What Do the Varying Ideas of Life After Death Signify, or Is it Fantasy?

General Philosophy
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One of my main areas of interest in philosophy has been the question of life after death. However, I am aware that the notions of what that may involve are so variable. In particular, there are ideas of an immortal soul, such as in the thinking of Plato. In contrast, there are ideas of reincarnation, which involve embodiment primarily.

I see the idea of life after death as extremely complex, especially in the concept of ‘immortality’. There is the question of what lives on beyond life experiences. This raises the question of the ‘soul’,and whatever that may entail. There are big problems with the idea of disembodied ‘souls’ which may have led to ideas of a physical resurrection. However, even the idea of resurrection raises the dichotomy between the physical and spiritual. It is related to the question of materialism and idealism, but with specific reference in the idea of human identity in this. Ideas of reincarnation involve some kind of continnuities of personal identity. How much is about how physical or other aspects of human consciousness? To what exactly is the idea of life after death a fantasy or an underlying approach for understanding the nature of continuites of the existence of life forms, including human beings?

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I view the issue more personally. If I lose my experience of being alive as myself then the other stories become a part of something else.

Unamuno puts this front and center in his Tragic Sense of Life.

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I think our beliefs on most matters are based on disposition and experience. I see no need for afterlife adventures. I do see how such beliefs might be part of terror management. It also seems clear that some people feel nihilistic despair unless they can identify transcendence. Maybe those of us who don’t instead experience despair at the thought of inherent meaning and purpose. I’ve known a lot of people who have died. The thought that they have gone to some version of heaven or that they have reentered the cycle of birth, death and rebirth does nothing for me.

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Since I missed the boat on classical philosophy when my brain was plastic enough to absorb it, I find it necessary to send my philosophical roots to feed where they can–sometimes even on the shallow waters of product jingles.

Take the view of a Schlitz Beer jingle, for instance. Schlitz declares that “It’s a once around life”. For once around living, you need a once around beer. Schlitz beer is THE once around product we need and want. (The jingle was performed by Steely Dan.) Just so you know, Schlitz was the beer that made Milwaukee famous, to whatever extent it is. Also, according to the company, “When you’re out of Schlitz, you’re out of beer.” That sentiment sounds a bit like, “when you’re dead, you’re dead; there are no second acts.”

We live once in this world; then we die and we are no more. The end. Terminated. No passing GO, no collecting $200. No eternal continuation, just one quiet ‘pffft’.

I fail to see the point of eternal life–something that generally comes off as a boring, static existence stretching out forever. Horrors! How would a flat eternity possibly be a refuge? Better to make the most of this once around life, be it good, bad, or indifferent.

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In a fairly prosaic sense, life functionally ends at death for a particular individual, that is what the biological sense of the word ‘life’ entails. So in this functional sense, it is an oxymoron to speak of life after death for a single individual.

If we take a different concept of ‘life’, perhaps considering those individuals with a first person perspective, consciousness, something it is like to be it, then it may be possible to separate the functional death of an organism from its consciousness, at least conceptually, such that the question of life after death genuinely arises.

While it seems conceptually possible for consciousness to persist after death, it seems much more problematic to suppose the identity of that individual does as well. It is conceptually easier to tie identity to function, as identity consists in a functional unity that has a location in time and space, a history, memory, persistent relations with other organisms etc. All of these aspects of identity are subject to death, and it’s not clear what could remain of identity after death. There is of course the notion of a soul, but how would one soul be differentiated from another exactly in a way that maintains identity? It would have to have a boundary, like a bubble. If it isn’t spatial, what does is existence consist in? Does it have a structure that individuates it in any way at all after the death of the body it was once attached to? Do souls merge in heaven? Or do they remain separate but occupy the same space, like a magnetic and gravitational field are different but co-extensive?

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It is an undeniable fact that human bodies cannot resurrect from death. The moment it dies, it starts decomposing as all organic matters do.

