possibility of psychological continuity after death

• what gives little hope of personal survival after the death of the body?

  the "bundle theory"
• the possibility of continued personal existence after death can be described only in...?

  limited ways
• persons don't live after death, why?

  since the physical body and brain die, and a persons memories and personality die with him
• there can be a psychological connectedness with children and close friends, how?

  in the sense that the persons influence on them during life continues for as long as the person is remembered
• aside from that, there is no deeper...?

  level of self that remains the same
• Parfit sees links between his bundle theory and what?

  Buddhist views
• how does parfait see links between his bundle theory and Buddhist views?

  Buddhism sees a person as an ever-changing combination of mental and physical energies, as Parfit does
• but also teaches what?

  that this continuous process of change continues through what we regard as death
• in Buddhist teaching, the person who dies is neither the same as nor different from the one who is reborn, why?

  because the new life arises from the last in the same way that the future arises from the past and present in this life
• this doesn't show that rebirth is "true" but what does it suggest?

  that a belief in some form of personal survival is consistent with the idea that the self is a "bundle"
• what is Daniel Dennett's theory ?

  survival by uploading brain information to a different platform
• explain what the idea is:

  that the information presently stored in the brain could be uploaded onto a different platform such as a computer
• what does this give a possible model for?

  personal survival beyond death
• what kind of approach is this?

  a functionalist approach
• with Dennett's approach then, what are your experiences/ memories/ personality?

  the organisation of information
• immortality is in principle possible, through what?

  the means of storing that information on another platform
• what can survive then is the...?

  "persistence of the narrative" that is you
• what is this?

  the narrative of your experience, memory and personality
• depending on the platform used, what could the stored information of your life presumably be?

  psychologically continuous with what went before
• to give a contrast between Dennett's approach and the dualism of Swinburne, consider the comparison figure in which...?


  a persons life is shown as a series of temporary terminal states
• what does TTS 1-10 represent?

  a persons temporary states over a lifetime
• what do these include?

  every successive experience in a persons life
• if you consider all that persons physical changes, ongoing thoughts and experiences, what would their total number be?

  incalculable
• For Swinburne, what is the self characterised by?

  first-person subjective accounts of its mental states (the conscious "I" who thinks, feels and has qualia)
• for Dennett, what is information?

  third-person objective
• what does Dennett want?

  a scientific approach to consciousness
• for Dennet, why don't conscious states exist?

  because science uses objective third-person methods and science cannot verify conscious states = they don't exist
• in Dennett's model, what is a person the sum total of?

  the information stream (nothing over and above the information itself)
• in the Swinburne model, the person isnt the information stream itself but...?

  the subject-self, the "I" or soul whose consciousness processes the information and can reflect on it
• the subject-self has to exist in order for what?

  the persons to understand the sequence of TTS
• for Swinburne, what can survive death?

  the subject-self (the soul)
• for Swinburne, what does survival appear to need?

  the intervention of God
• for Dennett, what survives can only be the information system stream of the narrative self, why?

  because there is nothing else to survive
• for Dennett, his functionalist account means that a persons narrative might continue on another platform but...?

  that platform cannot be a subjective consciousness, because the narrative is merely stored information
• the possibility of continued existence after death still exists for what?

  dual-aspect monism
• for example...?

  in the "objective immortality" of process theology
• what do they believe happens after death?

  we live forever in the mind of God
• explain objective immortality:

  we survive our death because we live on in the mind of God. our actions, thoughts and ideas exist eternally as objects in the memory of the eternal God