Well maybe the question can be answered by the people that after lying in coma for years they recover consciousness. But this may also be problematic, if they were not conscious then they may have no memories of it.

Not directly answering your question, but here you have an interesting article:

http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~wegner/pdfs/Gray,%20Knickman%20&%20Wegner%20(2011)%20PVS.pdf

and a related interview:

http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2011/10/perception-vegetative-state-interview-social-psychologist-kurt-gray/

I think your proposition is paradoxical since you are asking how a person WITHOUT PERCEPTION would PRECEIVE the world...

All the different "points of view" (dog, bat, snake, humans) you described are based on their different perceptions and sensations.

So to interpret the world you need sensorial stimuli (reaching the terminals of your nerves) that is processed by the brain and creates a perception (in general as a matching-pattern look-up in a catalog database of previous experiences).

Now if you have an inert body without any sensoric or without any processing system, no perception can take place.

Without sensoric you cannot detect stimuli, without processing system you cannot transform your sensations into perceptions.

There are some reports of coming back from death and thus, the report of such people of their experiences during the so called death period may shed some light on your question. However, the validity of such reports are definitely questionable and many believe that such instances are the case of premature burial or premature declaration of death.

Below is some text taken from Wikipedia's entry on "death" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death)

"There are many anecdotal references to people being declared dead by physicians and then "coming back to life", sometimes days later in their own coffin, or when embalming procedures are about to begin. From the mid-18th century onwards, there was an upsurge in the public's fear of being mistakenly buried alive,[17] and much debate about the uncertainty of the signs of death. Various suggestions were made to test for signs of life before burial, ranging from pouring vinegar and pepper into the corpse's mouth to applying red hot pokers to the feet or into the rectum.[18] Writing in 1895, the physician J.C. Ouseley claimed that as many as 2,700 people were buried prematurely each year in England and Wales, although others estimated the figure to be closer to 800.[19]

In cases of electric shock, cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) for an hour or longer can allow stunned nerves to recover, allowing an apparently dead person to survive. People found unconscious under icy water may survive if their faces are kept continuously cold until they arrive at an emergency room.[20] This "diving response", in which metabolic activity and oxygen requirements are minimal, is something humans share with cetaceans called the mammalian diving reflex.[20]

As medical technologies advance, ideas about when death occurs may have to be re-evaluated in light of the ability to restore a person to vitality after longer periods of apparent death (as happened when CPR and defibrillation showed that cessation of heartbeat is inadequate as a decisive indicator of death). The lack of electrical brain activity may not be enough to consider someone scientifically dead. Therefore, the concept of information-theoretic death has been suggested as a better means of defining when true death occurs, though the concept has few practical applications outside of the field of cryonics.

There have been some scientific attempts to bring dead organisms back to life, but with limited success.[21] In science fiction scenarios where such technology is readily available, real death is distinguished from reversible death."

One may find several links to "coming back from death" or near death experiences. However, if one accepts that validity of such experiences, the question remains that how one can have experience with a dead (or at least almost completely inactive) brain.

It is my understanding that the assumption behind you question is that there is a objective reality and subjective perceptions of that reality, but that these subjective perceptions are themselves not real. In this case reality is only possible for an mind capable of seeing without subjective restrictions, and is therefore infinite and as a result lacks conscientiousness , or is incapable of being deceived--i.e. dead.

Rakesh,

Read the Journeys in Dream and Imagination of Artur Lundqvist

http://siivola.org/monte/papers_grouped/copyrighted/Dreams/Journeys_in_Dream_and_Imagination.htm

There is a very good movie which touches this theme, 1946 movie by Frank Capra 'It's a Wonderful Life' where the actor commits suicide (or was trying to do, sorry for some wrong info here) on a christmas eve and an angel comes to him and explains how would the world be like if he were not born in the first place. So in order to explain him the importance of his existence angel shows him the kind of world that would be possible in case he were not there.

I do not think "It's a Wonderful life" example fits your question...

This is also the plot of e.g. Dickens "A Christmas Carol"

In both cases:

a) they did not actually die, but an "angel" (whatever this might be) shows them how the world WILL BE if they were actually dead (so a kind of oniric illumination)

b) you question stated "Lets take an imaginary condition here and consider that a person loses all modes of perception. Well this may be a popular sci-fi context here so lets consider the person is dead. That means an inert body. How would the world now seem to him/her", but in the film both angels and characters they DO PERCEIVE!

