Why so many of us think our minds continue on after we die
By Jesse Bering
The only real mystery is why we're so convinced that when it comes to where we're going "when the whole thing's done", we're dealing with a mystery at all. After all, the brain is like any other organ: a part of our physical body. And the mind is what the brain does - it's more a verb than it's a noun. Why do we wonder where our mind goes when the body is dead? Shouldn't it be obvious that the mind is dead, too?
According to proponents, you possess a secret arsenal of psychological defenses designed to keep your death anxiety at bay.
Consider the rather startling fact that you will never know you have died. You may feel yourself sleeping away, but it isn't as though there will be a "you" around who is capable of ascertaining that, once all is said and done, it has actually happened. Just to remind you, you need a working cerebral cortex to harbor propositional knowledge of any sort, including the fact that you've died - and once you've died your brain is about as phenomenally generative as a head of lettuce. In a 2007 article published in the journal Synthese, University of Arizona philosopher Shaun Nichols puts it this way: "When I try to imagine my own non-existence I have to imagine that I perceive or know about my non-existence. No wonder there's an obstacle!"
This observation may not sound like a major revelation to you, but I bet you've never considered what it actually means, wich is that your own mortality is unfasifiable from the firstperson perspective. This obstacle is why writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe allegedly remarked that "everyone carries the proof of his own immortality witihn himself".
On the one hand, from a very early age, children realize that dead bodies are not coming back to life. On the other hand, also from a very early age, kids endow the dead with ongoing psychological functions. So where do culture and religious teaching come into the mix, if at all?
In fact, exposure to the concept of an afterlife plays a crucial role in enriching and elaborating this natural cognitive stance; it's sort of like an architectural scaffolding process, whereby culture develops and decorates the innate psychological building blocks of religious belief. The end product can be as ornate or austere as you like, from the headache-inducing reincarnation beliefs of Theravada Buddhists to the man on the street's "I believe there's something" brand of philosophy - but it's made of the same brinc and mortar just the same.
- Scientific American Mind - Volume 19 nº5
By Jesse Bering
The only real mystery is why we're so convinced that when it comes to where we're going "when the whole thing's done", we're dealing with a mystery at all. After all, the brain is like any other organ: a part of our physical body. And the mind is what the brain does - it's more a verb than it's a noun. Why do we wonder where our mind goes when the body is dead? Shouldn't it be obvious that the mind is dead, too?
According to proponents, you possess a secret arsenal of psychological defenses designed to keep your death anxiety at bay.
Consider the rather startling fact that you will never know you have died. You may feel yourself sleeping away, but it isn't as though there will be a "you" around who is capable of ascertaining that, once all is said and done, it has actually happened. Just to remind you, you need a working cerebral cortex to harbor propositional knowledge of any sort, including the fact that you've died - and once you've died your brain is about as phenomenally generative as a head of lettuce. In a 2007 article published in the journal Synthese, University of Arizona philosopher Shaun Nichols puts it this way: "When I try to imagine my own non-existence I have to imagine that I perceive or know about my non-existence. No wonder there's an obstacle!"
This observation may not sound like a major revelation to you, but I bet you've never considered what it actually means, wich is that your own mortality is unfasifiable from the firstperson perspective. This obstacle is why writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe allegedly remarked that "everyone carries the proof of his own immortality witihn himself".
On the one hand, from a very early age, children realize that dead bodies are not coming back to life. On the other hand, also from a very early age, kids endow the dead with ongoing psychological functions. So where do culture and religious teaching come into the mix, if at all?
In fact, exposure to the concept of an afterlife plays a crucial role in enriching and elaborating this natural cognitive stance; it's sort of like an architectural scaffolding process, whereby culture develops and decorates the innate psychological building blocks of religious belief. The end product can be as ornate or austere as you like, from the headache-inducing reincarnation beliefs of Theravada Buddhists to the man on the street's "I believe there's something" brand of philosophy - but it's made of the same brinc and mortar just the same.
- Scientific American Mind - Volume 19 nº5
