Metaphysics anyone?

[LutiChris]

However, I'd like to point out that leaving a legacy - passing down knowledge - is precisely what has allowed us to advance so much. Achievements today cannot have been accomplished without the foundation set in the past by our predecessors.

i'm not arguing that. leaving knowledge behind has helped us better understand and improve our living conditions. i'm saying the idea of living through your off spring is nonsensical. there must be a way to save our consciousness from escaping death.

Let me put it this way. When you can live forever, you have infinite time to do everything that can possibly be done for an infinite number of repetitions. Sooner or later, you'd know everything there is and have done everything there is; there is nothing that can surprise you or give you a sense of discovery or achievement since your vast experience effectively gives you 20/20 foresight. Unless you outright forget/erase your own memory and start all over, I'm pretty confident that you are going to be bored and take the easy way out.

fair enough. i did mention if we got bored that we would have to do something about it like changing our routine, life style, way of thinking, creating new experiences. The thing with memory is it's often a blur. Sometimes we forget we did something and do it anyways. We listen to the same songs sometimes, eat and sleep pretty much the same way. I wonder if a way to fight boredom would be to wash away or fragment our memories so that way we don't end up offing ourselves later. or maybe we'll just see each other kill ourselves and return to chaotic times. :P

In the same way, for a living creature to sustain its life beyond simply "existing", it would need some form of resource or sustenance to keep it going. As long as it is possible to cut off this resource, the living creature can die. That's why I believe it is impossible, or at least extremely improbable, that death can truly be conquered.

so lets figure out what life is.

Living things avoid decay into disorder and equilibrium

since all our cells are like little machines (that don't experience or feel anything)
it has the properties that we assign to life

it has a wall that separates it from its surroundings (creating order)
it regulates itself and maintains a constant state
it eats stuff to stay alive
it grows and develops
it reacts to the environment
it's subject to evolution
and it makes copies of itself

but everything that makes up a cell, isn't alive. it just reacts chemically with other stuff over and over again. we're basically a bunch of dead matter moved by the laws of the universe.

eventually every living thing will die. the goal of the process is to prevent this by producing new entities, with new strands of dna and hope for a mutation that will let us survive the current outside state of our surroundings

life is just a lot of stuff that carries genetic information around. every living thing is subject to evolution and the dna that develops the best living thing around it will stay in the game

dna is a very complex micro machine but it can't do anything by itself. then we have viruses. they are strings of dna/rna and need cells to do something. and to this day we don't know if they count as living or dead. there's also some viruses like the cyanovirus that invade dead cells and reanimate them so they can be a host for them.

we're often said that we as a species act like a virus, so why not get passed the process and blur the lines for us to stay in the game?

back in the day, billions of years ago...
our oldest ancestor were probably mitochondria. they are the power plants in most complicated cells and were previously free living bacteria that entered a partnership with bigger cells like eukariotes.

they still have their own dna and can multiply on their own but they are not alive anymore, they're dead. they basically traded their own life for the survival of their dna

which means living things can evolve into dead things as long as its beneficial to their genetic code. so is life just information that manages to ensure its continued existence?

lets jump into AI, it's just a question of time before the technology we build gets there. it may seem like science fiction but it's not. we've got a lot of smart scientists and everyday programmers that are working on this.

btw check out the movie Ex Machina if you haven't already!

life in summary is just things, processes, dna, and information?
one thing is for sure, life is not fundamentally different from nonliving things.

we don't contain some nonphysical element or are governed by different principles in inanimate objects to be alive like we once thought thousands of years ago. there's nothing special or magical about us. we are like every living being, a product of evolution. we're learning more about what computers can do and how life works so the closer we get to creating the first machine that fits our description of life the more of our image of ourselves is in danger again. im sure it'll happen sooner or later. when we get to that point and mind upload our consciousness (if thats possible) or build complicated machines to replace every cell in our body we'll basically be like automated gods.

if everything in the universe is made up of the same stuff does this mean everything in the universe is dead or alive? is it a question of complexity? does this mean we can never die because we were never alive in the first place? is life and death an irrelevant question and we haven't noticed it yet? is it possible we are much more part of the universe around us than we thought?

[STM1993]

so lets figure out what life is.

Living things avoid decay into disorder and equilibrium

...
they(mitochondria) still have their own dna and can multiply on their own but they are not alive anymore, they're dead. they basically traded their own life for the survival of their dna

which means living things can evolve into dead things as long as its beneficial to their genetic code. so is life just information that manages to ensure its continued existence?
...
life in summary is just things, processes, dna, and information?
one thing is for sure, life is not fundamentally different from nonliving things.

we don't contain some nonphysical element or are governed by different principles in inanimate objects to be alive like we once thought thousands of years ago. there's nothing special or magical about us. we are like every living being, a product of evolution. we're learning more about what computers can do and how life works so the closer we get to creating the first machine that fits our description of life the more of our image of ourselves is in danger again. im sure it'll happen sooner or later. when we get to that point and mind upload our consciousness (if thats possible) or build complicated machines to replace every cell in our body we'll basically be like automated gods.

if everything in the universe is made up of the same stuff does this mean everything in the universe is dead or alive? is it a question of complexity? does this mean we can never die because we were never alive in the first place? is life and death an irrelevant question and we haven't noticed it yet? is it possible we are much more part of the universe around us than we thought?

