[Thomas W. Clark actually dispels the notion of a reified "nothingness", so I'll address this last part (above) first and outside of his paper. Then return to the rest in the context of his paper (Death, Nothingness, and Subjectivity).]
One might imagine a dying consciousness gradually dwindling away toward an absence of thoughts / things / events in the reverse manner that a newborn or prenatal consciousness gradually emerges from such absence. With that void being the same identical, featureless homogeneity that everyone will fade into eventually (barring brains that are instantly destroyed; no time for the 'waning' therein). And as aforementioned, it also seems to be an absence identical to what a developing fetal awareness creeps from onto its shore of weak apprehension. This potential nexus of "nothingness" between life / death, where multiple experiences of different organisms converge from those different temporal extremes (that is, before they are obliterated in becoming it or generated after un-becoming it), would seem to lack any means of selection other than either randomness or new Person-98 acquiring a glimmer of consciousness while near synchronous with old Person-33's consciousness utterly expiring (or even entering dreamless sleep, etc., while still alive).
I would be hesitant to say that someone falling into deep sleep isn't actually conscious, it could be that the awareness is simply cut-off from memory, we could have been aware the whole time without remembering it. Many times have I woken up thinking that I had no dreams, but later suddenly remember that I had a very vivid dream and also remember being conscious in that dream. I think that more research is needed to show that we are in fact unconscious when in deep sleep and that it isn't just the memories that are cut-off from us. This is important as, if the opposite were true, there is a possibility for a "new awareness" to occupy our body should your idea be correct (that it is random, or that there is some kind of queue where the deceased will become the next waking awareness).
I also want to say that I'm not a fan of positive nothing either, even though I have to use that word "nothing" sometimes (to account for what is objectively happening). I don't want to imply a positive nothing. You could say though, at any instant of time objectively the subject actually
is nothing, but the subject can only be nothing objectively.
As far as Clark's paper goes, it's expressed that individual consciousnesses may have global characteristics common to all, such as a "subjective sense of always having been present". It is this generic experience or generic subjectivity, distributed across multiple centers of awareness coming in and out of existence (births / deaths), that survives personal extinctions. "We continue as the generic subjectivity that always finds itself here, in the various contexts of awareness that the physical universe manages to create. ... The continuity is that of subjectivity itself, abstracted from any particular context, and it finds concrete expression in the fact that none of us has ever experienced (or will ever experience) not being here."
There is no transfer of information. If a 'glowing in the night' is the universal property of light bulbs, the others already possess / share this when a single bulb is switched-off. If there are different logos stamped on each bulb (their unique "personalities"), each expires with its specific bulb; but the 'logo-hood' of bulbs in general still persists. "The 'me' characterized by personality and memory simply ends. No longer will experience occur in the context of such [a particular] personality and memory."
No, but still experience will occur, and my experience may not be different from your experience, but still we are different persons, and even though I won't be having the same personality or identity or memories I will yet still exist, there will not be a subjective "end of the world", that is the important message, at least at this stage. My subjectivity will go on experiencing the world.
You say that my subjectivity is a universal property, that may be true, but there is also a private property, in the sense that my existence could sease while you are still maintaining yours. Even if my subjectivity have no gaps but is inevitable (since there was nothing and I was born and there was something - it can't be more inevitable than that) the inevitable still needs some selection process which rules that I may exist in this newborn and not that newborn. Random is just as tricky as Nothing is, saying it is random is just as much an excuse as saying that you become nothing - it is a lack of knowledge - but that there must be such a process (which must rule in some kind of realm that must be very exotic - as it can transcend life and death) is to me self-evident, and it must be of positive existence.
To me all this suggest that some kind of personal essence must be (if that is the same as information - well I don't know, but I don't know of any other essence that defines anything).
Also take into consideration that while we are objectively nothing, all of us are the same, in such a way that I could just as likely have been in your body and you in mine - if it weren't for a soul or if it weren't for some kind of "random" process that must be able to transcend (or, if you want, be a part of, or link) the subjective gap.
According to Clark:
"In proposing [continuity of generic experience] I don't mean to suggest that there exist some supernatural, death-defying connections between consciousnesses which could somehow preserve elements of memory or personality. This is not at all what I have in mind, since material evidence suggests that everything a person consists of --a living body, awareness, personality, memories, preferences, expectations, etc.-- is erased at death. Personal subjective continuity as I defined it above requires that experiences be those of a particular person; hence, this sort of continuity is bounded by death. So when I say that you should look forward, at death, to the 'subjective sense of always having been present,' I am speaking rather loosely, for it is not you --not this set of personal characteristics-- that will experience 'being present.' Rather, it will be another set of characteristics (in fact, countless sets) with the capacity, perhaps, for completely different sorts of experience. But, despite these (perhaps radical) differences, it will share the qualitatively very same sense of always having been here, and, like you, will never experience its cessation."
Yes, I read the paper carefully, I also understand what he meant by it as I am in a point of my life when I have personally discovered the very same thing. I don't claim to be first with it, and this paper might be old, but I do declare that this idea came to me without knowingly having read about it earlier. Which is why I understand him very well and the ideas contained within it.
As I said before, I don't think that we, judging from physical evidence, can say that memories or personality or even identity is preserved, that is not at all what I think, but some qualitive essence of me persists, which is the continuity of my subjective awareness.
A supposed 'nothing' would be outside of experience, so there is no positive encounter with it or personal confirmation.
"I believe a materialist can see that consciousness, as a strictly physical phenomenon instantiated by the brain, creates a world subjectively immune to its own disappearance. It is the very finitude of a self-reflective cognitive system that bars it from witnessing its own beginning or ending, and hence prevents there being, for it, any condition other than existing. Its ending is only an event, and its non-existence a current fact, for other perspectives. After death we won't experience non-being, we won't 'fade to black.' ... So when I recommend that you look forward to the (continuing) sense of always having been here, construe that 'you' not as a particular person, but as that condition of awareness, which although manifesting itself in finite subjectivities, nevertheless always finds itself present."
The presumed absence is really just the absence of a specific personal consciousness after it ceases; not an interval of non-existence but the inability to apprehend what exists. Generic subjectivity, however, might be figuratively construed as leaping over a gap, from the standpoint that it never disappeared in terms of its global distribution.
"If there are no subjective gaps of positive nothingness between successive experiences of a single individual [during unconsciousness or dreamless sleep], then there won't be such a gap between a person's last experience and the first experience of his or her radically transformed successor. That first experience occurs within a context of memory and personality which establishes the same sense of always having been present generated by the original person's consciousness."
The interval of non-existence is of course a objective interval, for me subjectively there will be no such interval. Even so, objectively something must define my subjectivity as being in some way different from another as I will continue to exist at a specific time even though objectively (given that subjectivity is universal) I could exist at any time (and in fact, in any body that aren't currently occupied by awareness - or why not in any body at all, even though they are occupied with awareness - or even several awarenesses, could be that you aren't the only one looking out of "your" eyes and doing "your" actions).
