Is There Anything Beyond Death?
A Parapsychologists Summation
BELIEF IN SOME form of an afterlife can be found in every
society known to us and, from the evidence of ceremonial burial
practices, appears to go back to remote prehistoric times. Various
psychological explanations for this fact have been advanced. We
are the only species that understands that we are doomed to die
and the idea of a life beyond the grave may be our brway of
compensating for the menace of our mortality. Such an idea
could derive substance from our dream life, because in our
dreams we engage in diverse activities while our body lies prone
on the bed. The fact, moreover, that it is impossible to imagine
one's own total annihilation, because something must be left over
to do the imagining, would reinforce such a belief. At a more
sophisticated level, we have a tenacious belief in a just world.
But, because the world we know contradicts this belief so
flagrantly, it becomes necessary to invent a world where we do
all ultimately receive our just deserts.
At present, however, belief in an afterlife has been
severely eroded by the advance of science, which reveals that the
mind is so intimately dependent on the proper functioning of the
brain that the very idea that we could, in some form, survive the
destruction of our brain now strikes many educated people as so
farfetched as to be no longer worth considering. Where such
belief remains strong is among religious fundamentalists. All
three main monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and
Islam, teach the immortality of the soul. This is especially the
case with Christianity because of the central position of the
Resurrection in Christian doctrine. The faithful are promised a
share in Jesus' own triumph over death or, as Paul puts it, "For, as
in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive."'
It is not surprising, therefore, that where religion is still
strong, belief in some form of survival is still prevalent. Thus, for
the United States, Gallup puts the figure at around 70 percent as
compared with Western Europe where it is a mere 43 percent,
while within Europe itself it is strongest in countries like Ireland,
where religion still counts (64 percent) and weakest in a
nonreligious country like Denmark (26 percent). It is true that
some modern Christian theologians, influenced by certain trends
in modern philosophy, have discarded the notion of survival as
they have discarded the miraculous element in religion generally.
The basic argument here is that personal identity becomes
meaningless without the body as one's point of reference. But the
argument is questionable and, in my view, unsound. At all events,
the reason so many people still cling to a belief in an afterlife is
that this is what their religion teaches them.
In what follows, however, I want to discuss not why
people believe in an afterlife, but, rather, what empirical
evidence there is that would justify such a belief. This brings us
into the domain of psychical research.
The Evidence
I shall start by listing four broad categories of evidence. The first
and oldest type of evidence involves the alleged manifestations
of deceased individuals or what, in common parlance, would be
called "ghosts." The second, and by far the most important
evidentially, consists of communications, ostensibly from
deceased entities, as purveyed by a medium. The third, which
only recently has become a target for serious research, consists of
evidence that persons now alive have had a previous life on
earth. And the fourth, which is even more recent as a topic for
research, involves the so-called near-death experience. This
means that someone, after being pronounced clinically dead, is
John Beloff: “Is There Anything Beyond Death?” – page 1 of 7
resuscitated and is then able to recall some special kind of
experience during this critical interval, usually of an
otherworldly kind.
Let us now consider each of these in turn.
1. There can be no doubt that people do see apparitions
and, in some instances, the apparition is so lifelike that it is only
after it has disappeared that the observer realizes that it was not
an actual person. There is also evidence of apparitions being seen
collectively by more than one observer at the same time or by
several observers independently on successive occasions.
However, apart from the so-called crisis apparitions where it
transpires that the person whose apparition was seen had just
died, such manifestations rarely communicate any important
information, contrary to what one might infer from fictional
accounts of hauntings. It is more as if the places in question
retain a sort of memory of their past inhabitants. One of the best
attested ghost stories in the literature is that of the so-called
Cheltenham ghost of 1885 in which the figure of a woman in
black, thought to be a previous owner, was seen on many
occasions by various witnesses. What makes that case more
trustworthy than most is that the principal witness, Rosina
Despard, the daughter of the current owner (known in the
literature as Rose Morton), was then studying medicine and
shortly afterwards become a practising doctor, a rare
accomplishment for any woman of that period.
2. The mediumistic evidence is the legacy of the
spiritualist movement, which erupted quite suddenly in 1848, in
Upper New York State, but then within the course of just a few
years spread to almost every country in the world and penetrated
almost every stratum of society, although, in England at least, it
was strongest among the upper working class which had turned
its back on the established churches.