Or perhaps the mitochondria aren't dead, but have simply merged with other cells to become a whole new other organism. Which brings me to the idea that living things are not merely individuals, but an entire collective organism that originally started as just one cell or even less. By this scientific definition, we indeed aren't actually much different from non-living matter and it seems to make this whole thing irrelevant as you said.

What I do want to address however, is more of the human definition of living. A vegetative person is considered scientifically alive - he still breathes, can breed etc, but he can't be considered in human terms to be "living" as he is unconscious; he has no power to really exert control over his surroundings.

Now, I'm fairly confident that a person will retain his own sense of consciousness throughout his life whenever he wakes up from sleep etc. If consciousness is a product of the brain, then if the brain is suddenly destroyed and then replaced with a clone, then wouldn't the original conscience be lost while the clone is an entirely new conscience? At the same time, our body constantly undergoes cell division to replace lost cells, and within 7-10 years all our old cells have been replaced, yet we still retain the same conscience. Doesn't this raise the question of what conscience really is? Is it possible to retain this conscience and thus live forever in human terms? Or perhaps conscience is really just an illusion to facilitate the invisible logic that goes behind our every action?

If there is a metaphysical reality, then there is the possibility of a philosophical zombie - a being that has no soul, yet is physically exactly the same and acts exactly the same in response to pain even if it doesn't actually experience pain. Of course, this raises even more questions and I'm not sure how I can dwell into it.

[LutiChris]

Now, I'm fairly confident that a person will retain his own sense of consciousness throughout his life whenever he wakes up from sleep etc. If consciousness is a product of the brain, then if the brain is suddenly destroyed and then replaced with a clone, then wouldn't the original conscience be lost while the clone is an entirely new conscience? At the same time, our body constantly undergoes cell division to replace lost cells, and within 7-10 years all our old cells have been replaced, yet we still retain the same conscience. Doesn't this raise the question of what conscience really is? Is it possible to retain this conscience and thus live forever in human terms?

awww man. consciousness! this topic is getting deep so fast :P

I'm not sure if you played the game Wolfenstein but there is a certain scene which i love from Tekla

perhaps conscience is really just an illusion to facilitate the invisible logic that goes behind our every action? ... it seems to make this whole thing irrelevant as you said.

i like this question the most since it feels like that may be the case yet its kinda scary to come to terms with. in which case everything else i said about preserving consciousness gets thrown outside the window. AI's at some point will beat the the real turing test proving they can be as complicated as our biological process and our compassion to understand and emulate human behavior, morality, humor, etc.

This illusion of life is so fascinating. I feel like we often don't think that character's in a film or reading a fictional book exist because they are merely products of our creation. Even though it's not the same ball park as AI creation i like the notion that our minds conceive this illusion that the characters exists in our minds. Since we can't prove anything exists we have to be pragmatic so that we don't go insane with this provoking thought. The state of living - whatever that means at this point i don't know- is all in our heads and we'll continue to perceive it in that way. asdgjhkl same thing with metaphysical reality

If there is a metaphysical reality, then there is the possibility of a philosophical zombie - a being that has no soul, yet is physically exactly the same and acts exactly the same in response to pain even if it doesn't actually experience pain. Of course, this raises even more questions and I'm not sure how I can dwell into it.

i would think that one of its senses (touch) is not fully functional or they choose to ignore pain in pursuit of their food for whatever irrational reason.

i encourage everyone to talk about their thoughts on being, existence and reality! it's fun!

[Gespenst]

MULTIVERSE!!!!!!!

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MULTIVERSE THEORY!!!

Ramond edited this post 07-22-2015 12:49 PM because:

I'd appreciate it if posts were a little more constructive than just a single word.

[LutiChris]

Is pushing someone to commit suicide same as committing murder?

[A-Man]

For myself, it depends what you mean there by "pushing". If it's like convincing someone, without resorting to any means of pressure,  to commit suicide, then I wouldn't call that murder because it was still the decision for that person to make. If "pushing" is done by subjecting one to psychological/physical pressure/torture, like a situation where one is asked to commit suicide for the safety of someone/something who's/that's dear to him, then I consider that to be essentially murder. Another bizarre situation is forcing one to take a risk which he might die because of. An example of this was demonstrated in the first episode of the show "Sherlock" where the criminal would force the victim to pick one of 2 pills from which 1 is poison, followed by both of them having a pill they have. That is obviously murder - if the victim dies at least.

[LutiChris]

What if you didn't have to resort to psychological or physical pressure?
Is negligence permissible if a person in question is seeking attention and they come to you for help with the knowledge that they are probably going to harm/kill themselves in the process. While it seems to me that it's not punishable by law for an adult to commit suicide and have other bystanders not do anything about it, when someone can not take care of themselves (under-aged kid, the elderly, and mentally handicapped patients...etc) it seems like the fault is on the caretaker if they were aware of the events that led to the death of the such persons. I'm sure people who are sent to mental wards, hospitals, and retirement homes have to sign some sort of waver saying they are responsible for taking care of them but what about allowing parents to let their children die and have them plea a deal that allows them to avoid prison? are they not murderer's because they were unaware that their child would die? Seems to me that they aren't 1st degree murderer's because they didn't know but would that still make them second degree murders?

