Lesson 7 Flashcards
If u think personal identity…
For those who think that personal identity lies in the physical facts about the body and the brain, here are four conclusions that might be drawn concerning the possibility of continuing personal existence after death
1 There is no continuing personal existence after death…
-This would be a clear conclusion for those who adopt a purely physicalist/ materialist understanding of the nature of persons, since it is evident that body and brain decay after death and no longer exist in any recognisable form.
-For example, Bertrand Russell sees the self as bound up with what happens in the brain, so cannot entertain the idea of an existence that outlives its dissolution:
“Our memories and habits are bound up with the structure of the brain, in much the same way in which a river is connected with the riverbed.”
2 As an alternative to (1), science and technology may allow us to survive our death
Physicalism/materialism does not automatically entail a denial of life after death or of continuation in some form or other, but whether it is personal survival is another matter. For example, the developing science of cryonics deals with the low-temperature preservation of people whose lives cannot be saved by conventional medicine. Their heads (for example) can be preserved at -196°C, waiting for resuscitation and reattachment to a body as and when science permits.
Another physicalist suggestion is provided by Daniel Dennett, for example, that the information presently stored in the brain could be uploaded onto a different platform, such as a computer.
Further views that are consistent with physicalism include resurrection of the body and Hick’s Replica theory.
3 The Christian concept of resurrection of the body
-Christians disagree concerning whether resurrection will be spiritual or bodily.
-considering the idea that resurrection in a bodily form is a coherent, philosophical view of continuing life after death.
-obvious difficulty with such a view is that bodies rot and the material of any one body becomes part of other physical systems, including those of other human beings.
-If a body of some form is necessary in order to be recognised as a person, how are we to understand identity, if a body available after death is not to be physically and numerically identical to the one that dies?
key question is, then: ‘How would it be possible to establish identity in the re-embodied existence?’
-One way out of this dilemma is simply to observe that an omnipotent God can do whatever he likes, and so there is no reason why God cannot allow souls to live again after the death of their bodies or be attached to another body.
-(This is the approach taken by Swinburne) One of the best-known answers to the body problem is that of John Hick:
Conscious self surviving death
HH Price
Swinburne
Plato
HH Price
-Pictured a community of disembodied, Cartesian style souls, who would communicate telepathically and project images of themselves to other disembodied souls
-It is very difficult however, to talk of sameness in the absence of body, brain and sense experience
Plato
Argued for the natural immortality of the soul using for example, the argument from recollection
The core of this argument is that the soul is immaterial, own extended and simple (it has no parts) so it cannot be destroyed at death
What would a simple soul be like?
How could it have character?
How could this soul be verified as the same person?
Swinburne
-Defended substance dualism
-Rejects the idea that the soul can be naturally immortal
-He sees the soul as an evolutionary development in connexion with bodies and brains brought about by God’s intervention (or some other process)
-Mental states are states of the soul so at the point of death the soul, which is the real person, would have character, beliefs and desires
-Just as a light bulb full shine only if it is plugged into a live socket, a soul will function only if it is attached to a living functioning brain
-Swinburne clearly assumes the God’s intervention would be needed to bring about the survival after death of disembodied souls or souls linked to existing or new bodies.
In principle…
-Souls could survive death in a disembodied state
-Certainly, God could bring this about
-Alternatively ,God could reconnect the soul to its original body or to another body if the original body has been annihilated
-In either event, since the soul has character, beliefs and desires the surviving person would be the same person as the one who had died
Eastern thought…
This view is generally associated with Eastern thought
Most Hindus believe that after this life the soul enters into another body either that of a human being a God or an animal
The nature of which is determined by karma –actions good or bad performed in this life
This view also assumes that a person situation in this life has been caused to some extent by actions in previous lives it assumes a single entity – the soul (atman) that passes from body to body but may aim finally at identity with divine reality itself (Brahman)
Implications for issues of life and death
Is this dualist, materialist, neither or both?
The self is necessarily embodied – materialist
Embodied self accumulates karmic character and therefore is independent of any one particular embodiment – dualist
Past-life regression – hypnotherapy
Direct past-life recall – childhood case studies (Ian Stevenson)
NDE
-There is some evidence for dualism and personal survival after death in accounts of near-death experiences
this is because they are most often understood by those who have them and by some who investigate them scientifically, to be evidence for the existence of a soul that survives death
-NDEs have been reported from all cultures and times since the day of Plato
they are most commonly reported in hospitals where the chances of resuscitation are much higher and for those who suffer cardiac arrest or a major stroke where help is not close at hand
NDE are structured
-Near death experiences commonly begin with an out of body experience when someone sees himself from a vantage point somewhere near the ceiling
-some witness resuscitation attempts on their body and afterwards are able to describe the procedure in detail
Examples of NDE
Seeing a light – commonly described as being brighter than anything
moving along a long dark tunnel with the light in the distance
feeling at peace and serenity
meeting a barrier, order or limit – symbolic of death
meeting of being of light
an instantaneous past life review
meeting relatives who have died
the need to return to the body
the effect of the experience on the way one lives thereafter
a different understanding of the nature of death and the afterlife
Negative interpretations of NDE
-Neuroscientific studies of the NDE are generally ‘reductive’, meaning that the whole experience is understood as a product of the dying brain and as having no further or deeper meaning.
-In support of this interpretation, neuroscientists point to the fact that the NDE is culture- and religion-specific. Christians will not see Buddhist figures, and Sikhs will not see Jewish figures, so the NDE simply reflects what the person expects to see.
-By definition, those who remember a NDE did not actually die, so many would say that the NDE is not evidence for what happens after death.
