expect continuity throughout eternity. However is it not possible, and of course I am only speculating here, that there is an eternal part to our ‘self’ - the part which transcends life. Now I don’t wish to complicate the matter by discussing what this is (since all I am doing is giving a possibility) so I cannot provide an answer to the problem of what part of us forms our soul or which man, as it were, goes on to the next life given that we are continually changing. The problem with your argument Polemarchus is that you are denying character. How can you say what you are if you are always changing? Are you the same person as who you were five minutes ago? The only way of creating something that you can say is you is to say that you must have a soul - something not physical which unites all the different people you have been into one ‘thing’ and is it not possible that this soul could live before and after its current manifestation as YOU. So the soul makes you you, but it can make any form or series of experiences or beliefs or whatever you. what do you think? I’m not sure that I’m even convincing myself to be honest. Can you provide a critique of this please.

Hey Alex,

Some experts claim that within a period of seven years we replace all the molecules of our bodies. If that’s true, then molecule for molecule, I’ve replaced my entire body six times since I was born. The man my wife hugs today is not physically the same man she married. On the other hand, since one atom is indistinguishable from another, it would be impossible to detect a difference on this account alone.

This brings up a question with huge philosophical implications. Our body naturally uses its present physical form as a blueprint to slowly replace its cells, one-for-one. What if we could develop a machine to do this? The machine might scan the type and location of each atom in my body, and then using, say, a pile of compost as raw materials, assemble an exact duplicate of me. Suppose we perfected the machine such that it could flawlessly replicate every atom in my present body in less than a second. Now please bear in mind that atoms don’t come with identity markers or barcode identifiers of any kind. Thus, these two replicas of me are truly identical and indistinguishable from one another, save their physical location.

But what about your concept of a “soul”? If the “soul” is not made of matter, our scanning machine won’t pick it up, and thus not be able to recreate it. Would there be a difference between the original and the replica, or do you think this mystical “soul” would render the original unique from the duplicate? Given the two versions of me standing side-by-side, if you kill the original version of me and keep the duplicate, would you be guilty of murder, or would it be no different than if you had asked me to take one step to the right? Of course, what I’m describing is little more than the transporter from Star-Trek. My question is; does the transporter routinely commit murder, or is it simply a useful transporation aid?

Actually, every time I take a step to the right I do much the same as the transporter. I force all the atoms in my body to be recreated, one step to the right. In effect, I kill myself in one location and recreate myself in another.

My repeated use of quotation marks around the word “soul” likely gives away the fact that I’m skeptical about the concept. I believe that a sufficiently complex arrangement of atoms is capable of emotion. A neuron is a sophisticated logical component constructed of lowly meat. A lion could make a nice meal from me, without fear of choking on my “soul.” I’m made of meat and bone, but I see no reason why a conscious being couldn’t be constructed of silicon, or gallium arsenide, just the same.

One neuron is incapable of producing much in the way of thought, but one hundred billion neurons connected in a complex system of feedback loops does indeed appear to be capable of complex thoughts. Once you accept the fact that we are complicated machines, the idea that “no machine = no life” follows quite naturally. To think that we are incredibly sophisticated machines takes nothing away from the dignity of life. In his book, The Future of Life, E.O. Wilson wrote:

Humanity did not descend as angelic beings into this world. Nor are we aliens who colonized Earth. We evolved here, one among many species, across millions of years, and exist as one organic miracle linked to the others.

Alex, I don’t see where I’ve belittled the importance of character in my assessment. If anything, I probably belabored that point in my last post, in relating all that is necessary to make me what I am. While my personal history is of critical importance in making me what I am at this moment, it isn’t everything. My favorite quote of all time is from Kierkegaard:

“The ‘self’ is only that which I am in the process of becoming.”

We live neither in the past or the future. We live in the present moment. While I live, I am in a state of “becoming.” My becoming is a product of the physical machinery of life as well as my memories. Equally important to my becoming is an element of randomness in my next thought. A number of recent books refer to a quantum aspect of our consciousness. Here’s a quote from one such book, titled, The Physics of Consciousness, by Evan Harris Walker, pp 259 - 260:

[i]"The concept of will is not compatible with the classical conception of physical processes. Classical physics would demand that nature grind out blindly and automatically the consequences of any initial action. Any mind attached to such an automaton would be only a passive observer.

…when the quantum observation happens - when the state vector collapse occurs - one synapse, from all those that could have fired, does fire."[/i]

Of all that is possible, each moment of our becoming is the continual birth of “is” from “could have been.” The world is partly as we find it, and partly as we make it.

I enjoyed reading this, Alex. You’ve spoken like a true philosopher.

Ubi dubium ibi libertas. - Where there is doubt, there is freedom.
Roman proverb

I’ve never written a single paragraph that I’ve been satisfied with. As soon as I put the last period in place, I start to see cases where what I said might not be correct. Discovery, in the best sense of the word brings new questions rather than certitudes. I remember reading Charles Dawin’s warning:

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”

No matter how wise you and I become, let’s agree to leave room in our hearts for that beautiful mistress known as doubt.

Michael