Why immortality alone will not get me to the afterlifeстатья из журнала
Аннотация: Abstract Recent research in the cognitive science of religion suggests that humans intuitively believe that others survive death. In response to this finding, three cognitive theories have been offered to explain this: the simulation constraint theory (Bering, 2002 Bering, JM. 2002. Intuitive conceptions of dead agents' minds: The natural foundations of afterlife beliefs as phenomenological boundary. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 2: 263–308. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]); the imaginative obstacle theory (Nichols, 2007 Nichols, S. 2007. Imagination and immortality: Thinking of me. Synthese, 159: 215–233. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]); and terror management theory (Pyszczynski, Rothschild, & Abdollahi, 2008). First, I provide a critical analysis of each of these theories. Second, I argue that these theories, while perhaps explaining why one would believe in his own personal immortality, leave an explanatory gap in that they do not explain why one would intuitively attribute survival of death to others. To fill in the gap, I offer a cognitive theory based on offline social reasoning and social embodiment which provides for the belief in an eternal social realm in which the deceased survive—the afterlife. Keywords: AfterlifeCartesian Substance DualismExplanatory GapImaginative ObstacleImmortalityIntuitive BeliefsOffline Social ReasoningSimulation ConstraintSocial EmbodimentTerror Management Theory Acknowledgements I wish to thank Graham Macdonald, Bethany Heywood, Jared Piazza, Colin Holbrook, Natalie Emmons, and two reviewers for comments on previous versions of this article. In addition, I would like to thank Joshua Knobe, Paul Bloom, and Jesse Bering for helpful conversations which aided in the development of this paper. Finally, I would like to thank Tracy Orr for patiently listening as I gathered my thoughts on this subject. Notes Notes [1] My theory is the result of combining two previous hypotheses concerning social interaction—namely, offline social reasoning (Bering, 2006 Bering, JM. 2006. The folk psychology of souls. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 29: 1–46. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and social embodiment (Barsalou et al., 2003 Barsalou, LW, Niedenthal, PM, Barbey, AK and Ruppert, JA. 2003. "Social Embodiment". In The psychology of learning and motivation, Edited by: Ross, BH. 43–92. Amsterdam: Academic Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; Niedenthal et al., 2005 Niedenthal, PM, Barsalou, LW, Winkielman, P, Krauth-Gruber, S and Ric, F. 2005. Embodiment in attitudes, social perception, and emotion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 9: 184–211. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). [2] The phrase "folk psychology of souls" was introduced by Bering (2006 Bering, JM. 2006. The folk psychology of souls. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 29: 1–46. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). [3] As I will argue in a moment, there was an asymmetry between the physical and psychological domain questions posed to participants. [4] In an unrelated experiment, Systsma and Machery (2009) found that subjects are more willing to ascribe phenomenal states to group agents if that phenomenal state was followed by a prepositional phrase (e.g., "Acme corporation is feeling upset about the court's decision," vs. "Acme corporation is feeling upset"). I would suggest that it is not merely the prepositional phrase that contributed to the increase in ascription of phenomenal states, but rather a prepositional phrase with the right type of social connection for the entity in question (i.e., "Acme corporation is feeling upset about the court's decision," vs. "Acme corporation is feeling upset about little Timmy spilling his Coke on his mother"). [5] If this socially embodied view of afterlife beliefs is correct, then this implies that each surviving person will conceive of the deceased's survival in the afterlife in different ways based on the social relationship(s) they had with the deceased. A surviving husband, for example, will envision the deceased individual (his wife) as maintaining the embodiment necessary to continue the social role of a wife, and perhaps mother of their children; whereas if that same deceased individual was a teacher, then her students would envision her continued existence embodied in such a way as to portray that role in their imaginings. [6] I think that Socrates, in the Apology (Cooper, 1997 Cooper, J. M. (Ed.) (1997). Plato: The complete works. Indianapolis: Hackett. [Google Scholar]), provides us a helpful simulation in what it is like to be dead when he argues that it might be a dreamless sleep, but this requires that the distinction between the simulator and the simulated be maintained and not collapsed as discussed below. [7] I consider the absence of pancultural prelife beliefs in more detail with the discussion of Nichol's imaginative block hypothesis below. [8] My colleague Natalie Emmons is currently undertaking such questions concerning prelife beliefs. [9] It is likely that we cannot even imagine what it is like to be disembodied, though we might imagine what it is like to have experiences "as if" we are disembodied: but claiming that the former is imaginable from the latter is non sequitur (Blose, 1981 Blose, BL. 1981. Materialism and disembodied minds. