Is this really all there is?

[Magical Realist]

If not, what personally convinces you it isn't? That there is "more" than this? That there is something transcendental in human experience?

“I mean, maybe I am crazy. I mean, maybe. But if this is all there is, then I don't want to be sane.”― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

[Seattle]

I think "this" is plenty, don't you?

[Magical Realist]

I think "this" is plenty, don't you?

I don't know. Sometimes it seems like something is missing.

[Syne]

I think "this" is plenty, don't you?

That's kind of sad.

[Seattle]

I think "this" is plenty, don't you?

That's kind of sad.

You think reality is sad?

[Syne]

I think having no aspirations beyond what the material offers is sad. If this is all, things like love have nothing to do with soulmates or anything inherently poetic. It's just an instinctual reaction to hormones and pheromones, and we're all just hapless dupes for believing otherwise...if we believe in love at all.

[C C]

If not, what personally convinces you it isn't? That there is "more" than this? That there is something transcendental in human experience?

“I mean, maybe I am crazy. I mean, maybe. But if this is all there is, then I don't want to be sane.”― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

Depends on what you mean. I expect there is something more than this universe, but there's no [consensus] validating manner of access to it. Any private revelations are just that -- for the public they're potentially opportunistic lies or self-deceptions slash hallucinations of the proselytizer. 

If this also pertains to "afterlife" in some sense or another....

The problem there is that our identity or "who we are" is grounded in a physical-based memory system. Both anterograde amnesia and retrograde amnesia can severely compromise or even eradicate one's identity well before death.

That kind of fragility of our information pattern in even this life suggests that it wouldn't survive a transition to a "prior in rank level" unless this reality is an orchestrated simulation (certainly an intruding agency or memory-salvaging process would be detectable without the deliberate stealth of the latter's setup or cosmic deception).

Alternatively, if there was a secular version of Ātman or a natural version of witness awareness that was responsible for the manifestations of consciousness associated with a brain, such seems completely passive and uninterested in what appears on its universal "screen".

IOW, the above is not a motivated intelligence that cares about preserving or reviving complex information configurations and phenomenal events that reside in its global field.  It doesn't even temporarily enjoy the distractions, like a movie watcher would regard cinema characters, because the capacity isn't there.

And if it was something more than a blank identity, then each of us would be little more than multiple dream avatars to it. Our own latter versions become largely irrelevant to us when we wake up (for those who can't recall their dreams, they're no influencing factor at all to the higher-level identity).

The entire development of our memories and bodies is preserved in the context of eternalism (i.e. the "you" who existed forty years ago would still be there in the past, and conscious). But that's restricted to this life. There's no continued experiences of _X_ person beyond the point where that biological form's functioning ceases at its death coordinates in spacetime. (This excludes quantum immortality, or a multiverse spin on the block-universe, where our consciousness follows the path where we survive, and one's identity is maintained in parallel worlds for a while before it eventually has to drift away into incrementally becoming a different body with wholly different memories.)

[Yazata]

Is this really all there is?

That would depend on what the word "this" is referring to.

I see myself as being a part of and a product of this physical reality (I accept biology, cognitive science and evolutionary ideas.) I don't imagine myself as a spiritual soul fallen from some imaginary heavenly existence and somehow trapped in corrupting human flesh.

But that being said, my view is that physical reality around us is far more mysterious and unknown than most people give it credit for being.

If not, what personally convinces you it isn't?

I'm not "convinced" exactly, since I most emphatically don't have the answers and struggle just to ask the questions. It's more of an intuition I guess.

What motivates my sense of transcendance? Mathematics, logic and the laws of physics. (All the things that scientism seems to hold so tightly to as articles of faith.) I'm not seeking a different "higher" world than the one that the "skeptics" inhabit. I just look at the same world that we all inhabit a little differently.

It isn't based on any elaborate "proof" that employs the laws of physics, mathematics and logic. It's more the mere fact that those things (seemingly) exist at all. They obviously aren't physical objects. (I can't order up half a pound of logical implication.) They seem to exist outside the scope of what physics studies with its empirical methods and its physicalism, despite the fact that physics constantly calls upon them and relies upon them in everything it does.

So what are they, what kind of reality do they have? How do humans even know about them? There are deep metaphysical and epistemological questions here.

That's one (of many) intuitions that incline me to think that there's a lot more going on around us than we currently acknowledge.

That there is "more" than this? That there is something transcendental in human experience?

That's the function of philosophy as far as I'm concerned. It asks hard questions about the most fundamental principles of any area of human belief or knowledge. And when those questions are asked (people rarely ask them and many don't like it when others do) we realize that we are little more than tiny bubbles of understanding in the limitless unknown.

Few if any of our most cherished beliefs have sound and stable foundations. That to me is true skepticism in its historical philosophical sense.

I have a very strong sense of the transcendant, MR. It's just that my sense of the transcendant owes almost nothing to the Abrahamic religions and isn't some desire to find heaven or the beatific vision. It's more of a drive to understand a mystery that I suspect is ultimately beyond the powers of any human.

It isn't a mystery withdrawn from Earth in some higher realm of the imagination. It's right here, right now if we only have the eyes to see.

[Zinjanthropos]

Why can’t there be some things missing, perhaps forever? Perhaps evidence that would help us figure it all out. Paraphrasing Krauss, when galaxies are so far apart that they no longer receive information from the universe then any civilization that arises will theorize incorrectly. Due to a major lack of evidence. In my mind, some key evidence is already never to be seen again. How many times have I heard there’s no way we can know if anything happened before the BB?

[Secular Sanity]

Descartes stresses the frail temporary nature of his self-awareness. Not only is such an awareness a flickering candle of certainty that could be extinguished at any moment, but he also uses self-awareness as an indicator of a power greater than himself. Although, unlike me, Descartes assumes there’s an infinite being because a finite mind can reach for it in its thoughts.

All our knowledge is obtained through our senses. Even if we’re a brain in a vat or living in a simulation, our self-awareness is dependent upon our environment. He’s right in saying that we encounter a dependency on a power greater than us—life itself. Sadly, sometimes, I think of DNA like the hairworm that doesn’t kill its host because it needs a lift back to the water. Love makes us do crazy things, eh?

My concept of the gates to heaven or hell is Tomorrow and only those who are written in the book of life will enter.

C'est la vie!