Sam Harris on a secular form of immortality (Generic Subjective Continuity)
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- Опубликовано: 25 авг 2024
- In this excerpt of a talk from his Making Sense podcast, Sam Harris discusses how the purely subjective aspect of consciousness has a continuity that elides any gaps in experience, including - quite possibly - the gap of death. To illustrate this, he quotes extensively from philosopher Tom Clark's essay "Death, Nothingness, and Subjectivity" (naturalism.org...) which elaborates his theory of "generic subjecitive continuity." What's particularly interesting and compelling about this thesis is that it's completely naturalistic and compatible with either materialism or idealism.
Taken from "The Paradox of Death" from www.samharris...., where all his full-length talks and interviews are available via subscription.
My website has short essays and musings on the kind of thing this video is about: sites.google.c...
Subjective continuity of consciousness had taken the fear of death away from me. Indeed, I see no reason why “I” will not experience consciousness again, after all, its happened at least once already.
One of my biggest takeaways from this is that there is a way of viewing consciousness collectively, in a completely impersonal way. Conscious 1st person experience is a guide for ethics, especially suffering. The general goal of aiming for the totality of consciousness to have not only less suffering, but much better experiences seems like a very ethical thing to aim for. This would inevitably include many animals who can suffer, but must stop at some point between mammals and microbes.
Thank you for this post. Great thought. So from the perspective of your own consciousness, you continuously keep experiencing things, without experiencing the gaps of non-existence.
I wrestled with the same idea that came to me about a year ago. I really struggled to describe how your last moment of consciousness here is “you“ is immediately continued by a new consciousness without any connection, ( i.e. not reincarnation).
Sam did a much better job explaining (the author of that essay, I forgot his name) - and now I feel the idea makes much more sense. I’m still trying to consider what the meaningful implications of this means, if true.
Understanding open individualism makes it easier to understand GSC
Even in a purely physical context, consciousness cannot fathom an end of experience, and so does not. If one halves the time between experience and non experience, there is still experience. If one halves that half, then that half and continues infinitely, there is still conscious time to be halved. Consciousness can never make it to non experience.
Then there is Einsteinian time, which does not pass (instead we pass through it). In the infinity of splitting fractions of time, experience then instantiates the consciousness substrate with our own ever present time.
Mind blowing. Thank you science.
This is very close to what Advaita Vedanta says about consciousness
And Buddhism. Vedanta and Buddhism are closely related. They emerged from the same source.
Tibetan Buddhism contains detailed instructions about what the transition between lives will be like, but the end result is the same - consciousness experiences itself in a different form.
This would all work out if consciousness was immaterial, and it seems like both Clarke and Harris avoid talking about the nature of consciousness. If my consciousness was biologically tied to my brain, then there would be no possible way for generic subjective continuity to occur. I think the underlying assumption here is that panpsychism or idealism is correct, as an explanation for the ontology of consciousness
Actually, GSC is based on consciousness being a function of brains --- what brains do. Check out my latest videos on this topic. Also, experience is immaterial. But it is something brains _do_ .
@anonyme2878 There is nothing in Sam's description of this that implies anything like an underlying substance that connects one life to another. In fact, the GSC idea he's discussing doesn't rely on any particular ontology being true (i.e., it's a valid idea whether materialism, idealism, or panpsychism is the case). I think you should go back and listen to the piece more carefully and actually follow along with the thought experiments he employs.
@@_PL_ I've listened to this and a bunch of other videos explaining GSC. There's no implication of an underlying substance that connects one life to the other, which IS the issue.
How do we know consciousness is generic? How does the experience of the *same* consciousness continue from one life to the other. There is nothing to link my experience of being conscious with an animal that is born after I die.
@@naturalisted1714 Yes. I've also watched your talk with the Atheist Experience. I think their criticisms roughly align with mine. Consciousness is something brains do, and we don't have evidence to support that it something generic, that my bare experience of consciousness will cease, and then resume once another living organism is born.
There is no connection between the two, unless a proper ontology is established.
@@anonyme2878 _"How do we know consciousness is generic?"_
Because by definition, only _objective content,_ no matter how subtle, can mark something as personal or non-generic. So, in the context of identity, that means memories, thoughts, feelings, behavioral tendencies, perceptual filters, and so on. The purely subjective dynamic that gives these (subtly) objective content their _personal_ salience is simply the impersonal "light" by which these or any content are known (as Sam puts it in the talk here).
