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The Mental and the Physical

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Philosophy and the Belief in a Life After Death

Part of the book series: Library of Philosophy and Religion ((LPR))

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Abstract

We have seen that there are no insuperable difficulties about picking out some disembodied spirit as being one and the same individual as some identifiable human being now deceased. Problems of post-mortem identification do not constitute a fatal, or even a very serious, objection to the belief in a life after death.

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Notes and References

  1. See J. A. Shaffer, ‘Could mental states be brain processes?’, in C. V. Borst (ed.), The Mind—Brain Identity Theory (London: Macmillan, 1970) pp. 113–22.

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  2. See Kai Nielsen, ‘The Faces of Immortality’, in Stephen T. Davis (ed.), Death and Afterlife (London: Macmillan, 1989) pp. 2–9.

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  3. T. Penelhum, Survival and Disembodied Existence (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970) p. 99.

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  4. See W. Penfield, The Mystery of the Mind (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975) pp. 21–7.

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  5. J. Eccles, The Neurophysiological Basis of Mind (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953) p. 285.

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  6. W. Grey Walter, The Living Brain (London: Duckworth, 1953) p. 176.

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  7. H. Berger, Psyche (Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1940). Although a fully paid-up physicalist, he confusingly called this form of physical energy ‘psychic energy’.

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  8. H. A. C. Dobbs, ‘Time and ESP’, Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, Vol.54, pt. 197, 1965.

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  9. D. M. Armstrong, A Materialist Theory of Mind (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968) p. 364.

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  10. See K R. Lashley, ‘The Search for the Engram’, esp. pp. 501–3, in F. A. Beach and D. O. Hebb, The Neurophysiology of Lashley, cited in H. A. Bursen, Dismantling the Memory Machine (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1978) pp. 15–16.

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  11. Henri Bergson, ‘The Soul and the Body’, in Mind-Energy (London: Macmillan, 1935) p. 47.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Hull, UK

    R. K. W. Paterson (Formerly Senior Lecturer in Philosophy)

Authors
  1. R. K. W. Paterson
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© 1995 R. W. K. Paterson

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Paterson, R.K.W. (1995). The Mental and the Physical. In: Philosophy and the Belief in a Life After Death. Library of Philosophy and Religion. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230389885_3

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