Definiera Gud

The Death Delusion

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Boy: “When you take apart a Lego house and mix the pieces into the bin, where does the house go?”

Girl: “It’s in the bin.”

Boy: “No, those are just the pieces. They could become spaceships or trains. The house was an arrangement. The arrangement doesn’t stay with the pieces and it doesn’t go anywhere else. It’s just gone.”

A popular scientific observation is that all of the atoms in our bodies are in constant transition. It is claimed that they are shed from our bodies at a constant rate, with new atoms taking their place. The atoms that form your brain are replaced about every twelve months and almost your entire body is replaced about every seven years.

Therefore, how can you say you are the same person that you were a year ago? You can, of course, because your subjective consciousness is not a physical entity, it is an intangible system that is supported, but not reliant on, a physical substrate.

As with any system, it is maintained by a physical substrate, in this case your biological brain. The components of the system may change, but the system itself remains consistent.

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The truth is that it doesn’t matter what form your mind takes, as long as its structure is maintained. This leads us to the inevitable conclusion that our minds may one day be copied onto a computer and that this copy would itself be an individual sentient mind.

As uncomfortable as it may make some of us feel, there is no evidence to support the notion that human consciousness is somehow inextricably linked with the biological package of meat, bone and grey matter that houses it.

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Many terms have been used to define our “spirit”, “soul”, “mind” or “qualia”. When the supernatural elements are removed, I believe that these terms fundamentally refer to the same concept. Since our conciousness exists in the dimension of pure thought it could be said that we are living in a “spiritual plane” every day of our lives.

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What separates your mind from the outside world? Why is it that your mind exists only within your brain, and not within the liquid that surrounds it? Or in the bone that encases it? Or in the air outside? Or in the people around you?

If the atoms in your brain are constantly being replaced and passing through this liquid and bone and air then is not your mind intrinsically linked with the outside world?

Your mind can never die since death is an event restricted to the physical world and does not exist in the dimension of pure thought.

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If our consciousness is a chain of connected thoughts, like a string of musical notes, then the concept of death describes a chain of thought that is no longer continuing.

No pain can be felt, no disappointment, nothing.

“Nothing” is nothing, so it cannot exist, and so therefore neither can “death”.

Something can only be said to have ended when it will never continue.

In regards to our consciousness, death is more like a very long pause rather than The End.

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In an infinite universe anything is possible and everything is inevitable. There is every chance that your chain of thought may be continued again somewhere, sometime, in the infinite possibilities of time and space.

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The atoms that form us may change, so may their position, size, and time that they exist in, but these things have changed constantly throughout your life, yet you have remained alive and maintained the same identity...

My answer is that the mind is a meme.

A meme is the conceptual equivalent of a gene. It is a concept that can be shared between conscious minds without losing its fundamental integrity; like complex religious beliefs, or the simple custom of shaking hands.

Memes tend to compete with each other for survival and are subject to the same laws of evolution as other forms of life. Memes have been shown to develop self-defensive adaptations with varying levels of internal intelligence. In fact, I assert that since memes are complex intelligent systems they are as valid a form of life as our own protein-based genes or the humans which they construct.

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The example that Dawkins gives is that when a carpenter teaches the technique for building a chair to an apprentice he describes a single step as “nail this leg here”, not “swing the hammer at thirty degrees and hammer five times.” This is because, ultimately, those smaller details are not important in achieving the goal of nailing the leg onto the chair; a goal which can be achieved despite various small changes and still produce a faithful recreation of a chair.

Our minds are the same in that they are memes kept alive by neurons that transfer their memetic information from generation to generation without losing fidelity. Even though the cellular and atomic structures of our brains is constantly changing, our meme-mind stays intact. Small details may change as the physical vehicles die and are replaced but the core integrity survives.

Your mind is a substrate-independent system. It is a consistent meme on an ever-changing ocean of cells and neurons.

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Your mind was never intrinsically linked to a particular set of atoms or a particular location in space. Because it is a meme it can be recreated at a later date, out of different materials and in a different place.