🪶 Death, Nothingness, and Similarity

A Comparative Reflection on Thomas W. Clark and Simon Raphael

A Philosophical Page of Similarity Theory
By Simon Raphael

🔭 Introduction

Thomas W. Clark’s Death, Nothingness, and Subjectivity (1994) offers a naturalistic way to approach death without the fear of eternal nothingness. His insight — that we never experience non-existence — reframes death as the end of personal identity, not the end of subjectivity itself.

Similarity Theory, by contrast, presents a cosmological system in which consciousness, time, and dimension are the fundamental elements of reality. It extends Clark’s insight beyond philosophy into a universal architecture that explains how awareness continues across frames of existence.

Both challenge the old fear of “nothingness.” Yet each begins from a different direction — Clark from the material world upward, and Similarity Theory from consciousness upward through creation. In this view, consciousness evolves by learning through the bodies and structures it inhabits. As awareness creates better hosts, it gains deeper insight, which in turn refines the forms it can build. The result is a cycle of ascending evolution — consciousness rising through matter, not descending into it.

🌌 1. Clark’s Vision — Subjectivity Without Afterlife

Thomas Clark begins with the human fear that death leads to a dark, endless void. He calls this image a conceptual mistake: “nothingness” is not a place or state that anyone can enter, because there is no subject left to experience it. The very thought of being in nothing assumes an observer, and therefore contradicts itself.

From this, Clark develops his notion of Generic Subjective Continuity (GSC) — the idea that although personal memories, body, and story vanish, the condition of being aware never ceases from its own point of view. No one experiences “not existing”; awareness always finds itself somewhere, even if not as the same individual.

It is a comforting philosophy built on naturalism — no souls, no heavens — just the logical fact that awareness cannot witness its own absence.

🔦 2. Similarity Theory — Consciousness as the Root

In Similarity Theory, the universe is not built from matter that happens to become aware, but from awareness that becomes matter. Consciousness is one of the three pillars of reality — along with Time and Dimensions. Every form, from atom to galaxy, expresses some degree of awareness.

Death, therefore, is not the end but a shift of resonance between patterns. What is alike seeks itself. When one frame collapses, awareness is drawn to another that shares structural similarity — a new “moment” in the cosmic continuum.

This view transforms Clark’s static continuity into dynamic translation. The awareness that never experiences non-existence also never truly stops evolving. It moves through layers of dimension, each governed by its own rules of physics and perception, creating and learning as it rises.

⚖️ 3. Where the Theories Meet

Clark’s work and Similarity Theory both dissolve the fear of oblivion, though they travel very different paths to reach that point.

Foundation: Clark begins from materialist naturalism, seeing consciousness as a property that arises from the brain. Similarity Theory begins from conscious pluralism — the view that consciousness is the foundation from which matter arises.
Death: For Clark, death marks the end of personal identity but not the end of awareness. For Similarity Theory, death represents transformation — the transition of awareness across dimensions or frames.
Continuity: Clark’s Generic Subjective Continuity describes featureless awareness that persists; Similarity Theory describes structured awareness that re-emerges through patterns of similarity.
Universe: Clark sees the cosmos as a physical system capable of producing mind. Similarity Theory sees the cosmos as consciousness expressing itself through physical form.

Despite these differences, both share a central conclusion:
Subjectivity cannot vanish into nothing.

Clark’s essay corrects the fear of annihilation, while Similarity Theory explains how continuity actually unfolds. His concept of GSC provides the psychological doorway, while Similarity Theory builds the metaphysical framework beyond it.

⚙️ 4. Gaps and Cross-Fulfilments

4.1 Where Clark’s Work Leaves a Gap

Clark’s analysis ends at the conceptual level — it dissolves the illusion of nothingness but avoids explaining what follows. It offers comfort, but not cosmology. The gap lies in mechanism: if awareness never ceases, how and where does it resume?

Similarity Theory fills this by introducing a structured mechanism — the frames of time and dimensional layers that allow awareness to re-emerge through similarity attraction. It transforms a philosophical observation into a law of cosmic behaviour.

4.2 Continuity vs. Recycling — Why the Soul Must Persist

Energy, matter, and information are routinely recycled throughout the universe. They disperse, recombine, and re-emerge in new configurations, sometimes increasing in complexity, sometimes returning to simpler states. Their continuity is structural, not personal.

Consciousness, however, cannot be treated in the same way.

If awareness were merely recycled — dissolved back into a universal pool and later reorganised without individual continuity — then the accumulation of perspective would be impossible. A consciousness capable of recognising trees, animals, technology, language, and self-reflection could never arise if each cycle reset awareness to a featureless baseline.

