Death

[Liquid Len]

I think it's not really clear from the onset if our biological death is the end of our conscious existence or not. But we could just decide that by "death" and "mortality" we mean the end of our conscious existence (whether there is such a thing or not). And then we could discuss our attitude towards it. That's what I'm going to do first.

Some have argued (especially Epicurus) that death (always understood in the above defined way) can't be bad because it's the end of all perception. And since (as they think) everything good and bad consists in some perception, it can't be something bad. I'll admit that a corpse doesn't perceive his state of being dead as something negative, but I would also reply that merely being able of perceptions and experiences is already something good (at least as it can enable to experience other, more intrinsic goods) and therefore the loss of it must be bad. Now, some will say that there is no "loss", because in the moment of death the person entirely ceases to exist, i.e. there is no one who "loses" something, and definitely no one who isn't able of perceptions anymore. But I think that being able to perceive, to think, and to experience is better than not existing at all, therefore death must be negative.

Often people think that death is even worse because it prevents you from fulfilling your wishes and aspirations etc. Some have argued (especially Lucretius) that this isn't true, because a dead body doesn't have any wishes and aspirations, therefore it can't be called negative that it is unable to fulfill them... But I think here we have to distinguish between "death" as the state of being dead, for which this reasoning might be really true, and the "moment of death" as the dividing line between the states of being alive and of being dead, for which it is much more dubious. On the one hand it's true: If you die all of a sudden, you won't notice that you can't fulfill your wishes anymore. You won't experience that you've failed, and it won't seem negative to you at all. But on the other hand, now that you are alive, you'll definitely try to avoid dying, if you want to achieve something, and you'd be sad if you knew that you had only very little time left (which might be the case if you suddenly got heavily sick).

One thing seems certain: If you had to live forever, it would be necessary for you to evolve and to change, or otherwise your life would sooner or later become awfully boring and meaningless. Some have argued that you might get psychical problems from such extreme changes (considering that we are talking about eternity). But I'd reply that I have already changed a lot since my birth and it didn't make me that sick. Others have argued that your goals and wishes in the far future would have to be totally different from your current ones, and that you therefore cannot reasonably be wishing that you are going to live in the far future. However, I don't find this to be a very convincing argument. I personally don't care what my wishes would be then, I'd be happy if I could have any at all...

Jeff Malpas, a contemporary philosopher, has argued that you can only really lead a life if you think that it will have an end. He sort of compares such a correctly led life with a piece of art, something that can be moulded into a sculpture, or a novel, and this can only be something finite. If you live forever, you could at best only lead a series of an infinite number of very loosely connected lives. Well, I think he's right about that, but would this be worse than extinction? He says that then everything would be possible and nothing would be important. And that you'd be everything and nobody at once. But if you are really leading one of this series of lives - this wouldn't be true, would it?

So, to sum it up, I would regard my personal death as something negative. From a purely egoistical, or even egocentrical point of view of course.

Now we could discuss the pros and cons of an afterlife. On the one hand there is no conclusive, compelling evidence for life after death.
NDEs (near death experiences) come to my mind. Unfortunately it's problematic to prove that such patients had their NDE during their cardiac arrest, and not shortly before and after it. As you can imagine, it's very hard to verify the exact time when such a subjective experience took place. And in fact, there are people who reported having had an NDE although they had never come close to death. Sometimes the mere belief that one is close to death seems to suffice to cause an NDE. A possible explanation for NDEs during cardiac arrest I've come across: The cardiac massage produces of course some blood flow to the brain. In some cases it is strong enough to enable conscious experience to take place, albeit the heart is not beating. Only a small fraction of the resuscitated remember having experienced something. According to Parnia and van Lommel it's 11-18%.

Another at first sight promising phenomenon are alleged memories of previous lives. Some children have them spontaneously, some few get them spontaneously later in their life (e.g. during an NDE), and most of the adults get them in trance- or hypnotic regressions. It might be debatable how good or bad this body of evidence is; at least I myself have heard of very impressive cases. But IMO even the best possible case that might be conceivable in theory could be explained alternatively by ESP (extrasensory perception). (And you don't have to assume immortal souls in order to make a working model of ESP.)

