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wow...this discussion turned from an interesting view of the pathfinder metaphysics into a depressing discussion about morality...
and what was that about pharasma feeding souls to groetus? Where does that info come from?
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I think "murder = bad" is a pretty basic building block of Pathfinder stories. And the easiest way to make murder bad is for death to be bad. Most Pathfinder encounters are the PCs fighting for their lives. Having death basically be life but more utopian undercuts this.
Could you come up with other ways to justify why murder is bad when you build your cosmology? Sure, but you start getting further into the weeds than a beer and pretzels game like Pathfinder is meant to get.
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It seems like today is not a day where I am going to be able to collect my thoughts properly so instead of a marathon post, I'll just bring back around a few important points I think are being neglected:
"It is morally permissible to extend one's life by the minimal means necessary."
I have noticed that you do stress that these means do not necessarily entail killing others to achieve your goals, however you do also seem to suggest that killing others is permissible by the same definition.
As it happens, there are a number of non-evil means that allow you to extend your life far beyond your normal span, not limited to but including becoming a god (esp Test of Starstone; if a drunken adventurer could do it, it's by no means beyond reach for someone making a serious bid at lichdom) or whatever Baba Yaga and Aroden did.
If we are serious about the minimal means necessary, we can still place lichdom at the far end because there are many other non-evil means which could have been taken. To bring back the cannibalism argument, this would be feasting on your fellow's body because the bananas in the tree are harder to reach.
Also, as has been brought up but I don't think fully addressed yet, we have no evidence that becoming an undead creature (i.e. the primary means of achieving immortality which brings others suffering) will necessarily allow you to live longer than dying and living out an afterlife as a petitioner. The oldest lich I know of in the setting is an Azlanti, making him some 10,000+ years old. We simply lack the statistics on average petitioner existence beyond 'gradual absorption over millennia' and conjecture from the existence of outsiders older than some mortal realms.
It would seem like extending the material portion of your existence has not yet compared favourably to the lifespan you might have as a petitioner. The fact that a petitioner eventually gets absorbed back into the cycle of the cosmos and forms the building blocks of a fresh soul doesn't strike me as remarkably different from a lich who has grown bored of life and dissolves into a demilich and eventually fizzles out, or otherwise gets destroyed when their planet's star destroys its system.
EDIT PS: And if you follow the interpretation of the other forum-goer who posts using this avatar, taking certain high-level monk or druid features will also make you not only immortal but eternally young, which sounds like a way better deal than a soul-siphoning scheme or undeath.
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Because survival is NOT in question, there are limits on permissible methods of extending your life. I.e.: hurting other people to extend your current material life is not permissible. As for my earlier posts this would not qualify as "minimally necessary" or egoic.
I thought you already said there are limits under the PF rules?
Hence why I say that only the minimally necessary conditions are permissible. So if you have non-lich options, take those. If the only options are 'evil' then they aren't actually evil under my framework.
I don't really see the distinction you're trying to draw here. Because in either framework it sounds like harming others is a bad thing, unless you actually believe that you could justify wiping out cities to extend your life by a year?
When a person dies their soul/consciousness persists disembodied until it re-incarnates. While memories don't usually persist they can sometimes; Personal subjectivity is not interrupted.
Also, this seems awfully similar to the current system if you believe loss of memories is loss of the self. In the current system, you wind up as a petitioner and lose your memories, only sometimes you don't. Sure, EVENTUALLY you dissolve back into nothing, but the implication seems to be that this is a choice you willingly make after untold eons of existence. That just... doesn't seem all that different to me.
I thought you already said there are limits under the PF rules?
There are limits in the PF rules/lore - no matter what you do eventually you will be snuffed out from existence. That's a pretty hard limit.
Also, this seems awfully similar to the current system if you believe loss of memories is loss of the self. In the current system, you wind up as a petitioner and lose your memories, only sometimes you don't. Sure, EVENTUALLY you dissolve back into nothing, but the implication seems to be that this is a choice you willingly make after untold eons of existence. That just... doesn't seem all that different to me.
I do not accept the premise that memory has anything to do with identity. The self is not memories, it's just the self. It only needs to exist continuously for survival to be achieved regardless of whether your memories are in any particular arrangement.
The difference between my system and Pathfinder's is that existence is non-negotiable. If you exist at all, you must exist forever infinitely in some experential form.
