existence of a conscious self after death

Question 1

possibility of conscious self after death
Plato - argument from opposites

Answer 1

• everything comes from its opposite
• life and death are opposites so in same way living bodies die, dead must become living

Question 2

possibility of conscious self after death
Plato - argument from recollection
- knowledge is recollection

Answer 2

• attempted to demonstrate that the principles of geometry can be recollected even by the uneducated
• true knowledge is knowledge of unchanging forms
• to have such knowledge implies we must have existed before birth implying further that souls exist affter death of the body

Question 3

possibility of conscious self after death
Plato - argument from recollection
- what does this suggest after death

Answer 3

• soul goes to world of forms to contemplate their perfection & is reborn in the flesh
• this follows early Greek (religious) belief that everything is involved in an eternal cyclic process
• seems Plato is endorsing a view of reincarnation of soul as an automatic process

Question 4

possibility of conscious self after death
Plato - argument from recollection
- problem with this view

Answer 4

• rests on his theory of forms with some very doubtful arguments. example, argument from opposites seems to be wrong. Plato uses analogy of sleeping & waking as you need to be asleep to wake up but to say one needs to be dead to live is not the same
• another issues is it’s appeal to simplicity. core to his argument is straightforward: soul is immaterial, un-extended & simple -> it has no parts but something can be destroyed if its parts are separated so by having no parts can be destroyed but a self that’s so simple it can’t be destroyed is so simple it cannot be understood. we only recognise one another due to our distinctive complexity which we gain by contact with physical environment which we live in

Question 5

H.H Price argument

Answer 5

• hypothesised that the afterlife would be mind-based just as in a dream state, we perform bodily actions
• suggested their environment would correspond to the individual soul’s deepest desires & strongest memories from which their environment would be created
• suggested disembodied souls would communicate telepathically & in response to how disembodied souls would recognise each other in afterlife, Price suggested that telepathic communication would allow individuals to project image of them to other souls

Question 6

H.H Price evaluation

Answer 6

• ideas here are coherant but whether they’re true is another issues. Price’s disembodied souls would seem to spend much time manipulating images to create a substance for sense experiences so how could someone who was blind since birth do this?
• doesn’t seek to prove existence of disembodied afterlife but wants to show it’s at least coherant as parapsychological phenomena provide some support for it. Example, some claim to be ‘mediums’ and can communicate with those in afterlife however the possibility of fraud suggests mediums have no real ability to communicate with the dead

Question 7

Swinburne argument

Answer 7

• substance dualist so believes there are 2 substances in a human being - material body & non material soul
• accepts that in principle a conscious self could continue to exist after death in a disembodied state because the concept of me is concept of a soul which is an immaterial substance distinct from my body so God can make it continue to exist
• alternatively, God could connect soul to its old body or to a new one

Question 8

Swinburne evaluation

Answer 8

• first possibility supported by functionalist arguments as they can accept that minds could operate on a metaphysical platform
• careful to say these are possibilities not facts. logically impossible that souls as Swinburne defines them could survive death either in an embodied or disembodied states
• for Christian theists (like Swinburne) the argument that an omnipotent God could cause souls to exist after death in either an embodied or disembodied state will make sense but for a soft materialist like Hick idea of a disembodied soul makes no sense since for Hick a hyman is a psychosomatic unity so God would have to resurrect whole person

Question 9

reincarnation

Answer 9

• view generally associated with Eastern thought
• most Hindus believe soul enters another body (human, God, animal) and nature determined by karma and actions in current life
• also assumes that a person’s situation has been caused by some extent by actions in previous lives
• single entity the soul (atman) passes body to body but may aim for identity with divine reality
• in Bhagavad Gita (Hindu scriptures) bad karma is generated by those whose role is to be a warrior are countered by claim that to kill body is to bot really to kill the person
• compatible with physicalist/materalist views see self as necessarily embodied

Question 10

reincarnation
past life regression

Answer 10

• used in hypnotherapy where therapist uses variety of techniques to locate causes of a patients’ present mental stress in a supposed past life
• experiences a forgotten memory & doesn’t recognise it as having been experienced before

Question 11

reincarnation
direct past life recall

Answer 11

• occurs most in young children who may confuse their parents by apparently remembering a different set of parents

Question 12

reincarnation
evaluation

Answer 12

• weak research procedures
• accepted belief in most of these cases studied by Stevenson so perhaps there’s a tendency for people to encourage each other to provide testimony to support their beliefs
• well-known phenomenon of cryptomnesia shows that people can believe that they remembered events whereas in reality they are forgotten memories that have resurfaced