After We Die

Theology, Philosophy, and the Question of Life after Death

Stephen T. Davis

• Publisher: Baylor University Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781481303422
• eBook ISBN: 9781481303446
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

In After We Die, philosopher Stephen T. Davis subjects one of Christianity's key beliefs--that Christians not only will survive death but also will enjoy bodily resurrection--to searching philosophical analysis. Facing each critique squarely, Davis contends that traditional, historic belief about the eschatological future is philosophically defensible.

Davis examines personal extinction, reincarnation, and immortality of the soul. By juxtaposing two systems of salvation--reincarnation/karma and resurrection/grace--Davis explores the Christian claim that humans will be raised from the dead, as well as the radical Christian assertions of Jesus' resurrection, ascension, and long-anticipated return. Davis finally addresses Christian thinking about heaven, hell, and purgatory.

The philosophical defense of Christianity's core beliefs enables Davis to render a reasonable answer to the eternal question of what happens to us after we die. After We Die is essential reading for teachers and students of philosophy, theology, and Bible, as well as anyone interested in a reasoned analysis of historic Christian faith, particularly as it pertains to the inevitable end of each and every human being.

1

Survival of Death Theories

I

Do people live after death? This is surely one of the most important questions that human beings ever ask. Naturally there are only two possible answers to it. Either human persons will live after death, or else they will not. Let us call all theories that deny life after death “death ends all” views. There are three main sorts of theories that affirm life after death: reincarnation, immortality of the soul, and resurrection of the body.

In this chapter, we will first consider the claim that life after death is not just false but incoherent. Next, we will consider two philosophical problems that bear significantly on our issue, viz., the relationship between the mind and the body, and the problem of personal identity. Then we will discuss one important “death ends all” theory. Finally, we will discuss reincarnation and immortality. Resurrection will be discussed in more detail later in the book.

II

In a famous essay written in 1956, “Can a Man Witness His Own Funeral?,”1 Antony Flew argues that the notion of life after death is incoherent. He offers three related arguments for this conclusion. First, one statement typically made by those who affirm life after death—“We all of us survive death”—is self-contradictory. In an airplane crash, Flew says, there are two mutually exclusive and exhaustive categories, the dead and the survivors. So the question “Did Jones [one of the passengers] survive the crash?’” makes perfect sense, but the question “Did Jones survive Jones’s death?” does not. Accordingly, the sentence “We all of us survive death” has no clear meaning.

Second, another statement typically made by those who accept life after death—“We all of us live forever”—is simply empirically false. Notice, Flew says, that the paradigm true statement throughout the history of logic is the statement “All men are mortal.” This generalization is as massively confirmed as any generalization can possibly be, and it is, Flew says, the “flat contrary” of “We all of us live forever.”

Flew was aware of a possible objection to his first two arguments. One way to decide whether a given state of affairs is logically possible is to ask whether it is coherently imaginable. And a defender of life after death might claim that survival of death is coherent after all because it is possible to imagine one’s own funeral. But here Flew offers some distinctions. (1) What it would be like to witness my own funeral. Of course this is imaginable, Flew says. It is quite possible for me to close my eyes and imagine people witnessing my funeral—I am in the casket, my mother is crying, a priest is offering prayers, etc. But imagining this picture does nothing to support the claim that life after death is imaginable. What would support the claim would be imagining (2) what it would be like to witness me witnessing my own funeral. But the problem is that this picture is not coherently imaginable: if it is really me who is witnessing the funeral, then it is not my funeral; and if it is really my funeral, then I cannot witness it because I am dead in the coffin.

But, says Flew (speaking for his imagined critic), why can’t I imagine (3) what it would be like to witness myself as an invisible, incorporeal spirit witnessing my own funeral, that is, the funeral of my body? But, says Flew (now speaking in his own voice), this does not differ in any significant or empirically relevant way from (1), that is, from imagining my own funeral without being there at all (except as a corpse in the coffin). All talk about an “invisible, intangible spirit” and of its “being there” is devoid of any empirical sense. So life after death theories either presuppose the absence of genuine death or else violate the normal use of such terms as “I” or “me.” Flew’s conclusion is that his first two objections still stand.

Third, Flew introduces his dictum “People are what you meet.” Person words (by which Flew means words like “I,” ‘“me,” “you,” “father,” “mother,” “butcher”) refer not to mysterious elusive things like souls, but to real human persons, that is, bodies plus behavior. We know this because children who have no idea what a soul or immaterial essence might be can use person words perfectly well. Persons are publicly locatable and observable things. You don’t ever take a walk or have a conversation with an immaterial essence. You engage in such activities with other human beings—not just with their bodies, of course (the term “father’s body” would normally mean “father’s corpse”), but with their bodies plus behaviors. Since the bodies and behaviors of human beings do not survive death, Flew’s overall conclusion is that human beings do not and cannot live after death.

