A philosopher and a physicist talk about death, self-awareness, knowledge, and place in a rambling conversation. (That’s a heads-up for you if you’re short on time—and you are when you consider that you are a finite being)
Phil: What do you envision as death?
Phys: Well, I haven’t thought about this for a long time. What do you mean? That the body ceases to function?
Phil: More than that. Is there a status for “death” as there is a status for “life”? As you are self-aware in life, will you be self-aware in death?
Phys: Again… Okay let me ramble. If I’m alive, then I am an energy-exchange system with varying amounts of biochemical-electrical activity, and since I’m human, maybe even if I were in the so-called vegetative state of a coma, I can have brain activity and thoughts, possibly dreams and insights. I don’t know whether or not people in a coma are self aware, but I have heard anecdotes that they are sometimes aware, but just not capable of reaching out; but people in such a vegetative state still act as an energy-exchange system. Anyway, to go back to your original question, if that’s the status of “life,” “being alive,” or “existing,” then the status of “death” or “being dead,” or being “in death” is the opposite of that; I death I would be an energy-exchange system only as long as part of me remains, the molecules in my decaying bones. If I had to define, then I would say death is the nonexistence of what I currently am, so if I’m dead, then I, the self-aware energy-exchange physicist to whom you now talk, won’t exist—I will neither obtain nor use energy save for that give en off by decaying molecules. There will be no “I.” I think of the Gary Larson Far Side comic panel in which lifeless rubber chickens lie motionless on the ground under the sign “Rubber Chicken Farm.” Rubber chickens are unaware, but since nothing is at absolute zero, then I have to admit my analogy is weak because even rubber chickens have the energy of their molecules. Anyway, being dead makes me as “life-less” as a rubber chicken—and just as intellectual, or astute, erudite, or self-aware as one.
Phil: Whoa. I got the point about the rubber chickens up until you talked about absolute zero.I can see your mentioning energy because it suffuses the Cosmos and provides the fundamental means for our having this discussion. If I understand you, then death is a lack of energy, save for the slowly decaying body’s vibrating molecules. I guess then that you don’t believe you will somehow continue as a perceptive being after you die, that you will be self-aware, or even be aware.
Phys: No, when I’m gone, I’m gone. Don’t look for me on the attic stairs at Halloween or suddenly appearing on some reality show to cause the TV investigators’ “scientific instruments” to sense something. What is it that those investigators want us to believe, that the “spirit world” is the world of electromagnetism? That seems to be how they define the status of being dead because the “ghosts” leave an electromagnetic signature either on an oscilloscope, on some photosensitive paper, or on a digital memory card.
In short, I believe I am now; I won’t be then.
Phil: But isn’t there any wish in you that you will somehow continue, and continue not just as some Heraclitean Eternal Fire or “part” of the Hindu Moksha Loka, but rather as a being with an identity, a recognizable continuation of you in a spiritual form, maybe even a self-conscious one? Surely, you realize that you aren’t now just an entity composed of matter and energy. What about your thoughts and your memories.
Phys: Biochemo-electrical signals of firing neurons. That’s all. And as far as wishes go, I recognize that humans have long had a fondness for unreal conditions, say being able to fly without mechanical aid, or being loved by one and all, or…
Phil: But what about our communicating if we are isolated entities? How do those signals get from my neurons to your neurons? How do we somehow “know” what someone is thinking without a word being said?
Phys: First, we’re really not isolated. In the energy-exchange system, we also exchange information. That’s our new buzzword in physics, you know. The universe is itself information, and we debate whether or not it can be destroyed in a black hole or re-emerge from one in Hawking radiation. So, as part of the universe each of us is a composite of information. Second, context, that’s pretty much at the center of our communicating. Similar circumstances produce similar responses in different brains. And coincidence, I might add, plays a role. Say you and I both have the feeling that a football player is about to fumble, or throw an interception, or run for a long touchdown. Knowing how many football circumstances we have personally experienced or witnessed and knowing the possibilities of each football scenario, it seems likely to me that at some time we will both have similar thoughts. And it won’t be a matter of some out-of-body communication. No, we will both surmise a highly likely scenario because we belong to a group of millions of fans who have watched thousands of football games. At sometime two fans in close proximity and watching the same game will have similar thoughts. It’s not a matter of some nonmaterial world having reality. It’s a matter of coincidence. It’s like running into an old friend and saying, I was just thinking about you. Wait! I have to tell you this anecdote. My good friend, Dick, and I were talking one day, when I asked him, “What ever happened to Tony?” Dick said he didn’t know. He hadn’t seen him in years. That evening, Dick called to say, “Guess whom I ran into today?” I replied, “I don’t know. Tell me.” Dick then said, “Tony. Literally, I was in the grocery store parking lot looking for a place to park when I turned down one parking aisle, Tony and I crashed into each other.”