So again, I must stick to my previous comment: "your proposition is paradoxical since you are asking how a person WITHOUT PERCEPTION would PRECEIVE the world"

If you reformulate the question from a philosophical/religious point of view of how we may perceive the world after death, then we enter another discussion and eventually a different kind of perception may be involved.

When we shutt off the door of perception and have experience we either dream or think. The case of Artur Lundqvist describes his coma experience which is a mix of dream and imaginary journey.

Agreed that the question is somewhat unclear about my actual intent behind it. What I really meant from it was a PROJECTION of human perceptions in a dead person. That means, if suppose dead people also have an identity, symbolically represented as something non-existent but being an entity (like many conceive of God's identity, who doesn't exist but still has an imaginary form in minds of all) then how would that dead person think like, how would the world look like to him/her.

I think this is easy to conceptualize as we have several fictional accounts of such identities in the form of Evil, Ghost, Spirits, some mythological characters like Satan, Devil etc. These symbolized identities are just a PROJECTION of our inner darker sides. We can idolize such identities in both forms, one representing GOOD and the other one EVIL.

Here I am asking about the representation of LIFE and DEATH. So we all are alive, there is no need to conceptualize ourselves and moreover we have access to our own realities. Now the other one left is the conception of a DEAD person. But not the one like a zombie or a dracula who is only destructive and frightful. Usually the kind of depictions that we find of such identities is of the one who has lost human values but has retained human instincts. This is only a partial reality then. How about the feeling of pleasure and happiness, interpersonal relationships, intellectual understandings, social interactions, its philosophy, its psychology, its metaphysics, its morals and ethics etc. That means the view of reality from a dead person's 'mind'. And I am not referring to some cyborg or a humanoid or a robot who is mechanically similar to humans but has no emotions. This is again a partial representation. I am pointing to a picture of an organism that is identical to the humans but 'dead'.

This definitely seems to be a topic more of fiction and less of philosophy but is it possible to conceive of such a person or an organism. How would such a person experience reality? Any suggestions or references are welcome.

I think that God's analogy fits my intent better. We have never seen god, we do not even know whether he/she exists or not, we do not know how he/she functions but still people conceive of him/her as a real entity which influences their life in several aspects. If someone commits some sin, he/she would be punished. Now who punishes the person - a god.

Observing the way the mind is structured around beliefs of god it seems that being non-existent god still influences many people. Now there are several reasons to set an image of god in mind. Most important being he/she is omnipotent and omnipresent. So one can identify with god as a big father. Due to these properties of god one can identify with him/her and feel his/her presence and influence in one's life. Identification is necessary to have an image of god.

When we project in the form of evil or devil, then fear, misfortune, curse, death are the sources of identification, among many other ways. So idolizing devil one again needs to feel its presence and influence in one's life through identification.

Imagining about a zombie one needs to project and identify with fear, aggression, death, destruction, animal instincts, apathy etc. And to imagine about a cyborg one needs to identify with someone emotionless and being under someone's control.

Is such a thing possible for a dead person who resembles a human being but has no life? (I can not say right now about the presence of self and consciousness but that would depend upon the imagination.) That means just a dead person and experience of death all the time but still trying to be like a human and experiencing human reality. I mean to say can we project our feeling of 'being dead' on to another entity so that it can remind us of what death actually is and how it feels like. How can we identify with feeling of being dead? Similarly that identification with god reminds us of prevention from sin and performing good acts. What can the identification with a dead person do for us? How can we benefit from such an identity? Can this identification help us to be more alive and enthusiastic and take life as it is in its full entirety? Because then we will be reminded of its actuality most of the time (similarly as the rationale is given for belief in god that when someone would believe in god and perform the acts according to his will there will be no harm done to such a person and god will be with him all the time).

Or is this just impossible since death can not be symbolized in such a form? But then no one can imagine god as just a human-like figure. Anyone believing in god thinks of him/her as having some mystical appearance. Unless one sees god actually, he/she can not be imagined accurately. Which is definitely not possible. So there must be some way of idolizing the 'dead'.

