11. Life after Death: Arguments for Dualism
- Created by: Alasdair
- Created on: 18-06-17 18:05
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- 11. Life after Death: Arguments for Dualism
- The Introspection Argument (Philosophical)
- Our Sense of Self-Awareness
- "It is not that each of us uniquely has these but rather that each of his or her own individualised set"
- Further access to this set is private
- I might infer from your behaviour what you are thinking or feeling but my access to your mental life is not allowed
- This argument is claiming that because I experience a sense of 'self' that is private to me and not accessible to anyone else then it must be real
- It cannot be synonymous with our public, physical self
- Descartes (philosophical)
- The Doubt Argument
- I can doubt that my body exists
- I can doubt that I exist as a thinking thing
- I, a thinking thing, am not identical with my body
- Leibniz's law (philosophical)
- Trying to sharpen Descartes' theory up a bit
- The Principle of the Indiscernabilty of Identicals
- If two things are identical, then they have exactly the same properties
- In other words you can't discern (tell the difference) between the same properties - if not they are NOT THE SAME
- I, a thinking thing, do not have such that I doubt my existence
- I, a thinking thing, am not identical with my body since I can doubt one (my body) but not the other (my mind) - therefore mind and body are not the same.
- If two things are identical, then they have exactly the same properties
- In other wrds you can't discern (tell the difference) between two things
- My body has the property of being such that I can doubt its existence
- Near Death Experience (evidential)
- If there is an aspect of 'us' that can exist apart from our body then there must be some part of us that is non-material, i.e. a soul
- Example
- Pam Reynolds
- 'Operation Standstill'
- Induced brain death
- She has consciousness and senses work despite clinical death
- Sees herself, identifies instruments
- Hears
- Can identify a specific medical tool she would not have known about had she not been floating above her body
- Very detailed knowledge of what is going on whilst she was unconscious
- Extraordinary as surgeons can pin-point her experience
- Pam Reynolds contested
- Stuart Hameroff, Director of Consciousness Studies
- Argues consciousness is produced in brain at quantum level
- He argues that due to 'Super-Positioning' (where a prticle can be in two places/states at once) consciousness could 'leak out' and remain outside body when we die
- Argues what happened to Pam Reynolds is a 'Quantum entanglement'
- Susan Blackmore
- Cites nearly 30 years of research into paranormal claims and early cases she has investigated always found no evidence or an alternative explanation
- "I can only say that my expectation is that this case did not happen like that"
- Ockham's Razor
- We should accept the simplest exxplanation as the most likely
- Therefore, it ca bee explained by trauma of the blood clot and drugs
- We should accept the simplest exxplanation as the most likely
- Stuart Hameroff, Director of Consciousness Studies
- The Introspection Argument (Philosophical)
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