h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

KB - reassuringly dishevelled


I do not understand what you are saying. Could you please explain it in plainer language.

Where does he actually exist?

Secondly, if possible, can you provide any sort of proof that he still exists.

Are you asking me to show you his body?

Walks away shaking head...

Can you provide me with proof that you've walked away shaking your head?

He exists even if he's not saying much, surely?

Well, I would have thought so. It's the first time I've ever come across the proposition that dead people don't exist. It seems to me that you could only justify a notion like that if you're talking about a "soul" or something like that, separate from the body, which is independent of matter and disappears when the body stops moving.

Although you can certainly say that once someone has stopped moving and started decomposing they have a different legal status. You can (often must) do things to them that you couldn't get away with previously.

"Where does he actually exist?"

I'm not sure that Hitch would have liked to be associated with this http://grooveshark.com/#/search?q=abraham+martin+and+john+-+marvin+gaye , but Alfster's question reminded me of it.

And, after all, he must have freed many from unquestioning devotion to the supernatural, and the preservation of traditions for their own sake (and of the religious establishment, of course).

>>and the preservation of traditions for their own sake

Is this the same Christopher Hitchens who started to celebrate Shabbas Seder with his family? Not for religious reasons, but for the sake of the tradition.

I'd say he did it in respect for his family, wouldn't you?

*He* said he did it to teach them to respect tradition.

There was nobody else in the family interested. He said (but his younger brother disagrees) that his maternal grandmother revealed that she was Jewish. This made him Jewish by matrilineal descent. He wanted to keep the tradition going in his family, despite its having skipped a generation.

>> It's the first time I've ever come across the proposition that dead people don't exist.

Well, his consciousness doesn't exist any more, does it? In cartesian terms: he no longer thinks, therefore he can no longer be said to be.

I am intrigued by the language we use about the dead; I think "stopped" is the most accurate.

Christopher Hitchins has stopped.

on bbc2 now, interview with Jeremy Paxman

I've seen the Paxman interviews. I found them very affecting. I watched them again since he died.

The guy was intelligent, witty, thought provoking, straight, warm, cared a hell of a damn about the position of women...he clearly was a woman's man, (Some people might know what I mean by that), charismatic, probably an absolute pain in the arse and bastard to be around for very long.....but I certainly would have relished being trapped in the lift with him for a weekend.

I couldn't say that about any of the others of that et al grouping...most likely I would murder Dawkins within half an hour

I miss him being alive.

>>Well, his consciousness doesn't exist any more, does it? In cartesian terms: he no longer thinks, therefore he can no longer be said to be.

Which is KB's point. He can only be said not to be if he had a soul/mind that was distinct from his body. And his associate Dan Dennett would beg to differ from the whole Cartesian proposition.

At very least he is a pile of ashes and an extended phenotype, as his friend Dawkins would say. Oh - and some genes he's passed on.

And some memes he's passed on.

His spirit lives!

And to you too, Ed. I am no dualist, but the whole appears to be greater than the sum of the parts.

Note the use of the phrase "appears to be".

The whole IS not greater than the sum of the parts, which is KB's point and presumably yours. But it certainly looks and feels that way. Putting the Con in Conscious... It's mysterious, but it's not a capital-M Mystery.

It is disingenuous to pretend there is no difference between the brain in motion and the brain at rest. The differences are clear both from the inside (how was I before I was born, so shall I be after I die) and the outside (please don't bother trying to find her, she's not there...).

Consciousness is a function of how our life-form is constructed, it's just that it is so darn compelling it's far far easier to think it's more fundamental than it is.

Anthropism lures.

One recently dead guy on the subject of another. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2010/02/a_nation_of_racist_dwarfs.single.html

@Blue:

>>Putting the Con in Conscious

Nice.