Later in his career, Flew no longer developed his critique of life after death in precisely this way, but his argument has had a lasting impact on the discussion and is still occasionally cited. In one sense, this is surprising, since the argument is hardly convincing.

For one thing, Flew’s ex cathedra claims about the incoherence of “surviving death” will only be convincing to those whom we might call lexical fundamentalists. These are people who stubbornly insist that the meaning of a word is indelibly fixed by its original usage; thus Flew’s dogged insistence that you might “survive a plane crash” but never “survive your own death.” But it is obvious that as new human situations arise, words sometimes get stretched in meaning in order to make valid, and quite communicable, points. If talk of “surviving death” communicates with people, as opposed to systematically misleading them, that way of talking is fine.

Similarly, it would be surprising indeed if anyone who says “We all of us live forever” means that sentence to deny that “All men are mortal.” I would have thought that the reverse is true—that those who speak in this way would want to be interpreted as insisting on the mortality of all human beings. This, in fact, is precisely their point—we all die, and after we die we go on living forever in another form or world. I have never heard of a believer in life after death who wanted to deny that everyone must die.

Finally, Flew’s dictum, “People are what you meet,” has clearly overlooked something, viz., a first-person perspective. If the range of the term “people” is “other people”—i.e., people besides me—then Flew’s dictum is beyond reproach. But it is obvious that by introspection, human beings know themselves as something different from and other than “body plus behavior.” It is perfectly possible for me to know many things about myself (e.g., my present mood, my first impression of Kant, my sense that a certain person whom I know is pompous) that may never have been evident in my body or behavior.

Whatever this missing something is—and it has been called by many names in philosophy (the mind, the soul, the realm of the mental, consciousness)—those who believe in the life after death theory known as immortality (as well as those who believe in reincarnation) hold that it is the thing that survives death. Flew has not refuted that claim.

III

Two philosophical problems, the mind-body problem and the problem of personal identity, are importantly related to life after death theories. Let me briefly define each problem, sketch the strengths and weaknesses of some of the most important theories, and point out the relevance of those theories to the problem of life after death.

Human beings have or are bodies and engage in bodily activities such as walking, talking, sleeping, writing, etc. Bodies are physical objects that take up space, have physical location, and can be tested and measured scientifically. In addition, bodily events are accessible to other people. If I walk or talk or sleep, others are perfectly capable of observing those activities. But human beings also engage in various sorts of mental activities—thinking, feeling, remembering, experiencing pain, formulating intentions, making decisions, etc. And those sorts of events do not take up space, do not seem to be located anywhere, cannot be measured scientifically, and are “private” in the sense that they are directly accessible only to the person who thinks the thought, makes the decision, etc.

The mind-body problem, broadly stated, is as follows: How are the physical and mental aspects of human beings related? How are the body and the mind (assuming there is such a thing as a mind) related in the human person?

Several major theories of the mind and body have been suggested in the history of philosophy. Monistic theories limit human nature to one and only one metaphysical class. Momentarily we will consider the monistic theory called materialism. Dualistic theories claim that human beings consist of both physical bodies and nonphysical (or incorporeal) minds, and that the mind (or soul), an ongoing existing thing, is the essence of the person. (There are other versions of mind-body dualism beside the substance dualism that I am describing, e.g., the so-called “bundle theory” usually associated with Hume and with some versions of Buddhism, but we will not be able to discuss them here.)

The dualistic theory known as interactionism is most commonly associated with Descartes.2 One of the things that Descartes thought followed directly from his famous Cogito, ergo sum was “I am a thinking being.” That is, my essence or nature is to think (as well as, presumably, to engage in other mental activities like feeling, intending, remembering, deciding, etc.). That aspect of human beings that does the thinking Descartes called the soul or mind; it is indivisible and unextended, and is the essence of the person. Human bodies are corporeal, divisible, and extended, and are really just very complicated machines whose behavior can be explained mechanistically.

Descartes was convinced that minds and bodies are so metaphysically dissimilar that they cannot causally interact with each other—not directly, at any rate. The mind cannot directly cause bodily events, and the body cannot directly cause mental events. Yet we know intuitively that our minds and bodies are (as Descartes says) “intimately conjoined”; mind-body causal interaction seems to happen all the time. I perform the mental event of deciding to raise my hand, and the physical event of my hand going up occurs; I perform the physical event of placing my hand in the fire, and the mental event of my feeling pain occurs.