The most common form of communication is a verbal
message delivered by the medium in her own person. In the case
of a so-called "trance medium," however, the, supposed
communicator or some "spirit control" would speak in the first
person using the vocal mechanisms of the medium or, in the case
of a written communication, the medium's hand. In the early part
of this century there were a number of remarkable women who
practised such "automatic writing." They were not mediums in
the professional sense, but were educated women who happened
to be devotees of psychical research.
If we go back to the early days of spiritualism we find
that the phenomena were far more bizarre than anything we
would nowadays associate with mediumship. The furniture and
objects of the seance room would be moved about or even
levitated, musical instruments would appear to play of their own
accord, the spirit might speak directly from some point in the
room rather than through the medium's mouth, or might inscribe
a message direct onto a pad or slate without using the medium's
hand. Most spectacular of all was the phenomenon of
materialization in which the spirit would seek to manifest
temporarily as a quasi-physical phantom, usually, it was thought,
by extracting matter, or "ectoplasm," from the medium's body. A
"full form materialization" was always a rarity but partial
materializations of a hand or a face were common enough. I need
hardly add that these florid physical phenomena were always the
focus of intense suspicion and controversy. However, the whole
fraught topic of physical mediumship, although of obvious
interest to the student of the paranormal, is of dubious relevance
to the question of survival; it was, in the end, the great trance
mediums, such as Leonora Piper of Boston (whose career began
in 1884 and who died in 1950), who provided the most telling
evidence we have for the reality of survival. We shall come back
to her later.
John Beloff: “Is There Anything Beyond Death?” – page 2 of 7
3. But now let us turn to the evidence from past lives.
Here we are no longer concerned with existence in some other
world but, rather, with another life in this world. It has, of course,
always been a feature of Hindu and Buddhist teachings that we
are destined to be repeatedly reborn in this world unless we can
escape eventually from this cycle of rebirths and enter Nirvana.
No doubt belief in reincarnation in the West derives originally
from this source. When we turn to the evidence, however, we
find that it is of two kinds: (a) the ostensible memories of a past
life that can be elicited under hypnosis, and (b) memories of a
previous life that are occasionally reported spontaneously by
young children.
Hypnosis was already being used to elicit memories of
past lives in the late nineteenth century and was part of a late
flowering of the once powerful mesmeric movement. What gave
it impetus in recent times, however, was the publication of the
book by Morey Bernstein called The Search for Bridey Murphy.
It tells of a housewife in Colorado, known in the book as Ruth
Simmons, who, under hypnosis, recalls her life in nineteenthcentury Belfast. No one, however, has been able to trace the
identity of this "Bridey Murphy" who, nevertheless, it must be
said, showed a surprising knowledge of that place and period. In
general, I would say that in all the cases reported so far that have
been elicited under hypnosis, either there was no such person as
the one described or the character in question could have been
known to the informant who, in all innocence, might consciously
be quite unaware of the source of this knowledge – a case of
what psychologists call "cryptomnesia."
The evidence based on the ostensible memories of the
very young is on a much sounder footing, thanks entirely to the
heroic labors of one individual, Ian Stevenson, a professor of
psychiatry at the University of Virginia who has made it his life's
mission to investigate such cases. The University of Virginia
Press has now brought out five volumes of his case studies,
drawn mainly from Middle East, India, and Sri Lanka, plus a
further volume written for the general reader. Yet another volume
in the offing deals with the so-called birthmark cases. In such
cases the child's verbal account is reinforced by a physical sign.
Thus, if the previous personality had died a violent death (and
violence figures prominently in the reincarnation literature), the
mortal wounds of the previous personality are reflected by
birthmarks on the body of the child.
In an ideal Stevensonian case, events might proceed
somewhat as follows. Almost as soon as the child learns to speak
it would start talking about another family elsewhere to which it
rightfully belonged. Its parents would, understandably,
discourage such talk but, if the child persisted and could furnish
enough particulars, attempts would be made to contact this other
family, wherever they might be. If the case attracted enough
attention it would come to the notice of one of Stevenson's
informants in those parts and Stevenson himself would visit the
family and try to be present when the two families first met.