Then I think Mr. Houghton is the only authority around ;-)

O yes he is dead for last 30 years. How does he look like?

Well maybe the question can be answered by the people that after lying in coma for years they recover consciousness. But this may also be problematic, if they were not conscious then they may have no memories of it.

Not directly answering your question, but here you have an interesting article:

http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~wegner/pdfs/Gray,%20Knickman%20&%20Wegner%20(2011)%20PVS.pdf

and a related interview:

http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2011/10/perception-vegetative-state-interview-social-psychologist-kurt-gray/

Thank you Samuel for the references. They are very interesting and somehow extend the inquiry here.

The below links also add to the discussion

http://ucrtoday.ucr.edu/13912

A better one, the full article

http://ronbarak.tumblr.com/post/34107039735/death-why-we-should-be-grateful-for-it

Excerpt: "The team also identify an important distinction between conscious and non-conscious death reminders. The latter - subtle or subliminal prompts - tend to cause us to cling unthinkingly to the values of our community. This can be positive if those values are positive, but can also be negative if they induce us to aggressively defend those values against others.

Conscious death reminders, on the other hand, stimulate a more considered response, leading people to re-evaluate what really matters. The more we actively contemplate mortality, the more we reject socially imposed goals such as wealth or fame and focus instead on personal growth or the cultivation of positive relationships.

Which suggests we do not yet think about death enough"

If you're looking for fictional examples, I have a few suggestions:

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner is probably the most famous literary example (in the English language, at least). A more recent example might be The Lovely Bones, which I haven't read but is about a murdered girl perceiving events in the afterlife. I believe the movie Flatliners dealt with this subject, but I haven't seen it. The Sixth Sense also comes to mind . . .

Thank you for inviting me to this discussion, Tarun. I would imagine that a useful way of looking at the issue at hand, is to think of it as a systems problem. Linear ystems require inputs, perform some function(s), and produce an output. Nonlinear systems usually involve some feedback loops, often monitoring their performance and then modifying how they perform their processes.

For a dead person, there are (apparently no inputs - no sensors are working), so there would be nothing to process; and there would be no output. Until someone can demonstrate that a dead person can sense their environment and can produce outputs, the view of the world from a dead person's perspective has to be null.

Of course the dead person can be considered a mass of organic tissues that undergo decay - but there is no brain activity, no cognition.

Dear Tarun

Let us make few assumptions about the 'dead person" you are referring to.

1. The person has just died and the death is confirmed in terms of absence of cardiac activity

2. As a corollary, such dead person is not completely brain-dead. However, the brain is not active as it is in alive person

3. The internal and external sensory input is also absent as the sensory mechanism is also dead

In the light of aforesaid assumptions the following may be the possibility.

1. The person's status is similar to what is called "pratyahar" in yoga philosophy. Pratyahar is a mental state where all sensory experiences cease.

2. In the absence of internal and external sensory input this dead person is capable of registering the input arising from the brain itself (as brain is not completely dead). Thus, the reality for such dead person will be the earlier neural representation of the internal/external world which now is not likely to be influenced or modified by the dynamic sensory/perceptual changes that occur in alive person.

3. In this situation it is likely that the 'dead' person might have some experience arising from the internal brain representations. But it would be difficult to describe such experiences from the dead person's perspective because such person is not capable of sharing the experiences to others and the persons like us have never came back to alive state again to share them.

It is important to note that all the aforesaid statements are just based on imagination and thus, are likely to suffer from logical errors also.

Rakesh,

What you describe is close to the dream state in mammals. During dreams the experience is self-enacted. All the sensori-motor schemata are self-activated but disconnected.

I am starting with the quantum formalism of mind. I am supposing that one person's mental activities are closely linked to cytoskeletal quantum phenomena.

So, one person's perception are not disconnected, but, are all expressions of the some underlying superposed state.

Two person's perceptual bits are also not disconnected. Because they are somehow entangled.

This is extrapolated to the case of many persons'.

So, all the expressions come from a big unrevealed state of existence.

So, when one brain-activity ceases all of his/ her thoughts remain in some unrevealed state, only to find expression in other persons' mind and in other natural phenomena.

That can be one answer of what happens to one dead persons perceptions, thoughts etc.

