The logical extension of the "Die every time you are unconscious" argument, is that you are constantly, continually, dieing--- until you are completely dead.
This is because it is predicated on the notion that you cease being "you" when something intrinsic about that "you" changes. So, every time you learn something new, you cease being "You", and become that new, more knowing future you. Past you is dead.
I hold that this is an absurd position to take, and so consider the entire string or philosophical sophistry that is woven into that tapestry to be unworthy of consideration; it would require a universe without change to permit "you" to exist in that fashion in any meaningful way. The creator of the statement "died" at least a dozen times trying to write it!
I define "myself" (as an abstract concept) as the evolving computational process that gives rise to my consciousness. That process can theoretically be simulated on any number of substrates, and perhaps even directly duplicated. As such, the idea of an "afterlife" is not outside the scope of rational consideration. In the intervening years between now and my eventual physical death, technology to permit the continuation of that process artificially on new substrates may come to exist-- At which point, a genuine, physical "afterlife" (a life after physical death) would be real and tangible. Further, even further down the road in the future, it may be possible to collect a state-sample from processes that have already terminated. (Time is not as fixed as some people believe it to be, but causality does indeed seem to hold sway here. Since these processes did indeed exist, the effects they had on their local environment may be sufficient to reconstitute them perfectly later. Say for instance, a post-mortem connective scan of their brains, ran through a reconstructive computer program, then fed into the afterlife simulation. Even further down the line, who knows what the future may hold there.) The "supernatural" kind of afterlife is basically the same kind of thing, just where the simulation is being run on a substrate that is outside the makeup of the physical universe, and due to this outside nature, is able to sample the processes it allows to continue non-destructively, continually, and just allows them to continue past death on the new substrate.
Since I have no way of proving nor disproving that such a modality of existence is possible or impossible, I cannot make a value determination either for or against. That is why I am agnostic, and not theistic or atheistic.
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Topic: Railgun and Spirituality Discussion (Read 582176 times)