It seems like today is not a day where I am going to be able to collect my thoughts properly so instead of a marathon post, I'll just bring back around a few important points I think are being neglected:
"It is morally permissible to extend one's life by the minimal means necessary."
I have noticed that you do stress that these means do not necessarily entail killing others to achieve your goals, however you do also seem to suggest that killing others is permissible by the same definition.
As it happens, there are a number of non-evil means that allow you to extend your life far beyond your normal span, not limited to but including becoming a god (esp Test of Starstone; if a drunken adventurer could do it, it's by no means beyond reach for someone making a serious bid at lichdom) or whatever Baba Yaga and Aroden did.
If we are serious about the minimal means necessary, we can still place lichdom at the far end because there are many other non-evil means which could have been taken. To bring back the cannibalism argument, this would be feasting on your fellow's body because the bananas in the tree are harder to reach.
Also, as has been brought up but I don't think fully addressed yet, we have no evidence that becoming an undead creature (i.e. the primary means of achieving immortality which brings others suffering) will necessarily allow you to live longer than dying and living out an afterlife as a petitioner. The oldest lich I know of in the setting is an Azlanti, making him some 10,000+ years old. We simply lack the statistics on average petitioner existence beyond 'gradual absorption over millennia' and conjecture from the existence of outsiders older than some mortal realms.
It would seem like extending the material portion of your existence has not yet compared favourably to the lifespan you might have as a petitioner. The fact that a petitioner eventually gets absorbed back into the cycle of the cosmos and forms the building blocks of a fresh soul doesn't strike me as...
The hang up I have here, that I think OP shares, is the nature of identity, subjective experience, and survival.
Annhilation would entail that the experiencer literally no longer exists in anyway whatsoever. That is, however, very different from subjectivity existing indefinitely. If you have a discrete experiencer, and then they lose all their memories, they may be a different 'person' in a sense of having a different personality but the substrate of their existence and experience never blinks out.
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"It is morally permissible to extend one's life by the minimal means necessary."
I have noticed that you do stress that these means do not necessarily entail killing others to achieve your goals, however you do also seem to suggest that killing others is permissible by the same definition.
This is basically the crux of why I don't understand Filthy Lucre. So let me ask plainly: Lucre, how much suffering and/or death do you think it is permissible to inflict under the PF cosmology? I mean specific quantities.
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Stuff about the minimal means necessary." and the life cycle of a soulThe hang up I have here, that I think OP shares, is the nature of identity, subjective experience, and survival.
Annhilation would entail that the experiencer literally no longer exists in anyway whatsoever. That is, however, very different from subjectivity existing indefinitely. If you have a discrete experiencer, and then they lose all their memories, they may be a different 'person' in a sense of having a different personality but the substrate of their existence and experience never blinks out.
I'm sorry, I think you may have misclicked your response here, as it appears to be replying to Captain Morgan's question of your system, rather than to my question of alternative means of immortality and the difference between how long a lich lives before being dissolved into particles and how long a soul lives before being recycled into a new soul.
Lucre, how much suffering and/or death do you think it is permissible to inflict under the PF cosmology? I mean specific quantities.
If the option is between be annhilated or commit atrocity, then atrocity it is. Whatever the minimally sufficient amount is to prevent that aforementioned obliteration. If the minimal amount is 10 people, great. If it's the entire world, well that's too bad.
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The hang up I have here, that I think OP shares, is the nature of identity, subjective experience, and survival.
Annhilation would entail that the experiencer literally no longer exists in anyway whatsoever. That is, however, very different from subjectivity existing indefinitely. If you have a discrete experiencer, and then they lose all their memories, they may be a different 'person' in a sense of having a different personality but the substrate of their existence and experience never blinks out.
Most people don't subscribe to such a view.
I would posit that many more people believe if you were to lose all your memories, you would cease to be you in the meaningful sense to other people. There would be a person who looked like you, but wouldn't have your mannerism, speech, memories, etc. It wouldn't be "you" to the people that were apart of your life.
It's why most people view things like Alzheimer's disease to be one of the worst. There is a shell of a person that you used to know, and you had to watch them dissolve away into nothing, until there are only hollow eyes looking out of a face that no longer recognizes the people that love(d) them.
Under your view, you never cease be because the constituent parts of your body never go away. The atoms will always be. They might be transformed into different compounds, they might scatter apart from one another. But they will always be, short of burning up in star which could still be considered as transformation of the parts. So under your view, once someone comes into being they never really cease to be unless all of existence ends.