Was that an out-of-body premonition or just a coincidence in a population of billions of humans? I’m going with the latter. Tony just happened to come up earlier in the day. In a world of millions of drivers going to similar places, the two were in the same place at the same time. it's a small world--though as the comedian Stephen Wright says, "I wouldn't want to have to paint it."
Phil: So, upon your death, all those personal and seemingly nonphysical phenomena will simply cease to exist simply because you would no longer be an energy-exchange system? Don’t you think you’ll somehow continue? And I don’t mean in someone’s memory or in a book you wrote, video you made, or statue you sculpted.
Phys: Nope. Dead and gone. That’s all she wrote. Well…let me clarify. As long as some book, video, or statue exists, it is a form of information about me. That, however, will also eventually disappear from the energy-exchange system though any of those remnants of me might last for centuries, even millennia—like the accouterments of some Neanderthal surviving in a grave until and after a paleoanthropologist discovers them. In some instances, like the famous Australopithecus, Lucy, I might last for millions of years—but even Lucy’s bones will eventually fade to nothing. If Lucy, or Neanderthals, or some ancient human had been self-aware, then all this consciousness devoted to all the worldly matters has just been whisked away like some dust beneath a broom’s swish. I will be like the statue and empire in Shelley’s poem “Ozymandias,” pretty much laid to waste and buried by the shifting sands.
Phil: You don’t desire to be “one with the universe,” maybe in possession of all that knowledge you have sought? Maybe finally seeing and knowing what the Standard Model is? Seeing a quark up personally because you transferred into a different realm of existence, albeit one that doesn’t require an energy exchange? You don’t think you might be a bodiless consciousness who can discover whether or not String Theory is just a mere hypothesis dreamed up by people who knew from the outset that they could never devise an experiment to prove it scientifically?
Phys: Some things will just remain a mystery. I don’t have the 18th and 19th century scientists’ view that all the universe is knowable even though I have spent my life trying to discover the ultimate meaning, that is, the what, how, and why of the universe. I’ve witnessed the finding of subatomic particles we didn’t know existed a half century ago. The Standard Model is our best approximation of the universe’s inner workings, but every so often someone discovers a heretofore unknown particle that throws a loop into CERN’s loop—makes some doubt the model. I don’t think we’ll have ultimate answers because our very looking disturbs what we observe. And I know that much of what we think of as understanding is merely a change in metaphor that suits our needs.
Phil: But you will have spent most of your lifetime trying to find those answers, trying to understand not only how the universe works, but also why it works. Why, if I might take the most pessimistic of existential positions, would you pursue that which can’t be caught? Why chase after knowledge that will disappear as you disappear? You say you and your culture will just lose it all anyway, so why bother? And if you think that others will continue your work, then you miss an important point about humanity: We tend to destroy things. Right now as you physicists attempt to acquire knowledge, there’s someone or some group out there plotting to destroy the civilized world. Heck, you even have a Russian leader threatening nuclear war at this time.
Know what just popped into my head? Cement. Yeah. Cement. The Romans used it—I think with diatomaceous earth—to build the dome of the Pantheon. Then the making of cement fell out of use and had to be rediscovered. The same can happen to our physics, our chemistry, our medicines, and our technology. Want another example of lost information? Consider the ancient city Nineveh, now called Mosul. ISIS wrecked monuments that lasted millennia. Sculptures and bas relief writing that survived thousands of years were destroyed in a week of smashing. So, why bother with anything, if I can adopt your pessimism, to accomplish anything or to learn anything?
By doing your research, you suggest there’s a purposefulness to human existence. That somehow we will endure. Isn’t the idea of an Afterlife just a continuation of what you daily practice?