You could loosely analogize it using abstract _space_ as the generic context for the existence of any possible object within it, while neither imparting anything *to* those objects, nor taking on qualities *from* those objects. And yet, without space to inhere in, no objects could be present. (The analogy risks reifying subjectivity, but the hope is that you get the principle it's pointing to.)
_"How does the experience of the _*_same_*_ consciousness continue from one life to the other."_
It's the "same" consciousness phenomenologically, not in terms of any specific content, as explained above. Another analogy I've used is that of electricity, which is functionally "the same" whether it's powering a refrigerator, a laptop, an electric razor, or anything else. The main hurdle to overcome in understanding GSC is the tendency to conflate the aforementioned personal contents of consciousness with their underlying impersonal context.
Am I hearing that Sam may believe continued consciousness (after some n-eons of dormancy) is a nonzero possibility?
When he said the word eternal I was spooked
I couldn't believe when he seriously seemed to accept fundamental principle of immortality from Bhagavad Gita as psychic, and therefore cosmic fact.
Alternative idea linking consciousness with the physical; Your consciousness is linked with the fact that the atoms that make you up have come to be in such an order as they are. If you were reconstructed, post death, atom for atom, you would be as you are now. If time is infinite, this will not only happen again but an infinite number of times through infinite re-iterations of the universe. But this is linked to the assumption of infinity (there are an infinite number of monkeys typing the works of Shakespear simply because infinity makes that possible)...
That was the premise behind Nietzsche's view of eternal recurrence.
@@_PL_ Interesting, thanks for this. It only needs to recur up to the point of your creation though surely, from that point on it can be any iteration of experience (including an infinite number of identical iterations). If so, one feels sorry for still born children or those that experience a naturally short life.
@@_PL_Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence is merely a thought experiment to assess whether one truly affirms life, it isn’t a literal statement of how things are. At least in my understanding.
@@hihello-sx1sx
_"Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence is merely a thought experiment..."_
Only in Nietzsche's first published mention of the idea was it proposed as a thought experiment. His later book _Thus Spoke Zarathustra_ featured the idea more centrally, and in his posthumously published notebooks he develops the idea in even more depth. All of this suggests that he took the idea quite seriously indeed.
_"...to assess whether one truly affirms life..."_
Yes, what he called _amor fati,_ which I consider to be one of his most subtly profound and valuable ideas.
@@_PL_ Oh right I see, thanks for the insight. I’ll have to read up on it :)
have you read the essay" death, nothingness and subjectivity"? it talks about this naturalist-afterlife idea ,its brilliant! similar theories to your video are "existential passage" and "eternal conscious experience"
That's the essay Sam is reading from in this audio.
This is very inline with many ideas in Buddhism
Thanks for this, and for your detailed responses to commenters. Fascinating, but probably Greek to almost anyone who hasn’t spent time observing the mind. Also really like your electricity analogy. By the way, is this an excerpt from a longer podcast or interview, and if so, which one?
Thank you for your comment and compliment, it's appreciated. Yes, as simple and foundational as what this idea points to really is, it tends to elude many otherwise quite bright and perceptive people. As I've indicated elsewhere, I think the main reason for this is the common tendency to conflate the contents of experience (percepts and concepts, basically) with their purely subjective context, which is entirely generic or non-personal.
And yeah, I've come to whatever insights I've had in my own way, and so I tend to have my own way of talking about this stuff, for better and/or worse.
This audio is indeed an excerpt from a 34 minute long monologue called The Paradox of Death (episode 263; samharris.org/episode/SE0040FC128 ). Sam released the first 18 minutes of it on his RUclips channel, but it cuts out right when it's getting to the interesting bits (which is why my clip, although shorter, contains more of the later parts).
Incidentally, don't be put off by his site's stated annual fee of $100. When you go to sign up, you'll be given several fee structures to choose from (e.g., I pay $30/yr.) - including free (which you have to email about, but he will grant it, no questions asked).
