What do we mean by “cease to exist”?

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If these minds cease to exist, it is neither akin to the demolished building [n]or the concept/idea of a particular restaurant.

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I think you need to say exactly how/why it is different.  Above you are just making an assertion. 

Maybe it's obvious to you, but if I am going to agree or disagree it I want to know exactly what I am considering.


Thanks

[Laird]

To be clear what is strange to me is that anti-Survival adherents believe the Experiencer will "cease to exist" in a way that nothing else within Experience will. Basically they insist on a strange - illogical? - Oblivion for Persons yet would be unlikely to accept a chair can "wink out" of existence.

Oh, I see, and yes, that is strange, except for physicalists, for whom a person is emergent from a configuration of matter, and who thus winks out when the matter's configuration no longer supports personhood.

The Person as just the PoV...it's not new exactly but I'd not given it much thought...

Let me know your conclusions if you do turn your thoughts to it.

I think you need to say exactly how/why it is different.  Above you are just making an assertion. 

Maybe it's obvious to you, but if I am going to agree or disagree it I want to know exactly what I am considering.

Thanks

Heh well it's not obvious to me either! I'm not sure if the case for Survival I'm making is valid. 

But as an attempt to articulate the difference I'd say the other cases do not change the total number of constituents in reality. Rather they just involve a change in Structure. To give some examples:

Let's say when I tell my friend his favorite restaurant has ceased to exist, what actually has happened is that a tornado has destroyed the building. Then the particles are presumably still there - some may have collapse back into their generating field but even then this is just a change in Structure.

OTOH perhaps what has happened is the building is still there, but it's now a bowling alley. Or a restaurant with new decor, new owners, [or maybe just] a new menu. Here within the building the Structure has changed in some sense that makes it debatable whether the "favorite restaurant" retains enough characteristics to still be said to exist.

But when a Person ceases to exist, they have "winked out" of existence. There is a kind of, as I see it, radical discontinuity that is not present in the other cases.

Again, I'm not saying the argument is definitely valid, just that this is how I am thinking about it right now. 

Heh well it's not obvious to me either! I'm not sure if the case for Survival I'm making is valid. 

But as an attempt to articulate the difference I'd say the other cases do not change the total number of constituents in reality. Rather they just involve a change in Structure. To give some examples:

Let's say when I tell my friend his favorite restaurant has ceased to exist, what actually has happened is that a tornado has destroyed the building. Then the particles are presumably still there - some may have collapse back into their generating field but even then this is just a change in Structure.

OTOH perhaps what has happened is the building is still there, but it's now a bowling alley. Or a restaurant with new decor, new owners, [or maybe just] a new menu. Here within the building the Structure has changed in some sense that makes it debatable whether the "favorite restaurant" retains enough characteristics to still be said to exist.

But when a Person ceases to exist, they have "winked out" of existence. There is a kind of, as I see it, radical discontinuity that is not present in the other cases.

Again, I'm not saying the argument is definitely valid, just that this is how I am thinking about it right now. 

Aren't you assuming a mind is different from a restaurant, and isn't that what you are trying to prove, so aren't you assuming what you are trying to prove?

Aren't you assuming a mind is different from a restaurant, and isn't that what you are trying to prove, so aren't you assuming what you are trying to prove?

I think the difference is noted when I say the mind projects the status of restaurant onto the building?

Though I have to admit I am not sure how they could be the same?

If I visited a town you [had] lived in, and you asked me about the condition of an old favorite restaurant to which I replied, “Sorry, it doesn’t exist anymore.”

What do you think happened to the restaurant?

If it was demolished, the constituent “physical” stuff would be expected to be around. Just what we mentally conceived of an arrangement of said particles constituting a restaurant would be lost.

Similarly if the building still existed, and we - after getting recipes from the previous owners along with their blessing - pooled money to reopen the restaurant it would “pop” back into existence.

In fact we could re-open the restaurant in a new location, though some might argue it’s not the same restaurant because of a new location and new ownership. But what if the original owners came back, then it could be considered by more people to genuinely have continuity with the prior restaurant.

But what about the minds that hold the idea of this restaurant, along with a variety of other concepts and ideas and emotions? 

If these minds cease to exist, it is neither akin to the demolished building [n]or the concept/idea of a particular restaurant.

It seems to me the idea that a Person could cease to exist is saying something rather unique, a special kind of non-existence we don’t have a good analogy for?

Or am I wrong about this…honestly not sure…

Traditionally at a QM level... no observations/interactions are lost, no matter how far away in space, or, time they are. They become facts.

IMO Experience is the same. The restaurant may have gone, but the experiences of the restaurant remain exactly where they were created, and theoretically the experiences remain individually accessible with the right pattern. Experiences (tied to the underlying interactions) don't cease to exist, they are already facts

Two examples of areas where I think things go wrong IMO is... 1). around the label of 'mind', the idea of "minds that hold..." - like a plastic container of some kind holds stuff, it assumes the stuff that a container holds is isolated, can be isolated in some way. 2). around the idea that the Experience of the restaurant is a thing, it's not, its a Result (Experience), i.e. what comes after the equals sign in maths, what comes before the equals sign is hidden, but we can Experience some of the mystery of the process by which that which is hidden, becomes a result, within our Experience of QM experiments.