Phys: Research into the workings of the universe will have been a good career, a good way to pass my limited time. It will have given me some purpose, true, the purpose to make life easier, safer, and more meaningful for those who come after me—even if they don’t remember my specific contributions. In their using what information I discover, I will live on—for a while, anyway. Then, as I said, “That’s all she wrote.”
Phil: But to what end? Temporary acknowledgement? Fame of some kind? An identity based on what you do rather than on who you are? Are you saying you have some ethical purpose by saying you want to make life easier, safer, and more meaningful for others? No matter what you say, that statement shows purpose, and purpose isn’t matter or energy; it’s nonphysical even though it produces matter, that is, it allows you and others to use energy. Is purpose a physical part of the universe? Will your purpose continue in others after you die? And if you acknowledge that you can have a purpose and that it can continue, which is, as I said, nonphysical, can you also acknowledge that the universe itself might be purposeful? And if it is purposeful, to what end? I say that knowing you physicists say it will last trillions of years.
Phys: Look. I was born into a culture. The culture set by historical standards those actions it deemed over centuries to be worthy. You philosophers started to question the nature of the universe at least 2,500 years ago, and you really ended up just arguing generation after generation until scientists picked up the questions and discovered some of the answers. In finding those answers, I earned a living and got to see the world by going to international conferences, where I had a chance to meet new people with new hypotheses. Besides, your argument about purpose is circular. It’s like the argument for a “fine-tuned” universe. Saying that the universe with all its delicately balanced forces was fine-tuned for life ignores a chance happening in one of many universes. There might be other universes that are incapable of supporting life, some with imbalances in force strengths that make life impossible.
And I have to add that your religious counterparts, the theologians, have also argued the same matters for millennia. Again, to what conclusion? Have they advanced the meaning of an Afterlife or simply provided different metaphors?
Phil: And that’s it for you? A temporary existence begun 13.8 billion years after the origin of this universe?
Phys: Sure, but I’m happy while I’m here, and I know that there’s no way to prove that I’m THERE—wherever—when I’m not HERE. I can’t prove anything about an existence—sorry, a nonexistence—that is impossible to observe. And that’s why I haven’t thought about death for a while.
Phil: Still, regardless of your “this is all there is” thinking, you must wish to continue?
Phys: Oh! I can’t say that that thought hasn’t crossed my mind. I think I’m of one mind on this matter with the late Carl Sagan. In his Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium, he wrote:
“I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But as much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking. I want to grow really old with my wife, Annie, whom I dearly love. I want to see my younger children grow up and to play a role in their character and intellectual development. I want to meet still unconceived grandchildren. There are scientific problems whose outcomes I long to witness—such as the exploration of many of the worlds in our Solar System and the search for life elsewhere. I want to learn how major trends in human history, both hopeful and worrisome, work themselves out: the dangers and promise of our technology, say; the emancipation of women; the growing political, economic, and technological ascendancy of China; interstellar flight. If there were life after death, I might, no matter when I die, satisfy most of these deep curiosities and longings. But if death is nothing more than an endless dreamless sleep, this is a forlorn hope. Maybe this perspective has given me a little extra motivation to stay alive. The world is so exquisite, with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better, it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look Death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.”
Phil: Yet, there seem to be individuals who claim to have connections with those who have died and connections with God. Sagan’s “endless dreamless sleep” is no more provable than an afterlife of consciousness and self-awareness. As a “scientist,” he simply guessed.
Phys: All those “connections” are unsubstantiated by science, of course, even those two miracles required to substantiate the holiness of a canonized person can’t be repeated in a lab, can’t be verified by experiment. It’s all anecdotal. In the end, I have to say that much of what we humans call knowledge is storytelling, mere anecdotes we find satisfactory and all differing slightly from one culture to another and from one period to another.
Phil: Okay. I get it. You want proof. But proof that seems to you to be only one way of knowing isn’t really the only way of knowing. What about our various emotional states?
Phys: I’ll bite. Let’s say the emotional state of love. The impossible-to-answer questions a guy hopes a girl never asks him are “Why do you love me?” And “How much do you love me?” That’s just as unanswerable as String Theory, which is definitely beyond definite proof—though maybe with a more powerful CERN we’ll discover strings someday. Love is one of those human things that requires faith. And such faith can mislead as every divorce proceeding demonstrates.