Another bizarre situation is forcing one to take a risk which he might die because of. 

The reason why i ask is some parent could pray for their child to be healed even though such things could be easily avoided with the help of medical professionals. Here's an example: A family likes to travel to unsafe areas, their daughter gets bitten by a poisonous snake. They refuse to take their beloved daughter to a hospital because they believe prayer works. She dies the next day. They continue having more kids and do the same dangerous activities. Even though they are oblivious to these patterns of consequences are they still not murderer's? I agree that it can be tricky and things depend on case-by-case situations but i'm just trying to invoke responses from you guys in hopes to getting some of you thinking.

[A-Man]

Is negligence permissible if a person in question is seeking attention and they come to you for help with the knowledge that they are probably going to harm/kill themselves in the process. While it seems to me that it's not punishable by law for an adult to commit suicide and have other bystanders not do anything about it, when someone can not take care of themselves (under-aged kid, the elderly, and mentally handicapped patients...etc) it seems like the fault is on the caretaker if they were aware of the events that led to the death of the such persons. I'm sure people who are sent to mental wards, hospitals, and retirement homes have to sign some sort of waver saying they are responsible for taking care of them but what about allowing parents to let their children die and have them plea a deal that allows them to avoid prison? are they not murderer's because they were unaware that their child would die? Seems to me that they aren't 1st degree murderer's because they didn't know but would that still make them second degree murders?

Indeed. Being suicidal is a psychological illness, and just like any other physical illness, it needs to be treated. The analogy can continue further. If the caretakers didn't provide the person with shelter (a happy family environment) to protect against cold (premature suicidal thoughts) and sufficient amount food (love and care from parents), then it's only natural to assume it will have a direct effect on the health of that person. The only difference between the 2 is that psychological health is often overlooked, and this is why you often hear parents telling their children: "You have got food and shelter! What more could you really need?".

The reason why i ask is some parent could pray for their child to be healed even though such things could be easily avoided with the help of medical professionals. Here's an example: A family likes to travel to unsafe areas, their daughter gets bitten by a poisonous snakes. They refuse to take their beloved daughter to a hospital because they believe prayer works. She dies the next day. They continue having more kids and do the same dangerous activities. Even though they are oblivious to these patterns of consequences are they still not murderer's? I agree that it can be tricky and things depend on case-by-case situations but i'm just trying to invoke responses from you guys in hopes to getting some of you thinking.

Just ask those believers who believe just praying will do the thing one questions: Why would God have rules that govern the universe and then breaks them? If you believe God is to help you in distress, then you might as well want to try to walk along the steps of logic and reason God created. Make sure you don't say that provokingly, and perhaps they will listen to you.

[STM1993]

(Note: I don't study law, this is strictly personal opinion)

The main thing about suicide is accessing the intent of the 'murderer' and the state of mind of the 'victim'. If I told any random person to kill himself and he does even though his mind is perfectly sound, he is committing suicide. If I told an insane, depressed, drunk guy to kill himself and he does, I'd be a murderer even if I didn't intend to - because in the first place why would I outright tell someone to kill himself? If I gave a person a false choice, I'd be a murderer. If I was under duress when I suggested suicide to another, strictly speaking I'd still be a murderer but context is important to determine if I can take the full blame.

I consider negligence to be murder; a lack of knowledge is not a valid excuse for wrongdoings. That's like a real criminal trying to plead insanity, and even if the criminal truly is clinically insane, he shouldn't be excused for outright having caused death. The only time something akin to negligence is accepted is if a person is proven to have attempted a reasonably accepted life-saving measure(ie: prayer is NOT acceptable, CPR or trying to talk it out is acceptable) but still failed in the process - the same way the Good Samaritan law works. That said, if you have someone who is actually trained to help like paramedics and a person get in their way, then that'd be obstruction of aid and that person can be considered a murderer.

Similarly, freak accidents would not count as murder or suicide for the matter - defined as death that resulted despite proper measures and assumptions taken to avoid it. So falling asleep while driving (even if suffering nacrolepsy unless that was the 1st instance the person suffered from it) would be negligence, but the brakes not working despite having checked them the day before and the driver having done what he could to avoid collision would be considered a freak accident.

The last case I can recall is assisted suicide or euthanasia. I consider it strictly suicide, but the main problem is trying to determine the victim's will, otherwise as with the 2nd paragraph, you can have doctors going around killing their patients and calling it euthanasia. Personally, in this case if a person's intent cannot be determined, his choice should be left to his closest caretakers(basically whoever's paying the bill), and failing any such relative, then the doctor should have the final say based on the probability of recovery and costs of not pulling the plug.

[LutiChris]

You are falsely accused of a crime by a police officer. Knowing this, you calmly explain the situation. Nonetheless,  they become extremely violent with you. Given your background, you know you can easily subdue them. Should you allow yourself to be assaulted?