Arguments

Courage and cowardice argument

An argument about the moral weight of taking superimmortality seriously. Refusing to follow the premises to their conclusion is its own kind of intellectual cowardice.

Sometimes secular humanists show pride in the fact that they believe that at death they will never experience conscious existence again. They are proud of the fact that either they are not afraid of death or of being dead. But what is about being dead that they do not fear? Some have stated that being dead is like what you experienced before you were born. The implication is that you experience nothing before you were born. The problem with this is that just because you do not remember experiencing something does not means that you did not experience something in the past before birth. However, the point that they are trying to make is that you wil not be aware of being dead. To put it in perspective, if you happend to exist again after any length of time of being dead, including and infinite amount of time, it would seem like no time had passed at all. A trillion years would seem like less the blink of an eye. When you think about it that is not really very scary. What is scary is the suffering you can go through to in order to die while you are still alive. What is scary if life. What we need courage for is life not death. If you believe that when you die you will never suffer from anything ever again it can be a very pleasant thought especially if you have suffered a lot in this life. For a secular humanist death by any means is escape from suffering.

For many religions death can mean a better or worse future. So people will not kill themselves when times get bad, religions promise eternal suffering, a suffering worse than they have ever experienced on earth, if they do kill themselves, in an after life (hell) that is endlessly long. Religions have put extra fear into death. Some religions believe in reincarnation. This means re-existing on earth over and over again. In their view this means suffering through life over and over again. In retrospect the secular humanist view of death or being dead is not so much courage but the easy (or compassionate) way out. Maybe the cowards way out of the problem? Secular humanists and religious believers both sort of have it right about death. The ideas proposed in awaretheory solves this paradox of conflicting views. Who really are the cowards and who really have the courage when it comes to death of the individual? Can you believe in the ideas of awaretheory and not be accused of being a coward and taking the easy way out because awaretheory gives you the best of both worlds? If you are a pessimist you could say it gives you the worst of both worlds. But awaretheory actually gives a solution for this also.

Awaretheory is based on the scientific idea that the functioning of the brain produces consciousness. If the brain does not function in the right ways (like in the case of it being dead) it no longer produces consciousness. There is no soul or other supernatural aspect of you so it seems that the secular humanists are right. However, they are wrong on one aspect. It is really not their fault because they have not had the ability to deal properly with the problem that they then faced. If nature can produce a consciousness that you experienced once why can it not do it again? This is where semantics confuses the entire issue. We want to know under what circumstances can we create the same person again after his death? There are two ways of solving the problem. The first way is by restoring life to the body of the person. The second ways is by making a close enough replica of a person. The problem of making a replica of a person is that it is a replica and not the same person. This is deductively and logically true using the definition of a person. This is usually where secular humanists drop the argument since it appears to be so clear cut. But it turns out that it is not clear cut at all!

The first way of creating life after death is believed by several different religions. There are two grouping of ways to accomplish this task of making a person's body alive again. First, through science and technology. In fact, science has brought people back to life after short periods of death. The second way is by supernatural means like a god restoring a person back to life or by the suposed natural process of reincarnation. The problem with these two ways is that there is no guarantee that god, gods, nature, or other supernatural entity actually exist or want to bring your body back to life. And if they do reanimate your body maybe it will not be your consciousness but someone else's that they restore within it.

We now revisit the second way of creating life after death for the original or you. We do not have the right words and the right scientific understanding of the problem. The words replica and person are not adequate to scientifically define the problem. There are all sorts of different kinds of replicas. A stature replicas is not even going to be animate or conscious but it will nonetheless be a replica of the original. A second type of replica will look like a human act like a human and look and act like the person it is replicating. This definition of a replica is good but does not guarantee that this person is conscious and has the consciousness of the original. What do we mean by the statement that some body or person has the consciousness of some other body or person? What does it mean if two different bodies to produce the same consciousness? Can two different bodies produce the same consciousness under any circumstance? Awaretheory believes there are not enough correctly or well defined words to define and properly understand the problem. There are several key terms that awaretheory defines and uses that helps in the understanding and solution of the problem. These terms are ixperiencitness, identireplica, cidentireplica, videntireplica, physipath, physapath, and awarepath. Their definitions can be looked up. There is nothing illogical or irrational about these following questions or their various answers. Can two different people have the same ixperiencitness? Can two different points on the same physipath have a different ixperiencitness? Awaretheory predicts that the answer to both of these questions is yes. Most religions and their adherents and secular humanists, when they understand the question, believe that the answer to both is no.

It is not a logical contradiction that there can be two or more different bodies that can have the same structure and functioning. Awaretheory predicts that if two or more bodies have the same structure and functioning then they have or produce the same consciousness and ixperiencitness. It is not a logical contradiction if they do not have the same consciousness and ixperiencitness either. But the evidence is that they will have the same consciousness and ixperiencitness. The evidence is also that because of the complexity of the body two bodies the probability having the same structure and functioning is so nearly zero it can be considered impossible. This is not the end of the story just the beginning. What is important in the continuation of your conscious existence, life after death and immortality is not the need for creating the same consciousness but the simpler and probable task of making any consciousness that has the same ixperiencitness as the original or you. What we find is a very large grouping of structures and functioning of matter that will produce an ixperiencitness. We also know that the universe is much bigger and longer lasting with more planets than scientists used to think just last century. So the random creation of a particular ixperiencitness is more likely. When we add to this conscious beings ability to learn, solve problems, enhance themselves, colonize new lands or worlds and deliberately create specific consciousnesses and ixperiencitnesses, the possibility of life after death becomes much more likely.

There is the fear and real possibility of permanent death where you never experience anything ever again. But there is also fear of life extending endlessly into the future with all the suffering that life can create. Both can exist according to awaretheory. The worst of both worlds it seems. Awaretheory even predicts that there can be infinitely long extremely miserable awarepaths that can exist for each person or each ixperiencitness. Which is the definition of hell. This may seem to paint a bleak picture but in fact it is just the opposite. If we could do nothing about the suffering that exist it might be a bleak picture. But we can make things better. We can work toward the the creation of better awarepaths. Awaretheory does not put our future in the hands of some irrational (non existent) god or gods but in the hands of the conscious beings that suffer when we make mistakes. The ideas of awaretheory ties people and other consciousness being together.

The courage and cowardice argument

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APA

Douglas, M. (2026). Courage and cowardice argument. You Never Die companion site. Retrieved from https://volney.co/concepts/courage-and-cowardice-argument.html

MLA

Douglas, Mark. "Courage and cowardice argument." You Never Die companion site, 2026, https://volney.co/concepts/courage-and-cowardice-argument.html.

Chicago

Douglas, Mark. "Courage and cowardice argument." You Never Die companion site. Last modified 2026. https://volney.co/concepts/courage-and-cowardice-argument.html.

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