Phil: I can’t be as dismissive as you are about continuing after death or in a state of death. When I was little, I thought of the state of death as being “in heaven,” and that, which I have never, even then, localized as a “place,” meant to me that I would have no boundaries, including no boundaries on knowledge. All those scientific mysteries that you have worked to understand would be open to me, or rather, I would be open to them. I would know the how and why of existence and would not be tied to the finite concerns I now have. Then, when I aged, I began to think that maybe knowing everything because I had no earthly limitations, wouldn’t necessarily be a good thing. A constant state of Oneness, means no challenge, no growth, and no purpose; such a condition would be in my estimation boring. I certainly don’t want to go purposeless after spending a whole finite lifetime finding and fulfilling purposes. Of course, there’s no way to imagine an eternal state. I certainly want to continue as an identity, but I know the limitations of my current identity. It certainly doesn’t lend itself to being infinite and omniscient. Generally, I align myself with those who believe in a personal afterlife, a continuation. And no, it’s not a “place” with endless grapes and 72 virgins—who, sorry to tell my Muslim friends, would most likely be Catholic nuns. No, I think of it as placelessness, a different kind of existence from what I know. In death I would have an existence that is the antithesis of the one fundamental phenomenon common to all who have ever lived, that of being in a “place.” Place, even imaginary place, defines the status of being alive. I cannot think of God being relegated to any “place.” Heaven to me is ubiquitous, though that term is itself a contradiction because I can’t assign even the word everywhere to a status of being nowhere.
Phys: And thus, you see my pessimism about the status of being dead. Even your basic tenet of placelessnes is unimaginable. Your brain always runs into some boundary because you can’t imagine the infinite or the eternal. You even have trouble thinking of timelessness.
Phil: True, all philosophers and theologians have those difficulties, but again, we are more than rational as the experience of love indicates. It demonstrates that faith is part of existence, and faith is immeasurable, non-quantifiable, as you scientists say. Yet, faith seems to be a way of knowing. And you can’t say you don’t have any faith because you have it in your experiments and your results.
Phys: Sorry, I think we’ve exhausted this conversation. We’ll never agree.
Phil: I don’t know. The persistence of philosophy is predicated on the “belief” that we will someday agree. And the persistence of physics seems to be similarly grounded on some faith in an eventual agreement.
Phil: What do you envision as death?
Phys: Well, I haven’t thought about this for a long time. What do you mean? That the body ceases to function?
Phil: More than that. Is there a status for “death” as there is a status for “life”? As you are self-aware in life, will you be self-aware in death?
Phys: Again… Okay let me ramble. If I’m alive, then I am an energy-exchange system with varying amounts of biochemical-electrical activity, and since I’m human, maybe even if I were in the so-called vegetative state of a coma, I can have brain activity and thoughts, possibly dreams and insights. I don’t know whether or not people in a coma are self aware, but I have heard anecdotes that they are sometimes aware, but just not capable of reaching out; but people in such a vegetative state still act as an energy-exchange system. Anyway, to go back to your original question, if that’s the status of “life,” “being alive,” or “existing,” then the status of “death” or “being dead,” or being “in death” is the opposite of that; I death I would be an energy-exchange system only as long as part of me remains, the molecules in my decaying bones. If I had to define, then I would say death is the nonexistence of what I currently am, so if I’m dead, then I, the self-aware energy-exchange physicist to whom you now talk, won’t exist—I will neither obtain nor use energy save for that give en off by decaying molecules. There will be no “I.” I think of the Gary Larson Far Side comic panel in which lifeless rubber chickens lie motionless on the ground under the sign “Rubber Chicken Farm.” Rubber chickens are unaware, but since nothing is at absolute zero, then I have to admit my analogy is weak because even rubber chickens have the energy of their molecules. Anyway, being dead makes me as “life-less” as a rubber chicken—and just as intellectual, or astute, erudite, or self-aware as one.
Phil: Whoa. I got the point about the rubber chickens up until you talked about absolute zero.I can see your mentioning energy because it suffuses the Cosmos and provides the fundamental means for our having this discussion. If I understand you, then death is a lack of energy, save for the slowly decaying body’s vibrating molecules. I guess then that you don’t believe you will somehow continue as a perceptive being after you die, that you will be self-aware, or even be aware.