Then, acting through an interpreter, he would devise tests to see
whether the child would duly recognize certain people, objects,
or places connected with its previous personality. As the child
grew up its memories of a former life would fade but certain
traits of personality or certain habits or strong likes or dislikes
would persist.
4. The final category we shall consider, the so-called
near-death experience, is essentially a peculiarly vivid
hallucination. That there should be any mental experiences
whatsoever when a patient is presumed to be in a deep coma is
itself an anomaly but it is the form it takes that makes it relevant
to the survival problem. Typically, individuals report passing
through the following four stages: (a) hovering some distance
above their body while watching attempts being made to induce
John Beloff: “Is There Anything Beyond Death?” – page 3 of 7
resuscitation; (b) entering a long dark tunnel from which they
emerge into a dazzling and glorious pool of light; (c) finding
themselves in some kind of paradise where they meet lost loved
ones and beg to be allowed to stay but are told to go back as
there is still important work to be done on earth; and (d) finding
themselves back in their physical body gasping for breath.
Many who report such experiences say that they are no
longer afraid of death. Sometimes the effect is like a religious
conversion where the convert thereafter tries to be a better and
more loving person. Estimates of the proportion of those who
have reported such an experience after being resuscitated vary
from one researcher to another but some medical authorities have
put it as high as 50 percent. Unlike the other categories we have
mentioned, it is only quite recently that the near-death experience
has attracted the attention of psychical researchers. An American
medical man, Raymond Moody, published a short collection of
such cases in 1975. Much to his own and his publishers'
astonishment, the book soon became a best-seller. Today a whole
new field of near-death studies has developed, replete with its
own professional organization, The International Association of
Near Death Studies; its own specialist journal, Anabiosis; and
many volumes of research findings by doctors, psychologists,
and others.
A related phenomenon is the so-called death-bed vision.
In this case we are dealing with someone who is actually dying
and who is aware of the situation and surroundings. But, here
again, we find references to celestial visions and to seeing the
figures of those who had gone before and have now come to take
the dying one away. Sometimes a revered religious figure, such
as Jesus, acts as the guide to the next world. In 1926, William
Barrett, a physicist and pioneer psychical researcher, published a
book called Death-Bed Visions, but current interest in the topic
stems from a monograph, published in 1961 by the
Parapsychology Foundation of New York, by their then research
officer, Karlis Osis, called Deathbed Observations by Physicians
and Nurses. Osis went on collecting death-bed visions but,
eventually, he wanted to find out how far they were influenced
by the subject's cultural background. He therefore collaborated
with a doctor in India, working with a predominantly Hindu
population, so as to be able to compare findings. The outcome
was published in 1977. Although there were some clear cultural
differences in the kinds of visions described, there was also much
in common. Thus, according to the authors: "When the dying see
apparitions, they are nearly always experienced as messengers
from a post-mortem mode of existence" whose function, in both
cultures, is "to take the patient to the other world."
Evaluation
So what, you may ask, are we to conclude? It would be nice if
one could say that those who had studied the evidence were
convinced of survival whereas those who were ignorant
dismissed it. But such is not the case. From the outset, psychical
researchers have been deeply divided on this issue. This lack of
consensus among the authorities is not surprising. The fact is that
we can set no limit on the psychic powers of the living. Hence, if
a medium makes statements purporting to come from the
deceased, how can we be sure that she is not merely personifying
information she has gleaned using her telepathic or clairvoyant
powers? It is true that such a medium would be unlikely to
succeed on any standard test for ESP but we know that
paranormal phenomena are highly sensitive to situational factors
and it may be that only the conditions of the seance suffice to
bring out her special gifts.
A point on which nearly all the experts would agree is
that the information supplied by a medium such as Mrs. Piper
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cannot be explained away along the lines we would use to
dismiss the claims of some inferior medium, such as relying on
generalities, fishing for hints from the sitter's reactions, trading
on items of inside knowledge about the case in question, and so
forth. The precautions which Richard Hodgson, her chief
investigator, took with Mrs. Piper border on the paranoid. Not
only were sitters always introduced anonymously and after she
had gone into her trance but they even took up a position behind
her where she could not have seen them had she had her eyes
open. Furthermore, Hodgson had her tailed by private detectives
who even opened her mail, yet nothing suspicious ever turned
up. Yet Mrs. Piper continued to pour forth a profusion of
pertinent statements, not only when she was on her home turf in
Boston but when she traveled to England and was tested in
Liverpool, Cambridge, and London. As she was paid a retaining
fee throughout her career by the Society for Psychical Research
in London, she was able to devote herself full time to research
instead of giving private sittings.