So, you must look into the spiritual side of resurrection after death. The question then would be does spirit or souls die when the body it was residing in dies?

The answer could be, “No” spirits and souls are not physical in nature, hence they cannot die physically.

This could lead to more arguments on whether souls and spirits actually exist first place.

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What you are saying seems to be about the sense of one’s own self to the construction of meaning. It is difficult to imagine a world in which one does not exist any longer. It is like an empty space where one used to be. The memories of oneself will remain in the world through people who one has known and artefacts. Some people may be remembered more than others and if one is barely thought about at all that appears to be the most tragic aspect. Of course, some are remembered in a notorious way. There are heroes and antiheroes, with some being almost like immortals, including Elvis, Marilyn Monroe and Kurt Cobain.

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Part of the reason why I may feel the need to think about life after death, while you don’t, is because I was brought up in a family who had strong beliefs about it. I know that my parents saw ‘going to heaven’ as a central goal. I can remember having lots of discussion with them about it, especially when I was a teenager. My mother used to wonder what kind of bodies people would have, and whether they would all be beautified and ageless.

Of course, the downsides of the belief is the fear of hell, which is where indoctrination comes in. I did worry about hell a lot and it was this which led me to be sceptical about life after death as such belief was so fearful, as conveyed in the existential angst of Kierkergaard’s writing.

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I am not sure that I would wish to live forever, although it would depend on what form it takes, with reincarnation being my preference. I can remember a philosophy tutor who seemed to think that it would be a kind of disembodied existence and I think that he was influenced by Plato.

The reason why I am attracted to the idea of reincarnation is that it would give many opportunities for different experiences. I have never been completely convinced by the idea of reincarnation But my own wondering about it as a possibility is based on the premise that some of the greatest minds and thinkers.I am curious to know how they could have learned so much in one life alone.

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For what it’s worth, I do believe that the individual life overflows the bounds of physical birth and death. How to interpret that is the question. It can be interpreted quite naturalistically: after all, this ‘I’ that is ‘me’ came into this life with predispositions and attributes, personal, cultural and genetic. I will bequeath to the future the effects of my actions in this life. Another ‘I’ will be born - ‘neither completely the same, nor completely different’ is how Buddhism puts it.

But the ‘eternal life’ is not, I think, the indefinite continuation of the ordinary self. It’s not as if one goes to a heavenly condo with all one’s pets and possessions, there to live ‘forever’. No. My understanding, such as it is, was very much influenced by an Alan Watts book, The Supreme Identity, which speaks in terms of realising your real nature or true identity, which is quite different from one’s ego or persona. This is the identity that is ‘beyond birth and death’. That is why in the spiritual and philosophical traditions, there is the principle of ‘dying to the self’ so as to realise the undying.

It’s been a very long while since I read Watts’ book, but I think there is still value to be found in it. Read more here.

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I’d like to think of the afterlife philosophically, and i know that I have been influenced by society, specifically religion. As a gay woman, there is a real part of me that wants to fit back in with religion and be accepted. That influences me. However i have questions. Why is the world so beautiful? Is that scientifically natural? I don’t just want to be a sheep. I think it takes a strong character to blow past common answers. They’re almost all we have. But that’s an exercise the mind wants to do.

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Hello, good to see you posting. The whole area of sexuality is part of the way in which ideas of punishment in hell abound. This often leads to questioning and many LGBT people prefer the philosophy of Buddhism.

However,Buddhism does have some notions of there being hells, including the hell of ‘hungry ghosts’ but the hells are not the eternal ones as in fundamentalist religious thinking. Also,from my own understanding the Buddha, Gautama was uncertain about reincarnation. The idea of reincarnation in itself allows for gender/sexual fluidity because there would be rebirths in different bodies, male and female.

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I like what you say about there being a continuance to the afterlife without the “ego.” I’ll have to read Watts.

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Human bodies are temporary containers and caretakers of DNA. All physical and mental functions (including consciousness) performed by the body during a lifetime revolves around ensuring the continuity of the genetic material.