Lucre, how much suffering and/or death do you think it is permissible to inflict under the PF cosmology? I mean specific quantities.If the option is between be annhilated or commit atrocity, then atrocity it is. Whatever the minimally sufficient amount is to prevent that aforementioned obliteration. If the minimal amount is 10 people, great. If it's the entire world, well that's too bad.
Unfortunately it's simply not possible. There will be one survivor, and unless you can convince Pharasma to make it you then you will fail.
And I don't think you can possibly usurp Pharasma role in creating the seed for the next universe, but then again that is the fun of RPGs, if you have a GM that would like to explore such things.
In the end annihilation is certain, even for Pharasma, who survived the previous round of existence and will be ended this time around.
Lucre, how much suffering and/or death do you think it is permissible to inflict under the PF cosmology? I mean specific quantities.If the option is between be annhilated or commit atrocity, then atrocity it is. Whatever the minimally sufficient amount is to prevent that aforementioned obliteration. If the minimal amount is 10 people, great. If it's the entire world, well that's too bad.Unfortunately it's simply not possible. There will be one survivor, and unless you can convince Pharasma to make it you then you will fail.
And I don't think you can possibly usurp Pharasma role in creating the seed for the next universe, but then again that is the fun of RPGs, if you have a GM that would like to explore such things.
In the end annihilation is certain, even for Pharasma, who survived the previous round of existence and will be ended this time around.
Interestingly, this plan, if successful, would result in the longest possible lifespan for a single mortal creature. You would still die at the completion of the next universe's cycle, plus you'd have whatever time you spent before being the last survivor of this universe.
I suppose the only way to live longer may be to leave reality and surrender yourself to the incomprehensible ways of the eldritch horrors who exist outside of time and logic. Beginning to see what motivates the Night Heralds to have their brain sucked into a nel-thalggu and join the Dominion of the Black.
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Honestly though, I have to question even the value of living that long in the first place?
Why? Why would someone want to? Do they really fear death so much?
An individual's mortals existence in no more valuable or meaningful than any other, IMO. The only ones with importance above the general (to the universe) is the watcher, and the survivor (both the one from the previous universe and the one to be). Everyone else is just a footnote.
Personally I'm comfortable with that. I can generate all the meaning I need for my life from within.
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Lucre, how much suffering and/or death do you think it is permissible to inflict under the PF cosmology? I mean specific quantities.If the option is between be annhilated or commit atrocity, then atrocity it is. Whatever the minimally sufficient amount is to prevent that aforementioned obliteration. If the minimal amount is 10 people, great. If it's the entire world, well that's too bad.
I hope you enjoy being destroyed by a party of 4-6 rag-tag heroes of varying ancestries, backgrounds, and classes, but a shared desire to save the world from evil monsters who think of nothing but themselves.
Or did we all forget we were talking about a setting for a Tabletop RPG?
Most people don't subscribe to such a view.
I would posit that many more people believe if you were to lose all your memories, you would cease to be you in the meaningful sense to other people. There would be a person who looked like you, but wouldn't have your mannerism, speech, memories, etc. It wouldn't be "you" to the people that were apart of your life.
It's why most people view things like Alzheimer's disease to be one of the worst. There is a shell of a person that you used to know, and you had to watch them dissolve away into nothing, until there are only hollow eyes looking out of a face that no longer recognizes the people that love(d) them.
Under your view, you never cease be because the constituent parts of your body never go away. The atoms will always be. They might be transformed into different compounds, they might scatter apart from one another. But they will always be, short of burning up in star which could still be considered as transformation of the parts. So under your view, once someone comes into being they never really cease to be unless all of existence ends.
What most people believe about the philosophy of identity is irrelevent. We're talking about the nature over self - if I have a ball that is painted green, then red, then blue, the underly ball is constant.
With the alzheimers case, regardless of their memory, you have a constant continuous stream of subjectivity/conciousness. Ergo, memories are irrelevent to the survival of self - as is personality.
Identity =/= Personality. Identity is WHAT you are, Personality is HOW you are. Identity, I would argue/believe is an ontological issue - it's about what exists and personality is about the qualities of an existant thing.
