Philosophical Speculations

In this excerpt of a talk from his Making Sense podcast, Sam Harris discusses how the purely subjective aspect of consciousness has a continuity that elides any gaps in experience, including — quite possibly — the gap of death. To illustrate this, he quotes extensively from philosopher Tom Clark's essay "Death, Nothingness, and Subjectivity," and provides a few easy thought experiments to make the insight more accessible.

What's particularly interesting and potentially most valuable about this thesis is that it's both completely naturalistic and compatible with an orientation of either materialism or idealism. Given that this is an idealism forum, I will warn you that Clark (along with Harris) is definitely a materialist, so the passage of his that Sam reads at the end might be irksome. But the insight being pointed to is one that supercedes any particular metaphysic, and as such it warrants deep consideration.

Taken from "The Paradox of Death" from samharris.org, where all his full-length talks and interviews are available via subscription.

Once you accept that there is a subjectivity that is not generated by matter, and only the qualia appearing in that subjectivity is generated by matter, you're already in at least cartesian dualist territory. It's incompatible with materialism, plain and simple.

Once you accept that there is a subjectivity that is not generated by matter, and only the qualia appearing in that subjectivity is generated by matter, you're already in at least cartesian dualist territory. It's incompatible with materialism, plain and simple.

Materialists do indeed think that subjectivity (i.e. consciousness or mind) is generated by matter. It's not my view, but it's generally accepted that that's their view. The point of the clip is that even if materialism were true, and subjectivity were generated entirely by physical processes, the premise that subjectivity is fundamentally impersonal and always present to itself would be just as true as it is in the case of idealism.