Probably the person for whose postmortem existence we
have the best evidence is a George Pellew. He was a Bostonian
gentleman, a member of the newly founded American S.P.R.,
and, although he did not himself believe in survival, he once told
his friend Hodgson that, should he die in the not too distant
future and then discover that he had survived, he would earnestly
attempt to communicate the fact through Mrs. Piper. In the event,
he did die soon afterward in an accident at the early age of 33
and, lo and behold, a spirit-control calling itself George Pellew
(in the literature, for the sake of anonymity, he is referred to as
George Pelham, or just G. P.) duly began communicating through
Mrs. Piper. Whenever she held a sitting at which any of his
friends were present, he never failed to greet them whereas,
conversely, he never greeted anyone he had not known during his
lifetime. In this way he correctly recognized 30 out of a possible
150 individuals without making a single error.
Then, after some years, he stopped communicating. It
appears to be a general rule that it is the recent dead who
communicate through mediums, especially when they have died
prematurely, leaving unfinished business. This raises the question
as to what happens to us eventually, assuming we do survive. Do
we, in due course, progress to some higher spiritual sphere where
we lose all interest in earthly matters? Does our private ego
merge with some universal cosmic mind? We can but speculate.
However, a case like that of G. P. reminds us that, perhaps, some
people are better able to communicate than others, just as some
are more psychically gifted than others. It also reminds us that
survival does not necessarily imply eternal life.
Hodgson, himself, died soon afterward, also somewhat
prematurely at the age of 50 while playing squash. He likewise
soon began communicating through Mrs. Piper, and it then fell to
his friend William James to study and evaluate the R.H. control.
James, the great pioneer of psychology in America and a Harvard
professor, was the one who had originally discovered Mrs. Piper.
As befits an academic, he was very cautious about coming to a
definite conclusion about anything, but he had no doubt whatever
that the entranced Mrs. Piper knew more about Richard Hodgson
than she could possibly have known in her waking life.
Perhaps, the most sophisticated attempts to demonstrate
survival that has ever been undertaken is one that began in 1901
with the death of Frederic Myers, perhaps the most important
pioneer of psychical research and the author of Human
Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death. Messages
purporting to come from the deceased Myers began being picked
up in the automatic scripts of Margaret Verrall. Margaret Verrall
was a lecturer in classics at Newnham College, Cambridge, the
John Beloff: “Is There Anything Beyond Death?” – page 5 of 7
wife of Arthur Verrall, who was likewise a classicist at
Cambridge. The plan the postmortem Myers had concocted was
to involve a number of mediums who practised automatic
writing. He would select themes from Greek and Latin literature
and convey these piecemeal through different mediums so that
only when pieced together would the complete story emerge.
Hence the expression "cross-correspondences" for this whole
episode. The mediums were widely scattered and were kept in
ignorance of what was going on.
There can be no doubt that the cross-correspondences
remain one of the priceless treasures and enigmas of psychical
research but they demand so much application, knowledge, and
subtlety of interpretation that, considered as a proof of survival,
they are surely misconceived. If only Myers could have given us
a convincing picture of what it was like to survive the death of
one's body, instead of playing these involved and erudite literary
games, we might now be in a better position to solve this great
mystery!
What of our other three categories? I do not think that the
spontaneous cases can compare with the best of the mediumistic
as evidence for survival, whatever intrinsic interest they may
have. As regards reincarnation, the evidence from childhood
memories, which Stevenson has so painstakingly amassed,
presents a formidable puzzle but, although I do not doubt that
something paranormal is going on, I have yet to be convinced
that the survival of the previous personality is the only
interpretation. It could be that, in some obscure way, the child
tunes in to the life of this deceased person with whom it then
inevitably identifies. It is, surely, significant that nearly all such
cases occur in societies where belief in reincarnation is part of
the ethos. In any case, from the fact that the occasional child
remembers a past life it would not follow that we are all destined
to be reborn.
