Philosophy and the Belief in a Life after Death

230 Pages·1995·17.46 MB·English

by  R. W. K. Paterson

PHILOSOPHY AND THE BELIEF IN
A LIFE AFTER DEATH
LIBRARY OF PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION
General Editor: John Hick, Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study in
the Humanities, University of Birmingham
This series of books explores contemporary religious understandings of
humanity and the universe. The books contribute to various aspects of the
continuing dialogues between religion and philosophy, between scepticism
and faith, and between the different religions and ideologies. The authors
represent a correspondingly wide range of viewpoints. Some of the books
in the series are written for the general educated public and others for a
more specialised philosophical or theological readership.
Selected titles
ISSUES IN CONTEMPORARY JUDAISM
Dan Cohn-Sherbok
ISLAM IN A WORLD OF DIVERSE FAITHS (editor)
MORAL SCEPTICISM
Clement Do re
GOD, SUFFERING AND SOLIPSISM
PROBLEMS IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF
Harold Hewitt
RELIGION (editor)
J. Kellenberger INTER-RELIGIOUS MODELS AND CRITERIA
Carl Olson THE THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY OE
ELIADE
Alan G. Padgett GOD, ETERNH Y AND THE NATURE OF TIME
Joseph Runzo IS GOD REAL? (editor)
WORLD VIEWS AND PERCEIVING GOD
Arvind Sharma A HINDU PERSPECTIVE ON HE PHILOSOPHY
OF RELIGION
Norman Solomon JUDAISM AND WORLD RELIGION
Melville Y. Stewart THE GREATER-GOOD DEFENCE
Jonathan Sutton THE RELIGIOUS IT IILOSOPHY OF VLADIMIR
SOLOVYOV
Roger Teichmann ABSTRACT ENTITIES
Donald Wiebe BEYOND LEGITIMATION
Richard Worsley HUMAN FREEDOM AND THE LOGIC OF EVIL
Philosophy and the
Belief in a Life
After Death
R. W. K. Paterson
Formerly Senior Lecturer in Philosophy
University of Hull
w
First published in Great Britain 1995 by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
A catalogue record tor this book is available
from the British Library.
ISBN 0 333 61633-2
First published in the United States of America 1995 by
& ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC.,
Scholarly and Reference Division,
175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, N.Y. 10010
ISBN 0-312-12838-X
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Paterson, R. W. K. (Ronald William Keith)
Philosophy and the belief in a life after death / R. W. K. Paterson
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-312-12838-X
1. Future life. 2. Future life—Controversial literature.
3. Immortality (Philosophy) 4. Immortality (Philosophy)-
-Controversial literature. I. Title.
BL535.347 1995
129—dc20 95-23638
CIP
©R.W.K. Paterson 1995
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of
this publication may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or
transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with
the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988,
or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying
issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court
Road, London WIP 9HE.
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this
publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil
claims for damages.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97 96 95
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire
Contents
1 Philosophy, Belief and Disbelief 1
2 Problems of Post-Mortem Identity 21
3 The Mental and the Physical 59
4 General Arguments for the Immortality of the Soul 103
5 The Evidence from Psychical Research 131
6 The Concept of an Afterlife 191
Notes and References 213
Index 221
v