Edited to fix link
@@_PL_ Thanks for the link. I’m already a subscriber to Waking Up, and I see that the entire “Paradox of Death” talk is on the app, so I’ll give that a listen. Actually, I’ve probably listened to it before. But the isolated segment you posted here got me thinking again, maybe because I was concurrently reading passages from “I Am That.” I agree about context and content conflation. Put another way, I think most people simply assume that there must be a doer, and never actually look for it. Anyway, I’m definitely going to use the electricity metaphor, in the unlikely event that I meet someone who’s interested in discussing this.
I'm wondering how the idea of having any number of clones of you would factor into this, assuming they all had the same exact replica of the structure of your brain and body. Would any one of them experience the same consciousness as you have now? Would it be possible to experience two or more of "you" simultaneously? Does that imply then that our consciousness is being constructed moment to moment, and therefore, it's not just our brain that creates the subjective experience but a combination of everything and everyone we encounter moment to moment? So does that mean that our individual experience of subjectivity cannot be experienced beyond what is the combination of our physical structure + experience?
@joshfkamins
_"Would any one of_ [the clones of you] _experience the same consciousness as you have now?"_
Presumably, the experiential *content* of each clone would be the same (i.e., thoughts, feelings, memories, traits, etc.), but that wouldn't mean there'd be multiple simultaneous streams of identical content from the perspective of any one clone. Each clone would feel and experience itself to be the only one having its experience, just as is the case for every non-clone now.
_"Would it be possible to experience two or more of 'you' simultaneously?"_
No more than it's possible to experience two or more _others_ simultaneously. The generic subjectivity as discussed in this clip isn't a field or substrate, but simply the bare fact of being aware. The private, experiential content being the same or different doesn't have any bearing on the utterly neutral light by which any content is known.
_"Does that imply then that our consciousness is being constructed moment to moment..."_
I'm of the view that all experience is indeed constructed / conjured moment-to-moment, though I'm agnostic on whether this has anything to do with brains or any other reified platform or medium.
For me it seems trivial and doesn't attempt to touch on any interesting problems.
Can I just recommend Joscha Bach or Meaning Crisis RUclips series by John Varvaeke.
_"For me it seems trivial and doesn't attempt to touch on any interesting problems."_
I suppose for someone with the "problem" of death anxiety, especially of the fear-of-oblivion variety, the focus of the talk would be quite interesting.
@@_PL_ Sure, thats probably the purpose
@@_PL_ It's also relevant to morality and ethics. Tom recently said (in his Facebook group "Naturalism") that that is one of the practical aspects of GSC. When Alan Watts stumbled onto it, he too pointed out it's moral relevance. If one truly grasps GSC it can be a source of some anxiety... Considering the plight of many sentient organisms here on Earth... Who knows what might be out there throughout the universe...
@@naturalisted1714 Yes, I'm aware of that. If one truly groks what's being pointed to here, one is bound to be struck by the ramification that the pure experiencing of GSC can take place in the context of any sort of being anywhere in this or any other universe. That means not only that the generic subjectivity in me is the same as that in you, but that it's also the same generic subjectivity in any animal, for example; or in any other sentient creature. So this perspective naturally will (or at least can) foster empathy and compassion for all sentient life.
I find this a pretty nifty consideration.
When I first stumbled into this insight about 20 years ago, I found it disturbing. I was one of those who wanted there to be a once-and-for-all end. I've since come to some equanimity about it.
@@_PL_ I can understand that wanting everything to end, it is and was my own, and I think that is what is behind the often fanatical attitude of both the anti-natalist and materialist positions: it stems from a desparate desire for a guaranteed even if "negative" salvation. It is a similar impulse to the buddhist attitude which then, however, has to cope with the soteriologically much harder absence of materialism in its premises.
But please do not make the mistake of seeing Clark's argument as a kind of guarantee of an eternal prison in existence because I do not think that it means that either. The sense of self, history, past and future already belongs to the person. If the self-effulgence of this pure consciousness were divested of all incidental personality aspects _(and in its own nature it must be that way eternally !)_ it would in fact not experience time or "things happening". That story is already downstream and experienced _by_ the "reflected light" of _manifest_ consciousness. So it isn't _you_ as the one who dreads such a prospect who will wake up as someone else. Conversely, insofar as a more or less personal stream of consciousness _might_ survive death, it doesn't mean that _it_ has to return. The important difference between "reincarnation" and "metempsychosis" comes in here but is of course beyond the scope of this topic. And as regards the questios of ultimacy, the Ajata view of Advaita Vedanta is relevant since that would be the way that light would "see" things, so nothing dreadful at all. In fact, that view combines everything that is good about non-existence with the bliss of _not_ nonexistence !