As regards my fourth category, the near-death experience,
to which survivalists nowadays pay so much attention, again,
although I would concede that paranormal elements may be
involved, it remains open to a wide variety of psychological and
physiological interpretationssuch as cerebral anoxia, or oxygen
starvation of the brain, a self-defensive strategy in the face of
imminent extinction, and so forth. At all events, it would be
premature to interpret it at face value as affording a vision of the
next world. All the same, there is no denying the effect such an
experience has on those who have it. It may be worth mentioning
in this context that the late Sir Alfred Ayer, a lifelong rationalist
and sceptic, had a near-death experience while in the hospital
when his heart stopped beating for all of four minutes. His
experience was not typical or particularly blissful, nor did it
convert him to a belief in survival. However, he was sufficiently
impressed to write about it at length afterward in the press, where
he admitted that it had made him rethink his attitude to survival,
which, like so many modern philosophers, he had refused to take
seriously.
Conclusion
On the positive side we have a great many pointers to the
possibility of there being something beyond death. On the
negative side, there are too many unanswered questions for such
indications to be entirely convincing. In particular, we have no
very coherent account of what this other world would be like if
that is where we go. Moreover, if we survive death, what about
animals? To make an exception for ourselves seems to fly in the
face of evolutionary thinking, at the same time to suppose that
animals, too, have souls capable of transcending the dissolution
of their organism becomes ever more preposterous the further
down we go on the phylogenetic scale. The best evidence, as I
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have indicated, derives from the practice of mediumship, yet
most of that evidence is now very old. Today there simply are no
mediums of the caliber of a Mrs. Piper and, even if there were, it
would be most unlikely, given our mercenary society, that they
would devote themselves to research rather than, like Doris
Stokes, amass a fortune from public performances and popular
books. Of course, evidence does not lose its cogency just because
it is old but we are handicapped if we can only fall back on
bygone examples.
Not being a materialist, I think it is foolish to
underestimate the power of mind. Accordingly, I remain open to
persuasion about the possibility of the self surviving in a form
other than its present embodiment. I regret only that my
conclusions should have to be so guarded and that I cannot offer
the reader greater hope or consolation.
John Beloff
John Beloff: “Is There Anything Beyond Death?” – page 7 of 7
Is The Notion Of Disembodied Existence
Intelligible?
. . HUME ALLEGED THAT if two things, or qualities, A and B,
always occur together, they can be imagined to occur separately
(the one without the other), and it is a matter of empirical inquiry
whether they do. As a general principle one could question this;
can color occur without extension? can color occur without
shape? But let us ask, in the present context, whether
consciousness can occur without a body, even though all the
instances of consciousness we are familiar with are related
(causally or otherwise) to bodies.
Try to imagine yourself without a body. Imagine thinking
thoughts, having feelings and memories, and even having
experiences of seeing, hearing, and so on without the sense
organs that in this life are the empirically necessary conditions of
having these experiences. Having eyes is one thing; seeing colors
is another. Isn't it conceivable– whether or not it occurs in fact –
to see colors even though you lack the sense organs which in
your present life are the means by which you see colors?
You go to bed one night and go to sleep, then awaken
some hours later and see the sunlight streaming in the window,
the clock pointing to eight, the mirror at the other side of the
room; and you wonder what you will do today. Still in the bed,
you look down where your body should be, but you do not see
your body – the bedsheets and blankets are there, but there is no
body under them. Startled, you look in the mirror, and see the
reflection of the bed, the pillows, and blankets, and so on – but
no you; at least there is no reflection of your face or body in the
mirror. "Have I become invisible?" you ask yourself. Thinking of
H. G. Wells' invisible man, who could be touched but not seen,
you try to touch yourself; but there is nothing there to be
touched. A person coming into the room would be unable to see
or touch you, or to hear you either; a person could run his hands
over the entire bed without ever coming in contact with a body.
You are now thoroughly alarmed at the idea that no one will
know you exist. You try to walk forward to the mirror, but you
have no feet. You might find the objects near the mirror
increasing in apparent size, just as if you were walking toward
the mirror. These experiences might occur as before, the only
difference being that there is no body that can move or be seen or
touched.
