Death might not be non-existence. Many religions, philosophies, spiritual teachings, say that it isn't. Of course, maybe they are all baloney–and a lot of them have to be mostly that–but there is at least a chance there is some truth in one or more of them.
Maybe quantum immortality is true, and all of us live forever, but it is a lonely existence, cut off seemingly forever from family and friends. (I hope that isn't true, it sounds rather hellish.)
Could we be living in a computer simulation? If we have no idea, shouldn't we assign a 50% probability? But, if we are in a computer simulation, our simulators might decide to provide an afterlife for us. And if we have no idea whether they would or not, shouldn't we assign a 50% probability to that? Which gives us 25% chance of a simulated afterlife – not the best odds, but far from the worst either.
We could be physically resurrected into some paradise by various random processes (quantum tunnelling, quantum fluctuations, thermal fluctuations). The probability of that happening is immensely small but non-zero. No matter how small it is, if the future is infinite, then almost surely it will happen eventually.
Most people who think death is non-existence accept a materialist position in the philosophy of mind, but often without giving any great thought to the alternative positions. If idealism is true–and we have no hard evidence it isn't–then death being the cessation of existence is far less likely. If idealism is true, then quite possibly minds are inherently immortal, in which case an afterlife would be metaphysically necessary.
At the risk of sounding all "woo-woo", this statement bears some qualification.
How do you define existence, here? Are you equating it with consciousness? Surely your constituent parts (atoms, molecules, particles, etc) existed before your consciousness, and continue to do so afterwards.
I think you'll also agree that the arrangement of matter and energy you call "your life" is regulated by natural processes.
In principle, it's possible for the thing you call "your life" to be a brief window within some larger process (a meta-life, if you will) of which you have no recollection.
I don't know if I believe any of this to be true, but metaphysically speaking, it's not at all obvious that we "didn't exist before birth".
Yeah, I, for one, equate it with consciousness. I could not give less fucks if my "atoms, molecules, particles" existed before me or will exist after me.
I want the whole conscious being, able to kiss, hug, think, love, hurt, eat a steak, and so on to extend.
>I think you'll also agree that the arrangement of matter and energy you call "your life" is regulated by natural processes. In principle, it's possible for the thing you call "your life" to be a brief window within some larger process (a meta-life, if you will) of which you have no recollection.
If I don't have "recollection", then I still don't care.
The whole point being made was that "metaphysically speaking, it's not at all obvious that we "didn't exist before birth".
Which I say is irrelevant, if we need to distort "exist" so much as to mean some "larger processes" or our "atoms and molecules" existing.
Metaphysically speaking it might not be obvious, but the way the grandparent, me, and almost everybody else uses the term existence (i.e. regarding the conscious person, or at least their soul) it's obvious that we very much do not exist.
About "wishful thinking", many people really want there to be an afterlife, but conversely at least some people really want there to not be one. Some people fear hell, or that everlasting existence might become boring (apeirophobia). Others find the idea of oblivion and infinite nothingness as reassuring. see e.g. Swinburne's Garden of Proserpine – https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45288/the-garden-of-p...
No sense wasting glucose on thinking about things that are beyond our probing.
Immortality in the Carl Sagan sense that we came from stars, and one day will be there again, or even within a cycle of nature on mother earth, sure that seems reasonable. Particle immortality. Remarkably complex tales of hades, meeting everyone who has ever lived in paradise or cute red guys with a pitchfork require remarkable evidence.
On impending nonexistence, I've never quite understood why this is a struggle for so many to contemplate - maybe that's something lacking in me, who knows. I always just figure it like the tungsten filament after you flick the switch; fade then off. Why's that difficult? Why must it matter more? Can't it just be? It just is. I am perfectly chill with that, and always have been. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The earth actually is (roughly speaking) the centre of the observable universe, which quite possibly is all the universe we can ever know.
If this is a computer simulation, you'd expect some parts of the simulation to be much more accurate then others. Our psychology would be simulated to a great degree of accuracy, distant galaxies would be simulated at only a very coarse level. So, the centre of the simulated universe, the area with the highest degree of simulation accuracy, would be this planet. So, if we are in a computer simulation–and if we don't know, let's say the probability is 50%–then the earth is the centre of the universe after all.
If philosophical idealism is true, and esse is percipi, then the area around the earth (which is highly observed by minds) exists in more detail, has a greater degree of existence, than distant galaxies. So, philosophical idealism can lead to a similar conclusion as the simulation thesis, that the earth actually is the approximate centre of the universe.
If the universe is infinite then we are always likely to be at the centre of whatever range our instruments manage. In a universe where there is no such thing as centre. If it's simulation, it seems reasonable for the edge of observable to be the limit of simulation - the rest being under the galactic equivalent of fog of war.
Of course we don't know if it actually is centred, or just appears so from being in a local hotspot. Without knowing the extent of simulation that may be unknowable. There could just as easily be countless other species in other parts of the sim, or earth as an insignificant backwater with all the real activity outside our range. Unless it's encoded in an easter egg we may one day find, I suspect it will always be unknowable. And that's without considering multiverses. :)
Have you seen just how weird people are? I think the psych simulation is loaded with bugs.