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People in the diegesis who want to maximize the continuing of their soul for whatever that means are encouraged to worship the Eldest, as people who actually make that (rare, and kind of weird) choice and mean it have their souls shuffled off to the First World when they die, which does not behave like the outer planes at all.
You're essentially going to end up with a second life as some kind of fae creature who just reforms after they die.
My character who got the "you remember everything after you die" treatment in Hell's Rebels and then subsequently died was a devout Ngian and ended up as a CR19 Fae Creature attached to the Witchmarket as a magistrate- objectively more powerful, but saddled with a kind of terrible job.
I'm nerdsniping myself now with the character concept of a proto-lich who wants to avoid being on the wrong end of society's moral standards and so has planned to make use of the many, many creatures which heroes slay over the course of their adventure to fuel their rise to lichdom.
"An evil lich? Well, sure I may be, but I swear all these souls are 100% ethically sourced from the most reprehensible creatures. I personally asked the paladin to verify each soul before I consumed it."
To keep this relevant for the pathfinder forum, the cosmology that I run in an attempt to solve all these thorny issues is this:
- Souls are discrete and indestructible - nothing in the multiverse can actually extinguish a soul.
- When a person dies their soul/consciousness persists disembodied until it re-incarnates. While memories don't usually persist they can sometimes; Personal subjectivity is not interrupted.
- Capturing people's souls to use as a fuel source is evil because it prevents the natural cycle of rebirth.
- Because survival is NOT in question, there are limits on permissible methods of extending your life. I.e.: hurting other people to extend your current material life is not permissible. As for my earlier posts this would not qualify as "minimally necessary" or egoic.
- People might be tempted to sell their souls into bondage in exchange for earthly power
- Demons/Devils attempt to snatch up departed souls to fuel their schemes/power/etc, cementing them as being evil and inflicting suffering for its own sake, or for egoic reasons.
- Morality doesn't center on ending/preserving life per ce, but rather limiting suffering.
- Killing can be justified, but is usually evil/bad as it robs a person of their 'natural' life cycle and causes pain toward their loved ones/relatives
Before I go back to prepping for my game tomorrow where I have to get into the shoes of a bunch of vampires and understand how they think to roleplay them, I wanted to poke this system with a question or two.
I was going to ask if the number of souls were perfectly balanced between life and death, but it appears not, with the afterlife antechamber. Instead I should ask if the total number of souls in the universe remains constant? If so, how does that account for the changing number of mortal births? Would babies ever be born without souls because the afterlife got emptied out? More likely, the steadily increasing number of people being born as populations of mortals expand means the afterlife is usually pretty low on population and new, completely indestructible souls are coming into existence regularly. In the event of a great tragedy as a world is destroyed, does this influx of souls into the afterlife get stuck waiting to be reborn, cutting off new souls for a while, or must they wait their turn? Does the number of souls in the universe ever stop growing? Is the universe capable of sustaining a potentially infinite number of souls/births? When birth rates slow down as they often do in developed societies, does that leave an afterlife crunch until the number of deaths can level off, too?
Before I go back to prepping for my game tomorrow where I have to get into the shoes of a bunch of vampires and understand how they think to roleplay...I'm nerdsniping myself now with the character concept of a proto-lich who wants to avoid being on the wrong end of society's moral standards and so has planned to make use of the many, many creatures which heroes slay over the course of their adventure to fuel their rise to lichdom.
"An evil lich? Well, sure I may be, but I swear all these souls are 100% ethically sourced from the most reprehensible creatures. I personally asked the paladin to verify each soul before I consumed it."
To keep this relevant for the pathfinder forum, the cosmology that I run in an attempt to solve all these thorny issues is this:
- Souls are discrete and indestructible - nothing in the multiverse can actually extinguish a soul.
- When a person dies their soul/consciousness persists disembodied until it re-incarnates. While memories don't usually persist they can sometimes; Personal subjectivity is not interrupted.
- Capturing people's souls to use as a fuel source is evil because it prevents the natural cycle of rebirth.
- Because survival is NOT in question, there are limits on permissible methods of extending your life. I.e.: hurting other people to extend your current material life is not permissible. As for my earlier posts this would not qualify as "minimally necessary" or egoic.
- People might be tempted to sell their souls into bondage in exchange for earthly power
- Demons/Devils attempt to snatch up departed souls to fuel their schemes/power/etc, cementing them as being evil and inflicting suffering for its own sake, or for egoic reasons.
