ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the meaning of life and death, the interplay of continuity and discontinuity. In other ways to approach selfhood, the question can be much simpler to answer. It is clear that what is happening is that death is a return to a simpler level, and a falling-apart of the non-linear processes that sustained the level of life. But we need to look at the death of this wonderful, conscious human being. The theory points to something more, because we are working with a self that is not inherently continuous. We are therefore facing a death and rebirth of self in every moment. Theories of emergence allow for a third possibility, of selfhood as an emergent level of complexity with possibilities not available at the simpler level, but, vitally for any discussion of death, not separable from that simpler level.
