Toughest Philosophical Questions

Well, you could look at death in this manner as Epicurus proclaimed:

P1. Pain is the thing to be avoided in life and is the "bad".
P2. Death does not induce pain because the sensation or cognizance of pain is not possible when dead.
C. Death is not "bad".

I guess Epicurus would have a fear of dying in a manner that was painful; however, one could argue that whilst we are alive we are also dying simultaneously. It is a strange paradox. Epicurean thinkers would therefore say we need to live and die in pleasure, but death itself is a nonsensical thing to fear. Our immortality is a part of our condition, something the stoics would put on a brave face and get on with as a part of the indifference of the universe.

Personally, I do not believe life is wholly about pleasure. Aristotle convinced me when he argued there is this telos we aim for and defined as "eudaimonia" - to flourish and to be prosperous. All our actions are instrumental to attaining this goal, including the indulgence in pleasure. How we go about granting this flourishing and prosperity to the entirety of humankind seems the bigger issue. Do we adopt a utilitarian model? Is eudaimonia synonymous with "utility"? We all have different concepts of what can be the definition of flourishing and prosperity, but I think it is self-evident that there are some objective and universal morals. The Inuit people may kill their infants, but, despite this ostensible disparity between their morality and our morality, they do this to better the lives of their remaining family - they are not so different from us in terms of values. An objective morality does not mean we lead the exact life in terms of practices, but derive our practices from fundamental values. Imagine a world where humans did not share the universal value to tend for their children. (I agree that I am arguing against a very simplistic moral relativist position, but I am not convinced by moral relativism even in its complex forms).

The fear of death is a "brute fact" according to philosophers like Parfit. It is irrational and founded on a fear of losing our personal identity or what we understand to be personal identity. The continuity of experiential reality as our self seems important to our intuitions; however, practically speaking it makes no difference if someone very closely psychologically connected to me fulfils my life projects or goals or I myself do (the numerically identical me versus the qualitatively identical me). This does not make me an eliminative reductionist, but a constituent reductionist. The concept of personal identity and this "brute fact" is very real and important to our experiential reality and our intuitions, but it is irrational if we take a moral realist perspective (it is objectively irrelevant if you or someone like you completes your life goals).

When you synthesize the fact our moralities all are trying to lead to some fundamental values and that the individual fascination with personal identity is irrational, you sort of have the comfort of knowing everyone is struggling for the same things even if you are not here (maybe you are not even here when you think you are!). The wheels will keep turning and reality will still be. Take comfort in your insignificance; love, learn and live while you can.

This reminds me of a text I read once. It's about a series of conversations between the roman philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero and his friends, in his home in Tusculum around two thousand years ago.
In the text, Cicero argues that death is not "an evil", as claimed by the people he is having the discussion with. It is an interesting read and an interesting insight into the mindset of that era.

what happens when we break just one of lifes cycles?

And it seems as though Augustus had his head nailed to a wall... I would say, if that were so, that Cicero could not have borne him much malice considering that he did him no evil...

You have to remember that the reason Christianity took over from those filosophers is that they could not manage to find any meaning in life... They were as doomed as the whole empire of Rome, and they could not care... Even when Rome needed an army they would make gifts of castrated boys for their daughter's attendents...

pain is in the mind

And the mind is in the brain and the brain is in the body, and from my experience that is like saying the pain is all over...Nerve pain is the absolute worst imaginable pain, and people are incapacitated with migrane headaches... And I know that for the right reasons, that people have let themselves get burned up, cut up and ate before their own eyes until there was nothing left of them to butcher, and all without complaint; but pain without end is madness... Fortunate you if you have never had to feel it...

Shingles are the "real" pain.

To live?

How do you know that?

S/he doesn't know. That is the short answer. However, if we take science seriously, it would see very legitimate to say that our most important parts of the "mind" reside in the mind - damage the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex is going to influence our personality and so forth. Sure, this is post hoc and it has not given us a specific area or quantity that functions as "mind", but it seems more substantiated than claiming it is some immaterial entity.

I am not sure that any science indicates that the mind is inside the brain. It does indicate that there is relationship between brain and mind, but that is not the same thing.

Sure damage to the frontal lobe can influence our personality. But so can damage to an arm or a leg. "Mind" includes all we know and know of, and though it is easy to tell one brain from another, it is not so easy to determine the boundaries of a mind.

...and how do you know that ?

The thing acting afferently and efferently is the central nervous system which allows cognizance of your extremities. It is quite clear that your brain is central to this function. If I damage cortices, you will lose parts of this elusive concept of "mind". Post hoc aside, you are not explaining why we need to posit some separable entity or property outside the physical realm.

How do you prove the division of brain and mind? If there is a relationship between brain and mind, you are suggesting there is interaction and therefore a causal (efferent and afferent) connection between two entities or properties. You have therefore excluded epiphenomenalism (where the brain processes produce the mind coincidentally and this mind does not interact causally with the brain but exists parallel to the brain). How do these components interact? Why are changes in my mind seen as neurochemicals in the brain?

...you ought to know the difference between the causes of mind and what mind is...even I who hardly agree with most of what this guys believe can see where you are missing the point here...

Without the causes of mind, you wont have the mind. I cannot separate the mind from its causes. What do you refer to when you say mind?

I am sorry if this is an obtuse question, but I am not sure what the mind is beyond its physical causes.

The question I am always involved is what will happen at the end? Is it any end for this existence?

...lets put it this way, I am sure you understand, whatever causes you to walk is not walking...now the argument goes, you get to know what brain is through mind and not the other way around...now take notice that I accept we can know reality up to the extent by which our own questions were made...that is to say the correlation is valid and a valid part of reality itself...and that, mainly that, is the bottom line contended issue at hand here...

I've tried, and am still trying.

It's extremely--in fact fundamentally--difficult to understand the connection between "mind" and 'brain." If we take language very seriously, we feel we know they're connected, but is it as causation or mere correlation? Is mind a mere epiphenomenon of brain? I know that without brain there is no mind. But is it not also the case that without mind there is no brain? Is "brain" more than the thoughts and perceptions that define it? Eventually we fall into the two camps of physicalists and mentalists, and those metaphysical biases seem to be no more an expressions of our personalities than of actual knowledge.

It is on the top of the first page in my book of loves with atheletes foot of the crotch, and I have had both... Like lincoln said of it: Now I have something I can give to every one...