1
Philosophy, Belief and
Disbelief
By engaging in philosophy we are agreeing to put our beliefs to
the test of logic. We are demonstrating our willingness to subject
the concepts which figure in our beliefs to logical analysis, to an
intensive scanning for hidden inconsistencies, obscurities, or
ambiguities; and we are accepting that the grounds on which we
hold our beliefs need to be logically evaluated, fallacies in
reasoning detected, concealed premises identified, and different
forms of relevance established. Actually, we have no option. An
incoherent belief is not a belief at all, but merely a jumble of
words or perhaps of muddled impressions and feelings. And
although we may indeed hold beliefs for which we have no good
grounds, we must then expose ourselves to the wholly justified
charge of childishly sheltering in private fantasies.
Some of the issues tackled by philosophers are purely
philosophical in character. Examples of these are problems about
universals, the justification of induction, the ontological argu
ment for the existence of a God, or about the general notion of
identity. Such problems centre entirely on the possible logical
relations between concepts and involve only arguments of a
purely formal character, with no admixture of any empirical
content whatsoever. But there are many other problems, in
which philosophers have a major interest, which are intellec
tually composite. That is, in addition to strictly philosophical
elements, these kinds of problem also involve reference to
various types of claimed empirical fact. Hence a complete
solution to these problems would require answers to both the
1
2 Philosophy and the Belief in a Life after Death
logical and the factual questions of which they are composed.
The distinctive contribution of philosophy in these cases is thus
absolutely necessary, but (perhaps subject to a qualification
which we shall later note) is by no means sufficient. Examples of
such intellectually composite problems are the free will/
determinism controversy, the nature of the relation between
mind and brain, and the religious problem of evil. Another
example is the problem of whether or not human personality
survives bodily death.
Admittedly there are a few celebrated arguments for the
immortality of the soul which are of a purely philosophical kind
because they depend entirely on drawing out the logical
implications of concepts like 'unity', 'destruction', and so on.
These will be examined in due course. Mainly, however, the
present work will be concerned, not with the concept of
immortality or endless life, but with the more limited concept
of a life after death. No doubt many people believe that, if they
were to survive bodily death, this would be a sure sign that they
were immortal, perhaps on the not completely unreasonable
principle that 'il n'y a que le premier pas qui coute'. However (to
say the least) this is a question which must not be begged. At any
rate if a person did not survive his bodily death for an initial
finite time, it seems clear that he could not survive his death for
an endless time.1 Because survival of death is clearly a necessary
condition of personal immortality, this alone would justify us in
examining the many philosophical objections to the former
concept, since if these objections have adequate force they will
necessarily rule out the latter concept. It need hardly be added
that, if it should turn out that there were no adequate objections
to the concept of a life after death, this philosophical conclusion
would in no way establish that there is a life after death.
Nevertheless such an outcome would be of the first importance.
For if it could be shown that a life after death was not a priori
impossible, we should then be mandated to collect, sift, and
weigh up the many varieties of evidence which putatively bear
upon this question, in the hope that empirical inquiry would
progressively enable us to make a reasoned assessment of the
relative probability or improbability of survival.
Now because philosophy (like pure mathematics) is an a priori
inquiry, its conclusions, if correct, are held to be necessarily
Philosophy, Belief and Disbelief 3
correct. What these conclusions assert is the only possible state of
affairs, and all alternative states of affairs are logically impos
sible. And if something is logically impossible, it cannot be.
Because empirical beliefs, however improbable, may be true, it is
always a meaningful exercise to investigate the chances of
their being true. Thus there might be a golden mountain in the
jungles of Brazil, but there cannot be a spherical golden cube
anywhere on earth, and it is quite useless for explorers to hunt
for one.
As a consequence we can, I think, detect a certain professional
tendency among philosophers who have addressed the intellec
tually composite types of problem I have mentioned. They have
tended to seek answers to the philosophical elements in the
overall problem which, consisting of necessary truths, will
decisively rule out various classes of solution to the whole
problem. For example, many philosophers have argued that the
notion of a 'free acf is logically incoherent, or that interactionist
dualism is literally inconceivable because mental processes,
endowed with no physical energy, could not possibly be thought
of as producing changes in a physical brain. If these findings
were valid, they would absolutely rule out all beliefs in free will
or in interactionist dualism as a theory of mind and body, thus
demonstrating any empirical research into these hypotheses to
be a complete waste of time. Such an outcome, though seemingly
negative, would be an immense achievement, serving to focus
research efforts on truly worthwhile problems.2
Of course philosophers might alternatively conclude that some
a priori arguments for free will, or immortality, or the existence
of a Creator, were formally valid. In that case, whatever the
apparent evidence against these beliefs, it would be a necessary
truth that we were free, or immortal, or the creatures of a God,
and all empirical research into the opposite hypotheses would
have been shown to be useless and wasteful.
Finally, philosophical analysis might show that free will, mind-
brain interaction, or the existence of a Creator, are logically
coherent notions but that there are no sound arguments which can
either demonstrate or refute them a priori. Unless they produced
further grounds to show that such great problems are intrinsically
incapable of solution and that we must therefore remain forever
agnostic on these issues (a possibility we shall later consider), the