Now, have we succeeded in at least imagining existence
without a body? Not quite. There are implicit references to body
even in the above description. You see – with eyes? – no, you
have no eyes, since you have no body. But let that pass for the
moment; you have experiences similar to what you would have if
you had eyes to see with. But how can you look toward the foot
of the bed or toward the mirror? Isn't looking an activity that
requires having a body? How can you look in one direction or
another if you have no head to turn? And this isn't all; we said
that you can't touch your body because there is no body there;
how did you discover this? Did you reach out with your fingers
to touch the bed? But you have no fingers, since you have no
body. What would you touch (or try to touch) with? You move, or
seem to move, toward the mirror – but what is it that moves or
seems to move? Not your body, for again you have none. All.the
same, things seem to get larger in front of you and smaller
behind you, just as if you were moving. In front of and behind
what? Your body? Your body seems to be involved in every
activity we try to describe even though we have tried to imagine
existing without it.
Every step along the way is riddled with difficulties. It is
not just that we are accustomed to think of people as having
bodies and can't get out of the habit. This makes things more
John Hospers: “Is the Notion of Disembodied Existence Intelligible?” – page 1 of 2
difficult, but it is only part of the problem. The fact is that you
can't imagine doing things like looking in a different direction
without turning your head, which is usually the result of a
decision to do this – and of course you can't turn your head if you
have no head to turn. If you decide to turn your head, you can't
carry out this decision in the absence of a head, and so on. There
seems to be a whole nest of difficulties – not merely technical
but logicalcƒonstantly embedded in the attempted description.
There is no necessary, conceptual, connection between the
experience we call "seeing" and the processes that physiologists tell us happen
in the eye and brain; the statement "James can still see, although his optic
centers are destroyed," is very unlikely in inductive grounds but perfectly
intelligible – after all, people used the word "see" long before they had any
idea of things happening in the optic centers of the brain. It therefore appears
to be clearly conceivable that seeing and other "sensuous" experiences might
go on continuously even after death of the organism with which they are now
associated, and that the inductive reasons for doubting whether this ever
happens might be outweighed by the evidence of Psychical Research.
I think it is an important conceptual inquiry to consider whether
really disembodied seeing, hearing, pain, hunger, emotion, etc., are so clearly
intelligible as is supposed in this common philosophical point of view.
impunity; but if you break enough the whole web collapses – the concept
becomes unusable. Just such a collapse happens, I believe, when we try to
think of seeing, hearing, pain, emotion, etc., going on independently of a
body. (from Peter Geach: Mental Acts.)
There is a whole web of meaning-connections between
perceiving and having a body; when we try to break all the
connections we appear to be reduced to unintelligibility. But
perhaps we used a bad example; perhaps we can imagine
thinking, wondering, doubting, and so on (mental operations)
taking place without a body. Where do these operations occur?
They occur, one might say, in a mind; and a mind, unlike a brain,
does not exist at any physical place. But what do you think
about? Surely about a world that is not your mind. And what
causes you to have the thoughts you do? Not a brain process,
because you have no brain. And once again the description
begins to be suspect. What is the you?...
JOHN HOSPERS
"The verb 'to see' has its meaning for me because I do see – I have
that experience!" Nonsense. As well suppose that I can come to know what a
minus quantity is by setting out to lose weight. What shows a man to have the
concept seeing is not merely that he sees, but that he can take an intelligent
part in our everyday use of the word "seeing." Our concept of sight has its life
only in connection with a whole set of other concepts, some of them relating
to the behavior of people who see things. (I express exercise of this concept in
such utterances as, "I can't see, it's too far off – now it's coming into view!"
"He couldn't see me, he didn't look round," "I caught his eye," etc.
[T]he exercise of one concept is intertwined with the exercise of
others; as with a spider's web, some connections may be broken with
John Hospers: “Is the Notion of Disembodied Existence Intelligible?” – page 2 of 2
On Survival Without A Body
AS REGARDS UNEMBODIED survival, I would make the
following remarks. The few Western philosophers in modern
times who have troubled to discuss the question of survival seem
generally to have taken for granted that the survival of a human
personality would be equivalent to its persistence without any
kind of physical organism. Some of them have proceeded to
argue that the attempt to conceive a personal stream of
experience, without a body as organ and centre of perception and
action and as the source of a persistent background of bodily
feeling, is an attempt to suppose something self-contradictory in
principle or inconceivable when one comes down to detail. They
have concluded that it is simply meaningless to talk of a human
personality surviving the death of its body. Their opponents in
this matter have striven to show that the supposition of a personal
stream of experience, in the absence of any kind of associated
organism, is self-consistent in principle and conceivable in detail.
