Eternal oblivion

Eternal oblivion is an expression sometimes used to describe what might occur after death.^[1]

In philosophy

In the Apology of Socrates (written by Plato), after Socrates is sentenced to death, he addresses the court. He ponders the nature of death and summarizes that there are two major schools of thought on the afterlife. The first is that it is a migration of the soul or consciousness from this existence into another, and that the souls of all previously deceased people will also be there. This excites Socrates, because he will be able to conduct his dialectic inquiries with all of the great Greek heroes and thinkers of the past.

The other opinion about death is that it is oblivion, the complete cessation of consciousness, not only unable to feel but a complete lack of awareness, like a person in a deep, dreamless sleep. Socrates says that even this oblivion does not frighten him very much, because while he would be unaware, he would correspondingly be free from any pain or suffering. Socrates stated that not even the great King of Persia could say that he ever rested so soundly and peacefully as he did in a dreamless sleep.^[2]

Cicero, writing three centuries later in his treatise On Old Age, in the voice of Cato the Elder, similarly discussed the prospects of death, frequently referring to the works of earlier Greek writers. Cicero also concluded that death was either a continuation of consciousness or cessation of it, and that if consciousness continues in some form, there is no reason to fear death; while if it is in fact eternal oblivion, he will be free of all worldly miseries, in which case he should also not be deeply troubled by death. Similar thoughts about death were expressed by the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius in his first-century BC didactic poem De rerum natura and by the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus in his Letter to Menoeceus, in which he writes:

Accustom yourself to believing that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply the capacity for sensation, and death is the privation of all sentience; therefore, a correct understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not by adding to life a limitless time, but by taking away the yearning after immortality. For life has no terrors for him who has thoroughly understood that there are no terrors for him in ceasing to live. Foolish, therefore, is the man who says that he fears death, not because it will pain when it comes, but because it pains in the prospect. Whatever causes no annoyance when it is present causes only a groundless pain in the expectation. Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and when death is come, we are not. It is nothing, then, either to the living or to the dead, for with the living it is not and the dead exist no longer.^[3][4]

Scientific views

Popular models of consciousness in modern neuroscience view the brain as the basis of subjective experience, agency, self-awareness, and awareness of the surrounding natural world. When brain death occurs, all brain function ceases.^[5]

Many neuroscientists and neurophilosophers, such as Daniel Dennett, believe that consciousness is dependent upon the functioning of the brain and death is a cessation of consciousness. Scientific research has discovered that some areas of the brain, like the reticular activating system or the thalamus, appear to be necessary for consciousness because dysfunction of or damage to these structures leads to disorders of consciousness.^[6] Through a naturalist analysis of the mind, it is regarded as being dependent on the brain, as shown from the various effects of brain damage.^[7]

Paraphrasing philosopher Paul Edwards, Keith Augustine and Yonatan Fishman state that "the greater the damage to the brain, the greater the corresponding damage to the mind. The natural extrapolation from this pattern is all too clear – obliterate brain functioning altogether, and mental functioning too will cease."^[8]

Neuroscience is a large interdisciplinary field founded on the premise that all of behavior and all of the cognitive processes that constitute the mind have their origin in the structure and function of the nervous system, especially in the brain. According to this view, the mind can be regarded as a set of operations carried out by the brain.^{[9][10][11][12][13]}

Many lines of evidence support this view, for example:

• Neuroanatomical correlates: In the field of neuroimaging, neuroscientists can use various functional neuroimaging methods to measure an aspect of brain function that correlates with a particular mental state or process.
• Experimental manipulations: Neuroimaging correlational studies cannot determine whether neural activity plays a causal role in the occurrence of mental processes (correlation does not imply causation) and they cannot determine if the neural activity is either necessary or sufficient for such processes to occur. Identification of causation and necessary and sufficient conditions requires explicit experimental manipulation of that activity. If manipulation of brain activity changes consciousness, then a causal role for that brain activity can be inferred.^[14][15] Two of the most common types of manipulation experiments are loss-of-function and gain-of-function experiments. In a loss-of-function (also called "necessity") experiment, a part of the nervous system is diminished or removed in an attempt to determine if it is necessary for a certain process to occur, and in a gain-of-function (also called "sufficiency") experiment, an aspect of the nervous system is increased relative to normal.^[16] Manipulations of brain activity can be performed in several ways:

Pharmacological manipulation uses various drugs which alter neural activity by interfering with neurotransmission, resulting in alterations in perception, mood, consciousness, cognition, and behavior. Psychoactive drugs are divided into different groups according to their pharmacological effects; euphoriants which tend to induce feelings of euphoria, stimulants that induce temporary improvements in either mental or physical functions, depressants that depress or reduce arousal or stimulation and hallucinogens which can cause hallucinations, perception anomalies, and other substantial subjective changes in thoughts, emotion, and consciousness.