- Morality doesn't center on ending/preserving life per ce, but rather limiting suffering.
- Killing can be justified, but is usually evil/bad as it robs a person of their 'natural' life cycle and causes pain toward their loved ones/relatives
The oversoul/font of all souls is infinite, and thus can split off an infinite number of souls.
Lucre, how much suffering and/or death do you think it is permissible to inflict under the PF cosmology? I mean specific quantities.If the option is between be annhilated or commit atrocity, then atrocity it is. Whatever the minimally sufficient amount is to prevent that aforementioned obliteration. If the minimal amount is 10 people, great. If it's the entire world, well that's too bad.I hope you enjoy being destroyed by a party of 4-6 rag-tag heroes of varying ancestries, backgrounds, and classes, but a shared desire to save the world from evil monsters who think of nothing but themselves.
Or did we all forget we were talking about a setting for a Tabletop RPG?
Lol my games are very much Sword & Sorcery in the classic 70s/80s tradition so you would probably consider my 'heroes' to be villains.
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Most people don't subscribe to such a view.
I would posit that many more people believe if you were to lose all your memories, you would cease to be you in the meaningful sense to other people. There would be a person who looked like you, but wouldn't have your mannerism, speech, memories, etc. It wouldn't be "you" to the people that were apart of your life.
It's why most people view things like Alzheimer's disease to be one of the worst. There is a shell of a person that you used to know, and you had to watch them dissolve away into nothing, until there are only hollow eyes looking out of a face that no longer recognizes the people that love(d) them.
Under your view, you never cease be because the constituent parts of your body never go away. The atoms will always be. They might be transformed into different compounds, they might scatter apart from one another. But they will always be, short of burning up in star which could still be considered as transformation of the parts. So under your view, once someone comes into being they never really cease to be unless all of existence ends.
What most people believe about the philosophy of identity is irrelevent. We're talking about the nature over self - if I have a ball that is painted green, then red, then blue, the underly ball is constant.
With the alzheimers case, regardless of their memory, you have a constant continuous stream of subjectivity/conciousness. Ergo, memories are irrelevent to the survival of self - as is personality.
Identity =/= Personality. Identity is WHAT you are, Personality is HOW you are. Identity, I would argue/believe is an ontological issue - it's about what exists and personality is about the qualities of an existant thing.
You can argue all you want about personality and memories being irrelevant. You mentioned that you were involved with philosophy so I imagine you have all sorts of lines of prepared arguments.
At the end of the day your responses are irrelevant if the majority of people don't subscribe to them. Philosophy is questions looking for answers, with people coming up with many ideas to answer those questions. None are more provable than the others, since we have no objective methods to test them. At best, you can merely say you subscribe to a specific world view.
In my view, the reason a ball is the same ball regardless of what color you paint it, is the same reason that a person is the same person regardless of what color you might paint (literal body paint) them.
But erasing the memories and personality of an individual isn't like painting a ball. It's like replacing the ball inside the layers of paint with a new ball. And when you tell me it's the same, I would say you're lying or mistaken.
Just because you believe it doesn't make it a universal truth, especially when so many people would strongly disagree on the subject of what makes someone themselves.
However, I suspect this is not something you can ever be convinced to view otherwise so I'm just going to disengage because I find it to be a waste of time and effort.
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I agree with OP that these are some pretty disappointing metaphysics and that the designers of pathfinder have overlooked ways to make the afterlife NOT be bleak, while it still being quite scary/unknown.Bleak depends on your outlook, and regardless it seems very intentional cosmology. It's also one of the easiest things to change for your home games since it has no association to the mechanics whatsoever.'You no longer exist in any meaningful sense whatsoever' is fairly bleak. There's a lot of arm-chair philosophy going on, and that's actually what my training/education is in.
IN FACT... if self preservation/self-defense is always justified then this cosmology makes survival at any cost permissible. Undeath, sucking souls, etc is all a legitimate way to survive in an ultimate sense.
As Xkyon said 'Anything to avoid the big fire below."
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Lol my games are very much Sword & Sorcery in the classic 70s/80s tradition so you would probably consider my 'heroes' to be villains.Lucre, how much suffering and/or death do you think it is permissible to inflict under the PF cosmology? I mean specific quantities.If the option is between be annhilated or commit atrocity, then atrocity it is. Whatever the minimally sufficient amount is to prevent that aforementioned obliteration. If the minimal amount is 10 people, great. If it's the entire world, well that's too bad.I hope you enjoy being destroyed by a party of 4-6 rag-tag heroes of varying ancestries, backgrounds, and classes, but a shared desire to save the world from evil monsters who think of nothing but themselves.