Yes, you've caught on to this notion, and that's really the best we can ever do in our present state. Funny how we imagine our little 3 pound mass might someday fathom the secrets of the cosmos. Could a fruit fly trapped in a jet airliner ever comprehend the turbo jet mechanics keeping its carrier aloft?
I would argue that it's fairly safe to conjecture a continued progression of "higher" dimensions beyond time and space; beyond our human imagining. Might as well think of the progression itself as infinite.
From this, entire books could be written about the imagined implications, such as every possible timeline "emanating" from every point in time. Relatively rudimentary approximations of what we can not fully imagine.
So, how does this relate to the afterlife. Well, once it's established that at least everything our puny brains could ever imagine does cosmically exist, then our continuation is certainly included in that. So is choice / free will, simply put. Of course, there would exist many individual continuations and wills, even variations of individuality. It's interesting to consider and one inevitably encounters a thickening cloud of paradoxes, indicating that our mental models are laughably incomplete.
One thing that has given me a bit of comfort was an answer I heard when somebody asked one of the great minds of the 21st century, Jennifer Lawrence, "what happens after we die?"
1. Don't worry about the gods; they're too busy being gods to bother you.
2. Don't get anxious about death; you didn't exist before you were born, and I don't recall that being unpleasant.
3. What is good is easy to get; friendship, wisdom, bad jokes.
4. What is bad is easy to endure; if it gets too bad, you'll die (see #2).
I believe I want to live forever if it's forever in health and non-poverty and freedom.
The fact that I will not live forever really effects my thinking and what I'm willing to do. As just one example, being older I know that I can't go dedicate 10 years to living in another country to learn a language or I could but I've only got at most 2 10yr chunks left, more like 1, before my ability to be free and healthy and non-poverty change. Or similarly to change my career or go back to school. I'm already in my mid-50s.
Conversely I'm lost, isolated, and without direction, have no close friends, no partner, and find it exceedingly hard to fix and so the thought of just calling it quits does pop into my head.
It stunned me. I couldn’t sleep. I could NOT imagine non-existence. It terrofied me.
In the next few years I learned more about the world and grew far more comfortable with my place in it. I don’t feel nearly as puzzled about nonexistence as I used to.
For me, I see myself as a cell in a greater body — humanity — and I see humanity as part of an even greater whole, the universe. Does a single cell worry about its fate after death? No. It merely does what it is supposed to do, does it well if it can, and then ends gracefully when its time has come.
I feel the same way about my own life. I am part of a whole, humanity at one level, the universe itself at another. I do my best with the limited time I have; I do my duty; and then I die.
I have grown quite comfortable with this view of life and death over the years. It gives nonexistence found at the end of life its appropriate meaning. It is the natural end of a temporal life.
No one talks about death in real life, we just kind of go with the flow of "death is bad" yadda yadda. If you deconstruct your view on death and looks at how other societies or cultures sees deaths it can be eye opening. It's only bad if you see it as a bad thing.
"But tell me, do you consider it fairer that you should obey Nature, or that Nature should obey you? And what difference does it make how soon you depart from a place which you must depart from sooner or later? We should strive, not to live long, but to live rightly; for to achieve long life you have need of Fate only, but for right living you need the soul. A life is really long if it is a full life; but fullness is not attained until the soul has rendered to itself its proper Good, that is, until it has assumed control over itself. What benefit does this older man derive from the eighty years he has spent in idleness? A person like him has not lived; he has merely tarried awhile in life. Nor has he died late in life; he has simply been a long time dying. He has lived eighty years, has he? That depends upon the date from which you reckon his death! ... Nay, he has existed eighty years, unless perchance you mean by "he has lived" what we mean when we say that a tree "lives.""
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius. (letters 4, 24, 26, 61, 82, 93)
https://terebess.hu/english/AlanWatts-On%20The%20Taboo%20Aga...
It may be in your philosophy, and I'm not arguing that. But it's not universal.
http://www.atheismandthecity.com/2016/02/does-special-relati...
Also, remember that when you're gone, it won't hurt, and you won't miss anything. Everything in your life, from the worst torture to the most minor itch, hurts more than being dead.
From all the existentialists I've read Peter Wessel-Zapffe[1], a Norwegian philosopher (considered the comedian among philosophers) has helped me understand the importance of always facing the bleak side of life. As somebody who is no stranger to depression (and thoughts of suicide every couple of weeks) facing the reality of death and even seeking it out as a topic is the only way I'm able to be happy.
Also worth reading is Denial of Death[2].
[1] The Last Messiah: https://philosophynow.org/issues/45/The_Last_Messiah
[2] Ernest Becker "The denial of Death" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denial_of_Death
The idea of any afterlife in which my personal identity is still coherent fills me with dread, frankly.
And since having kids I find permanent nonexistence even more painful to contemplate.
The nearer I approach death the more I feel like one who is in sight of land at last and is about to anchor in one's home port after a long voyage. -Cicero
The fear of death is indeed the pretense of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being a pretense of knowing the unknown; and no one knows whether death, which people in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good. -Plato