LIFE AFTER DEATH: Personal existence after death

Question 1

Personal identity as physical: A physicalist would argue that you can’t be a person without your brain

Answer 1

No brain= no memory, personality, no thoughts. The brain retains identity as the neutrons in the cerebral cortex are never replaced/none are added

Question 2

Personal identity as physical: Physicalists believe to be the same person depends on the spatio temporal continuity of a functioning body and brain

Answer 2

Continuity between the body’s various states over a life time

Question 3

Personal identity as metaphysical, involving continuity of consciousness

Answer 3

What is real about a person is their unchanged conscious awareness: Campbell illustrates that Big Ben strikes twice- separate events in space-time. The observer is conscious during both strikes so they know the clock has struck 2 and is consciously aware of being the same self as heard the clock strike 1 as now hears it strike 2. Therefore memory is dependent on the ‘I’ being self aware

Question 4

Personal identity as psychological continuity of personality and memory: The Bundle Theory of identity

Answer 4

Parfit argues against identity depending on some core self that remains the same throughout life. What matters is what Parfit calls ‘Relation R’- psychological connectedness, including memory and personality. You don’t survive death as the same person; you have continuity through ancestors

Question 5

Physical existence after death: There is no continuing personal existence after death

Answer 5

The body and brain decay after death. Russell: the self is bound up with the brain so it can’t exist after death

Question 6

Physical existence after death: The Christian concept of resurrection

Answer 6

Resurrection in a bodily form. But, if a body is necessary to be recognised as a person, how would it be possible to establish identity in the re-embodied existence or a rotted body?

Question 7

Physical existence after death: Hick’s replica theory

Answer 7

The body decays and its atoms become part of other living things so it is not possible for the individual to be resurrected with bodily identity. What is resurrected is a perfect replica which retains the individual’s identity as a mind-body unit in a post-mortem world e.g. Mr X who has a complete set of memories and looks the same

Question 8

Physical existence after death: Hick’s replica theory does not demonstrate the logical possibility of bodily resurrection

Answer 8

By definition, a replica can’t be the original

God could create more than one replica of a unique individual and each one would have a different consciousness

Question 9

Physical existence after death: Hick’s replica theory does demonstrate the logical possibility of bodily resurrection

Answer 9

Mr X is a unique mind-body (psychosomatic) unity, so there can only ever be one version of Mr X in existence

Question 10

Physical existence after death: Problems with Hick’s replica theory

Answer 10

Does the resurrected Mr X get the same body as that which died?
An omnipotent God wouldn’t resurrect humans post-mortem
Unlikely that there could not be more than one replica

Question 11

Existence of a conscious self after death: Plato’s argument from opposites for the immortality of the soul

Answer 11

In the Phaedo: Everything comes to be from its opposite. Life and death are opposites so in the same way living bodies die, the dead must become living. BUT, Plato uses the example of being awake and asleep but sleep is not the same as death

Question 12

Existence of a conscious self after death: Plato’s argument from recollection for the immortality of the soul

Answer 12

In the Phaedo: Knowledge is recollection from the WOF. We recollect beacuse our souls were in the WOF. BUT, WOF can’t be proven

Question 13

Existence of a conscious self after death: Plato’s argument from simplicity for the immortality of the soul

Answer 13

In the Phaedo: The soul is simple, immaterial, unextended. BUT, how can the soul be complex as well?

Question 14

Existence of a conscious self after death: Swinburne’s light bulb argument

Answer 14

All we need is something to replace the body for the conscious self to continue after death: there exists a material body (electric socket) and a non-material soul (light bulb)
When socket is damaged or switched off, the bulb doesn’t shine. If we destroy the brain, we stop working
We can fix or move the light bulb or socket. Only God can do this though. God would either allow the soul to survive in a disembodied state OR reattach the soul to a new/old body

Question 15

Existence of a conscious self after death: H. H. Price and disembodied souls

Answer 15

Price’s argument is backed up by parapsychological phenomena
Price believes that the after life is mind based- like a dream where we perform bodily actions
We can survive outside the body
The after life would match the soul’s desires and memories
BUT how will stillborn babies/blind people manipulate images? Are we the same without our body/brains/sense experience?

Question 16

Existence of a conscious self after death: Reincarnation of the soul

Answer 16

Hinduism: soul enters another body after this life determined by karma. The soul passes from body to body
The self is necessarily embodied but is independent of any one particular embodiment
Support comes from past-life regression (therapist locates the causes of a patient’s present mental stress in a past life) and direct past-life recall (young children remember a different set of parents e.g. Ian Stevenson amassed 1000+ cases of reincarnation)

Question 17

Existence of a conscious self after death: Objections to reincarnation

Answer 17

Weak research procedures
Cryptomnesia shows that people can remember events when they are actually just forgotten memories that have resurfaced
How could it be established that any individual now living is the same person as a previous incarnation?= belief in the reincarnation of a soul is unverifiable

Question 18

Existence of a conscious self after death: The structure of Near Death Experiences
Boring Snails Might Feel Insecure Near Elephants

Answer 18

Begins with an out of body experience
Seeing a light
Moving along a long dark tunnel with the light in the distance
Feelings of peace and serenity
Instantaneous past life review
Need to return to the body
Effects how one lives thereafter

Question 19

Evidence of continuing personal existence after death: Negative interpretations of near death experiences

Answer 19

The experience is understood as a product of the dying brain
NDE is culture and religion specific: Christians won’t see Buddhist figures. The NDE reflects what the person expects to see
By definition, those who remember a NDE didn’t actually die- not evidence for what happens after death

Question 20

Evidence of continuing personal existence after death: Positive interpretations of near death experiences

Answer 20

We might expect the NDE to be culturally and religiously specific because there would be no point giving a Christian a Buddhist NDE
There are examples of people giving detailed sighted experiences despite having been blind from birth

Question 21

How does the Bundle Theory prove psychological continuity after death?

Answer 21

On the surface, the theory seems to suggest that there is no deeper level of self that remains the same aside from a psychological connectedness with children and friends
The self is a bundle-a person is an ever changing combination of mental and physical energies. This continuous process of change continues through death

Question 22

Possibility of psychological continuity: Who is Dennett?

Answer 22

American philosopher

Question 23

Possibility of psychological continuity: What is Dennett’s functionalist approach to survival?

Answer 23

The information presently stored in the brain could be uploaded onto a different platform, such as a computer:
Your experiences, memories, personality are the ‘program that runs on your brain’s computer’. What can survive is the ‘persistence of the narrative’- the narrative of your experience, memory and personality if it is stored

Question 24

Possibility of psychological continuity: Quote from Dennett

Answer 24

In ‘a suitably programmed robot … there would be a conscious self whose body was the robot and whose brain was the computer’

Question 25

Possibility of psychological continuity: Objective immortality

Answer 25

In process theology, God is di-polar- God is in the universe and the universe is in God
This dual aspect must be true of everything in the universe
Therefore all persons are in God
When persons die they are objectively immortal because persons stay forever in the mind of God. They no longer have their own self-conscious states; only God has subjective immortality
This, for some, isn’t worth having because you are not self aware

Question 26

Possibility of psychological continuity: Subjective immortality

Answer 26

Some process thinkers argue that God can give persons subjective immortality
If this is right, God has the power to to bring it about that the ‘same person’ survives
This does away with a human centred universe