Phys: No, when I’m gone, I’m gone. Don’t look for me on the attic stairs at Halloween or suddenly appearing on some reality show to cause the TV investigators’ “scientific instruments” to sense something. What is it that those investigators want us to believe, that the “spirit world” is the world of electromagnetism? That seems to be how they define the status of being dead because the “ghosts” leave an electromagnetic signature either on an oscilloscope, on some photosensitive paper, or on a digital memory card.
In short, I believe I am now; I won’t be then.
Phil: But isn’t there any wish in you that you will somehow continue, and continue not just as some Heraclitean Eternal Fire or “part” of the Hindu Moksha Loka, but rather as a being with an identity, a recognizable continuation of you in a spiritual form, maybe even a self-conscious one? Surely, you realize that you aren’t now just an entity composed of matter and energy. What about your thoughts and your memories.
Phys: Biochemo-electrical signals of firing neurons. That’s all. And as far as wishes go, I recognize that humans have long had a fondness for unreal conditions, say being able to fly without mechanical aid, or being loved by one and all, or…
Phil: But what about our communicating if we are isolated entities? How do those signals get from my neurons to your neurons? How do we somehow “know” what someone is thinking without a word being said?
Phys: First, we’re really not isolated. In the energy-exchange system, we also exchange information. That’s our new buzzword in physics, you know. The universe is itself information, and we debate whether or not it can be destroyed in a black hole or re-emerge from one in Hawking radiation. So, as part of the universe each of us is a composite of information. Second, context, that’s pretty much at the center of our communicating. Similar circumstances produce similar responses in different brains. And coincidence, I might add, plays a role. Say you and I both have the feeling that a football player is about to fumble, or throw an interception, or run for a long touchdown. Knowing how many football circumstances we have personally experienced or witnessed and knowing the possibilities of each football scenario, it seems likely to me that at some time we will both have similar thoughts. And it won’t be a matter of some out-of-body communication. No, we will both surmise a highly likely scenario because we belong to a group of millions of fans who have watched thousands of football games. At sometime two fans in close proximity and watching the same game will have similar thoughts. It’s not a matter of some nonmaterial world having reality. It’s a matter of coincidence. It’s like running into an old friend and saying, I was just thinking about you. Wait! I have to tell you this anecdote. My good friend, Dick, and I were talking one day, when I asked him, “What ever happened to Tony?” Dick said he didn’t know. He hadn’t seen him in years. That evening, Dick called to say, “Guess whom I ran into today?” I replied, “I don’t know. Tell me.” Dick then said, “Tony. Literally, I was in the grocery store parking lot looking for a place to park when I turned down one parking aisle, Tony and I crashed into each other.”
Was that an out-of-body premonition or just a coincidence in a population of billions of humans? I’m going with the latter. Tony just happened to come up earlier in the day. In a world of millions of drivers going to similar places, the two were in the same place at the same time. it's a small world--though as the comedian Stephen Wright says, "I wouldn't want to have to paint it."
Phil: So, upon your death, all those personal and seemingly nonphysical phenomena will simply cease to exist simply because you would no longer be an energy-exchange system? Don’t you think you’ll somehow continue? And I don’t mean in someone’s memory or in a book you wrote, video you made, or statue you sculpted.
Phys: Nope. Dead and gone. That’s all she wrote. Well…let me clarify. As long as some book, video, or statue exists, it is a form of information about me. That, however, will also eventually disappear from the energy-exchange system though any of those remnants of me might last for centuries, even millennia—like the accouterments of some Neanderthal surviving in a grave until and after a paleoanthropologist discovers them. In some instances, like the famous Australopithecus, Lucy, I might last for millions of years—but even Lucy’s bones will eventually fade to nothing. If Lucy, or Neanderthals, or some ancient human had been self-aware, then all this consciousness devoted to all the worldly matters has just been whisked away like some dust beneath a broom’s swish. I will be like the statue and empire in Shelley’s poem “Ozymandias,” pretty much laid to waste and buried by the shifting sands.
Phil: You don’t desire to be “one with the universe,” maybe in possession of all that knowledge you have sought? Maybe finally seeing and knowing what the Standard Model is? Seeing a quark up personally because you transferred into a different realm of existence, albeit one that doesn’t require an energy exchange? You don’t think you might be a bodiless consciousness who can discover whether or not String Theory is just a mere hypothesis dreamed up by people who knew from the outset that they could never devise an experiment to prove it scientifically?