Or did we all forget we were talking about a setting for a Tabletop RPG?
Ah. A Grimdarker. That explains a lot.
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Something I keep forgetting to ask: on this thread https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2olvb?Beyond-the-Doomsday-Door (which has some spoilers for Shattered Star) James Jacobs compares the multiverse to a peach at the center of a mile wide ball of dirt, which implies the omniverse (or whatever word you want to use to mean "everything") is WAY bigger than just the Pathfinder multiverse. That said, I am wondering if there are other "peaches" out there, and if there might be new ones forming and ending all the time.
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It's good that you're disengaging because you're 1.) just begging the question (also known as using circular logic) and 2.) dismiss me by saying you can't convince me when you yourself might be just as susceptible to that sort of self deception. So if you're saying it's impossible to convince me otherwise, then it's fair to say that it's impossible to convince you otherwise. So, in effect, you're saying people don't believe things because of reason but are just determined to believe a certain thing which would make it impossible to falsify your claim or anyone elses.
You're also catagorically, objectively wrong about the nature of philosophy. If you're going to take a staunch empericist stance you're going to cut your legs out from under you because you can't establish the truth of empericism with empericism. Furthermore, if you only care about things that are testable I guess you don't care about mathmatics, formal logic, or history.
Can I suggest that one should not complain about logical fallacies in a post so dependent on straw men?
Beyond that, you really do not need to approach these discussions with such hostility. Why care if anyone bites on your rough outline for a pretend moral structure for a pretend universe? You are not trying to describe a logically robust system for behavior in the real world. Like the official Pathfinder system, yours just needs to be described enough for your players to have a framework for guiding their character's decisions. Like Pathfinder's it can be as silly as it needs to be.
Some people didn't read Concordance (which is I think where that's from? Or is it Planar Adventures).
I’ve read both planar adventures and CoR and don’t remember this. If you happen to recall where exactly you read this could you point me to it?
EDIT: To clarify, I mean the whole Pharasma doesn’t feed souls to Groetus anymore thing. To the best of my recollection CoR only barely mentions Groetus at all and even then only in the context of the multiverse ending. Planar Adventures is more hazy in my mind due to it being so much larger but I still don’t remember this change.
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wow...this discussion turned from an interesting view of the pathfinder metaphysics into a depressing discussion about morality...
Yeah, I didn't intend this thread to get this depressing, I'm sorry. You can of course do whatever you want with your own game, but when playing in Pathfinder Society and other official things like the PC game, you have to abide by the rules laid out by the game. The metaphysics of PF just made me kind of sad, and I just wanted to discuss if there was any other things I'd missed. I'm really not trying to power-game or anything like that with the system.
Remember that most knowledge is stored in the Akashic Library. That includes the story of most people who lived.
Annihilation of the soul does not destroy those experiences from the library.
But it doesn't entail the survival of the experience-ER. No one cares about object immortality, just subject immortality.
Yeah, I didn't intend this thread to get this depressing, I'm sorry. You can of course do whatever you want with your own game, but when playing in Pathfinder Society and other official things like the PC game, you have to abide by the rules laid out by the game. The metaphysics of PF just made me kind of sad, and I just wanted to discuss if there was any other things I'd missed. I'm really not trying to power-game or anything like that with the system.
I find the different ways people approach guided imagination to be interesting. Do you see your characters as wanting to exist forever with some subset of their memories intact, but are sad because the lore doesn't allow for it? Or do you imagine them wanting to eventually let go, and are sad at the thought of that time occurring? Or something else entirely?
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But it doesn't entail the survival of the experience-ER. No one cares about object immortality, just subject immortality.Remember that most knowledge is stored in the Akashic Library. That includes the story of most people who lived.
Annihilation of the soul does not destroy those experiences from the library.
But if you die, lose your memories, then subsequently become a powerful outsider you will always have the option (admittedly a difficult one) to find your way to the Akashic Library to regain all of the memories the being that became you ever had.
So it's not like those memories are gone, they're just temporarily inaccessible.