I really think that the topic of this argument touches on the salient issue of how Douglas Harding could say that the nothing at one's center is in fact identical to the nothing at _every_ center. One can accept that as some kind of Advaita view, but it escapes me how he could claim that this fact is immediately seen.
@@TheSoteriologist I'm not sure what you mean by "...this pure consciousness"... Could you elaborate?
@@naturalisted1714 I thought I was refering to what the channel owner in the info-text to this video calls _"the purely subjective aspect of consciousness"_ . Please ask him :) I suspect _(and only under this condition would I assume to be speaking about the same "thing")_ that by "purely" he means the absence of any incidental personal modifications.
@@TheSoteriologist Busy day today, so apologies for the delay in my reply to your excellent and thoughtful post.
_"...I think that is what is behind the often fanatical attitude of both the anti-natalist and materialist positions"_
I share that view as well. Apropos, since you mentioned Kastrup in another comment, you might appreciate this: in his long interview with Curt Jaimungal (ruclips.net/video/lAB21FAXCDE/видео.html) there's the following exchange:
2:35:01 (CJ) “There’s comfort in knowing that your life is going to end. _‘Oh, how’s there comfort in knowing my life is going to end?’_ Because you don’t know what is at the other side. You don’t know if agony awaits you infinitely - infinite torment - or infinite pleasure. You don’t know. And so there is comfort in the certainty that maybe this is it."
2:35:18 (BK) “It’s the elephant in the room. And it’s such an enormous elephant, and people don’t see it - they only see a patch of skin in front of them cuz the elephant is giant. Let’s just put it this way, and I’m sure everybody will agree with this, because it’s objectively the case: The single greatest fear human being have always had, of any generation before the 19th century, the single greatest fear in the lives of every human being has been the experiential state after bodily death. The fear of what comes after is what has kept people in line and turns the Christian church into a political institution of tremendous power, to the point that it still has a country of its own - the Vatican. *It was the leveraging and the use of that fear of what would happen to you after you die: will you go to hell, or will you go to heaven? Will there be monsters? That has been the single greatest fear in the history of humanity; it has allowed peoples to be controlled throughout history. And it is the one thing that materialism has taken off the table, it has neutered the greatest fear in the history of human kind. It’s off the table. It’s no longer credible, you do not need to worry about that.* This is a social/historical fact, and a psychological fact."
_"But please do not make the mistake of seeing Clark's argument as a kind of guarantee of an eternal prison in existence because I do not think that it means that either."_
Yeah, no worries there my friend. The insights I've come to are my own and are deeply authoritative for me, so I don't look to anyone else for direction or whatever. I've drilled down into all this stuff enough to have more or less resolved (at least to the degree of not having nagging existential or metaphysical questions anymore) the _identity and experience_ conundrum behind those old fears of eternal existence.
I post things like this video for others who are still searching or struggling; or who, like me (and probably you too), are just interested in hearing how others talk about this stuff.
_"If the self-effulgence of this pure consciousness were divested of all incidental personality aspects (and in its own nature it must be that way eternally !) it would in fact not experience time or 'things happening'. That story is already downstream and experienced by the 'reflected light' of manifest consciousness."_
Nicely put; and that, in essence, is how I've come to see things as well. That's why I said earlier that I've come to some equanimity about there being no real end (and no real beginning, either). A friend once asked me, like a Zen master assigning a koan, "What do you think of life?" And also like a Zen master, he wouldn't elaborate when I pressed him to be more specific (lol). Anyway, my seemingly flippant but actually sincere response was, "It's one part Lila, two parts Sisyphus." The good news is that in the intervening years, that ratio has more or less inverted :-)
_"Conversely, insofar as a more or less personal stream of consciousness might survive death, it doesn't mean that it has to return."_
Sure, I would agree that there's neither mandate nor compulsion to exist as something or other. And yet, I also suspect that there's something about this crazy light show in all its tragicomic ups, downs, and all-arounds, that's somehow the very raison d'être of source "itself" (← pardon the reifying and dualistic language there).
