6.2 Points for discussion about life after death

Question 1

Plato Quote

Answer 1

Death is not the worst that can happen to men

Question 2

Platonic Dualism

Answer 2

• Plato reasoned that the universe contains opposed properties, such as light and dark , good and bad. Similarly opposed to a physical universe there must’ve been a metaphysical universe - a non-physical universe beyond the physical one.
• The metaphysical universe must be composed of pure ideas or forms (universal ideas e.g. of a cat). Each instance of a cat participates in the perfect FORM of a cat: it as a physical copy of an ideal BLUEPRINT ‘cat’ in the world of forms.

Question 3

Platonic dualism - Forms of abstract ideas

Answer 3

The overarching Form is the form of the Good, because, because this form defines the supreme quality of goodness in all things. The Form of the Good is the closest that Plato gets to a concept of God.

The perfect idea for a person lies within the soul, argues Plato, and this is the counterpart of the body and the brain. The soul is pre-existent, immortal in its own right as a Form, and is embodied in the physical matter of the brain while the person is alive: it is a bridge between the physical world and the ethereal world of Forms.

Question 4

Platonic dualism - the soul at death

Answer 4

• The soul returns to the world of forms and contemplates them until it is reincarnated into the world. - - Knowledge is gained from remembering what the soul already knows from its contemplation of pure ideas. The soul, encased in the body, has to remember what it already knows, so knowledge is the uncovering of universal truths such as geometry and maths.

Question 5

Plato - the soul in the body

Answer 5

The soul has three parts in embodied from:
1. HEAD and BRAIN associated with REASONING
2. CHEST associated with the NATURAL AGGRESSION in a person.
3. STOMACH and REPRODUCTIVE ORGANS are associated with APPETITE and DESIRE.

Plato insists that reason must rule otherwise the soul will be out of balance.
Humans must put reason about everything else, to focus on the soul as the best way to live.
For Plato, the soul is immortal in its own right and is the real essence of a person.

Question 6

Aristotelian Dualism - FOUR CAUSES

Answer 6

There are FOUR CAUSES that explain why things are as they are and do what they do:
1. THE MATTER FROM WHICH A THING IS MADE
2. ITS FORM - the shape it takes
3. ITS EFFICIENT CAUSE - for humans is parents
4. THE FINAL CAUSE - the reason why a thing exists

Question 7

Aristotle on the soul

Answer 7

• For Aristotle the soul is the animating principle of the body - it’s formal cause is what makes a physical body a living body.
• All life forms have a soul.
• As the animating principle, the soul in humans is the principle by which we know and understand, by which we develop character and skills.
  The soul enables us to 1. grasp eternal truths 2. rationalise our sense-experience 3. understand abstract ideas such as goodness.

For Aristotle these abilities are grounded in this world and NOT a metaphysical world of forms.
When the body dies its ANNIMATION is lost and the SOUL DIES also.

Question 8

Monism: Hard materialism

Answer 8

Monism is the belief that the mind and body are one substance. Most monists are materialists.

Hard materialism is the view that human beings are made from only one kind of substance - material substance.

Mental events are essentially physical events.

Hard materialism is a reductionist philosophy, ‘soul’ reduces to matter. There is nothing that can survive death.

Question 9

Monism: Soft materialism (Swinburne)

Answer 9

Argues that materialism cannot explain the subjectivity of mental events. Materialists are forced to give descriptions of events that cannot be reduced in this way. E.G. how could the subjective experience of eating strawberries be described that could reproduce the exact experience.

Soft materialism argues that some of these material objects have mental properties which are distinct from physical properties.

HARD MATERIALISTS - express atheistic viewpoints
SOFT MATERIALISTS - allow for the possibility of God reconstituting the dead person.

Question 10

Scientific materialism: Dawkins

Answer 10

‘Life is just bytes and bytes of digital infomation’
Believes that the only survival that can be identified in connection with life forms is genetic.

To Dawkins, belief in the soul and belief in God are by-products of blind evolutionary processes and are also the product of our unwillingness to contemplate the inevitability of extinction after death.

If humans want to think about being immortal they should think about MEMES - they explain the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena through the behaviours they initiate in their hosts. If you get imitated, you become immortal.

Question 11

Advantages of Dawkins’ materialism

Answer 11

It makes use of evolutionary biology in a way that many people find persuasive. Explains that people are expendable.

The concept of memes is easy to understand. The notion that ideas replicate is an interesting extension of the fact that genes replicate themselves.

Question 12

Challenges to Dawkins’ materialism

Answer 12

• To assume that human evolution serves no other function than to ensure the survival of the genes is to put the cart before the horse.
• To argue evolution is a blind, unregulated process completely ignores the fact that it obeys the absolute laws of biology and chemistry.
• If we are reduced to nothing but bytes of infomation, then any recommendation we should reflect meaningfully on what we have achieved seems anomalous.

Question 13

Near-death experiences

Answer 13

Have been reported for millennia, in all cultures and at all times.
Reported characteristics:
1. ineffability
2. feeling of peace and quiet
3. seeing a dark tunnel with a light at the end of it
4. review of the person’s life
5. a decision to return

Question 14

Scientific explanations for NDEs

Answer 14

1. anaesthetic drugs
2. hypoxia - starving the brain of oxygen can produce altered states of consciousness
3. temporal lobe seizure - characterised by an eruption of past-life memories.

Question 15

Verification of NDEs

Answer 15

• The evidence of there experience is often based on a recall of events which could only be known about if the experience is true.
• BLACKMORE has concluded that NDEs have a scientific explanation and compared NDEs to dreams. Dreams occur when the brain goes to sleep or wakes up, and not in between.
• Can be used to SUPPORT any theoretical mode of life after death, even reincarnation. No clue is given as to how ‘persons’ are really identified in an afterlife, since there would be no observable differences between a physical environment and a mental construct of such an environment.