Phys: Some things will just remain a mystery. I don’t have the 18th and 19th century scientists’ view that all the universe is knowable even though I have spent my life trying to discover the ultimate meaning, that is, the what, how, and why of the universe. I’ve witnessed the finding of subatomic particles we didn’t know existed a half century ago. The Standard Model is our best approximation of the universe’s inner workings, but every so often someone discovers a heretofore unknown particle that throws a loop into CERN’s loop—makes some doubt the model. I don’t think we’ll have ultimate answers because our very looking disturbs what we observe. And I know that much of what we think of as understanding is merely a change in metaphor that suits our needs.
Phil: But you will have spent most of your lifetime trying to find those answers, trying to understand not only how the universe works, but also why it works. Why, if I might take the most pessimistic of existential positions, would you pursue that which can’t be caught? Why chase after knowledge that will disappear as you disappear? You say you and your culture will just lose it all anyway, so why bother? And if you think that others will continue your work, then you miss an important point about humanity: We tend to destroy things. Right now as you physicists attempt to acquire knowledge, there’s someone or some group out there plotting to destroy the civilized world. Heck, you even have a Russian leader threatening nuclear war at this time.
Know what just popped into my head? Cement. Yeah. Cement. The Romans used it—I think with diatomaceous earth—to build the dome of the Pantheon. Then the making of cement fell out of use and had to be rediscovered. The same can happen to our physics, our chemistry, our medicines, and our technology. Want another example of lost information? Consider the ancient city Nineveh, now called Mosul. ISIS wrecked monuments that lasted millennia. Sculptures and bas relief writing that survived thousands of years were destroyed in a week of smashing. So, why bother with anything, if I can adopt your pessimism, to accomplish anything or to learn anything?
By doing your research, you suggest there’s a purposefulness to human existence. That somehow we will endure. Isn’t the idea of an Afterlife just a continuation of what you daily practice?
Phys: Research into the workings of the universe will have been a good career, a good way to pass my limited time. It will have given me some purpose, true, the purpose to make life easier, safer, and more meaningful for those who come after me—even if they don’t remember my specific contributions. In their using what information I discover, I will live on—for a while, anyway. Then, as I said, “That’s all she wrote.”
Phil: But to what end? Temporary acknowledgement? Fame of some kind? An identity based on what you do rather than on who you are? Are you saying you have some ethical purpose by saying you want to make life easier, safer, and more meaningful for others? No matter what you say, that statement shows purpose, and purpose isn’t matter or energy; it’s nonphysical even though it produces matter, that is, it allows you and others to use energy. Is purpose a physical part of the universe? Will your purpose continue in others after you die? And if you acknowledge that you can have a purpose and that it can continue, which is, as I said, nonphysical, can you also acknowledge that the universe itself might be purposeful? And if it is purposeful, to what end? I say that knowing you physicists say it will last trillions of years.
Phys: Look. I was born into a culture. The culture set by historical standards those actions it deemed over centuries to be worthy. You philosophers started to question the nature of the universe at least 2,500 years ago, and you really ended up just arguing generation after generation until scientists picked up the questions and discovered some of the answers. In finding those answers, I earned a living and got to see the world by going to international conferences, where I had a chance to meet new people with new hypotheses. Besides, your argument about purpose is circular. It’s like the argument for a “fine-tuned” universe. Saying that the universe with all its delicately balanced forces was fine-tuned for life ignores a chance happening in one of many universes. There might be other universes that are incapable of supporting life, some with imbalances in force strengths that make life impossible.
And I have to add that your religious counterparts, the theologians, have also argued the same matters for millennia. Again, to what conclusion? Have they advanced the meaning of an Afterlife or simply provided different metaphors?
Phil: And that’s it for you? A temporary existence begun 13.8 billion years after the origin of this universe?
Phys: Sure, but I’m happy while I’m here, and I know that there’s no way to prove that I’m THERE—wherever—when I’m not HERE. I can’t prove anything about an existence—sorry, a nonexistence—that is impossible to observe. And that’s why I haven’t thought about death for a while.
Phil: Still, regardless of your “this is all there is” thinking, you must wish to continue?
