Mohammed Hijab – You’re Dead !
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The speakers discuss the importance of finding purpose and meaning for oneself in life, and the use of metaphysical concepts in philosophy. They explore the concept of " metaphysical" and how it can be verified through various methods, including scientifically verified logic. They also explore the use of " bodies" and "imaging memory" to describe experiences and relate to the post-mortem experience.
AI: Summary ©
Another question, which potentially will bring you off into the metaphysical for your thought experiment?
Yeah, sorry, I apologize. I was gonna say the thought experiment consisted of actually thinking about death contemplating what people will do when you die. So actually, we live in a third person kind of scene, where you literally have bodies put into the grave, and people are going away. Now, your children are there, you know, your parents potentially, are there as well. Some people are there as well, you know, they're leaving, you know, you're thinking about that whole process. And because human beings can't suffer for too long, they can't grieve for too long. So imagine how your children or your parents, whatever it may be, or your friends, after a few days, they're thinking
about it, they have to now suppress into the unconscious mind all of those grievances. You know, they forget about you, I think now is when I started this conversation, I asked you what the important things to talk about.
And you said religion, and we've been speaking not 1015 minutes,
mentioned religion once? Well, that's what you think.
This is a religious point of view, right? This is something that we have to deal with every day. Yes. And religion doesn't come into that. You know, I agree, in a way, in a sense, I agree with you that there are some themes in religion, which are, as you can say, like a Venn diagram, that would be not just religious, but either philosophical, or something else, or sociological cycle. But this is one of them. Death is, is a universal theme, in a sense, because everyone has to come to terms with death. Right? So it's, I genuinely do believe that coming to terms of their thinking about it, introducing, as you're weakening your life, to go back to Heidegger will bring you back that sense
of authenticity, grounding, right? anchoring. I think we all need to find meaning and purpose in our lives. And as a non religious person, I think it's my duty to find purpose in my life,
find a different manner than I do.
Okay.
Then ask a question, why is it what is? Do you believe in meaning with a capital M? Do you believe in actual meaning and purpose with a capital P? Or do you believe in a meaning are subjective, just individual, individually on this planet, I have to find something that has meaning for themselves to get through the end of their life, get themselves into a fair price. That's illusionary. So it's not actually from that perspective, that wouldn't be there isn't a an actual meaning and actual purpose that anchors one, to living a meaningful life and serves the purpose of giving a fulfilled life and
whether you consider that to be
served its purpose. So one could argue the same thing with religion, by the way, but not making that argument coming back to the more important philosophical argument. The question is this. I mean, I don't know what framework to kind of operate from, whether it be like evolutionary framework or an atheistic one, I think human problems have solutions.
I don't disagree with that.
The question is this. I mean,
what role does metaphysical explanations if any, having on your thought process? Do you ever think that potentially there is something beyond the physical world? That's a long word, you know, that's not something that comes into my mind.
It's not a word that I use every day or every day. But what I mean by the
definition of metaphysics, so, meta wise, metaphysical is that which is above and beyond the material world, which can be extrapolate from the five senses, that which is empirically verifiable, if you like, that when we talk about metaphysics, we're talking about that. So my point, my point to you is that if we confine ourselves to the material, then we're gonna have material solutions and problems. But if we expand to the metaphysical realm, then we can start talking about things like theology and philosophy that
so that's what I was gonna say that, for example, what happens after death? That's a legitimate question. And what's your answer to that? And why is that? Give me your answer and tell me the reasoning behind it. Because when we're talking about death, well, we're gonna ask about what happens when you die and after you die? Well, I don't consider that not considered life. The end of life.
Why not?
I don't know why not. Nothing. Some people do. Yeah, some people don't. I think
I guess I guess,
I guess goes back to what Heidegger is talking about, and the sense kind of like kind of suppressing that thought, but less because we've lived the life on this earth, right.
And while I believe one of the things that distinguishes human beings above and beyond all the animals, is self contemplation, introspective.
introspection, so here, my question to you is, what do you think is going to happen? Most probably,
my actions will disperse and be used in some form.
Bases or food for worms.
Yeah, that's
why you've explained this materially, what will happen to your body by and also in the memories of the people that I've met? Yeah. Which will also, then my memory will continue. It's about 100 years from now, everyone's memories are swept away. Yeah, there's nothing nothing exists of you.
Apart from the individual atoms and labor.
My question is as follows. I mean, do you think that human beings are made of just material elements like carbon? Or do you think that were something more than just carbon? Oh, yes, or no other than the sum of the parts, I mean, you could dry out those chemicals and put down a table and we're not
introducing any animals that may introduce it. This is a debate in philosophy right. Now, three schools of thought, broadly speaking, the materialists also called physicalists, the duelist and they are idealists. So, materialists believe that everything that exists is especially material that we should cannot empirically verify, or justify, it doesn't exist, in a sense, or it's meaningless. I wouldn't say it doesn't exist, they will say it's meaningless. It's a meaningless proposition. And there's a school of thought called logical positivism that flourished in the 1920s and 30s, which kind of pushed this materialist way of thinking illusion.
Okay, I apologize. Let me try and break it down. Some people believe that all that exists, is physical things.
Some other people say no, actually, what you have is physical things. And many other things, metaphysical things, experience. It could be anything, for example, mathematics,
a number it can't be seen.
It can't be smelt. It can't be dealt with. It can't put onto a microscope, it cannot go through the scientific method.
And that's why, by the way, by the 40s, and 50s, this way, called logical positivism became very weak. And in fact, they retracted those materialists and positivists, they kind of retracted this whole verification principle, they realize that things like this, mathematics can be justified. Now, why am I telling you this? The reason why I'm telling you this is because it's an age old discussion. Are we minds and bodies? Or are we just bodies? Because if we assume that we're just bodies, then when we die, necessarily, what that means is that we're going to be, we're going to cease to exist. But if we accept that we our minds and bodies, like Judas, for example, would say
that we're not just bodies,
that despite the body, we have experience, for example, through dreams.