Lastly I say that this observation of mine is influenced by most prevalent ontology of Indian philosophy.

Dear Tarun wat about movies like Avatar. He is transformed to another world so he is dead and becomes another.X- men is another movie alike

John,

Our greatest source of information are not what is observed but our access to the observing apparatus though our imagination. It provides us the insights, it provides us access to the very biological process that created during our life and which created all the species. The phenomenal layers of your consciousness are the layers of the evolution of consciousness on this planet.

John,

I completely agree. Imagination is deeply rooted into our nervous system, our sense-acting system and this microcosm evolved in conjunction with the macrocosm and is an implicit relational image of the world. Mammal dreaming/learning/playing/dreaming provide a way to self-enact this implicit relational image to the world which culminate into the human type of imagination which split our mammal awareness during waken time between self-enact and regular awareness. The theatrical forms of communications and all the arts are based on this fictious realm and culture grew from them. We have not yet master the art of imagination, the art of myth making, in order to probe the macrocosm buitl-in in our nervous systems and built-in in our cultural inheritance.

Tarun,

It is quite different as perspective, but maybe it helps: in the XVIIIth century, a French philosopher called Etienne Bonnot de Condillac imagined the situation of a statue becoming progressively alive, sense by sense. He gives a personnal interpretation of Locke's sensualism, in which your question seems to me to be remotedly rooted.

This question we can not answer because we do not have any experience about it. It may be a question for philosophers like how many angels can sit on a pin point.

when a person is dead, his/her brain is dead. therefore, there is no life, no consciousness and now view of reality.

"How would a dead person view reality?" By "view" here, I assume you mean perceive. If that's so, then the question is "How would a dead person perceive reality?" (The question itself assumes that there is an objective "reality," independent of minds.) What we can say about it is limited by our language and our language is limited by our ability to experience. Take, for example, the following: Suppose we're a fish who lives in a pond. As we go about our daily fish life, we swim around the pond and take care of fish business. However, in doing so, we know nothing of the pond in which we swim. From our perspective, we are simply moving through space, because we have no external frame of reference to inform us about the water in which we swim/live. Now suppose one day we're going about our fish business and in doing so we get too close to the shore, and suddenly we end up flipping out of the water onto the dry land.

Startled and in a panic, we flip around without any understanding of what's happening to us. In our panic, after a few moments of horror, we finally flip back into the pond. Unsure of what happened, we hurry back home to tell our other fish friends about our experience. How can we possibly do so? Our entire language system and our concepts are structured around our experiences of life in the pond. The language itself, then, isn't suited for the task of describing what we experienced outside the pond. By way of analogy, your asking the question "How would a dead person view reality?" is similar in kind to asking "How does someone born blind view color?" The two possible answers are: 1) they don't or 2) we don't know. Our language isn't suited to fully describe color to someone born blind, because describing all of the factual data about color will never result in having a "color experience," in the same way that the fish describing dry land will ever result in his friends having a "dry land" experience. The fish is limited to employing language and concepts based on life experiences in the pond.

Whatever philosophers might say, in some aspects of legal and everyday life, the distinction between living and dead persons has been lost. Dead people are believed to have some human rights. For example, relatives often object to autopsies on their relatives. Whilst, of course, this may be upsetting to some living relatives, it is nevertheless often justified by saying "No PM -- he/she has suffered enough already".

I agree with Rakesh and Samuel and would like to add the following: Do we conceptualize the total lack of perception as being a state of lack of consciousness? What level of consciousness is then implied in that specific situation? The definitions of terms are a good starting point for discussions where terminology meanings can differ across fields. Dead implies no consciousness, no brain activity and thus a supernatural state is implied, which has elluded scientific endeavour so far. Have a look at the works and theories of Arnold Trehub on Research Gate, he has some revolutionary ideas on consciousness etc, which are exceptional.

Hi, Cheryl.

Why does it imply "supernatural"? Could you define what you mean by that term, because, from my perspective there's no such thing as "unnatural" or "supernatural." Everything that happens do so within nature; thus, everything is natural. I don't limit the concept of "natural" to the parameters of "statistically standard," (a.k.a. "normal") which seems to be implied in the way many people use the term, because that seems to say more about our own expectations of how things do (or should) work.

