Surviving Death
Merely Mortal? Can You Survive Your Own Death?, by Antony Flew. Published by Prometheus Books.
What happens when we die? Is that the end for us - the end of experience, the end of living? Or is it rather correct to say that somehow, something of us survives - that we "live" on in some fashion and do not really encounter a final or total end of ourselves? This is the central question in Antony Flew's most recent work, tackling the issue from a strictly philosophical perspective which will be welcome to some, but a bit difficult for others to follow.
As Flew points out right at the beginning, the very idea that we survive our own deaths is quite odd when you think about it. Why? Because it involves a contradiction - when we say that someone has died, we cannot simultaneously say that they have *not died. Either they are dead, or they survived the illness or injuries. Both cannot be true in the normal use of language:
For when, after some disaster, the 'dead' and the 'survivors' have both been listed, what logical space remains for a third category?
The point of bringing up such an objection is to underscore exactly what is being claimed by those who argue for the existence of personal immortality, at least in the most common forms of that claim. Claimants inform us that what 'really' dies is our bodies, but that we, as persons, are not to be identified with those bodies. Instead, we are to be identified with immaterial 'minds' or 'souls' which are the actual engines of experience and life.
According to critics like Flew, such an identification is an error: 'minds' are not objects or substances like a hammer or a chair. To say that they are would be like saying that a person's 'temper' is also a substance which, upon losing, they can leave behind after they go someplace else. Such a statement is not merely wrong, it is also nonsense.
It can be seen that something similar is going on with people's attempts to explain what exactly the "substance" of a "mind" is supposed to be. It isn't hard to identify a "mind" when it is simply a process or a dispostion; but when it comes to identifying it as "substance," problems ensue. The most common is the habit to "explain" what a mind is by simply referring to one's "spiritual activity."
Unfortunately, a proper explanation cannot be based solely upon the facts of events which are to be explained - otherwise, all we have is a *restatement of those facts and events and we learn nothing new. A proper explanation must tell us something more than what we originally had. Typical "explanations" of the mind (as substance) do not do this.
Apparently, believers in the mind-as-substance do not really know anything about it beyond what they perceive to be its effects, which they are trying to explain. They do not know where it comes from, how it operates, how it achieves those effects, etc. One wonders, then, how they can claim that a mind does exist as a substance when they cannot say anything about it?
Flew goes on to address a wide variety of arguments which attempt to support the idea that there is some sort of "soul" which allows us to live forever; but for the most part, they are not easily summarized here. He tackles not only various contemporary proofs, but also the earlier arguments of Aristotle, Aquinas and Descartes. He also addresses the impact of "mind as substance" assumptions upon contemporary research into parapsychology.
None of it is easy or simple to understand: the original arguments are themselves complex, and Flew's analysis and critique can be even more so. People without some experience with philosophy will likely have trouble with this book. On the other hand, people who do have the background might appreciate it, because most books which critique the idea of personal immortality tend to be aimed at a more general audience.
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