Life is designed to safeguard the survival of the DNA – not the physical body. The way to make the DNA survive is by reproducing, and so it is no wonder that the sexual instinct is so strong.

Of course, it is not a simple linear universal cause-and-effect, and there are other circumstances in one’s life that affect whether reproduction occurs.

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Actually the DNA of the person who has 5 nephews and nieces but no children has more DNA surviving than the one with two children and no nephews and nieces. So reproducing (through sex) is not the only way to promote the survival of one’s genes.

In addition, one’s culture survives after death, much as the DNA does. The parent teaches his children their language, and their values, and how to love their families. This legacy gets passed from generation to generation, and constitutes something akin to an afterlife. It’s a legacy that does not depend on DNA – adopted children also “inherit” the languages, values and traditions of their parents.

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Therefore to be frank, the ideas of life after death appear to be fantasy.

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I am sorry that I took a while but I am replying to your initial post about the idea of resurrection. From my reading of the Bible there is so much ambiguity about whether it involves a ‘physical’ or ‘spiritual’ body.

Generally, I am sceptical of the idea of a physical resurrection, but I did read one writer, Frank Tipler, in ‘The Physics of Immortality’ which looked at this in relation to simulated forms of ‘reality’. It put forward the possibility of reanimation of physical bodies as information biotechnology. He does say that he is not convinced that this is going to happen, and he doesn’t construct an argument based upon religious premises. I find the idea of reanimation of human beings an interesting area of speculation, especially in the era of artificial intelligence.

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Good point. Suggests kin selection

Another good point. Speaks to the evolutionary benefit of humans as storytellers.

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One idea which I have come across is the idea of a continuation of some kind of consciousness in the form of xenobots, which may be a different form of life from what we know. I am saying this in the context of the whole area of panpsychism.

I do wonder about different levels of consciousness, prior to birth and after death. It is hard to know how matter and mind come into play in this, which connects with David Chalmers’thinking about the ‘hard problem of consciousness’.

It is difficult to know whether there are other dimensions of consciousness, lower or higher than the human and animal form. James Lovelock’s idea of Gaia suggests that the earth is alive.

I am aware that thinking about this is regarded as the fringe of science, or pseudoscience. This is fair enough but it does also raise the issue as to what extent consciousness can be measured empirically according to the methods of science. Certainly, it is not possible to measure what lies beyond death, and this may be why it has been a source of fantastic speculation.

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The idea of the rational soul, and the postulation of its immortality, I would think does have some rational grounding for an afterlife. How I would test for the coherency of an afterlife in comparison to that of no afterlife would be to use reason, and to think about the conditions necessary for either outcome to be true.

So to start would be to ask oneself what it would be like for no afterlife to exist, or so to say that, when one dies, then the consciousness by which we use to perceive the world, to access the rules of logic, and to even have these abstract talks about philosophy, would be gone, completely, or else to no longer exist, or to be nonexistent, most bluntly. So for the possibility of a lack of afterlife to be coherent, it would also be necessary for the concept of nonexistence to be coherent, or else if it is coherent, then it would be necessary to see whether it is coherent for something that exists to be able to not exist, such as our conscious mind that exists being able to fully not exist at the moment of death.

On the first part, nonexistence does truly seem to be an incoherent concept, because nonexistence would, if possible, be a state of affairs lacking all properties, both possible and actual. Nonexistence wouldn’t just simply apply to what certainty doesn’t actually exist, such as, say, pink elephants with blue ears and golden tusks, for even though such things certainly don’t exist actually, they could exist possibly, for they are applied with properties that, although unlikely and implausible together, are coherent and exist actually when apart from one another, such as the existence of elephants, the existence of colors such as red, blue, and yellow/gold, and the existence of animals having these colors of pigments imbued into their bodies. So, for something that doesn’t actually exist to possibly exist, it would need to possess attributes and properties that, independently of one another, actually exist. So if this logic holds, then for nonexistence to possibly exist, if would need actually existing properties attributed to it to be able to actually exist. But nonexistence is, by definition, a complete lack of anything that exists, which includes any actually existing properties that, brought together, can produce the actual existence of something that can possibly exist, such as nonexistence. By this logic, then nonexistence cannot possibly be a thing that exists, and if nonexistence cannot be something that exists, then this means that nonexistence cannot be a potential property that can be applied to things that currently exist, such as human minds, which do exist. Therefore, it seems incoherent to say that the mind, or the human consciousness, can end up becoming nonexistent.