Hi Pat, I think it depends on one's interpretation of supernatural. In my case the term means relating to or attributed to phenomena that cannot be explained by natural laws (we have not developed any for this based on evidence) via scientific evidence and in this case there is perhaps only one known case where a person has actually been determined as brain dead and being revived whilst certain technologies were attached. They were able to gain some information of the experience from them. I cannot remember the case, but it may be worth looking up.

Thanks, Cheryl.

Now, of course, I have a follow-up question based on your reply..."cannot be explained by natural laws." Here, do you simply mean "beyond the scope of current human understanding"? Because, again, similar to my position in my first post, what other kind of laws would there be? Anything that describes nature is going to be a natural law, it just may not be a part of our current body of knowledge or may even fall outside our present paradigm...but based on what you said, it sounds like you're asserting the "beyond the current scope" definition. If that's not the case, help point me in the right direction here. :3)

It currently falls outside of our current human understanding, with many theories posited depending on one's religiosity, culture etc. There do not appear to be any natural laws that extend beyond death itself, but fields (ie., Various fields in physics) and theories such as those of Stephen Hawkins provide a glimpse of what could occur. The only case where a dead person has been able to come back after brain death where factors such as "going into a tunnel of light" or "out of body experience" have been long passed on the time scale of the experience of death does shed light on that reality per se. Apparently it is the only known case and the experience recounted after brain death were actually recorded.

Are you familiar with Michael Persinger's work? He's a Canadian neuroscientist who specializes in this sort of research. You may find his work interesting, if you're not already familiar with it.

There are some type of frogs that can spend the winter frozen and they thaw in the spring. While being frozen, the frog is like dead. But since the body is not damaged by being frozen then when it thaw it is revived. So there is nothing so surprising about a body being revive. What is more surprising is a case where an experience is reported during a period where it is confirmed that the brain was shut down. Such a cases exist and the experience has been confirmed as being veridical by a third person.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZM81dxIx6Ow

There many cases that are documented by respectable peoples. Either we reject all these cases on the basis that they are scams or we accept that come cases exist where experience about real events are possible without any apparent activities of the body. Both possibilities are either hard to beleive.

Here is a well documented case of out body experience very hard to dismiss and to explain.

http://www.salon.com/2012/04/21/near_death_explained/

Pat,

I searched for Michael Persinger and found a very funny device: God`s helmet

Yeah, the "God helmet." That is a funny name. There's an interesting video he has related to the relationship between consciousness and the Earth's electromagnetic field, called "No More Secrets." In it, he talks about evidence that allegedly links a range of phenomena, including things like telepathy and the like, to our planet's electromagnetic field...meaning that that's how you get two brains connected at a distance.

There's also some interesting discussion about near-death experiences in this National Geographic documentary, called Moment of Death.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10--R6fm540&list=PLEE58FD32AD60DF46

Out of body or near death experiences have a simple and rational explanation, they arise from a hyperactive state of the inner ear which occurs when its pressure drops, especially as a result of hypotension or a cut-off of its blood supply. Hence the vestibular and auditory hallucinations in NDE and OBE. Recent animal work is consistent with this mechanism. See

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/08/08/1308285110.full.pdf+html

After cardiac death, there was a surge in EEG activity, consistent with a labyrinthine origin.

Hi, Anthony. That doesn't account for how people know things about what was happening in their environment at the time. Watch the video link I provided for an example of what I'm talking about...essentially, the patient's eyes were taped shut and he was behind a screen before the physician ever started his surgery. Yet, the patient was able to accurately describe events and details while on the heart-lung bypass, in his described OBE state. I'm not at all saying I disagree with anything you stated above. I do agree with it; rather, what I'm saying is that there are other factors it seems we need to be able to account for. The man's testimony, like all things, has an explanation. We just need to determine what that is.

I did view the video, but until I see several of these cases reported in peer-reviewed journals, and preferably an experimental study, I am deferring judgement on whether someone can look down upon and describe aspects of the environment during periods of near death. I do not have any problem with the subjective accounts of their experiences, which sound quite consistent and are surely describing some sort of physiological state.