How then do we explain apparent mind-body causal interaction when that interaction appears to be metaphysically impossible? Descartes’s solution was to posit a location in the body—the pineal gland (which is an actual gland at the base of the medulla oblongata)—where mind and body (indirectly) causally interact. The medical science of Descartes’ day did not know the function of the pineal gland, and Descartes simply posited the idea that mind and body exercise their influence on each other there.

Descartes also suggested the existence of what he called “animal spirits”—these are pure, subtle gases that pass through tubes in the body and are the means by which the mind and body communicate with each other through the pineal gland. Descartes’ picture was apparently something like this: when I raise my hand, my mind makes the decision and communicates this decision via the animal spirits to the pineal gland, which communicates via the animal spirits to my hand. Medical science of today, of course, knows nothing of animal spirits.

The majority of contemporary philosophers who discuss the mind-body problem oppose interactionism, and part of the reason for this fact may be the legacy of Descartes and his ignorant guesswork about the pineal gland and animal spirits. It may be that interactionism can be defended, but certainly not in this way.3 Contemporary defenders of dualism divide between substance dualists (who hold that there are immaterial substances) and property dualists (who deny that there are immaterial substances but affirm that there are immaterial properties of things). But I am not going to discuss the latter view, since I believe that a consistent defender of the latter must also hold to the former.4

The other mind-body theory that we will discuss is materialism. Materialists need not worry about causal interaction between metaphysically different sorts of entities, because they claim that there are no mental entities. (Of course materialists know that people think, feel, remember, etc.) Everything is physical; the only things that exist consist of atoms in motion. Most philosophers who discuss the mind-body problem today defend one or another version of materialism. Some of these theories are nonreductive materialism,5 animalism, and functionalism (which does not have to be but usually is materialist). But I will briefly explain a more venerable but quite clear theory; it is called identity theory.6

Identity theory is based on the claim that all mental events and processes are brain events. This is not meant as an a priori or linguistic claim, but rather as an empirical one—as a matter of fact, it turns out that all mental events are physical events. And the word “are” here is meant in the sense of strict numerical identity. So the identity theorist’s claim is that “making a decision to raise your hand” or “feeling a slight pain in one’s arm” turns out to be nothing more than an event that occurs in the brain. We used to think of them as mental events, but we now see that they are simply brain processes.

Aside from their criticisms of dualism, identity theorists defend their view in part on the basis of considerations of simplicity. And it must be admitted that theirs is a simpler ontology than is posited by dualists. The only realities they countenance are physical realities. Of course, considerations of simplicity are only probative or relevant in cases where two competing theories are equal or roughly equal in explanatory power, and it has yet to be determined that materialism and dualism are equal in explanatory power.

Identity theory has been subject to rigorous criticism, and the objections have spawned ever more subtle variations in the theory as well as in neighboring theories.7 Let me briefly mention what seems to be the overall point, as well as three aspects of it. The general theme of the criticisms is that physical or brain events simply cannot possess all the attributes that we are quite sure mental events possess, and that therefore mental events cannot be brain events.

For one thing, some mental states seem to be characterized by what philosophers call “intentionality.” That is, they have a sort of “aboutness”; they point towards things outside themselves as objects or targets. My decision to open the door is about the door; my aversion to lima beans is about lima beans. Now critics of identity theory point out that physical states, for example, the firing of certain nerve endings in the brain, have no intentionality. Brain events are simply electrical-chemical events in a human body—they don’t refer to or represent or aim at anything.

For another, it seems absurd to many philosophers to say, as identity theorists must, that mental events (like the brain events they are supposedly identical to) have physical location, size, shape, or velocity. Mental events have no location (despite Descartes’ claim that the soul’s “seat” in the body is the pineal gland). If they did, and if (as claimed) they were entirely physical, then surgeons would in theory be able to locate somewhere in my brain the decision to shut the door or my dislike of lima beans. Indeed, it has been charged against identity theory that if I were to close my eyes and formulate in my mind an imagined picture of an elephant, a surgeon would in theory be able to find an elephant-shaped something located somewhere in my grey matter. And that idea is, of course, absurd.

Finally, mental states are characterized by what philosophers call “privacy,” that is, they are directly available only to the person who has them. I can be directly aware of my decision to shut the door, but you can only observe that I have apparently made a decision to shut the door by observing my door-shutting behavior. But if identity theory is true, then my decision to shut the door is nothing more than a certain combination of physical events in my brain. Thus, in principle, if we knew enough about the brain and knew where to look, other people could observe my decision. And this has seemed to many philosophe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. Survival of Death Theories
• 2. Karma versus Grace
• 3. Resurrection
• 4. Ascension and Second Coming
• 5. Hell
• 6. Purgatory
• 7. Heaven
• Conclusion
• Endnotes
• Footnotes
• Bibliography
• Scripture Index
• General Index
• Other Baylor University Press Titles by Stephen Davis