_"And as regards the questios of ultimacy, the Ajata view of Advaita Vedanta is relevant since that would be the way that light would 'see' things, so nothing dreadful at all. In fact, that view combines everything that is good about non-existence with the bliss of not nonexistence !"_
Yep, I'm right there with you! (q.v. my previous comment above.)
Regarding that Harding statement, I'm familiar with him but hadn't heard that parsing before. I find his phrasing about "nothing" intriguing (agreed about the relevance to Ajata). My take on the basis of his claim about this informing his lived experience is that the "nothing" here is what his pointing and tube exercises were designed to reveal: that there is truly _no thing_ at the center, and thus not really a center, hence its universal applicability.
life cannot exist without death- death feeds those alive. just like all animals.
So the consciousness can't experience non existence but if consciousness ceased to exist with the death of the body, then there would be no consciousness to experience non existence. . Hoping someone can challenge my train of thought..
If you're asking about the death of any individual's body, I thought that Sam's talk here pretty cogently addressed that by pointing out how 1) pure subjectivity isn't personal - i.e., it's neither dependent on, nor bound up with, the contents of anyone's mind, because it's merely the "light" by which those mental contents are known; and 2) the continuity of pure subjectivity isn't continuity of anyone's personal narrative, but rather the property of that "light" which always finds itself _here_ as if it's always been here, even if there can be said to have been huge gaps between individual instantiations of it.
You have to do the Rip Van Winkle thought experiment he mentioned, and make sure you really grok the insight it leads to, and only then extrapolate that to the case of death.
If, on the other hand, you're asking about the death of all bodies everywhere and forever, that's where the premise of this generic subjective continuity differs depending on whether one believes in physicalism or idealism. If the former, there would be no more subjective experience, since under physicalism subjective experience requires a physical platform to exist. If the latter, it doesn't matter since idealism holds that the "light" that shows up as subjective experience is actually not other than the source and substance of any possible reality, and so it's inextinguishable.
'There would be no consciousness' - um, what about hundreds of thousands of babies born every day all over the world?
Reify the empty frame of reference as a separately existing thing, or realize that nothing is an everchanging subject that cannot be found
That's deep.
Umm, so....
Life, a "brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness" -Nabokov
Nope
@MatteoVinciguerra2112 Honest question: did you listen to the clip? I'm genuinely curious as to how someone could find that well-known quote from Nabokov relevant if they'd understood Sam's point (i.e., that consciousness has a continuity that elides any gaps, whether the gap be the blink of an eye or "two eternities").
If for some reason his approach to explaining it didn't click for you, try reading the Tom Clark essay he cites, and which I've linked in the description under the video. Writing from an entirely naturalistic/materialistic perspective, he does a good job of illustrating the fancifulness and fallacy of the "eternal darkness" trope.
Such endless darkness necessitates a perceiver of said darkness. So then we must ask, "where is this darkness located, and how is it that it's being witnessed? By who?"
@@zyxwfish yeah seriously! Did he not just listen to this video?
@@ryanburdeaux obviously not
While comatose, I was the most conscious I've ever been. My body however could not display this consciousness. The mind does not need the body to thrive.
But your mind was trapped there in your body.
@@naturalisted1714 By saying I was most conscious, I mean my mind was living a normal life. The doctors dispute my vision because they say my brain was too damaged for me to produce a dream.
Hence this is proof that we have souls and my soul was living for me while my body was dead.
You don't have a brain while writing this?
Just because the stimulus to your nerve endings wasn’t working or whatever lead to your being comatose, everything you remember was a result of your brain chemistry.
@@alexanderdumas- I've stumped highly skilled neurologists, neurosurgeons and psychologists with my case. You don't have an inkling of what I experienced, so you're pathetic assumption is nothing more than garbage.
Isn't this simply a biological question? The only relevant part seems to be the brain here. How many brain cells do you need to exchange for identical brain cells imbued with the same information as their counterparts to interrupt consciousness? At what point will someone else wake up (with identical memories), but not you? There doesn't seem to be a satisfying answer to me, because you can always add or subtract one cell to ask:"How come THIS made a difference in whether identity of consciousness got interrupted as a whole?"
What reason do we have to think consciousness continues after the death of the brain? Yes if indeed consciousness was transferred there is no end to the point of view from that conscious being. But so what! I know we are speculating but ... we have no logical reason to think it transfers. Why? How? Just because you don't feel like you have ever not existed doesn't mean that, that is actually true. Our feelings are inherently untrustworthy. Sure, reincarnation is possible, but lets all realize that "possible" is a low bar. Currently we have no good reason to think this is true and until we do, it remains a fun unfalsifiable thought experiment.
