What is death?

...that's also how philosophers and mystics become reborn with a message you may want to hear - or not!

"death is only the begining" :wink:

Death is the beginning of what? Can you be specific? And, if you can, when was the beginning?

i was quoting a phrase from a movie....THE MUMMIE

you c the mummie is a creature that has already died but he believed that when u die u go on to a new world ro start over and "begin" again...

that better :wink:

although i am just kidding around with the quote and wut-not...i believe taht there mite be some truth in that.


i very well believe that death could just be a transitional stage between this world and maybe another...thats a lil religous but it works for me, in that dieing isnt what we think of it...as just the ciesing of brain activity... but just a "soul" leaving one body and going somewhere else to inhabit another something...sorta like a person who buys a car and drives it is the "soul" and when the car (which would be the body) breaks down the person (or soul) does not ciese to exist but simply leaves that one car/body to find another to inhabit/or "drive"


ik its not the best analogy but its all i could come up with

Eureka! I'm born again.

JL....yes, i believe you can be more empathetic
when you have experienced similar (traumatic) experiences in life.....that is why support groups exist, I suppose.

I agree, people can be MORE empathetic (empathic?) if they have experienced similar losses. But I guess one can still be empathetic without such a similarity. Although we have all known SOME people who are incapable of resonating with, or feeling on behalf of, another. But we are talking about normals, I suppose.

Empathy (if only for complex organic structures) cannot be the requirement for death...

Rex, tell me, do you think that empathy is a requirement for life? I ask this against the background assumption that human beings--like wolves--can only survive as social beings. So I paraphrase: is empathy a functional requisite for social life?

continuing to read.

It seems to me that we cannot possibly talk about death itself, that is to say, the condition we will (not) be in after dying. As I noted earlier, once dead there is no-one to be dead. So we cannot make ontological speculation about the nature of death (and no one we know has experience of it). What we are confined to, therefore, is discussion about our thoughts about what we call death.

But you're talking about it right now...



We may define a state to something which does not exist, though.

My son is non-existant.

See?

We can also, therefore, define a state to something that used to exist but no-longer exists:

My son is dead.

I don't see what point you are trying to make, though

Good inquiry, Stuh: "But you're talking about it right now..."

But in fact I'm talking about not being able to talk about it. (where "it" is a fiction).

You then talk about a hypothetical (my son is non-existant) where you mean you never had a (or "that") son.

and

You talk about a memory of a son that you define as no longer existing (my son is dead). From your perspective "he" is in a state of death; that's the way you think and/or talk about it. But that is not a property of "HIM"; "he" has no properties; YOU have memories and conceptions.

That's my point.

No Stuh. If you say "my son is non-existant" you are saying "my son is ...". That's a contradiction.
And death has nothing to do with non-existence. Death is the lost of your identity. What you are. What makes you say "I".

1) I do not

2) I have a tendency to define it as such.

As for your continuous line of reasoning. It can easily be considered as ridiculous as:
This box is red. This is a red box. The box has turned blue. The red box is (now) blue.
Well, it's not a red box then is it?
I can't be dead if I'm not (existent).

Inability for 'abstract' reasoning does not constitute as ontological proof.

If language is the problem, would you feel more comfortable with me saying: 'He is not alive.' ?

As far as I'm concerned, this is merely the 'this sentence is not true' paradox, just a weaker version of it with a heavier subject.

PS: I'm not a different person, I just haven't been to the dojo for 2weeks and seriously lack some buddhist mojo :p
That and, of course, school (which should always be blamed).

I find your response confusing.

Heh! Heh!

Don't you mean yuk yuk?

ReX
There is a difference. A red or blue box is still a box. The substance remains, accidents occur, as Aristotle would have said.
But in the case of death, substance ceases. Substance could be defined as "being" (or, in another perspective, as the identity). Death is the non-being. (Parmenides would see here a contradiction, since the non-being isn't). In any case, death is the annihilation of the substance. But, since that substance is what I think as "I", we cannot think of death as an accident that occurs in a substance. Death is part of the substance itself, as a limit. I think that is what Heidegger meant when he talked about human experience as "a being to death".