Does our consciousness end after we die? Or do we get 'reborn' as another creature?

Do you believe in reincarnation?

  • Yes, but not in the spiritual sense.

    Votes: 4 6.2%

  • Yes, in the spiritual sense.

    Votes: 9 13.8%

  • Not sure.

    Votes: 21 32.3%

  • Nope.

    Votes: 31 47.7%
  • Total voters
    65
Roast Chicken

Roast Chicken

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I've been thinking about this for a while. I consider myself an atheist; I don't believe there's an old man sitting in the universe moving billions of chess pieces around. The type of reincarnation I'm referring to isn't one where you meditate to unlock memories from your previous lifeform or try to amass good karma in your current life to make sure you don't come back as a cockroach; I don't believe you get a choice in whether you come back as a cockroach or not... unless you exterminate all cockroaches before you die.

We still don't fully understand consciousness and what form it takes. For example, "I" (and I use that term loosely because it's not actually me) might've been a bug or a rabbit previously and lots of other creatures and people before that since life began on earth. I can't recall any of it of course, because this isn't Assassin's Creed.

But I've been wondering about reincarnation in the scientific sense - I've tried Googling it but all I get is sketchy woo articles and videos which often careen in unintelligible ranting.

When things die their matter gets recycled and fed back to the environment - your fluids and nutrients go on to contribute to plants and your gasses disperses into the air until it's pumped into some kid's balloon. The brain's activity is comprised of electrical signals, which is energy - and energy can't be destroyed, only recycled.

So do you think reincarnation in the scientific sense happens? Or do you believe once someone or an animal dies that's final? I admit, I find the prospect of being born again as something not of my own choosing and facing a life or more pain and misery to be kind of worrying. But at the same time, I guess it means that life isn't really pointless and finite because as humans you have some ability to change the world around you and have maybe, just a tiny, tiny amount of influence on the quality of life you'll have as your next lifeform.
 
  • Thunk-Provoking
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I've been reading up on stuff like this, it's entirely possible that consciousness is like a radio wave and the brain 'recieves' it.

Just by the law of averages or whatever anything could happen. You could be reincarnated, the Big Bang could happen again, anything.
 
  • Agree
Reactions: not william stenchever
I'm somewhere between, maybe, a functionalist and an eliminativist. Consciousness ain't a special separate thing, it is merely our cognitive functioning. One and the very same things; consciousness isn't a product of it per se. There is nothing special about consciousness and it's not even a separate "thing." A sufficiently advanced machine will be as "conscious" as we would be.

Furthermore, the problem of reincarnation is the problem of identity to begin with. If "you" get reincarnated as a chipmunk, or perhaps a lesser creature like a cockroach or a brony, then what does that even mean? Entirely a separate brain; entirely separate functioning, with little in common with the original "you." There are no memories passed on, or behaviors; what's the meaning of reincarnation then if neither of these two integral things are carried over? The idea of a "soul" is superfluously silly; it's nearly meaningless and doesn't really save the fact that there are no memories or behaviors carried over anymore than an atom or molecule inside of you that was once part of a triceratops means you carry a special connection with that dinosaur. Even if there was some sort of central essence, the canvas is not as important as the picture that is painted on it.

When philosophers have trouble even defining something, like "consciousness," then you need to take a good hard look at the concept and see if you're even arguing over something truly real. Obviously, there is differences in being what we call "conscious" versus "unconscious," but the exact differences between conscious and unconscious brain processes are not so clear, for example, when one is sleeping versus being awake. Sleep isn't even being truly unconscious, either for example.

Technically you could reincarnate someone dead if you scanned their entire molecular structure and created a 1:1 copy later on. They'd feel and act as if they did right when they were being scanned, which is to be expected and is just as "them" as the "original." Hell, you could create a copy of someone alive, and the "clone" would be the exact same person but with the perception of having teleported a little bit since they obviously can't be taking up the same physical space as the "original." Please note the scare quotes, the "original" doesn't confer some sort of priority metaphysically or anything regarding their identity. What we call the clone should technically have the same rights to the house and car as the "original," as the origination of the atoms in a body is rather irrelevant to the question of being and identity.

