Research Catalog

Merely mortal? : can you survive your own death?

Title
Merely mortal? : can you survive your own death? / Antony Flew.
Author
Flew, Antony, 1923-2010.
Publication
Amherst, N.Y. : Prometheus Books, 2000.

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Details

Additional Authors
Flew, Antony, 1923-2010.
Description
xviii, 200 pages; 24 cm
Summary
"Despite the perennial hope of life beyond the grave, Flew shows that there are insuperable difficulties in explicating the concept of postmortem survival on a rational basis. Analyzing the ways that philosophers have tried to get around these difficulties, Flew distinguishes three main hypotheses. The 'reconstitutionist way' maintains that after death, flesh-and-blood people are miraculously reconstituted as the same flesh-and-blood people. The 'way of the astral body' maintains that at death, similarly structured but normally undetectable 'astral bodies' detach themselves from the flesh-and-blood people they once were. The 'Platonic-Cartesian way,' by far the most frequently proffered view, maintains that people essentially are their incorporeal minds or souls, and that these detach themselves from their bodies at death. The main problem, says Flew, is that of logically demonstrating how a person surviving death in any imagined altered state could identify him- or herself as the same person who had previously lived. Flew reviews both the classic arguments of Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, and Descartes, as well as the modern findings of parapsychology, and in doing so he elucidates this complex issue with logical rigor and engaging wit."--front and back flaps.
Subject
  • Immortality (Philosophy)
  • Identity (Psychology)
  • Parapsychology
  • Parapsychology
  • Unsterblichkeit
  • Identität
  • Parapsychologie
Bibliography (note)
  • Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents
Ch. 1. Three Ways to Survival -- Ch. 2. Plato: (i) From Preexistence to Immortality -- Ch. 3. Plato: (ii) Attempted Proofs of Immortality -- Ch. 4. Plato: (iii) Intimations of Immateriality -- Ch. 5. Aristotle and Aquinas -- Ch. 6. The Cartesian Turn -- Ch. 7. Personal Identity: (i) Conceivable Differences? -- Ch. 8. Personal Identity: (ii) Uniting Memories? -- Ch. 9. Substances, Stuff and Consciousness -- Ch. 10. The Significance of Parapsychology.
ISBN
  • 1573928410
  • 9781573928410
LCCN
00045842
OCLC
  • ocm45087037
  • 45087037
  • SCSB-1206297
Owning Institutions
Princeton University Library