Surviving Death: A Guide for
Beginners
Michael Lacewing
[email protected]
What am I?
What is it for me to continue being me
over time?
Am I a kind of thing, e.g. a mind or a
body? What is it for a mind or a body to
continue to exist?
We know bodies can exist without minds
(corpses). Are minds able to exist without
bodies?
Dualism and Monism
Substance: needs no other thing to exist
Dualism: there are two sorts of
substance, mind (or soul) and matter
Materialism: there is just one sort of
thing, matter
The options
Suppose dualism is true, and my mind
can exist without my body. Do I continue
to exist just as a mind after death (=death
of my body)? Or am I essentially a mindand-body combination?
Suppose materialism is true, and we don’t
have souls. Can we survive death at all?
Can my body ‘survive’? Can my mind
survive?
Surviving death: Resurrection
 In the graveyard or
somewhere else?
How does my body
get there?
 Christ had an
intact body; I
won’t!
 Putting the old
body back together
A Corny Tale
Materialism and personal
identity
Am I…
My brain?
Or is what makes me
me different from
what makes my brain
my brain?
Teletransportation (or travelling
light)
Same mind, different body
Teletransportation suggests that I can still be
me – the same person – without having the
same body.
Materialism claims that everything that exists
exist in a material form, i.e. is made from
matter. It doesn’t have to claim that persons just
are their bodies; but persons must have bodies
to exist at all.
Surviving death: Recreation
Resurrection resurrected
Not all bodies are the
same: I Corinthians
15
But what makes it
‘the same’ body?
Will we still have
problems with
starting from the
original body?