In Brief

In a nutshell, what does Instantaneous Consciousness (I.C.) suggest? I.C. states that I only nessicarily exist at the moment I contemplate my existence. Any other time, my existence is questionable, even other times that I remember contemplating my existence. So how does this all get applied to the name Instantaneous Consciousness? Well, I can verify that I am conscious in the present, but it is only just this one discreet present. So for just this instant I am conscious. Thus Instantaneous Consciousness (I.C.).

The Proof

For the extended proof, come along with me on the path of logic I used to derive I.C.

The question was, do we die? Is death truly mandatory? What is truly real, if this is unreal, is death even possible? Do we exist and thus even are capable of death? What can we actually substantiate? I answered those first few via Descartes' logic. There is only one fact that I can TRULY verify: Yes I do exist because I can think. In order to exist, there must be something that I can actually do, not just perceive myself doing but actually do. Something so fundamental that there is no way I could be fooled into believing that I have done it. Thinking is the only thing that meets those requirements. This lead to new questions: Over what period of time have I been thinking? Will I be thinking a year, a week, a minute, a second, a moment from now?

So I considered these last questions. My first thought was: I have been thinking since I was born. How can I prove this? I remember thinking. But this lead to the point: The only truly verifiable fact is that I think. Memory is fallible. So my cause for believing that I existed previously is fallible. So I come back to the realization that I can only prove I exist now. The fact that I existed previously may be nothing more than an illusion, a glitch in my memory. Which brought me to the point: What is memory? Typically I consider that memory is a store of information and facts about people, places, and things that I have encountered before. But if memory is fallible, does that truly have to be the case? Couldn't my memory have been set for me, so that in the present I can recall information that I never experienced before? The only answer I could find is that: yes, my memory could be false, assigned to me at this particular moment, a fleeting illusion of experiences I never had. So I thought: This really only substantiates one thing, that I can only verify my existence in the present, a belief that, because I existed in the past, and didn't cease to exist in the present, does not suitably prove that in the next moment, I will still exist. Therefore the now is the only, past, future, all of these are irrelevant.

So I thought: Does this mean that I exist any time I am conscious? And while I contemplated it, I realized that the only time I was truly aware of my consciousness was when I was contemplating my existence, at any other time I was not aware of my consciousness, and as such, was only aware that I was even there in the first place was because of my memory. So I concluded that the only time I must exist is at the precise moment I think about thinking.

Conclusion

Since coming to these conclusions, I have formed many theories about what kinds of universes this suggest I exist in. Universes made from chaos, where an entire universal definition just pops into existence, and I, memories and all exist for only a moment, then wink out as fast as I came. Universes where people are sporadically just added to the populace, and all of history in the minds of it's inhabitants are simultaneously altered to include the new person. A universe that consists only of myself, and an array of false perceptions and memories. And finally the one we've all come to accept as the "useable" definition of the universe, a universe where a consciousness is born into a continuous universe with little apparent direct intervention from any outside sources. However, each and every one of these is a possible universe.

As it turns out, I managed to answer the question at hand: No. Death is not required, neither is birth or taxes. I shouldn't concern myself with death, as it is entirely possible that I will cease to exist in the coming moment. As is with death, I would not mourn the loss, as there would be no consciousness around to mourn it. Instead, I should concern myself more with the process of dying, because although I will never experience death, dying I might experience (continuous universe theory) and I should think that it's likely very unpleasant.