Consciousness: Is it seperate from the human body?

[Hezekiah]

My apologies, by "we percieve the universe incredibly fast" I simply meant that we are consciously aware of time at a certain rate, and that rate is "faster" than the length of time it took the universe to fall into place. The flip side would be that we percieve it incredibly slow because we are witnessing things moving slower now than how fast they'd move if you fast forward through those billions of years in five minutes. (If I further confused you, I'm sorry, it's not an important point to make)

I maybe understand what your saying. Are you suggesting that to percieve the universe as it is now, we have percieve it from its beginning to now? If this is what you claim, I have to disagree. There is nothing I'm aware of that suggest this.

Also, I agree any fixed number into a billion it wouldn't be zero. But rather its the effect that I would think of it as zero. In other words, the fact that we discovered space, a system that runs on a timeline greater than our own, makes me wonder if there's another system that our universe, as we understand it, works under. One whose timeline is on an even grander scale. Then what holds that system, and so on and so on.

Space's timeline and our timeline are not two different things. Space and us are in the same timeline. We are just born later and die earlier while space continues on existing.

If that's too "out-there" what about the fact that if life was suddenly wiped off the planet, the universe will continue to go on. And on. And on. And maybe the universe does "die", what happens to time after that? Does it continue to go on? If so you've got an infinity there too.

As far as I know, time will continue to exist to infinity.

No, sorry, I'm not suggesting we have percieved the universe from the beginning up until now. What we percieve from the time we are born to the time we die, is a fixed length that lies along the timeline of the universe, but, like I mentioned before it's just a spec, no where near the beginning of the birth of the universe. We have NOT percieved it from its beginning to now.

Now when you said, "Space and us are in the same timeline. We are just born later and die earlier while space continues on existing." I agree. I am simply implying that if, like you also said, "time will continue to exist to infinity" and anything that goes into infinity, including the timeline of which we were born and died, turns into zero as well, as if it never existed.

[Mudhammam]

A dead person is no longer conscious, so where did that consciousness go?

Well, reason and experience can only suggest that it fades back out into the nothingness from which it began.

[psychoslice]

Third, on the topic of "time not existing": I agree, I don't think your friend teleported, time still carried on "normally", if you will, because there were people alive percieving time accurately. But what I'm suggesting is if it takes billions of years for the universe to fall into this exact moment as you read this. Those billions of years happened without anyone to percieve a second of them. In that since, our lifetimes are less than specs on that spectrum of time. And on the spectrum of several billion years we percieve the universe incredibly fast at an amazing rate of information because of our brains. Time, as we know it in seconds, minutes, days, years, etc., is practically non-existent on this spectrum as well. The idea of time not existing because of this effect seems to pop into my head.

First off, I don't know what you mean by "we percieve the universe incredibly fast."

Second, the small percentage of our lifetime we exist compared to all the billion of years the universe existed doesn't make it zero. Non-existence would be 0.

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We were never really born and we cannot really die, the mind body organism dies and is born, but we are not the mind body organism. When I say we, I mean we as one, so its not really plural, even to say that we are one isn't correct, for that makes it sound like there is more than one. Like our lungs, they don't really just stop in our bodies, they extend outward, they are one with the tree's where the oxygen comes from, the tree's are one with the sun where they get their sunlight to be able to produce oxygen, and so it goes on and on right back to the so called beginning, or the big bang, yes its all One.

Where are the arguments for these claims? I can make counter arguments for these claims. For example, our lungs do not extend outwards to trees. Our lungs are made out of cells, and non of our cells are make a connection to a tree.

I have no arguments, this is simply my experience, my truth, you don't need to prove truth, if you don't agree with me then that's fine, that's how it should be.

[Whateverist]

What does the OP question have to do with atheism?

I assume atheist don't believe in an after-life. And the idea of consciousness being seperate of the body could suggest such notions, so I figured it would be a good discussion piece.

Why do you imagine that you know the first thing about how consciousness is accomplished let alone what it is. All any of us knows is that we do experience. Nothing you've said is any reason to think the body that follows you around all day is coincidental to your consciousness. To think otherwise is to be willfully obtuse.

[Hezekiah]

A dead person is no longer conscious, so where did that consciousness go?

Well, reason and experience can only suggest that it fades back out into the nothingness from which it began.

Following that train of thought, if consciousness fades back to the nothingness from which it began, would it be logical to assume that the nothingness that one's particular consciousness so easily faded into the world from and back to, could do it again?

[Mudhammam]

Well, reason and experience can only suggest that it fades back out into the nothingness from which it began.

Following that train of thought, if consciousness fades back to the nothingness from which it began, would it be logical to assume that the nothingness that one's particular consciousness so easily faded into the world from and back to, could do it again?

Well, there's certainly Nietzsche's interesting conception of the "Eternal Recurrence" that seems logically necessary given infinite time, but I admit I fail to see any logic in infinities.

[Hezekiah]

I assume atheist don't believe in an after-life. And the idea of consciousness being seperate of the body could suggest such notions, so I figured it would be a good discussion piece.

Why do you imagine that you know the first thing about how consciousness is accomplished let alone what it is. All any of us knows is that we do experience. Nothing you've said is any reason to think the body that follows you around all day is coincidental to your consciousness. To think otherwise is to be willfully obtuse.

Well, like I said before, I figured it would be a good discussion piece. Never at any point did I claim to know anything for sure. I'm simply exchanging my ideas with others. That aside, if my ideas about consciousness are "obtuse" I would invite you to support that with reasons why.

[Surgenator]

No, sorry, I'm not suggesting we have percieved the universe from the beginning up until now. What we percieve from the time we are born to the time we die, is a fixed length that lies along the timeline of the universe, but, like I mentioned before it's just a spec, no where near the beginning of the birth of the universe. We have NOT percieved it from its beginning to now.

Now when you said, "Space and us are in the same timeline. We are just born later and die earlier while space continues on existing." I agree. I am simply implying that if, like you also said, "time will continue to exist to infinity" and anything that goes into infinity, including the timeline of which we were born and died, turns into zero as well, as if it never existed.

No, our timeline doesn't turn into zero. If I am alive for 100 years, then I lived 100 years no matter how much time passes after my death. The ratio of the length of my existence and the universe's existence will approch zero. However, I don't see why this relevant to the original discussion about consciousness.

[Mudhammam]

Following that train of thought, if consciousness fades back to the nothingness from which it began, would it be logical to assume that the nothingness that one's particular consciousness so easily faded into the world from and back to, could do it again?

Well, there's certainly Nietzsche's interesting conception of the "Eternal Recurrence" that seems logically necessary given infinite time, but I admit I fail to see any logic in infinities.

I think the more interesting point is, if say, the entire Universe as it presently is were to repeat itself at some future point, and this conversation were to occur again between two people with identical compositions in the exact same time and space, in precise proportionality to the rest of the Universe, say even, that at this very moment this re-occurrence is taking place, in what sense is it really meaningful to speak of these past or future selves of ours as actually us? I certainly feel no affinity to any other so-called past lives.

[Hezekiah]

Following that train of thought, if consciousness fades back to the nothingness from which it began, would it be logical to assume that the nothingness that one's particular consciousness so easily faded into the world from and back to, could do it again?

Well, there's certainly Nietzsche's interesting conception of the "Eternal Recurrence" that seems logically necessary given infinite time, but I admit I fail to see any logic in infinities.

Haha infinity tends to do that. But yes, that's pretty much why I've been entertaining the idea of a concsciousness being seperate of the body, but like yin and yang, one can't exist/operate without the other.