But it doesn't entail the survival of the experience-ER. No one cares about object immortality, just subject immortality.You continue to make bold statements "no one," "never", "always."
There are many people that faith in their legacy, their family, or some other purpose continuing on after their individual death is worth their own personal life, or that their life is complete and the struggle of survival is no longer necessary. The struggle for personal survival and continuity at great cost, especially damage to the community is the difference between a healthy psyche and a damaged one.
Would you personally make the choices that you are espousing as something that must be done to fight against the scourge of mortality
Lemme put it this way - if I had to choose between immortality as a vampire, eating people to survive or be A N N H I L A T E D it would be a complete no brainer for me.
I also think you grossly over estimate what peoples ideal outcome would be. If I offered 100 people the choice of eternal bliss in an eternal afterlife or they just snuff out of existence you REALLY think people would be like "Nah, people will remember me and thats good enough".
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Ya know at the moment when you make OP feel guilty for starting the thread, you should know you have went too far to ramble around your own philosophical ideas :P
Also, idea that it is morally righteous to extend your life at any cost is absurd in both fictional and real life sense. It implies that most important thing to do with life is to live it longer rather than how you live the time you have.
Also, it makes you come across as scary person because you are essentially saying that if you knew for 100% you are going to disappear, you'd turn mass murderer if it was possible to extend your life :P Learn to accept the inevitable truth that everything ends eventually and understand other philosophies than just your own
But it doesn't entail the survival of the experience-ER. No one cares about object immortality, just subject immortality.Remember that most knowledge is stored in the Akashic Library. That includes the story of most people who lived.
Annihilation of the soul does not destroy those experiences from the library.
But if you die, lose your memories, then subsequently become a powerful outsider you will always have the option (admittedly a difficult one) to find your way to the Akashic Library to regain all of the memories the being that became you ever had.
So it's not like those memories are gone, they're just temporarily inaccessible.
I don't really think that bares on what I'm talking about - which doesn't really have much to do with Pathfinder specifically as it does actual metaphysics generally.
But, just for your edification, 'objective immortality' only implies that you are, more or less, 'remembered' but you don't actually exist as an experiencing subject. 'subjective immortality' implies that death does not interupt your stream of conciousness/state of experiencing.
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But it doesn't entail the survival of the experience-ER. No one cares about object immortality, just subject immortality.You continue to make bold statements "no one," "never", "always."
There are many people that faith in their legacy, their family, or some other purpose continuing on after their individual death is worth their own personal life, or that their life is complete and the struggle of survival is no longer necessary. The struggle for personal survival and continuity at great cost, especially damage to the community is the difference between a healthy psyche and a damaged one.
Would you personally make the choices that you are espousing as something that must be done to fight against the scourge of mortality
Lemme put it this way - if I had to choose between immortality as a vampire, eating people to survive or be A N N H I L A T E D it would be a complete no brainer for me.
I also think you grossly over estimate what peoples ideal outcome would be. If I offered 100 people the choice of eternal bliss in an eternal afterlife or they just snuff out of existence you REALLY think people would be like "Nah, people will remember me and thats good enough".
So it would be morally right for you to be eaten to extend some other a-hole's life then, right? As long as someone is immortal, it doesn't matter how many other people die.
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Lemme put it this way - if I had to choose between immortality as a vampire, eating people to survive or be A N N H I L A T E D it would be a complete no brainer for me.
Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you a perfect representation of Neutral Evil.
The predator-prey relationship is a perfectly natural aspect of nature. ;P
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This is an entire hobby practically dedicated to "That guy is predating on others for his own ends, you better gank him". Seriously, being a dick is always harmful for your survival.
From all sides, whether they be pragmatic or moral, I see being nice to other people as the way to go. The worst people in the world, if they don't die early, tend to live like hungry ghosts. They consume, consume, and consume yet they are never sated. They always have to worry about being backstabbed and often are. Being a greedy dbag is like all downsides, even when you extend that to metaphysical annihilation.
Tar Baphon got sealed away for Millenia, woke up, and that got blasted back into his hole. Alling Third is a gross dude in a jar. Liches, vampires, and ghouls that do anything other than hiding out in a hole tend to get blasted by heroes. Being evil sucks, my dudes. It is a myopic world view that still comes out to losses, even if they are willing to do more for wins.
