Reversalism
(This is merely conceptual, and in no way am I intending to indoctrinate anyone into my subjective idea. Take this concept with a grain of salt — it’s atheistic and incapable of being empirically validated. I’m 17, and I’ve only skimmed through philosophy. Try to be kind.)
What are you?
The concept of a you is just the self-model your brain which simulates, contingent on consciousness and its extrinsic factors.
What is the self-model?
The self-model is the central concept in the theory of consciousness called the self-model theory of subjectivity (SMT).
- This concept comprises experiences of ownership, of first person perspective, and of a long-term unity of beliefs and attitudes.
- These features are instantiated in the prefrontal cortex.
So what occurs to that self-model when you’re asleep?
Consciousness is a spectrum, and varies depending on what level of sleep you’re in. During deep, non-REM sleep (NREM), this model typically dissolves. Because there is no internal model to attribute experiences to, consciousness vanishes from an intrinsic perspective; the “universe” effectively ceases to exist for the individual — therefore, experiencing an ephemeral version of subjective ego-dissolution.
- SMT views sleep as a “cyclical death of the self”.
Reversalism echoes the same core; you experience a temporal and variable form of subjective death in deep non-REM, because your self-model system goes mostly offline. Effectively, you’re dead in regard to subjective experience.
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However what we know as life is simply consciousness interacting as a system — the intrinsic system (mind-dependent) processes and interacts with the extrinsic system (mind-independent reality). It is both the ability to objectively experience and be aware of subjective experience — obviously with biological constraints.
Subjective and biological death
Death is multifarious. There are different forms of death, two being biological and subjective. Reversalism implies that subjective death is what most fear of when we speak of irreversible death; that our sense of self, a seemingly ineradicable identity being ultimately mortal and fragile, can and will dissipate without reversal.
NREM and Death — Subjective Dissolution
The only perceptible difference between deep non-REM and subjective, irreversible death (which is mutually contingent with biological death) is that your body and brain are still alive. Substantially important regions of the brain such as the amygdala, prefrontal cortex, hippocampus and DMN (default mode network) are temporarily offline, nullifying any subjective experience in the moment. However, it’s reversible and upon awakening, a blank gap is noticeable — but with biological/conscious death, there is no gap to notice because there’s nothing to wake up to.
You can’t remember before you were born because simply, you weren’t existent. There’s nothing to remember. your brain cannot render anything from before your subjective experience of temporal flow, because one, that would be a paradox (how can one experience without being existent) and two, you simply weren’t here.
Go far enough back and neither were your ancestors.
Inadequate conclusion
“True death” could be a restoration of that state, if truly symmetrical to life.
Death in this context refers to phenomenological, subjective dissolution. Dissolution being subjective nonexistence.
If death is a restoration of subjective nonexistence, we’ve all once been “dead”.
And if so, it isn’t that our experience of life comes out of nowhere. It comes from death — if death is simply defined as nonexistence.