What's being talked about in this clip has nothing to do with consciousness continuing beyond death, or "transferring" from one person to another. I thought Sam made it pretty clear here that that's not what's being pointed to. You have to actually _do_ the identity transplant thought experiments he proposes (or, better yet, go read Tom Clark's essay on the topic at naturalism.org/philosophy/death/death-nothingness-and-subjectivity ). These thought experiments are designed to reveal that the root of any and all possible identities is a completely impersonal or "generic" subjectivity, which is utterly identical in you, me, and anyone at all.
So, when you close your eyes for the last time and take your last breath, someone else somewhere will take their first breath, but from the purely (or generically) subjective point of view, there's no point at which "you" have ended and this new individual has begun. In other words, _no one ever experiences coming into being or going out of being._ The fact that we each have a personal narrative based on unique memories and traits and relationships which all seem to have beginnings and endings is beside the point here, because none of that is what's actually at the root of the subjective sense of having always been here.
As an analogy, imagine that electricity had the property of being aware, *but only when it was powering some device.* So, when powering a refrigerator, the current of electricity would think it's a refrigerator; when powering a stove, it'd think it's a stove, and so on. Clearly, the electricity itself is not unique or different depending on which device it's powering; no matter what's running on it, the electricity itself is completely indistinguishable from one application to any other. Nor is there any transference or carryover of having been a refrigerator when a stove or anything else is plugged into the same outlet that the refrigerator had been plugged into.
Each new booting up of something will simply have as a property this sense of "I am such and such," but since there are no gaps from one instantiation of "I am such and such" to another, there's never a sense of having started at one point or ended at another. That's the "continuity" in Generic Subjective Continuity, though I can see how the word continuity could be misleading insofar as most people will automatically think it applies to their own personal identity continuing indefinitely - which, again, simply isn't what this is about. Hopefully that's clearer to you now.
(Edited to fix link)
@@_PL_ Thanks for the response this helps. The electricity analogy is great for explaining this. You have addressed the identity transfer aspect of my issue. But for me it still remains to be seen that consciousness at any form migrates, transfers, moves at death. It seems unfalsifiable (which doesn't mean its wrong but it does mean we are not justified in having a certain level of confidence in it).
I also have issue with no one experiencing "going out of being". We can't interview corpses. And near death experiences are very very fascinating but they are just that, near death, not true rotting death. Now to move to the former "no one ever experiences coming into being", isn't the explanation for this due to the fact that our brains slowly come "online" so to speak as we mature? So there is no defined moment in which we attain full human consciousness but a gradient that we all move through. Basing so much on sensation and feeling, however seemingly deep, is a shaky foundation to base these ideas from.
Anyway I appreciate the conversation.
@@11OBlitzO11 Hello again, and you are most welcome. I will address the various issues and questions you've posed in point-by-point fashion:
_"...it still remains to be seen that consciousness at any form migrates, transfers, moves at death."_
Again, though, it doesn't need to in order for there to be continuity of generic subjectivity. Even from a strictly physicalist/materialist position (which is that of both Harris and Clark), the assertion is that one brain goes offline at death and another brain comes online at birth, but the bare fact of being aware (generic subjectivity) is _identical_ in each case. Nothing has migrated, transferred, or moved from one brain to the other in order for this to be the case. Just as electricity has the property of powering any number and variety of devices without itself partaking of any of the characteristics or functions of those devices, so do brains (according to physicalism) have the property of producing the generic subjectivity which is the basis of any number and variety of personal characteristics or functions.
_"I also have issue with no one experiencing 'going out of being'."_
Do you experience the transition to sleep each night? Probably not; only advanced meditators and lucid dream practitioners report that (and even then it's not necessarily a nightly occurrence). For the vast majority of us, the way it works is one minute you're lying there in the dark, thinking about this or that, and next thing you know, you're either in a dream, or else waking up to find many hours have gone by. Why would death be any different? If the mundane transition to sleep every night isn't experienced, why does it seem plausible that the neurological catastrophe of actual death would somehow be accompanied by experience? (To be fair, _it might be;_ I'm just playing devil's advocate to make a point.)
