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A Naturalistic AfterlifeThe Varieties of Posthumous Experience

A Naturalistic Afterlife: The Varieties of Posthumous Experience [Having dealt with the emotional and rational underpinnings of the conventional notion of an afterlife, we turn to building the argument for a naturalistic alternative. The first order of business is to specify the base characteristics of a naturalistic afterlife: for example, it must not involve the survival of consciousness or claims of transcendence while at the same time being continuous with the mortal life that preceded it. To flesh this out, the possibility of a naturalistic afterlife is examined under the two principal philosophies of time: the standard view of time as flowing from past to future, or the block universe view, in which past, present, and future coexist as part of spacetime. If the block universe concept of time is correct, we find at least two plausible forms of a naturalistic afterlife: tenseless immortality and eternal recurrence. But that still leaves us with the question of whether such possibilities, scientifically defensible but divorced from our lived experience, can satisfy us emotionally as well.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

A Naturalistic AfterlifeThe Varieties of Posthumous Experience

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Publisher
Springer International Publishing
Copyright
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
ISBN
978-3-319-57977-1
Pages
65 –91
DOI
10.1007/978-3-319-57978-8_5
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[Having dealt with the emotional and rational underpinnings of the conventional notion of an afterlife, we turn to building the argument for a naturalistic alternative. The first order of business is to specify the base characteristics of a naturalistic afterlife: for example, it must not involve the survival of consciousness or claims of transcendence while at the same time being continuous with the mortal life that preceded it. To flesh this out, the possibility of a naturalistic afterlife is examined under the two principal philosophies of time: the standard view of time as flowing from past to future, or the block universe view, in which past, present, and future coexist as part of spacetime. If the block universe concept of time is correct, we find at least two plausible forms of a naturalistic afterlife: tenseless immortality and eternal recurrence. But that still leaves us with the question of whether such possibilities, scientifically defensible but divorced from our lived experience, can satisfy us emotionally as well.]

Published: Aug 2, 2017

Keywords: Philosophy of time; Time; Entropy; Albert Einstein

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