Have you existed before?

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by birch, Aug 10, 2017.

  1. Dinosaur Rational Skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    You & I have never existed before & will never exist again after our demise.

    Note that what you & I are is essentially the memories & thought processes in our brains. After our demise those brains will never exist again.

    Identical twins are not really identical.

    They have different fingerprints & some other different physical traits like retinal patterns.

    By adulthood, they have had different experiences & their brains have different memories & different thought patterns.

    If identical twins are not really identical, how can anyone expect two less related or unrelated people to be identical?
     
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  3. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    We have never existed as the person we are today and we will never exist again as the same person, but we all have molecules that may have belonged to other people. I read that we may have molecules inside us that once belonged to Ghengis Kahn.

    I believe the point is that we may eventually disintegrate as a person, but our molecules may be absorbed by other living things, such as plants, trees, animals, and even persons.

    Our current DNA testing reveals that almost all people have DNA from a variety of sources from all over the world. These DNA codes may have existed hundreds of thousands of years ago, but were passed on, even as populations split into the various races.
    Which is a logical assumption. We share some 98% of our DNA with the great apes. It is the 2% difference that gives us the variety, even within the human population.

    As Roger Antonsen observed, the greatest mass in a Redwood forest is mainly in the trees, but it is the little stuff, like ferns and flowers, and shrubbery that create the variety of life within the forest.

    The one common denominator seems to lie in the fractal nature of evolutionary development of all living things, such as neural systems and arterial systems.
     
    Last edited: Aug 25, 2017
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  5. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    I presume that the ostensible relevance of this to the topic under discussion is that you plan to posit some method by which the molecules that make us up can somehow "remember" the essence of those to whom they previous belonged? Otherwise, what is the relevance?
     
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  7. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Correction on post #22.
    Should read Robert Hazen
     
  8. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    The relevance is that we all share bio-molecules which were once part of other living organisms.
    I attach no mystical reincarnation to this, just a physical form of reincarnation.

    But consider this. Suppose we die, but we could individually store all bio-molecules of the body (including those of the brain). Then we reassemble all those bio-molecules in an exact copy of our previous self, would we be the same as before, or would our memories be lost and we'd have to start learning all over again?

    What is a memory? Wiki;
    If this sounds silly, consider the possible teleportation by entanglement. The deconstruction of a body into entangled particles which can be reassembled at a properly constructed reception station. If this could be done, would my copy be me?
     
    Last edited: Aug 26, 2017
  9. river

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    Or the mind has its own existence , separate from the body .
     
  10. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Since atoms are interchangeable, (one oxygen atom is identical to every other) it doesn't matter which oxygen atom you use, all that matters is its position.

    And yes, if we could assemble our brain exactly as before, with every atom in the same place (and restart the metabolic process), we would have exactly recreated our mind, including memories. This goes without saying.
     
  11. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    It may be time to move away from the magic and superstition that ruled our world when the body was ruled by the four humors, and we used leeches in our treatments.
     
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  12. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    • H.G. Wells: “Clearly,” the Time Traveller proceeded, “any real body must have extension in four directions: it must have Length, Breadth, Thickness, and—Duration. But through a natural infirmity of the flesh, which I will explain to you in a moment, we incline to overlook this fact. There are really four dimensions, three which we call the three planes of Space, and a fourth, Time. There is, however, a tendency to draw an unreal distinction between the former three dimensions and the latter, because it happens that our consciousness moves intermittently in one direction along the latter from the beginning to the end of our lives.”
    Awareness does seem to have a penchant for transiting from one body/brain state to the next, but that "movement" is probably illusory, rather than some _X_ literally flowing. Experience is discriminated into discrete moments, each confined to the information that those neural configurations over several milliseconds of measurement collectively harbor. Thus each chunk sequence of brain-states is isolated to only depicting itself as "real" in terms of the visual, audile, tactile, etc manifestation of that specious moment, "now", or division of consciousness.

    Even a believer in some _X_ "moving" along the extra-dimension version of the body, like either Wells or his fictional character above, would have to admit that it wasn't packing any memory along with it.[*] Which is to say, it would again be dependent upon the information contained in the next chunk sequence of brain-states it had transited to. Thus why bare awareness is the attribute of mind that would have to be entertained as "flow-worthy" rather than intellect.

    - - -

    [*] Note those suffering from amnesia and other conditions. Or if all past memory was being carried by such an _X_, it's certainly incapable of accessing it, as well as the specific body-states it passes through.

    * * * * *
     
  13. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    True, you can't even return a teacup to it's original state after it's broken, much less a person.
     
  14. river

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    This is a ridiculas statement .
     
  15. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    It's directly related to entropy and thermodynamics.
     
  16. river

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    And this has to with the OP , because ?
     
  17. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    The physics principle of entropy means that time can't be reversed in our universe, which implies that reincarnation is inherently impossible.
     
  18. river

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    Ah... the materialist . The Universe is nothing more , than material things .
     
  19. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Correct.
     
  20. river

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    Understood
     
  21. river

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    Now spidergoat explain remote viewing .
     
  22. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    It is an isotope of element 16.
     
  23. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Imagination.
     

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