Now, it's true that there are those near-death experiences (NDEs) you mentioned, and I do think they are intriguing and worthy of taking into consideration. And yet, it's also important to bear in mind that only a fraction of people who flatline under whatever circumstance report having had any experience at all. (Note the interesting parallelism between this minority and the above-mentioned minority of meditators being the exception to the "no experience of transition" rule.)
_"...'no one ever experiences coming into being', isn't the explanation for this due to the fact that our brains slowly come 'online' so to speak as we mature?"_
Not in the sense I was referring to. What I think you're referring to is self-awareness or reflective self-consciousness - i.e., being aware of oneself as a person distinct from others. Typically, this comes online around age 18 months, and as you state, it continues to get refined as the individual matures through the developmental stages outlined by Piaget. However, what I was talking about is the basic presence of awareness or subjectivity, which is (as Sam says in the present clip) merely the light by which anything (developmental stages, personal traits and memories, etc.) is known or experienced. And that isn't less present at some phases and more present at others, any more than space is less present under some circumstances and more present under others.
So, in summary, the bare capacity to register experience - what we're here calling generic subjectivity - is 1) fully present throughout life, and 2) completely independent of any particular content of experience.
_"So there is no defined moment in which we attain full human consciousness but a gradient that we all move through."_
Just to hammer home the previous point: you're talking about personal identity and other mental content; I'm talking about the impersonal context of any and all possible identities and mental contents.
_"Basing so much on sensation and feeling..."_
Hopefully you can now see how this simply isn't based on sensation, feeling, or any other content. To pivot back to the space analogy, what you've been doing is conflating pure empty space with the various and sundry objects that occupy it. Space is simply the neutral context for the objects to inhere, but at no point does space take on the characteristics of anything within it. Likewise, generic subjectivity is simply the neutral context for the contents of experience to inhere. At this fundamental level, "you" are not your mind or personal identity, but the neutral and impersonal registering of same.
I really do suggest reading Tom Clark's essay. It's just really well written.
This is one way I like to explain it:
You didn't exist, but then a brain was born and that brain started doing, and still does the sensation of being an "I" ("you")... Everyone is "I" to themselves. We all refer to ourselves as "I". Each brain is doing an "I". Brains I. ...After the brain that's doing the "I" that's reading this right now dies, brains will continue to be born and do "I".
So if everyone in the universe died right now, and then you were the only one alive, and so there's just this one consciousness, this one experience... That's being done by a brain... The only experience there is. Everyone else that died isn't experiencing a black void or nothingness, etc. They simply don't exist. Seeing black implies someone to see it... But in this scenario the only experience there is is your's. ... But then you die. That brain that was doing that experience died, and so that experience ended... But then (in this thought experiment) a new brain comes to exist, and it starts doing conscious experience -- the only experience there is. That brain is doing "I". And so another "I" came after the other "I".
@@naturalisted1714 - more to
Ponder on and of course this is another belief
It is Eternal = it is Sanatan.
It is foundation = it is Dharma.
It is Sanatan Dharma.
You spent 16 billion years being nothing before your life idk it would be any different after
You didn't exist, but then a brain was born and that brain does the sensation of being an "I" ("you")... Everyone is "I" to themselves. We all refer to ourselves as "I". Each brain is doing an "I". Brains I. ...After the brain that's doing the "I" that's reading this right now dies, brains will continue to be born and do "I".
So if everyone in the universe died right now, and then you were the only one alive, and so there's just this one consciousness, this one experience... That's being done by a brain... The only experience there is. Everyone else that died isn't experiencing a black void or nothingness, etc. They simply don't exist. Seeing black implies someone to see it... But in this scenario the only experience there is is your's. ... But then you die. That brain that was doing that experience died, and so that experience ended... But then (in this thought experiment) a new brain comes to exist, and it starts doing conscious experience -- the only experience there is. That brain is doing "I". And so another "I" came after the other "I".
@@naturalisted1714- how do mediums tap into personal private information? How did Bernardo kastrups gf have a dream that her grandmother was in hospital with a head bandage, all of what was relayed to her was true and confirmed via her phone call back home.
Consciousness is recycled just examine NDE community. "We are eternal all this pain is an illusion."
Wow, that's a lot of coping.
Sam Harris still wears a seatbelt though and otherwise avoids his death.
