God, Death, and the Meaning of Life (part 2)

III. Is it possible to exist after death?

It is an immutable fact of life that we must all one day die. Our bodies will grow old, stop functioning, and eventually decay. Even if science manages to halt aging and cure every disease in the world, life in its physical form will eventually come to end when the sun dies (or if that is not enough, at least when the universe suffers “heat death”), barring some miraculous intervention by God. Is it possible, then, to continue to exist after death? My answer would have to be a definitive yes. This is because I believe that we human beings have an immaterial component (the mind or soul) which is the essence of who we are, and thus the death of the body does not cause the person to cease to exist.

That said, to establish the possibility of an afterlife, we must first discuss what it means to be a person. In other words, we must first establish the basis for our identity as a personal being (the ubiquitous “Who am I?” question). There are three possibilities. As a person, we are either only our minds (or souls), or only our bodies, or some combination of both. To say that we are only minds is to say that our bodies are distinct from our minds, and that our identities (our sense of self) are solely based upon what we perceive as our minds or souls, which means that our bodies are merely “containers” for our souls, which form the entirety of who we are. This theory is known as dualism or the “container” theory. On the opposite end is the idea that we are identical solely with our bodies, and that our minds are merely a part of our bodies and thus indistinct and inseparable. This is known as materialism. The third theory is known as the mind-body composite theory, which states that each of us are partly composed of a living, organic body and partly composed of an immaterial soul. Only one of these three possibilities can be true.

I am personally in favor of the first theory, dualism, which states that the mind and the body are distinct from each other, that we are identical with our minds, and that the body is merely a “container” or “seat” for the mind. To be more specific, I believe in dualistic interactionism, which maintains that there are causal connections between mind and body in both directions.³ This is because there are a number of significant differences between mental and physical events that seem irreconcilable. Firstly, mental events have a subjective quality that physical events do not. For example, one can ask what a burned finger feels like, what the blueness of the sky looks like, or what nice music sounds like.⁷ Also, one can know everything there is to know about the physical aspect of something (say, the taste of ice-cream) and yet still not truly know what it means to actually experience it (a mental event).⁵ Besides that, many mental events are directed towards an object or a “target” in a way that physical events seem unable to account for (this characteristic is technically known as “intentionality”).³ For example, one can think that the lemonade he or she is drinking tastes good, yet the concurrent neuronal activity going on inside that person’s brain says nothing in itself about the taste of the drink. It thus seems that physical events and conditions differ from mental acts because they are unable to indicate anything beyond themselves the way mental acts can. Last but not least, there is the question of the immaterial nature of mental events. For example, one cannot directly observe anger in another person. One can only see the effects the anger causes on the person (an increase in neural activity, perhaps, or a change in demeanor). It thus seems obvious that mental events are immaterial (i.e. unobservable) in a way that physical events are not. To sum it up, these four points indicate that the physical and mental are distinct from each other, and thus it can be concluded that the body and mind are also similarly separate

Assuming that the “container” theory is true, our continued existence after death seems to me to be highly plausible. For if the body is merely the “seat” of the mind, the mind’s existence will not be affected by the death of the body. Here I would like to say that I do not believe that a bodily resurrection is necessary for an afterlife. It is sufficient for me that my mind continues to exist, for my mind is me.

Nonetheless, there are a number of significant objections to the idea of the mind as wholly separate from the body. Chief among these is the mind-body dependence argument. The mind-body dependence argument attempts to disprove the idea that the mind and body are distinct by looking at the effect of physical events on the mind. Specifically, the mind-body dependence argument argues that there is a direct correlation between damage to the brain and damage to the mind. For example, brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s alter the mental capacities (memory, cognitive thinking, perception, etc.) and behavior of the victim. As the disease gets progressively worse, the degeneration of mental capacities accelerates and the changes in behavior become more and more significant. Supporters of the mind-body dependence argument argue that this indicates that the mind is ontologically dependent upon the brain (meaning that the mind is wholly dependent on the brain for its existence), and thus the mind is not distinct and separate from the body such as claimed by supporters of the “container theory”. This argument is also used against the notion of disembodied survival (that is, survival beyond the death of the body in the form of a mind or soul) by claiming that the mind, because it is ontologically dependent upon the brain, will cease to exist the moment the brain dies.

Ultimately, however, I believe that this objection fails to conclusively refute the theory that the mind and body are separate and distinct. This is because it is not necessarily true that the mind is ontologically dependent upon the brain despite the seeming correlation between damage to one’s brain and the loss of mental capacities. The evidence merely shows that the mind and the body are inextricably linked in the physical world. It is thus still possible that the body and mind are metaphysically distinct, and that the mind merely uses the body as an “instrument” to express itself in the physical world (meaning that the mind is merely functionally and not ontologically dependent upon the brain). The “container” theory is thus still a viable theory regarding human nature and the possibility of an afterlife.

In short, I believe that it is possible for us to continue to exist after we die because our minds are distinct and not ontologically dependent upon our bodies, and thus will continue to survive beyond our physical deaths. Since I believe that we are our minds (in other words, we are identical with our souls), it follows that we will also survive the deaths of our bodies.