14. Life after Death: Reincarnation
- Created by: Alasdair
- Created on: 18-06-17 19:01
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- 14. Life after Death: Reincarnation
- Definition of reincarnation
- A dualist theory
- Notion that at death the soul moves from one bdy to another and leads a new life
- Hinduism
- Cycle of Samsara
- A series of rebirths in which the atman (eternal soul) moves from one body, where the reborn atman carries no memories of its past life
- "Just as a person casts off worn-out garments and puts on others that are new, even so does the embodied soul cast off worn-out bodies and takes on others that are new."
- Bhagavad Gita, 2,13
- The body which a soul is reincarnated into is dependent on karma accumulated in previous life
- The consequences of actions in this life are experienced in the next
- By keeping to dharma (duty) good karma is accumulated
- The aim of life is to obtain, moksha - freedom from rebirth - where the atman is united with Brahman, the ultimate reality, in a state of knowledge, peace and bliss
- Cycle of Samsara
- Strengths
- Reincarnation Research by Ivan Stevenson - Children's past Life Memories
- Evidence
- Birth defect
- Memories
- Recognition of people/places
- Prediction of rebirth
- Successful as it focuses on children
- Closest to event
- Less likely to know about reincarnation
- However, less trustworthy
- Problems with criteria
- Personality is subjective
- Birthmarks/defects
- Other explanation (genetics, etc)
- Memory
- Can be distorted, positive reinforcement, further distortions of memories. Some children are Indian so their culture naturally endorses it.
- Weaknesses of anecdotal evidence
- Subjective
- Parents report evidence + give weight to it
- Untestable evidence
- Persinger:
- Memory = reconstructed, self-experience/non-self, high temporal world activity - tendency to give significance to experience
- Robert Alemder
- 'irrational not to believe' because there's significant evidence that hasn't been disproved
- Evidence
- Reincarnation Research by Ivan Stevenson - Children's past Life Memories
- Weaknesses
- John Hick
- 3 strands of PI not preserved
- Chances character traits carried over from A to B (e.g. great artist, kind, sensitive) are shared by thousands of people in the past
- On basis I would equally as well be reincarnation of anyone of thousands of people in each past generation
- 'Thus, this criterion of character similarity is far too broad and permissive; if it establishes anything, it establishes much too much and becomes self-defeating"
- Thus idea of reincarnation, in sense of transmigration of self (though normally without memory of its previous lives) from death in one body to burnt is 'beset by conceptual difficulties of the gravest kind'
- 'For when we remove the connecting thread of memory' is the reincarnation still the same person
- Believes second strand of bodily continuity is broken existence through space and time from newly born baby to old man
- 'this strand of bodily continuity is also taken away by our rebirth hypothesis'
- Supporters of Reincarnation argue that strength of their views is that is avoids simplistic ideas of reward and punishment - it is our own actions that bring the results
- Universal law of cause and effect (Karma)
- Not really your own actions if PI is questionable?
- Peter Geach
- Rejects incarnation on grounds link with person who has died cannot be established
- Rules out possibility of memories being link between dead and new person
- e.g. old man dying and soul being reincarnated in new-born baby - questions links as old man was unity of both body and experiences and memories gained through life - baby lacks body, memories, experiences, feelings, etc.
- Stephen Davis
- Questions justice if people suffer for sins in their past lives but cannot remember commiting these sins
- John Hick
- Definition of reincarnation
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