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4 results

  • Personal Identity and Postmortem Survival

  • Edited by Ellen Frankel Paul, Bowling Green State University, Ohio, Fred D. Miller, Jr, Bowling Green State University, Ohio, Jeffrey Paul, Bowling Green State University, Ohio
  • Book:
    Personal Identity
    Published online:
    05 July 2014
    Print publication:
    04 July 2005, pp 226-249

  • Summary

    I. Introduction

    As many have noted, what is often called the “problem” of personal identity can be understood either as a metaphysical issue or as an epistemological (and somewhat more practical) issue. Metaphysicians typically want to know what it is for one individual to be the same person as another. People undergo many changes over time, and some people resemble others quite closely The metaphysician wants to know, for example, what makes me—the chronologically challenged, mostly bald philosopher Stephen Braude—the same unique individual as the infant who appeared on the scene many years earlier, despite the considerable evolution in my appearance and in my psychology during the interim. However, epistemologists are concerned (at least sometimes) with a different problem: how to decide if an individual is the same person as someone else. For example, are these decisions rooted in judgments about physical continuity, psychological continuity, or both? In virtue of what, for example, do we identify a person as me, despite (so I'm told) my remarkable resemblance to other chronologically and follically challenged individuals? Granted, in real life this potential problem seldom stops us in our tracks. Although some have trouble distinguishing identical twins, and although we sometimes mistake a person for someone else, those problems are uncommon, and usually they are quickly resolved. In fact, that is about as difficult as it gets for everyday identifications.

  • PERSONAL IDENTITY AND POSTMORTEM SURVIVAL

  • Stephen E. Braude
  • Journal:
    Social Philosophy and Policy / Volume 22 / Issue 2 / July 2005
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    15 June 2005, pp. 226-249
    Print publication:
    July 2005

  • The so-called “problem of personal identity” can be viewed as either a metaphysical or an epistemological issue. Metaphysicians want to know what it is for one individual to be the same person as another. Epistemologists want to know how to decide if an individual is the same person as someone else. These two problems converge around evidence from mediumship and apparent reincarnation cases, suggesting personal survival of bodily death and dissolution. These cases make us wonder how it might be possible for a person to survive death and either temporarily or permanently animate another body. And they make us wonder how we could decide if such postmortem survival has actually occurred. In this essay I argue, first, that metaphysical worries about postmortem survival are less important than many have supposed. Next, I'll consider briefly why cases suggesting postmortem survival can be so intriguing and compelling, and I'll survey our principal explanatory options and challenges. Then, I'll consider why we need to be circumspect in our appraisal of evidence for mind-body correlations. And finally, I'll try to draw a few tentative and provocative conclusions.