Afterlife
John Perry

16 March 2007

David Hume died in August, 1776, at the age of 65 --- rather young, by my standards (I'm 64) but not unusually so for that age, I guess. The death is well-documented in literature. Realizing that he was dying, Hume wrote his short, charming Autobiography. His student and friend Adam Smith wrote a moving休谟最后的日子And, most interesting for our purposes, his fellow Scot James Boswell, most famous for his biography of Dr. Johnson, at Johnson's urging, visited Hume to see if the old infidel's skepticism about an afterlife was shaken as death approached. Boswell published a short account ofhis interview, recording Hume's good humor, unfailing skepticism about an afterlife, and his own shock at Hume's light-hearted discussion of such issues.

It's not clear what bothered Boswell more, that Hume didn't believe in an afterlife, or that he didn't seem much bothered by not having it to look forward to:

我问他，毁灭的念头是否从来没有给他任何不安。他说得一点也不小;就像卢克莱修观察到的那样....我就像一个突然陷入危险的人，急切地寻找他的防御武器;当我面前竟是一个能力如此强大、调查如此广泛的人，眼看就要被消灭的时候，我不禁产生了一时的怀疑。但我坚持我的信念。

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This morning on Philosophy Talk we'll be talking about life after death. I have some memories of believing in Heaven and Hell. This is what I was taught in Sunday School. But I don't think I believed in this kind of afterlife for very long. In my more religious phases when I was younger the form of afterlife was always rather different.

有一段时间，受50年代畅销书《寻找新娘墨菲》(the Search For Bridey Murphy)的影响，我非常认真地对待轮回。这本书是由一位使用催眠的治疗师写的，他特别使用了一种叫做年龄回归的技术。催眠师通过告诉受试者他们要回到更早的时代，来让他们重温生命中更早的重要事件。显然有一天，他的研究对象比他预想的更早，追溯到她出生之前。她开始用爱尔兰口音说话，并说她的名字是Bridey Murphy。在这本书出版的时候，我和祖父在内布拉斯加州林肯市联合学院的钟楼里度过了每个星期六的早晨。我们在寻找作为“地面观察团”一部分的苏联轰炸机，这是政府资助的一种方式，让公民组成最后一道防线，抵御任何设法潜入我们中心地带的入侵飞机。我们有很多时间谈论其他事情，我们都对《寻找新娘墨菲》很感兴趣。我的祖父非常认真地对待轮回转世，我也是。然而，在某个时刻，一位记者发现，布里蒂·墨菲(Bridey Murphy)小时候在芝加哥的时候是这个主题的邻居，所以她并不真的记得更早的轮回转世。

Later I took reincarnation seriously again for a while. The Dalai Lama made a visit to Stanford, and I was on a panel of humanists who interviewed him. The Dalai Lama is the 14th Dalai Lama, but believes that he is the reincarnation of the 13th, who was in turn the reincarnation of the 12th, and so on back to the first. The Dalai Lama is a very intelligent guy who has written books about how the Tibetan Buddhist world-view is somewhat more amenable to naturalism than the Christian world view. So I asked him how the reincarnation view, and in particular the view that he was the same person as someone who had died before he was born, a number of miles a way, fit into naturalism. He gave quite a sophisticated answer in terms of many forms of memory, and dimensions that are physical and allow for causation, but beyond our ordinary conceptions of space and time. I was impressed, but not convinced.

But, speaking of space and time, it's now time to get ready to drive up to KALW, so I'll have to return to this blog later.
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Comments(2)

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Guest

Saturday, March 17, 2007 -- 5:00 PM

In a discussion over the truth of equality someone

在一次关于平等真理的讨论中，有人曾经问我:“你肯定不相信生与死是平等或相同的吧?”我回答说:“你怎么知道它们是不同的?你曾经死过吗?”
MJA

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Guest

Tuesday, March 24, 2009 -- 5:00 PM

I think that an afterlife without reincarnation is

I think that an afterlife without reincarnation is impossible. If we accept an afterlife, we must also accept a beforelife. It?s like marriage: when you marry the son or daughter you marry into the whole family, whether you like it or not. Consciousness can only exist after death if it can exist independently of our physical body; and if it can exist independently of our physical body, it can exist before our physical body is formed inside our mother. Put another way, if consciousness isn?t extinguished at the point of death, there?s no reason to expect that it would come into being at the point of conception. I think the two things cannot be separated.
I also think that the most important fact to consider when we talk about the subject of an afterlife is this: There is no generally observable evidence of an afterlife. There is no evidence in our normal dimensions of time and space that the dead continue to live. A credible afterlife theory must therefore provide evidence of a different context of time and space.
But a different context of time and space is not enough. A credible afterlife theory must also provide evidence that we have a constitution that allows a transition of consciousness to that context of time and space. It must therefore provide support for substance dualism, the proposition that our mind and brain are separate - and an unpopular position these days. Unless our mind and brain are separate there is no vehicle of consciousness available when our body dies.
A credible afterlife theory must not attempt to explain one mystery with another mystery; and like all credible theories, it must be able to be falsified.
That's a very high bar to jump over.