Philosophy and the Belief in a Life After Death
This book critically examines the case for and against the belief in personal survival of bodily death. It discusses key philosophical questions. How could a discarnate individual be identified as a person who was once alive? What is the relationship betw
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LIBRARY Of PI l!LOSOI'I IY AND RELIGION
Ccncm/ Editor: John Hick, Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities, University of Birmingham
This series of books explores contemporary rl'ligious understandings of humanity ' with 'Exit' written underneath, has to be understood as pointing to the
The Mental and the Physical
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right: a different convention could easily be arranged, whereby arrows indicated something to be found by moving in the direction of their shafts rather than their heads. In itself, an arrow-sign does not 'point' in any direction. The meaning of any sign, including the signs we use in ordinary speech and writing, is conventional, and they derive their entire meanings from consciousness not from the size, shape, or colour of the signs regarded simply as physical objects. Moreover, the object to which a conscious experience points may not actually exist, or may not exist in the form in which it is experienced. (This is technically called 'intentional inexistence'). Thus a desert traveller may seem to see an oasis, or a hypochondriac believe himself to have a dreadful disease, in circumstances which render the existence of the oasis, or the occurrence of the disease, a sheer physical impossibility. The non-existent oasis cannot provide physical refreshment and the non-existent disease cannot eat away the hypochondriac's body. In other words, illusions and delusions can have no direct physical consequences. However, they can have direct mental consequences, his belief in the oasis reviving the traveller's flagging spirits and his dread of the disease plunging the hypochondriac into despair; and the reviving spirits and the despair themselves can obviously have direct and indirect physical consequences, perhaps saving the life of the one by his redoubled efforts and leading the other to commit suicide. Hence there is falsehood in the realm of the mental, where things may seem to be as in fact they are not, whereas in the realm of the physical there are no non-existent objects and everything is exactly what it is. The mind can be influenced by what no longer exists, as when we are moved by our memories, and by what does not yet exist, as when we anticipate some state of affairs which stirs us. The past is dead and the future unborn, but both can influence the present if (and only if) they can filter into the world via our minds. It is only for the mind that there exist possibilities. In the physical world it rains, or alternatively it does not rain. A human being stays indoors, or reluctantly carries an umbrella, merely because he believes that it may rain. A degree of uncertainty marks all our awareness of the physical world. This is why we
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Philosophy and the Belief in a Life after Death
can significantly think, 'Either it is raining or it is not raining', even although we know that one term of this disjunction is definitely not true. And this is why we can significantly think, 'If it is raining, the pavement must be wet', even although we know that in reality there can be
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