But then one might say that, even if the mind, which exists, cannot undergo complete nonexistence, then it can still be radically changed after death, such as things like wood being radically changed when set aflame, and are turned into something else, like fire, smoke, and ash. In the same sense as material things can undergo complete change, so then, can immaterial things like the mind, also be changed radically by other things. But this has a problem: this seems like a category error, for it applies the rules of property changes as they relate to material objects to those that are immaterial objects, such as the mind. I can say, “Yes, material objects can undergo change. But even if they can, how does it follow that, therefore, immaterial objects like the mind can do so as well?” because this is the case, it would require the work of other skeptics to make the case that the rules of change that apply to material objects also apply to immaterial objects. And even if one could do so, they would need to make the case for what kinds of things can apply change to immaterial objects such as the mind. Can material objects do so? It doesn’t seem so at all, because it would be like saying that you can alter an idea by throwing a rock at it, or by changing the laws of logic by blasting them with a particle accelerator. But these ideas seem incoherent, because immaterial things like ideas and logic are not observable and don’t exist in the material reality, and so seem completely independent of causal influences like energy and matter, which are material. Therefore, material things don’t seem able to change immaterial things. So, if this is the case, then the only things that can change immaterial things would be other immaterial things, and so if death is a material things (Simply the full cessation of biological processes), then it cannot alter the immaterial mind, which could constitute the immortal soul.

But, if one of you is a functionalist, and so object that the immaterial mind can be significantly altered materially by arguing that the immaterial mind is merely an emergent property of the material parts of the brain coming together to form what is the mind, then you would need to be able to answer the hard problem of consciousness, which is how immaterial things can be produced by material ones. Because there is no strong answer to the question, then to make the claim that the mind is simply a product of the brain’s constituent parts would be to make an assertion, and not a substantive argument, against the argument which I’ve set forth. And if this is the case, then I shall simply invoke Hitchens’s razor, “What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.”

Putting all of this together, I think I’ve made a strong case as to why the lack of an afterlife is not a very reasonable concept, and so, if the lack of an afterlife is incoherent, or at least unfounded by sufficient reasoning, then one simply needs to make the case as to why the existence of an afterlife is coherent.

And I think it is more coherent because, unlike the problems of what nonexistence is, and the fact that nonexistence is necessary for the nonexistence of an afterlife, the existence of an afterlife is logically coherent by contrast, because not only is it a conceivable concept (Due to us making thousands of interpretations as to what it is throughout history), but it also complements the properties of the immaterial mind as being transcendent, because the afterlife would also be a transcendent domain if it exists (Unless, perhaps, reincarnation is true), and so, unless one could make a proof that the mind is actually made up of parts that aren’t transcendent, then the existence of a transcendent mind provides a strong grounds for the existence of a transcendent domain such as heaven, or at least reincarnation. Therefore, if we were to stack up the possibility that no afterlife exists, and that one does exist, and that no other possibility exists due to the law of excluded middle, then by demonstrating the seeming incoherency of nonexistence, the transcendence of the rational mind, and it compatibility with nonexistence versus existence after bodily death, then the possibility of an afterlife is the one that coheres better, even if it is, in truth, a seemingly unconventional possibility, and very weird. But then again, the world, as it is, is already extremely weird and baffling, so to dismiss the afterlife on the basis of it being weird is not, to me, any good evidence that it isn’t true.

Sorry if this response is very long, but I hope it answers your initial question sufficiently.