Remorse...?

Russell Nash · 08-20-2009

“To Chuck and Nancy Serafino and your loved ones, for all the pain that I have caused you, it is my earnest prayer that God grant you peace,” Getsy said before the lethal injection that ended his life Tuesday morning. “I’m sorry. It is a little word, I know, but it’s true.”

My questions are: Does a normal person, sooner or later, in his life, feels some kind of regret? Is it true that consciousness haunts you till you die? Even though some of us could say that Good and Evil don't exist, can someone say that remorse, regret, consciousness, or whatever you call it, doesn't exist?

Joel · 08-21-2009

Good and Evil are abstract moral principles that have no ontological status. Regret and guilt, on the other hand, are psychological realities – they may not happen to someone, or they can be blanked out, but they are real as emotional experiences, like pain, amusement, desire and so on.One thing that greatly puzzles me about the notion of an afterlife is that human consciousness is profoundly changed by time, illness, drugs and, especially, brain damage. So how is it supposed to survive death? Is death a lesser event than the life events that change and often destroy personality? Does a person with dementia regain full memory and mental function after death? If so, by what process? It may be a pleasing thought but that doesn't, to me, mean that it has to be true. If everything nice had to be true we'd all be squirrels filling our little burrows with acorns and chestnuts. I think I'll start a religion based on that conviction. As long as the hedgehog sect and the squirrel sect don't start fighting, we'll be fine.

Joel · 08-21-2009

Sorry, that was supposed to be three separate paragraphs. I'm not actually on speed.

Russell Nash · 08-21-2009

A member of my big family, a libertine in his youth, although from a very religious family, used to mock at moral values. Now, at 60, he says: "Hell is here". His wife died from cancer at 44, after suffering from it 4 long years. And his only daughter is "mentally challenged", as they say nowadays, she is 18 but looks like 12. He keeps repeating me: "Hell is here". Sometimes, I myself, not being a libertine, disregarding moral values, more from a philosophical viewpoint than practically, started to be haunted by events that come to my mind for no logical reason at all. I wish I could have done differently when these events happened. People call it remorse, regret, and some say is consciousness. This news was around the world this week,

Fatal-concert verdict ignites firestorm
BUENOS AIRES — Judges convicted concert promoters, city officials and a band manager Wednesday in a 2004 fire that killed 194 people at an overcrowded working-class nightclub. The court absolved the Callejeros band of criminal responsibility for the blaze, caused by fans' fireworks.

The verdict for the band and the court's decision to allow those convicted to remain free pending appeal prompted an uproar. Police struggled to separate family members of victims and followers of the band who punched each other in the courtroom and the streets outside.

The Cromagnon Republic nightclub tragedy has become emblematic of government failures in Argentina, and many hoped for stiff sentences for a police supervisor and city inspectors accused of taking bribes and allowing fans to carry fireworks into a club where 3,000 people squeezed into a space designed for 1,000.

And I just wondered whether or not this fellow, one of the concert promoters, who is going to be in jail for 20 years, in a small room, is going to be haunted by 194 ghosts.

Quote Originally Posted by Joel

One thing that greatly puzzles me about the notion of an afterlife is that human consciousness is profoundly changed by time, illness, drugs and, especially, brain damage. So how is it supposed to survive death?

I don't believe in afterlife. Someone else may answer it to you. However, I may say that the other day I bought new speakers for my kid's desktop computer. And I already replaced the power supply, video card, fan, HDD, and RAM; the only thing I didn't change (yet) was the case, the screen, and the "intel chip". Is it still my kid's computer? That is how I still call it. Ship of Theseus paradox.

Let's play this game, Joel. I have a machine that could reproduce you, Joel, even at quantum level. By this I mean, all the positions of electrons, quarks, anything that you may think of, are being reproduced exactly. Then, before, waking up this bodily "copy" of Joel, I ask you the same question: knowing that for you soul doesn't exist, is this a copy of what you are? For you, and me, being no soul, yes, it is. Then, before waking this copy up, I ask you again: Joel, allow me to kill you, I'm going to be fast, don't worry, I promise that I'll wake your copy up, and having your whole memory up to the last seconds, and being an exact reproduction of you, when you die, and this copy wakes up, it is still going to be you. Question: Yes or no? what is the difference between both if there is no soul? Who, in his right mind, is going to say: yes, Mr. Hetman, kill me, that copy is still me. Weird, isn't it?

Russell Nash · 08-21-2009

Quote Originally Posted by Joel

Does a person with dementia regain full memory and mental function after death? If so, by what process?

The best idea of "soul" I found is this one; it is not my invention though. A radio has dials, buttons, a case, an antenna, and inside it has electronic components. Well, I'm talking about an old fashioned radio, not the modern ones that have just one integrated circuit. If a button is missing, then it could be replaced. We could even replace the antenna. And some internal components (probably all). I remember that I used to open them, and with a small screwdriver, I changed the range of frequencies that that radio can be tuned to. With modern day radios with a damaged chip one sometimes gets certain frequencies and not others. With dementia, similarly, one can have loss of memory, or a disorganized mind, basically, if I compare a radio to a human mind, basically, then I see that whatever I do to a mind is the same I can do to a radio. Are we not both the same, in a material world? But, in all this process the radio is not what is broadcasting anything, but a receiver. Perhaps our brains equally may be only receivers? And, in that case, our souls only inhabit a body for some time, but never being part of it or being produced by it. What makes you think that if such a thing as a soul exists, it is produced by the brain?