Research Catalog

Title

The myth of an afterlife : the case against life after death / edited by Michael Martin and Keith Augustine.

Publication

Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield, [2015]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Martin, Michael, 1932-2015

Description

xxxi, 675 pages; 24 cm

Summary

"In The Myth of an Afterlife: The Case against Life after Death, Michael Martin and Keith Augustine collect a series of contributions that redress this imbalance in the literature by providing a strong, comprehensive, and up-to-date casebook of the chief arguments against an afterlife. Divided into four separate sections, this collection opens with a broad overview of the issues, as contributors consider the strongest evidence of whether or not we survive death - in particular the biological basis of all mental states and their grounding in brain activity that ceases to function at death. Next, contributors consider a host of conceptual and empirical difficulties that confront the various ways of "surviving" death - from bodiless minds to bodily resurrection to any form of posthumous survival. Then essayists turn to internal inconsistencies between traditional theological conceptions of an afterlife - heaven, hell, karmic rebirth - and widely held ethical principles central to the belief systems supporting those notions. In the final section, authors offer critical evaluations of the main types of evidence for an afterlife."--

Subjects

• Jenseits
• Tod
• Future life
• Jenseitsglaube

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Foreword: on the origin of afterlife beliefs by means of memetic selection / Steve Stewart-Williams -- Introduction / Keith Augustine -- Part I: Empirical arguments for annihilation -- Dead as a doornail: souls, brains, and survival / Matt McCormick -- Explaining personality: soul theory versus behavior genetics / Jean Mercer -- Dissolution into death: the mind's last symptoms indicate annihilation / Davis Weisman -- The argument from brain damage vindicated / Rocco J. Gennaro and Yonatan I. Fishman -- No mental life after brain death: the argument from neural localization of mental functions / Gualtiero Piccinini and Sonya Bahar -- The neural substrate of emotions and emotional processing / Carlos J. Álvarez -- Brain, language, and survival after death / Terence Hines -- The brain that doesn't know itself: persons oblivious to their neurological deficits / Jamie Horder -- The dualist's dilemma: the high cost of reconciling neuroscience with a soul / Keith Augustine and Yonatan I. Fishman -- Part II: Conceptual and empirical difficulties for survival -- Why survival is metaphysically impossible / Raymond D. Bradley -- Conceptual problems confronting a totally disembodied afterlife / Theodore M. Drange -- What could pair nonphysical soul to a physical body? / Jaegwon Kim -- Nonphysical souls would violate physical laws / David L. Wilson -- These is no trace of any soul linked to the body / Daniel Papineau -- Since physical formulas are not violated, no soul controls the body / Leonard Angel -- The implausibility of astral bodies and astral worlds / Susan Blackmore -- The pluralizability objection to a new-body afterlife / Theodore M. Drange -- Life after death and the devastation of the grave / Eric T. Olson -- Part III: Problematic models of the afterlife -- Problems with heaven / Michael Martin -- Can God condemn one to an afterlife in hell? / Raymond D. Bradley -- Objections to karma and rebirth: an introduction / Ingrid Hansen Smythe -- Part IV: Dubious evidence for survival -- giving up the ghost to psychology / Rense Lange and James Houran -- Out-of-body experiences are not evidence for survival / Susan Blackmore -- Near-death experiences are hallucinations / Keith Augustine -- A critique of Ian Stevenson's rebirth research / Champe Ransom -- Is there adequate empirical evidence for reincarnation?: an analysis of Ian Stevenson's work / Leonard Angel -- Conjecturing up spirits in the improvisations of mediums / Claus Flodin Larsen -- Madness in the method: fatal flaws in recent mediumship experiments / Christian Battista, Nicolas Gauvrit, and Etienne LeBel -- Is there life after death?: a review of the supporting evidence / David Lester.

LCCN

2014039697

OCLC

894105498

Title

The myth of an afterlife : the case against life after death / edited by Michael Martin and Keith Augustine.

Publisher

Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield, [2015]

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Added Author

Martin, Michael, 1932-2015, editor.

Other Form:

Ebook version 9780810886780