On the other hand, the findings of neuro science strongly indicate that every capacity of the human mind gets lost, if the corresponding brain structures are destroyed. Some might reply that the brain is only a control device for the mind in order to manifest itself in the material world. Often they compare the situation with a driver who makes use of a car. If the car is out of order, the driver can't drive, although he hasn't lost his abilities. Well, this might be a plausible analogy in the case of someone who has lost his ability to move properly due to a brain defect, or of someone who has lost one of his senses. It's getting already rather dubious in the case of personality changes and changes of the emotions, since we all accept that alcohol and other material drugs do have an influence on this - why should a brain defect be unable to produce similar effects? But it's getting completely counter intuitive in the case of someone who doesn't understand language anymore. According to the car analogy, the mind is still able to understand, but it can't prove it anymore. But if someone obviously is neither blind nor deaf, it's getting hard to see why he should be able to understand while being unable to prove it, especially if he is still able to move his tongue and make use of his vocal chords. Or otherwise he will usually still be able to move his hand and grasp a pencil. So, to me it's clear that the car analogy doesn't work.
We also have to imagine once, that, if the brain just limited the mind's abilities that it can manifest in the material world, i.e. if someone's mind might be much more intelligent than he is able to show, then it might also be the case that animals' souls are much more intelligent than human souls, and that it's only their brains that prevent them from proving it...

Furthermore, it's not only that the capacities of the mind can get lost, but also consciousness (awareness) itself. It's obvious that people somtimes get unconscious, during sleep, or when they faint, or under anaesthesia. I know - it's also possible that no one ever gets unconscious and that all that gets lost is the memories of what happened during an episode of apparent unconsciousness. On the other hand there's zero evidence for this, whereas unconscious people clearly appear to be very unconscious. Hence, the idea seems a little far-fetched. And what everybody has to admit is that the degree of awareness can vary a lot - from extremely awake and concentrated (perhaps in a dangerous sword duel) to the haziest daze (when you're staring at the wall and don't notice its colour). So why not even to unconsciousness?
Now, the point is that this degree of awareness is also depending on the brain's activity, or more precisely on the activity of the brain stem or reticular system at the upper end of the spinal cord. If this activity is inhibited, unconsciousness is, without exception, the effect.

These neurobiological findings are obviously very important if we're asking ourselves whether death means extinction. However, it isn't a compelling proof, since what's decisive isn't the question if our consciousness can survive death. Even though we're sometimes unconscious during life, we can usually regain our consciousness afterwards - if we're still existing then. Thus the decisive question is the one after our personal identity. If that what we are can survive death, we might be able to regain our consciousness, some time. For this we would have to assume the existence of something that is neither material nor consciousness, which would have to be our identity. We could call that thing "soul". It's clear that defining our identity could hardly be its sole purpose, since otherwise it would be a highly suspicious assumption; and then even conscious beings could be mortal, if they had the bad luck of not having (or being) a soul. Thus, IMO it should at least have the secondary function of converting the neuronal representations that are in the brain into subjective experience.

Unfortunately, this concept of souls has a serious problem: It can hardly be denied that higher animals do have conscious experiences as well - not only humans. It might seem debatable if insects and other inferior creatures have conscious experiences, but if you're doubting that dogs and cattle have them, you could as well doubt that other human beings are conscious. After all, even human brains are not identical to each other. But even though I'm willing to admit that higher animals do have conscious experiences, I simply cannot believe that every single one of them is an eternal, immortal being. Just looking at their lives - basically they seem often too absurd. Some philosophers have said that the human life is absurd. (This doesn't mean that you should kill yourself, or that life isn't worth living; it rather means that our situation is an absurd one.) However, that's a controversial observation, and it's in any case a subjective, emotion-laden impression, since many people feel that their life is full of meaning, of fate and providence, and whatever. This impression might be wrong, though. But looking at animal lives I can't help thinking that their lives are absurd.
So in short, I don't want to deny that some animals are as conscious as we are, i.e. the assumption of souls cannot be allowed to make a difference between us; and at the same time I don't believe that they are eternal. Hence, I can't really believe that we are eternal.

The belief that we are very mortal, temporally limited beings can in fact be very beautiful. I don't mean comforting, of course.
IMO the beauty of this concept can best be seen in the early work of Albert Camus, especially in the short essay collection "Noces" (Nuptials).
Especially the first two ("Noces à Tipasa" and "Le vent à Djémila") are marvellous, and the rest hardly any less.