Phys: Oh! I can’t say that that thought hasn’t crossed my mind. I think I’m of one mind on this matter with the late Carl Sagan. In his Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium, he wrote:
“I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But as much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking. I want to grow really old with my wife, Annie, whom I dearly love. I want to see my younger children grow up and to play a role in their character and intellectual development. I want to meet still unconceived grandchildren. There are scientific problems whose outcomes I long to witness—such as the exploration of many of the worlds in our Solar System and the search for life elsewhere. I want to learn how major trends in human history, both hopeful and worrisome, work themselves out: the dangers and promise of our technology, say; the emancipation of women; the growing political, economic, and technological ascendancy of China; interstellar flight. If there were life after death, I might, no matter when I die, satisfy most of these deep curiosities and longings. But if death is nothing more than an endless dreamless sleep, this is a forlorn hope. Maybe this perspective has given me a little extra motivation to stay alive. The world is so exquisite, with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better, it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look Death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.”
Phil: Yet, there seem to be individuals who claim to have connections with those who have died and connections with God. Sagan’s “endless dreamless sleep” is no more provable than an afterlife of consciousness and self-awareness. As a “scientist,” he simply guessed.
Phys: All those “connections” are unsubstantiated by science, of course, even those two miracles required to substantiate the holiness of a canonized person can’t be repeated in a lab, can’t be verified by experiment. It’s all anecdotal. In the end, I have to say that much of what we humans call knowledge is storytelling, mere anecdotes we find satisfactory and all differing slightly from one culture to another and from one period to another.
Phil: Okay. I get it. You want proof. But proof that seems to you to be only one way of knowing isn’t really the only way of knowing. What about our various emotional states?
Phys: I’ll bite. Let’s say the emotional state of love. The impossible-to-answer questions a guy hopes a girl never asks him are “Why do you love me?” And “How much do you love me?” That’s just as unanswerable as String Theory, which is definitely beyond definite proof—though maybe with a more powerful CERN we’ll discover strings someday. Love is one of those human things that requires faith. And such faith can mislead as every divorce proceeding demonstrates.
Phil: I can’t be as dismissive as you are about continuing after death or in a state of death. When I was little, I thought of the state of death as being “in heaven,” and that, which I have never, even then, localized as a “place,” meant to me that I would have no boundaries, including no boundaries on knowledge. All those scientific mysteries that you have worked to understand would be open to me, or rather, I would be open to them. I would know the how and why of existence and would not be tied to the finite concerns I now have. Then, when I aged, I began to think that maybe knowing everything because I had no earthly limitations, wouldn’t necessarily be a good thing. A constant state of Oneness, means no challenge, no growth, and no purpose; such a condition would be in my estimation boring. I certainly don’t want to go purposeless after spending a whole finite lifetime finding and fulfilling purposes. Of course, there’s no way to imagine an eternal state. I certainly want to continue as an identity, but I know the limitations of my current identity. It certainly doesn’t lend itself to being infinite and omniscient. Generally, I align myself with those who believe in a personal afterlife, a continuation. And no, it’s not a “place” with endless grapes and 72 virgins—who, sorry to tell my Muslim friends, would most likely be Catholic nuns. No, I think of it as placelessness, a different kind of existence from what I know. In death I would have an existence that is the antithesis of the one fundamental phenomenon common to all who have ever lived, that of being in a “place.” Place, even imaginary place, defines the status of being alive. I cannot think of God being relegated to any “place.” Heaven to me is ubiquitous, though that term is itself a contradiction because I can’t assign even the word everywhere to a status of being nowhere.
Phys: And thus, you see my pessimism about the status of being dead. Even your basic tenet of placelessnes is unimaginable. Your brain always runs into some boundary because you can’t imagine the infinite or the eternal. You even have trouble thinking of timelessness.
Phil: True, all philosophers and theologians have those difficulties, but again, we are more than rational as the experience of love indicates. It demonstrates that faith is part of existence, and faith is immeasurable, non-quantifiable, as you scientists say. Yet, faith seems to be a way of knowing. And you can’t say you don’t have any faith because you have it in your experiments and your results.
Phys: Sorry, I think we’ve exhausted this conversation. We’ll never agree.
Phil: I don’t know. The persistence of philosophy is predicated on the “belief” that we will someday agree. And the persistence of physics seems to be similarly grounded on some faith in an eventual agreement.
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