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 42: 59–74. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; see also Tye, 1983 Tye, M. 1983. On the possibility of disembodied existence. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 61: 275–282. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). [10] Graham Macdonald first posed this objection that I am developing here. [11] For Bering, knowledge seems to be limited to only that which can be experienced. He provides no defense for this view, however. [12] I shall return to this question. [13] Nichols argues that "there is a block against having an imaginational representation with the mode of presentation I don't exist" (2007, p. 227). It is from this simple formulation of the imaginative obstacle that Nichols makes the move to suggesting why we believe in our own immortality with the imaginative representation I will be considering, "it is the future, and I do not exist." [14] Nichols (2007 Nichols, S. 2007. Imagination and immortality: Thinking of me. Synthese, 159: 215–233. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) provides that our inference mechanisms can handle disguised contradictions, but not blatant contradictions. [15] Nichols (2007 Nichols, S. 2007. Imagination and immortality: Thinking of me. Synthese, 159: 215–233. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], p. 219) argues from the case of fiction that it is the normal case that we imagine the future as the present, as in when reading Do androids dream of electric sheep we imagine that it is 2021 and Deckard is hunting androids rather than "imagining that in 2021 Deckard will hunt androids." But this is a substantially different case than the one which Nichols is proposing. In particular, in imagining Deckard in 2021 allows me to maintain the role of observer, whereas Nichols' formulation of the imaginative obstacle requires imagining that I am not an observer but an actor currently undertaking those future events. [16] The terror management system itself might be innate, but this system only predisposes us to beliefs about immortality and the acceptance of cultural worldviews. It does not claim that those beliefs and worldviews are themselves innate. [17] Another interesting point here is that children who exclude themselves from dying never do so in isolation. They exclude other individuals as well (Speece & Sandor, 1984 Speece, MW and Sandor, BB. 1984. Children's understanding of death: A review of three components of a death concept. Child Development, 55: 1671–1686. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). [18] It might be objected here that unless children have a full understanding of death that this compromises the empirical findings that children believe in the afterlife, since an understanding of death would seem to be a prerequisite for a belief in the afterlife. Yet, all that is required for the theory I put forward below is that death be understood, at least metaphorically, as an absence. Thank you to Graham Macdonald for raising this objection. [19] Intuitive in this context is simply non-epistemically derived (see, Hodge, 2008 Hodge, KM. 2008. Descartes' mistake: How afterlife beliefs challenge the assumption that humans are intuitive Cartesian substance dualists. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 8: 387–415. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; Sperber, 1997 Sperber, D. 1997. Intuitive and reflective beliefs. Mind and Language, 12: 67–83. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). [20] Bering does not hold that offline social reasoning is causal in the genesis of afterlife beliefs, but rather that it provides the content for those beliefs which are generated from the simulation constraint. [21] In another paper, I (Hodge, forthcoming) argue that this presumption is an alief (following Gendler, 2008a Gendler, TS. 2008a. Alief and belief. Journal of Philosophy, 105: 634–663. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 2008b). [22] My use of the word "humans" here is meant to be all of us who are susceptible to folk reasoning processes which I take to be the vast majority. [23] I will not pursue the implications for the intuitiveness for beliefs in ghosts, spirits and apparitions here. [24] For a discussion of the social aspects and implications of death, see Palgi and Abramovitch (1984 Palgi, P and Abramovitch, H. 1984. Death: A cross-cultural perspective. Annual Review of Anthropology, 13: 385–417. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). [25] Researchers seem to have assumed that because the living see the disposal of the inanimate body of the deceased that they no longer attribute a body to them. What they overlook, however, is how easily the imagination can supply the decedent with a new one just as we supply fictional characters with theirs. I argue this in more detail in Hodge (forthcoming).
Год издания: 2011
Авторы: K. Mitch Hodge
Издательство: Taylor & Francis
Источник: Philosophical Psychology
Ключевые слова: Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion, Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology, Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health
Открытый доступ: closed
Том: 24
Выпуск: 3
Страницы: 395–410