Surviving Death: A Guide for Beginners

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Surviving Death A Guide for Beginners

• Michael Lacewing
• enquiries_at_alevelphilosophy.co.uk

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What am I?

• What is it for me to continue being me over time?
• Am I a kind of thing, e.g. a mind or a body? What
  is it for a mind or a body to continue to exist?
• We know bodies can exist without minds (corpses).
  Are minds able to exist without bodies?

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Dualism and Monism

• Substance needs no other thing to exist
• Dualism there are two sorts of substance, mind
  (or soul) and matter
• Materialism there is just one sort of thing,
  matter

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The options

• Suppose dualism is true, and my mind can exist
  without my body. Do I continue to exist just as a
  mind after death (death of my body)? Or am I
  essentially a mind-and-body combination?
• Suppose materialism is true, and we dont have
  souls. Can we survive death at all? Can my body
  survive? Can my mind survive?

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Surviving death Resurrection

• In the graveyard or somewhere else? How does my
  body get there?
• Christ had an intact body I wont!
• Putting the old body back together

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A Corny Tale
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Materialism and personal identity

• Am I
• My brain?
• Or is what makes me me different from what makes
  my brain my brain?

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Teletransportation (or travelling light)
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Same mind, different body

• Teletransportation suggests that I can still be
  me the same person without having the same
  body.
• Materialism claims that everything that exists
  exist in a material form, i.e. is made from
  matter. It doesnt have to claim that persons
  just are their bodies but persons must have
  bodies to exist at all.

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Surviving death Recreation
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Resurrection resurrected

• Not all bodies are the same I Corinthians 15
• But what makes it the same body?
• Will we still have problems with starting from
  the original body?