Agnostic.com

14 1

Can anyone imagine nonexistence?

skepticaljerk 5 Dec 4
Share

Enjoy being online again!

Welcome to the community of good people who base their values on evidence and appreciate civil discourse - the social network you will enjoy.

Create your free account

14 comments

Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.

0

Eh i was just seeing what everyone thought i'm not settled on the question

1

Yes, because it happens when we all sleep. It's like our brains go into some kind of suspended animation. That's what being dead will be like - absence of awareness. Which I really dislike the idea of... there's so much I want to see and experience. People living on Mars, Trump being impeached, and the twinning of the Transcanada highway up the road from me. OH - and a huge gathering of Agnostic.com members in some centrally located conference hotel.

1

I can, but only abstractly.

In mathematics, there is a concept of a thing-that-is-not-any-thing, called the "empty set". It has every property (including some self-contradictory ones!), and no properties at all.

Moreover, it is the only thing in mathematics whose existence is mathematically undeniable. In true bizarre fashion, every other mathematical object then gets built out of it. It sounds mind-warping, but you get used to it. I'll give an example of how this works:

You have nothing. And you want to talk about it, so you put it in a bag (the bag is empty). Right now, you don't have much to talk about. So you put THAT bag inside ANOTHER bag, and now you have a bag with something IN it (namely, the bag with nothing in it). So one bag is empty, and one isn't. Now you have 0's and 1's, and it's all downhill from there.

But my own, and everyone else's PERSONAL non-existence? That's a tough nut, because reflecting on the self, REQUIRES a self to do the reflecting. The closest I can come to, is to stop thinking, and just be. That is, to imagine nothing/non-existence truly, requires me to turn off my imagination and thought, so I never remember what it was like.

0

I don't see why it'd be a problem. It's just not existing. Very simple concept.

Implicit in the question is, "Is anyone willing imagine the notion that they will at some point not exist?" And I suppose that to those for whom such a thing is an intolerable, inconceivable affront, the answer is no. But once you understand that you're not entitled to anything, including your very existence, life gets a lot more comprehensible and manageable. So there's that.

A lot of the fear and loathing around the fact of our mortality is just a lot of operant conditioning to think of it as inconceivable and terrifying and that one must avoid thinking about it at all costs. It's actually just a very simple concept and existence is nothing to be clung to.

1

I can, but only for a brief moment. Then my conscious awareness steps in to monitor my imagining and it all falls apart.

The meaning of existence is ineffable. (my new word) 🙂

0

Yes, it's not a pleasant exercise

1

Yes. I've already been non-existent before I was born.

1

Sometimes is a little hard to be aware of your existence..how then anyone could imagine nonexistence?

0

Not according to DeCarte. "I think, therfore I am."

0

Nihilists can i guess, ya

1

Remember what it was like before you were born? It's a lot like that.

0

I think that is an impossibility.

0

Yes, I close my eyes and imagine “god”

0

i doubt it. not for oneself, anyway. do we need to?

g

Write Comment
You can include a link to this post in your posts and comments by including the text q:236785
Agnostic does not evaluate or guarantee the accuracy of any content. Read full disclaimer.