I agree. I just think that there's often a tendency for the establishment to respond with a wholesale rejection of some things, rather than proceed forward in a skeptically curious manner that requires us to accept only as much as the evidence allows us to accept. If we're doing science well, then we're investigating all claims that aren't blatant contradictions or impossibilities, and doing so in a way that doesn't require us to assume all explanations are equally valid. We can have true conclusions that rest upon the most ridiculous supporting arguments ever imagined; it doesn't follow that because our conclusion is good, therefore, so is our explanation.

I believe that the state of being awake, aware or conscious is actually a restriction of the whole experiential capability of a being. The limitations of the form that the being manifests in are what define the capability of the being. Beingness without a limiting form has no time, no location and no restrictions on what can be experienced. This kind of experience can not be related to what we humans define as knowledge, truth or facts. It can't be truly expressed in any words or models. If you ever get your form quiet enough to experience this (the only word I can think of is) realm beyond your form's time, location and senses, you may experience your form's current time and location more fully. You may experience a different time and/or location. You may experience some part of small reality. You may experience Everything. You will come back understanding what others have been saying to you about this and you will be in awe at your utter inability to describe it any better than they did.

The Ghost and the Silver Fish

Imagine you are in an ocean - a vast unfathomable ocean.

You are not on the surface of this ocean,

but deep within its heart.

The surface of this ocean is so far above your head

that you cannot even imagine how far away it is.

The bottom of this ocean is so far beneath your feet

that you cannot even imagine how far away it is.

And the darkness that you are staring at long -

you do not know if it is the darkness of a thousand miles

or the darkness here - in front of your eyes.

And you have been here for so long

that you have forgotten yourself.

There is only the darkness

and the sound of distant storms.

Then, one day, - a beautiful silver fish!

And then it was gone!

And it happened so quickly

that you did not have the time to remember yourself

so that you could really see the fish.

But now you do remember yourself.

There is the darkness.

There is the sound of distant storms.

And there is the waiting - for a silver fish.

Chris Davia

Since we are including answers from the arts, perhaps it would not be amiss to remind ourselves that the famous film "Sunset Boulevard," with Gloria Swanson as Norma Shearer, is narrated from the viewpoint of a dead narrator. The implication is that death is merely the continuation of the decadence of Hollywood stardom: it is the memory of a reality that never achieved the dignity of life. This vision is particularly unsettling when we realize that Swanson was cast in a role which she was actually playing in real life. If, then, life continually eludes our grasp in a world of mere appearances, it is a kind of heaven which is unattainable.

"The Death of Artemio Cruz" (La muerte de Artemio Cruz, 1962) by Carlos Fuentes is a Mexican novel which recounts the history of contemporary Mexico from the standpoint of a dying politician-industrialist. The whole novel s a vast panoramic flashback of the phases of the dying protagonist´s life.

Well, La muerte de Artemio Cruz is an excellent novel, but as Nelson already mentioned it is not strictly about Reality from a DEAD PERSON's perspective, but that of a dying politician-industrialist.

How close is this from a truly dead person's perspective is yet unclear to me.

Samuel, the difference between moribund and dead is problematic. The question is, what would reality look from a dead person´s perspective. The notion of person presupposes some kind of memory of personhood, self-possession, identity (see Zubiri, "Estructura dinámica de la realidad"). Artemio Cruz´s person consists entirely of his memories, unfolding as the pages of the novel. Therefore I would submit to you that

memory of selfhood persists from dying to the state of being dead.

@Nelson, I think the question (as well as your proposition) is paradoxical since it is asking how a person WITHOUT PERCEPTION would PERCEIVE the world...

All the different "points of view" (dog, bat, snake, humans) described are based on their different perceptions and sensations.

So to interpret the world you need sensorial stimuli (reaching the terminals of your nerves) that is processed by the brain and creates a perception (in general as a matching-pattern look-up in a catalog database of previous experiences).

Now if you have an inert body without any sensoric or without any processing system, no perception can take place.

Without sensoric you cannot detect stimuli, without processing system you cannot transform your sensations into perceptions.

I do not think "La muerte de Artemio Cruz" (as well as "It's a Wonderful life") example fits the question...

a) Artemio did not actually die (yet, in the moment you read the novel)

b) the question stated "Lets take an imaginary condition here and consider that a person loses all modes of perception. Well this may be a popular sci-fi context here so lets consider the person is dead. That means an inert body. How would the world now seem to him/her", but in the novel Artemio's memories are alive, but this is different from Artemio being dead!