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Personally, I would consider being less quick to leverage claims of begging the question in a debate when my conclusion (oblivion makes it morally permissible to kill any number of people to avoid) rested upon the as of yet unproven premise (inflicting a condition on another being is permissible to avoid suffering that condition, even temporarily). Contrary, I rather think it's explicitly not taken for granted anywhere in Western society that killing innocents to preserve one's own life is morally permissible. Organ harvesting seems to serve a relevant parallel for illustrating this. I do not think most would consider harvesting an organ from a healthy person to be a morally permissible activity even to save the life of somebody needing an organ transplant.
That aside, while you responded to it, I don't believe you actually addressed any of the points I raised in my previous post further up this page. Summarized for brevity:
-The existence of numerous options to achieve immortality that do not entail the suffering of others renders means which do beyond the scope of 'minimal means necessary'. Some of these options are not even more difficult to achieve than becoming a lich.
-Such means of extending one's life are rendered moot in this scenario as becoming an undead being and somehow surviving until the destruction of your planet, the heat death of the universe, or simply until you have grown so bored your physical body succumbs to decay and become a demilich, all the suffering you have inflicted still has not done anything to avoid eventual dissolution and oblivion. In fact, by performing evil acts to become a lich, when your body eventually gives out, whatever remains of your soul is likely sent to a plane where it will be destroyed much sooner than its natural life span as a petitioner.
-Bonus note, furthermore I think we should consider the quality of (un)life. If we hone in purely on ensuring the longest life span of a soul possible, most means of achieving undeath seem appealing, even trivial to achieve (converted by a vampire, or slain by any number of undead including wights, shadows, and wraiths), however there aren't really many, if any, types of undeath which leave the quality of life undamaged purely for the sake of extending mileage.
--
As an aside, I understand the debate was flying fast, but you also have not answered most of my questions about your cycle of reincarnation. You provided that the oversoul was capable of producing infinite numbers of souls, but not what happens when the number of indestructible souls exceeds the number of births, or whether the universe is capable of sustaining an infinitely growing number of souls. I am going to assume yes, but mainly I am speculating what allows the universe to continue growing infinitely to satisfy an infinite number of indestructible souls without succumbing to virtually inevitable afterlife lag.
Stuff that I, Filthy Lucre, said
Since this isn't a philosophy thread or forum and I think that most people here don't actually want to have a nitty gritty discussion of metaphysics I'm not going to respond to any more RL moral or metaphysical speculations. If you really want to talk about it though you're welcome to DM me and we can discuss it over discord or twitter.
You provided that the oversoul was capable of producing infinite numbers of souls, but not what happens when the number of indestructible souls exceeds the number of births, or whether the universe is capable of sustaining an infinitely growing number of souls. I am going to assume yes, but mainly I am speculating what allows the universe to continue growing infinitely to satisfy an infinite number of indestructible souls without succumbing to virtually inevitable afterlife lag.
In my game world, (and my real life opinion, btw), is that souls and phenomenal consciousness are the same thing. When an organism achieves whatever the necessary biological conditions for sustaining consciousness it immediately and instantly connects to a soul. Before that the organism is mere automata, afterwards it would properly be considered a 'person', regardless of it's race. This is fairly panpsychist approach/system so arguably most, possibly all, things have some degree of consciousness with humanoid phenomenal consciousness being the example par excellence.
I believe this answers both your questions about my game world's cosmology: 1.) The universe can sustain an infinite amount of souls and 2.) should there be a catastrophe that really pairs down the number of biological organisms capable of sustaining consciousness you just have a back log of souls waiting for the material world to catch up to them.
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Personally, I would consider being less quick to leverage claims of begging the question in a debate when my conclusion (oblivion makes it morally permissible to kill any number of people to avoid) rested upon the as of yet unproven premise (inflicting a condition on another being is permissible to avoid suffering that condition, even temporarily). Contrary, I rather think it's explicitly not taken for granted anywhere in Western society that killing innocents to preserve one's own life is morally permissible. Organ harvesting seems to serve a relevant parallel for illustrating this. I do not think most would consider harvesting an organ from a healthy person to be a morally permissible activity even to save the life of somebody needing an organ transplant.
Yeah, this. Arguing you can slaughter millions and co-sign them to oblivion to stave it off for yourself is not something supported by most conventional thinking and there's certainly not a consensus among moral philosophers on it either.
And that's without touching on Alignment which defines good and evil within the Pathfinder universe.