They have concluded that it is possible, at any rate in the sense of
conceivable without inconsistency, that a human personality
should survive the death of the body with which it has been
associated.
Now I have two comments to make on this. One concerns
both parties, and the other concerns the second group of them.
(a) Of all the hundreds of millions of human beings, in
every age and clime, who have believed (or have talked or acted
as if they believed) in human survival, hardly any have believed
in unembodied survival. Hindus and Buddhists, e.g., believe in
reincarnation in an ordinary human or animal body or
occasionally in the non-physical body of some non-human
rational being, such as a god or a demon. Christians (if they
know their own business, which is not too common nowadays)
believe in some kind of (unembodied?) persistence up to the
General Resurrection, and in survival thereafter with a peculiar
kind of supernatural body...correlated in some intimate and
unique way with the animal body..., which has died and rotted
away. Nor are such views confined to babes and sucklings.
Spinoza, e.g., certainly believed in human immortality; and he
cannot possibly have believed, on his general principles, in the
existence of a mind without some kind of correlated bodily
organism. Leibniz said explicitly that, if per impossibile a
surviving mind were to be without an organism, it would be a
"deserter from the general order." It seems to me rather futile for
a modern philosopher to discuss the possibility of human
survival on an assumption which would have been unhesitatingly
rejected by almost everyone, lay or learned, who has ever
claimed seriously to believe in it.
(b) Suppose it could be shown that it is not inconceivable,
either in principle or in detail, that there should be a personal
stream of experience not associated with any kind of bodily
organism. That would by no means be equivalent to showing that
it is not inconceivable that the personality of a human being
should survive, in an unembodied state, the death of his physical
body. For such survival would require that a certain one such
unembodied personal stream of experience stands to a certain one
embodied personal stream of experience, associated with a
human body now dead, in those peculiar and intimate relations
which must hold if both are to count as successive segments of
the stream of experience of one and the same person. Is it
conceivable that the requisite continuity and similarity should
hold between two successive strands of personal experience so
radically different in nature as those two would seem prima facie
to be? Granted that there might conceivably be unembodied
persons, and that there certainly have been embodied persons
who have died, it might still be quite inconceivable or
C.D. Broad “On Survival Without a Body?” – page 1 of 2
overwhelmingly improbable that any of the former should be
personally identical-with any of the latter.
Speaking for myself, I find it more and more difficult, the
more I try to go into concrete detail, to conceive of a person so
unlike the only ones that I know anything about, and from whom
my whole notion of personality is necessarily derived, as an
unembodied person would inevitably be. He would have to
perceive foreign things and events (if he did so at all) in some
kind of clairvoyant way, without using special sense-organs, such
as eyes and ears, and experiencing special sensations through
their being stimulated from without He would have to act upon
foreign things and persons (if he did so at all) in some kind of
telekinetic way, without using limbs and without the
characteristic feelings of stress, strain, etc., that come from the
skin, the joints, and the muscles, when we use our limbs. He
would have to communicate with other persons (if he did so at
all) in some kind of telepathic way, without using vocal organs
and emitting articulate sounds; and his conversations with
himself (if he had any) would have to be conducted purely in
imagery, without any help from incipient movements in the vocal
organs and the sensations to which they give rise in persons like
ourselves.
his lifetime by any deceased human being as to constitute
together the experiences of one and the same person.
C. D. Broad
from Lectures on Psychical Research (1962)
All this is "conceivable," so long as one keeps it in the
abstract; but, when I try to think "what it would be like" in
concrete detail, I find that I have no clear and definite ideas. That
incapacity of mine, even if it should be shared by most others,
does not of course set any limit to what may in fact exist and
happen in nature. But it does set a very definite limit to profitable
speculation on these matters. And, if I cannot clearly conceive
what it would be like to be an unembodied person, I find it
almost incredible that the experiences of such a person (if such
there could be) could be sufficiently continuous with those had in
C.D. Broad “On Survival Without a Body?” – page 2 of 2
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