Because when we're dreaming, we're not going we're not actually interacting with the extraneous variables. We're not interacting with the world. Yeah, we have a whole experience. In a dream. We've had the dream before, right. Yeah. So the point is this is that when we die, what's going to happen? If we say we're just bodies, it makes sense for us to say, okay, for just bodies, no problem, the body will cease to exist, and nothing will happen. But if we are minds and bodies, which is the prevailing school of thought and philosophy, and by the way, most philosophers, the vast majority of philosophers believe in this, that we're not just we cannot just be bodies, not just piles of
chemicals. We're not we're more than that.
What you're saying about the method? No, it doesn't. Yeah, you're right. It doesn't necessitate that. Yeah.
You were asking me about what I understand or what I think about metaphysics though, I'll
think about it differently. So
there are things that are transcendent to our normal everyday life. Yes, we might experience through a symphony or
a walk in the mountains. Perfect. Yeah. So experience. Yes. Yes. When you talk about metaphysics, and
you know,
when
you're absolutely right about that, you absolutely and that's exactly what philosophers cite. They say that first person subjective
experiences are examples of something which is not tangible, or scientific because for something to be scientific has to be third person.
sciences and the third person, third person is he or she, by the way, when we say first person I'm talking about that which relates to me, I write third person is he she? So what do we mean by sciences, third person sciences, you doing something to something else, and seeing the results of that a third person, whereas what you've just described, I believe quite correctly, right? The orchestra, the symphony, wherever you want to say they're walking on the mountains, is first person, no one can deny your first person experience. Yeah, you get moved by an experience that you can't quite explain transcendent in some way. Exactly. Now, the point is, when we dream, we're going
through those experiences again, there are no material things around us in the actual dream, you could say their mental constructs. But in what realm does that in what realm does that exist in? Does it exist? Right? Now, if we take this questioning, to the post death experience? Because Do you know what I mean? We talked about science briefly. Science is just an accumulation of historical events. And the assumption that history will repeat itself through patterns and laws. That's what history that's what science is.
If we use that approach, we'll find that when we're when we're sleeping, for example, we're leaving the conscious mind to the unconscious. So otherwise, we consciousness is suspended temporarily, and then we'll come back to what we think is the real world, right? And not context.
In that context, we could argue
that we're having an experience, which is a very real experience. Yeah. Now, if that's our experience of losing consciousness, that is an extension of losing consciousness, you will lose consciousness and death, for accept that premise, how can we?
How can we ascertain, well, how can we say for certain that when we die, we're not going to go into that space? Again, that domain again, which is as real as this domain, which has all these things in it, which are sometimes traditionally called religious.
You're comparing?
Yes, exactly. That's exactly what the prophet Muhammad says. He said, one time, this is the sister of sleep, or sleep is the sister of death.
What happens when you die?
There's only one level? How do you know?
Yes, and you can't find
respect to face.
That's fine. That's a solicitation. But here we're talking about things which we can do. The thing is, we have to think about how we reach conclusions, right? How do you come to conclusions I'll put to you that everything you can draw there, which is supposedly, even your own existence, can be rigorously criticized anything, even your own existence.
But what I will say to you, is this, what we do as human beings, whether it be
normally or not, is we kind of, we apply a probabilistic reasoning.
probability. So it's, I'm probably here right now, because everything
feels like that is so with everything.
Exactly. So we apply that kind of reasoning right? Now, what I'm saying to you is that for apply the same reasoning,
the same kind of influential sometimes it's called inferential reasoning, inferences. Yeah, we can make a very similar case for life after death. We can't bring it out.
We can't prove it.
What do you mean by the supernatural?
Going off the line?
Depends on how you define logic, right? Because we can make a very clear case
of the cosmological argument. Yeah, everything that begins to exist has a cause.
The universe began to exist. Therefore, the universe has a cause. So there's no argument
very logical, why is the cause and must have power and must have knowledge whatever that causes, therefore, God or wherever you wanted to find the cause as as the attributes of a conventional God, right. So from NASA logical deduction, we've come to the conclusion that there's a cause the Creator, through that logical deduction.
So depends on what kind of logic you're talking about biologically meaning empiricism.
Looking at something for your five senses, Yeah, I would agree with you, right? Why if you're talking about deduction,
well, you can't prove the existence of logic to science.
At this point, logical principles are metaphysical in nature, axioms, mathematical axioms, and even the whole field of mathematics is metaphysical. There is no physical evidence of maths none whatsoever. There's no physical evidence of logic. So logic itself can be scientifically verified.
And that's one of the reasons why verification ism as is known by
many different philosophers was even like, for example, a book called language truth and logic, yeah, and he was making a very similar argument to you right in 1933.
And this book, it was saying that only those things which you can see as that which you can verify is that which has meaning anything else has meaningless and he I saw an interview with him in 1976. And he categorically took back what he believed before so verification ism
equals strong verification ism is actually cannot be sustained. So had to be had to undergo fuser why because of these questions. Things like mass cannot be ascertained through science through verification is
very fundamental.
If you want to find this objective purpose, it's easier to do than just make one up and it can be unethical by the standards of the day Hitler had a subjective purpose of life and
everyone can find this objective * can have a subjective purpose of life. Anyone can have that but all we're saying is that is there a mean a meaning? Are we here for a reason? Or are we just
enjoy? He had a
happy?
Yeah.
good about yourself in doing and he didn't do
you feel so good about ourselves when we do this? Yes. How can you explain that? It helps. It's a part of social evolution
will talk
to you