So again, I must stick to my previous comment: "your proposition is paradoxical since you are asking how a person WITHOUT PERCEPTION would PERCEIVE the world"

Sorry, but I just retook y own words from before and fit to your example, I apologize for the self-plagiarism but I hope this helps reactivating the discussion.

O.K., Samuel. The original question used the word "person," and I presumed that personhood supposes some kind of memory of having been conscious.

Here is another possible answer to the original question. Few writers in the Spanish-speaking world have reflected more about death than Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936). Assuming, therefore, that Unamuno knew something about death, here is textually what he said in the original Spanish of his main work, "The Tragic Sense of Life":

"Imposible nos es, en efecto, concebirnos como no existentes, sin que haya esfuerzo alguno que baste a que la conciencia se dé cuenta de la absoluta inconciencia, de su propio anonadamiento." Here is my translation: It is in fact impossible for us to conceive ourselves as not existing, and no effort at all is sufficient for consciousness to acquire awareness of unconsciousness, awareness of its own annihilation.

If what Unamuno says is true-- and I cannot assert that it is-- then it is impossible for any of us to answer Tarun Verma´s question.

@Nelson, agree to you and Unamuno!!!

Learn more about NDE and read Bardo Thödol. You can use also astral OOBE to learn youself, travelling to bardo while in astral OBE can be achiavable based on one recent experiment we did with one proband.

 Is my existence limited to my body? The persons who love me or are in touch with me somehow,  also laugh or cry or feel joy when I do the same things respectively. Could it possibly be true that we have a bigger self than what we think or perceive now? It is true that we do not have perception of the bigger self. But, it can also be due to the fact that we have lost the training of empathising with the bigger self. Could it be a possibility that we shall be raised to the perception of the bigger self, not restricted by our own bodies, after our body stops functioning? 

Here is a poetic answer to your question. 

'

CORPSE - By Christopher James Davia

.

The heart's become so cold,

so dark a goblet,

for life's last and un-drunk blood;

a pool of pitch, in corpse-clad night,

for ghostly whited worms to turn  -  and turn.

.

In darkness the stake is sunk.

In darkness the deepened heart's impaled.

Dark - through eyes that still and sightless stare

to where and when the lid was nailed  -  and nailed.

.

An age,

and seeps the stale un-vented scream

through bones and toothy grin - betrayed by tired skin

in softly flaking fall: -

a creep of gas - a creep of voiceless gas,

that curls its lick

to taste decay's un-stitching pick -

the moment's loosened grip

lets sink - a rib,

in silent suffocating ink.

.

An age,

and grasps of begging bones are gradually stumped,

bereft of falling fingers and falling thumbs.

A void is left

to beg the void

above a pile of crumbs.

.

An age. an age,

too long an age…

This skull alone is sinking - waiting 

for the heaviness of years - to crack,

like sudden grief

its hopeless hollow gaping - into tears.

.

Once there was a dream - a spark

that split this night in half;

that burst in burning blues and greens - it shone - like lust.

This dream of dreams,

this last and longing crust – slips, stumbles,

and falls, all thirsty dreams.

to soft and disenchanted dust..

The following is a meditation on the nature of 'self'.

.

THE GHOST AND THE SILVER FISH

By Christopher James Davia

.

Imagine you are in an ocean – a vast unfathomable ocean.

You are not on the surface of this ocean,

but deep within its heart.

.

The surface of this ocean is so far above your head

that you cannot even imagine how far away it is.

And the bottom of this ocean is so far beneath your feet

that you cannot even imagine how far away it is. 

.

And the darkness that you are staring at for so long -

you do not know if it is the darkness of a thousand miles

or the darkness here – in front of your eyes.

And you have been here for so long

that you have forgotten yourself.

There is only the darkness

and the sound of distant storms.

.

Then, one day, out of the distance – a beautiful silver fish!

And then it was gone.

And it happened so quickly

that you did not have the time to remember yourself

so that you could really see the fish.

.

But now you do remember yourself.

There is the darkness.

There is the sound of distant storms.

And there is the waiting – for a silver fish.