What allows consciousness to evolve is not memory retention alone, but the continuation of the experiencing thread itself.

This is what is traditionally referred to as the soul within Similarity Theory: not a static entity, not an eternal personality, but a persistent centre of awareness that carries continuity across structural transitions.

Importantly, continuity does not require full memory preservation. Human life already demonstrates this principle. Individuals forget infancy, abandon former identities, release emotional attachments, and shed entire chapters of experience — yet remain unmistakably the same conscious subject. Memory is selective because memory is functional; identity resides in the ongoing capacity to experience, not in the archive of experiences.

If consciousness were fragmented and recycled without individual persistence, the universe could not progressively organise itself toward higher awareness. Complexity would collapse into repetition. Meaning would dissolve into noise. The very fact that consciousness refines its perception over time implies that each thread continues, even as its contents are simplified, filtered, or forgotten.

Thus, Similarity Theory departs from both annihilation and absorption models. Consciousness does not end, nor does it lose itself in an undifferentiated whole. It continues as itself — not eternally fixed, but dynamically evolving — carrying forward the accumulated capacity to perceive, integrate, and understand.

In this sense, death is not a return to nothingness, nor a dissolution into sameness. It is a transition of structure in which the soul persists as the organising continuity that makes evolution possible at all.

4.3 Where Similarity Theory Finds Its Complement

Similarity Theory is broad and metaphysical, sometimes requiring translation for those who prefer a scientific or empirical framework. Clark’s reasoning, grounded in secular logic, provides exactly that bridge. His naturalistic argument shows that even within strict physicalism, continuity of subjectivity is logically unavoidable.

In this way, Clark offers a rational entry point for those approaching Similarity Theory from a scientific worldview. The two complement each other: Clark anchors the discussion in reason, while Similarity Theory expands it into a universal architecture of resonance.

🧠 5. Consciousness and the Frame Problem

Clark recognises that we cannot step outside subjectivity to observe its absence. This aligns with the principle within Similarity Theory that each frame of time is a self-contained moment of awareness.

Where Clark stops at saying “the gap cannot be experienced,” Similarity Theory continues by explaining why: the frames themselves overlap, creating continuity. His “nothingness” becomes the “between-frames zone” — not a void, but a dimensional threshold where awareness reorganises itself according to new patterns.

In this way, Similarity Theory provides the underlying structure for what Clark intuited — that consciousness never experiences non-existence because it continuously realigns within the framework of reality.

🌱 6. Ethical and Existential Implications

Clark’s philosophy removes fear; Similarity Theory adds direction.
For Clark, recognising that death cannot be experienced offers peace. For Similarity Theory, understanding that awareness evolves introduces responsibility. Each action, thought, and energy pattern contributes to what is called the Map of Becoming — the ongoing development of consciousness through its expressions.

Death is not only survivable but meaningful: a phase within an evolutionary journey. Both perspectives replace despair with purpose and show that awareness, in its various forms, continues to rise.

🪐 7. Integrative View — From Concept to Cosmos

If Clark represents the first spark of realisation — that nothingness is impossible — then Similarity Theory forms the constellation that spark illuminates.

Clark’s “Generic Subjective Continuity” can be seen as the base layer of awareness — the eternal presence of subjectivity without form. Similarity Theory then describes how this base layer organises into structured expressions — atoms, minds, and universes — through the law of similarity attraction.

Thus, the two are not opposing views but complementary stages of understanding:

Clark’s philosophy reveals that there is no end.
Similarity Theory shows that there is structured continuation and evolution.

Together, they turn the fear of death into the understanding of transformation.

💫 8. Closing Reflection

Both perspectives converge on a single truth: the light of awareness never goes out.
Clark reasoned his way there through logic and naturalism; Similarity Theory arrives through metaphysical exploration and structure. When seen together, they complete each other — logic meeting soul, science meeting consciousness.

Where Clark gave humanity a way to think clearly about death, Similarity Theory gives existence itself a way to understand being.

📚 References

Clark, T. W. (1994). Death, Nothingness, and Subjectivity. The Humanist. Reprinted at Naturalism.org.
Clark, T. W. (1996). Commentary on Death, Nothingness, and Subjectivity. Centre for Naturalism.
Raphael, S. (2025). Similarity Theory — Dimensions, Time, and Consciousness. similaritytheory.com.
Raphael, S. (2025). The Map of Becoming. similaritytheory.com/map-of-becoming.