You don't even need a 1:1 copy. Do you remember everything you did yesterday? Are you the same person? If you get injured and suffered serious memory loss, are you the same person? Is it "reincarnating" a dead president if you make a human in a lab that has vague semantic memories of the life of Abraham Lincoln, looks sort of like Abraham Lincoln, and more importantly, believes he is Abraham Lincoln? How much similarity and exactness is needed to be a proper reincarnation? Do these questions actually mean anything at all? I do not think they do. Identity is a myth. But the "I" is a useful fiction we are doomed to use. This is partly why pretentious internet intellectuals like Sam Harris fellate Buddhism, but I don't think Buddhism really is stating the same thing when they say "no self" to what western philosophers mean by it. I think it's a western bastardization.

If we get to the point where on-demand cloning is a thing, and creating humans from scratch, then we're going to be in a whole new world of bizarre ethical dilemmas. Property rights become bizarre. You and your double (might not even know who the "clone" is, doesn't matter) fighting over who gets to use the car? How will laws handle it? All the political shit going on now is going to be as relevant as discussing bimetallism today when we start opening these cans of worms.
 
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  • Autistic
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What you've got now won't come back once it's gone, whether reincarnation and the afterlife exist or not. cherish it, make the most of it, enjoy yourself while you can.

Worst case scenario you end up in hell and there was nothing you could've reasonably done to prevent it.
 
  • Feels
Reactions: HaldolJunkie
Depends. Your consciousness is theoretically immortal since the universe is a simulation (probably). But who knows what happens to that consciousness. This might be "hell", living on this shithole planet instead of in some paradise simulation or even in the society which built the computer (which in turn might be simulated by a computer higher up).
 
  • Like
Reactions: HaldolJunkie
I mean reincarnation is true in the sense that we're energy and that energy never truly goes away it just goes into another form (first law of thermodynamics).
But at a spiritual level? I don't believe in supernatural stuff personally.
 
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Your consciousness is simply what we call one small process of many going on in the meat between your ears. The process ends after the meat goes bad, basically.

But then you could, if for some reason you were so inclined, claim the processes that continued happening to your brain after death constitute some kind of "consciousness" simply by pedantic definition. Worms eating your rotten brain matter is a process, after all.

I guess it's sort of like asking "If I run windows on my computer then blow up the computer, where did windows go?" Windows was a process in the physical memory of the computer, when you blew it up the process stopped. There's not (as far as we know) some other dimension or something that these processes actually happen in, they happen within physical stuff. Windows didn't keep running in some computer memory afterlife. So why would the process in your brain meat be any different?
 
  • Disagree
  • Autistic
  • Agree
Reactions: Otterly, Wurstbrot, Danskjaevel and 2 others
Dunno. Don't spend much time thinking about what happens after death as a general rule, I'm betting on us having figured out some sort of immortality by the time kicking the bucket in anything other then an accident will be a concern for me, whether that be some sort of de-aging serum or figuring out how to transfer our consciousness into machines or what have you. Can't say I really ascribe to Samsara or any of that other Buddhist or Hindu stuff though, it just seems a tad silly. I think we technically reincarnate eventually, in some sense, since what makes up our current bodies will probably inevitably become a part of something else, but if the consciousness that we've got now doesn't exist then I don't think anyone would find that sort of reincarnation by technicality to be particularly comforting.
 
When you are dead the code that constitutes your consciousness is automatically analysed to see how much you deviate from the norm, what interactions influenced the changes. Then the aliens clear the data that constitutes your memories make minor modifications to your sub-routines and reinsert you into another part of the simulation.
 
I've spent a lot of time thinking about this and what happens after death in general. personally I think the answer is we don't know. I'd like to think reincarnation or some kind of afterlife is what happens but ultimately I don't think anyone really knows until it happens.
 
  • Agree
Reactions: 1 person
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