Electrical and magnetical stimulations uses various electrical methods and techniques like transcranial magnetic stimulation. In a comprehensive review of electrical brain stimulation (EBS) results obtained from the last 100 years neuroscientist Aslihan Selimbeyoglu and neurologist Josef Parvizi compiled a list of many different subjective experiential phenomena and behavioral changes that can be caused by electrical stimulation of the cerebral cortex or subcortical nuclei in awake and conscious human subjects.^[17]

Optogenetic manipulation uses light to control neurons which have been genetically sensitised to light.^{[citation needed]}

• Symptoms of brain damage: Examining case studies (like the case of Phineas Gage) and lesion studies are the only sources of knowledge regarding what happens to the mind when the brain is damaged. Various symptoms have been documented.^[18][19]
• Mental development/brain development correlation: The brain grows and develops in an intricately orchestrated sequence of stages, and this development is correlated with the development of various mental capabilities.^[20][21][22] Impairments in the growth and development of the brain also result in various neurodevelopmental disorders.

Oblivion and subjectivity

Thomas Clark, founder of Center for Naturalism, wrote a paper titled "Death, Nothingness, and Subjectivity" (1994).^[23][1] He critiqued what he saw as a flawed description of eternal oblivion as a "plunge into darkness". When some imagine their deaths, they project themselves into a future self which experiences an eternal silent darkness. He argues that this is wrong, because without consciousness, there is no awareness of space and no basis for time – there cannot be darkness, because to experience darkness, one must be conscious of it. For Clark, in oblivion there is even an absence of experience, as we can only speak of experience when a subjective self exists. According to neuroscientist Giulio Tononi, consciousness is "all we are and all we have: lose consciousness and, as far as you are concerned, your own self and the entire world dissolve into nothingness."^[24]

See also

• Annihilationism
• Anattā
• Christian mortalism
• Afterlife
• Information-theoretic death
• Neural correlates of consciousness
• Nirvana

References

1. Clark, Thomas W. "Death, Nothingness, and Subjectivity". Naturalism.org. Center for Naturalism. Archived from the original on 23 October 2015. Retrieved 1 November 2025.
2. Plato; Estienne, Henri; Serres, Jean de; Adams, John; Adams, John Quincy (1578). "Platonis opera quae extant omnia". archive.org. [Genevae?] : Excudebat Henr. Stephanus. p. 17.
3. Cook, Vincent. "Epicurus - Letter to Menoeceus". www.epicurus.net. Archived from the original on 3 January 2017. Retrieved 9 August 2018.
4. "Epicurus and Lucretius against the dear of death". www2.gsu.edu. Archived from the original on 26 August 2018. Retrieved 9 August 2018.
5. Chalmers, David John (1996). The conscious mind: in search of a fundamental theory. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-585-35313-1. OCLC 47011200.
6. Dennett, D. C. (1991). Consciousness explained. Boston: Little, Brown and Co. ISBN 0-316-18065-3. OCLC 23648691.
7. Hallquist, Chris (20 January 2013). "Neuroscience and the Soul". The Uncredible HallQ. Patheos.com. Archived from the original on 9 November 2014. Retrieved 14 February 2015. Quoting neuroscientist Sam Harris (video Archived 6 July 2015 at the Wayback Machine).
8. The Myth of an Afterlife, Michael Martin and Keith Augustine, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2015, p. 206.
9. Kandel, ER; Schwartz JH; Jessell TM; Siegelbaum SA; Hudspeth AJ. "Principles of Neural Science, Fifth Edition" (2012).
10. Squire, L. et al. "Fundamental Neuroscience, 4th edition" (2012).
11. O. Carter Snead. "Neuroimaging and the "Complexity" of Capital Punishment" (2007).
12. Eric R. Kandel, M.D. "A New Intellectual Framework for Psychiatry" (1998).
13. "Neuroscience Core Concepts: The Essential Principles of Neuroscience". BrainFacts.org: Explore the Brain and Mind.
14. Farah, Martha J.; Murphy, Nancey (February 2009). "Neuroscience and the Soul". Science. 323 (5918): 1168. doi:10.1126/science.323.5918.1168a. PMID 19251609. S2CID 6636610.
15. Max Velmans, Susan Schneider. "The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness" (2008). p. 560.
16. Matt Carter, Jennifer C. Shieh. "Guide to Research Techniques in Neuroscience" (2009).
17. Selimbeyoglu, Aslihan; Parvizi, J. (2010). "Electrical stimulation of the human brain: Perceptual and behavioral phenomena reported in the old and new literature". Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. 4: 46. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2010.00046. PMC 2889679. PMID 20577584.
18. "Severe TBI Symptoms"
19. "Symptoms of Brain Injury"
20. "Cognitive Development and Aging: A Life Span Perspective"
21. "Adolescent Brains Are A Work In Progress"
22. "Blossoming brains"
23. Benjamin Libet; Anthony Freeman; Keith Sutherland (2000). The Volitional Brain: Towards a Neuroscience of Free Will. Imprint Academic. pp. [1]–. ISBN 978-0907845119.
24. Tononi, Giulio (2008). "Consciousness as Integrated Information: A Provisional Manifesto". The Biological Bulletin. 215 (3): 216–42. doi:10.2307/25470707. JSTOR 25470707. PMID 19098144. S2CID 364500.

Further reading

• Martin, Michael; Augustine, Keith. (2015). The Myth of an Afterlife: The Case against Life After Death. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-0810886773