Of course you would want to reasonably prevent premature death, especially being young and having a family, obviously it is less tragic for a 100 year old man to die then a new mother.
Why do you say this is coping?
What a stupid comment. Well of course he wants to stay alive, first of all it's a natural instinc to survive and second why would he want to die if he is having a good time.
This is a fascinating topic. I haven't been that much of a Sam Harris fan in the past. His critiques of religion and spiritual teachings have always seemed quite facile (though he was always the most tolerable of the Four Horsemen). However, I appreciate that fact that he can grok this idea of GSC and its implications, since it's quite a drastic paradigm shift, especially for a physicalist/materialist. I'm agnostic as to the ontological nature of things, although I lean towards some sort of idealism or cosmopsychism personally, so it wasn't that much of a hurdle for me to take this idea seriously, anyway. I just feel like physicalism is a cul-de-sac; postulating some abstract 'other' outside of experience that somehow gives rise to it is a stretch in my eyes. I know this is a point about epistemology but I feel its force. Then, there are other considerations like the Hard Problem and or the failure of the sciences to account for it, or certain experiences people have, whether they be mystical, spiritual, supernatural or even drug-induced, that lead to certain insights about the nature of reality. Then, something that just strikes me personally is the fine-tuning of the universe. I often feel that's the work of some sort of mega-mind, I guess you could call it.
Thanks for your comment, which I agree with on just about each point. I've also written a brief critique of physicalism that touches on several of your points: sites.google.com/view/ponderingsofsomeguy/objections-to-physicalism
@@_PL_ Thanks for the link, I will check it out. So far, I'm on board with that critique. If you don't mind my asking, how would you categorise your metaphysical views? I'm sure there's more written on your site, which I will certainly read more of, but I wouldn't mind hearing it straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak. I'm interested in hearing this based on your reply to me (as well as your critique), and on some of your other comments that I've seen elsewhere in the comment section for this video.
@@Al-ji4gd However I currently see and understand anything fundamental has come about through various insights, epiphanies, and cognitive shifts over many years, more than through reading about metaphysical subjects. As such, I don't identify with any labels or categories, though I suppose it's fair to say my view is nondual and at least loosely comparable to idealism. But it's also more atheistic and nihilistic than that of many/most forms of idealism. As you correctly indicated, I flesh out these and other views a bit more on the site linked to previously. Feel free to ask me to clarify or elaborate on anything else you might be curious about.
@@_PL_ I see, thanks for the reply. I will read through more of your site and if anything pops out, I will be sure to ask. For now, I would only ask if you could briefly outline what your view, at the risk of labeling it, entails, seeing as you say it's nondual in nature and at least loosely comparable to idealism. Is there a bit more you could tell me about, just the core tenets, I suppose?
I've been reading more idealism literature recently, both in academic philosophy but also non-academic stuff from various thinkers, scientists, spiritual teachers, etc, which piqued my interest in the subject. Not only the mystics of various religious/spiritual traditions, but also contemporary figures in analytic philosophy like Miri Albahari, Itay Shani, Bernardo Kastrup (who has a very interesting interview I could link to you on a lesser-known podcast channel that you might be interested in that I listened to over the weekend, because he seems to be the most vocal voice for that particular view out there and has a large online presence & following). There are also various scientists; Donald Hoffman, Bernard Carr, Menas Kafatos, Henry Stapp, among others, who espouse similar views. All of this coupled with my own insights, beliefs and experiences I've read about/heard of sort of contributed to me wanting to go deeper down the rabbit hole.
@@Al-ji4gd I'm familiar with some of the names you listed, especially Kastrup and Hoffman. I'm more familiar with the former (with whom my view diverges somewhat; you can find a piece about that on my site), while the latter is more intriguing to me. I'm glad to hear that you've had some insights and experiences of your own, as I feel those are by far the most valuable where it comes to grounding any of this stuff in reality in a truly meaningful way.
_"Is there a bit more you could tell me about, just the core tenets, I suppose?"_
Honestly, I don't have any core tenets, because this isn't philosophical or theoretical to me. At the same time, if you poke around my essays site(s), you'll see that I express thoughtfully critical views on things like reincarnation, NDEs, the difference between so-called spiritual awakening and psychological development, and other topics. So I do think deeply, but not in the service of fashioning a philosophy.