byrne - cheating death.pdf

8/14/2019 Byrne - Cheating Death.pdf

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Cheating Death

Philosophers Ponder the AfterlifeAlex Byrne

Star Trekstyle teleportation may one day become a reality. You step into the transporter, which

instantly scans your body and brain, vaporizing them in the process. The information is

transmitted to Mars, where it is used by the receiving station to reconstitute your body and braineactly as they were on !arth. You then step out of the receiving station, slightly dizzy, but

pleased to arrive on Mars in a few minutes, as opposed to the year it ta"es by old#fashioned

spacecraft.

$ut wait. %o you really step out of the receiving station on Mars& 'omeone just like yousteps

out, someone who apparently remembers stepping into the transporter on !arth a few minutes

before. $ut perhaps this person is merely your replica(a "ind of clone or copy. That would notma"e this person you) in *as +egas there is a replica of the !iffel Tower, but the !iffel Tower is

in Paris, not in *as +egas. f the !iffel Tower were vaporized and a replica instantly erected in

*as +egas, the !iffel Tower would not have been transported to *as +egas. t would have ceased

to eist. And if teleportation were li"e that, stepping into the transporter would essentially be acovert way of committing suicide. Troubled by these thoughts, you now realize that -you have

been commuting bac" and forth to Mars for years . . .

'o which is it& You are preoccupied with a /uestion about your survival) %o you survive

teleportation to Mars& A lot hangs on the /uestion, and it is not obvious how to answer it.

Teleportation is 0ust science fiction, of course1 does the urgent fictional /uestion have acounterpart in reality& ndeed it does) %o you, or could you, survive death&

Teeming hordes of humanity adhere to religious doctrines that promise survival after death)perhaps bodily resurrection at the %ay of 2udgment, reincarnation, or immaterial immortality.

3or these people, death is not the end.

'ome of a more secular persuasion do not disagree. The body of the baseball great Ted 4illiams

lies in a container cooled by li/uid nitrogen to #567 degrees 3ahrenheit, awaiting the 8reat

Thawing, when he will rise to sign sports memorabilia again. 94illiams:s prospects are

somewhat compromised because his head has apparently been preserved separately.; 3or thefuturist


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Physical ob0ects 9including plants and animals; typically come into eistence at some time, and

cease to eist at a later time, or so we normally thin". 3or eample, a cottage might come into

eistence when enough beams and bric"s are assembled, and cease to eist a century later, whenit is demolished to ma"e room for a McMansion. A mighty oa" tree began life as a tiny green

shoot, or perhaps an acorn, and will end its eistence when it is sawn into plan"s.

The cottage and the oa" survive a variety of vicissitudes throughout their careers. The house

survived ?urricane rene, say. That is, the house eisted before rene and also eisted after rene.

4e can put this in terms of -identity) the house eisted before rene and something eisted afterrene that was identicalto the house.

f you don:t have to go where your soul goes, or where your body goes, then you go where your

mind goes.

!plaining what survival amounts to in terms of identity helps to clarify the notion, but it is

potentially confusing. 'uppose your house burns down and you build an identical house in itsplace. That is not a situation in which your housesurvives(it:s a situation in which your house

is destroyed and a replica is built in its place. Although your original house and the replica areidentical in the sense that they are very similar, there is another sense in which they are notidentical. There are twohouses in the story, and in the -numerical sense of identity two things

are never identical. 4e have the numerical sense in mind when we say that *ady 8aga and

'tefani 8ermanotta are identical) we don:t 0ust mean that 8aga and 8ermanotta aresimilar, li"eyour iPhone and my iPhone, or the members of the 'cottish band The Proclaimers, who are

identical twins. 8aga and 8ermanotta are not twoat all) -they are one and the same. 'urvival,

then, should be cashed out in terms of numerical identity) you survive some event 0ust in case

you eist before the event and someone eists after the event who is numerically identical to you.

?ouses can survive repainting and the addition of a porch1 they cannot survive being consumed

by fire or having their parts scattered. $ut there are difficult cases. magine your ancient familyhome has been lovingly repaired over the years so that now not a single bric" or beam from the

original construction remains1 they have all been replaced with period bric"s and beams from

architectural salvage. ?as the original house survived& @ot an easy /uestion, but only aprofessional metaphysician would care about the answer. 'entiment aside, it doesn:t much matter

whether this is 9numerically; identical to the house your grandfather lived in, as opposed to one

0ust li"e it built on the same spot.

?owever there is one thing whose survival seems to be of the greatest importance(here spea"

for myself(namely me. As we have seen, /uestions about survival can be put in the language of

identity, and since we are persons, philosophers use -personal identity as a label for the study of

the sorts of events we can undergo and survive.

>ontemporary discussions of personal identity owe a great deal to the seventeenth#century

!nglish philosopher 2ohn *oc"e, whoseEssay Concerning Human Understandingcontainsmany fantastic thought eperiments of the sort 9li"e the teleportation eample; that are staples in


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the contemporary philosophical literature. *oc"e:s interest in the topic was motivated by his

belief in a >hristian afterlife and his suspicion of the then#prevalent idea 9deriving from Plato;

that we survive death because we have immaterial souls that outlast our bodies. *oc"e thin"s wecannot rule out the view that the Almighty, instead of animating our bodies by uniting them with

immaterial souls, has instead 0ust made matter capable of supporting mental lives, not bothering

to create immaterial souls at all. *oc"e:s account of personal identity is designed to ma"e roomfor the %ay of 2udgment whether or not there are immaterial souls. -All the great ends of

morality and religion, he wrote, -are well enough secured, without philosophical proofs of the

soul:s immateriality.

t will be easiest to approach *oc"e:s position by considering some of his arguments 9slightly

altered; against rival views. 'o first consider the view that our survival consists in the survival of

our immaterial souls) you go where your soul goes. magine that the immaterial soul inhabitingyour body is, in fact, numerically identical to(the very same soul as(the immaterial soul that

inhabited the body of 'ocrates. You have no memory of any events in ancient 8reece, yet on the

view that ties our survival to the survival of our souls, 'ocrates has survived as you. You and'ocrates would therefore be one and the same person, li"e *ady 8aga and 'tefani 8ermanotta,

or 8eorge rwell and !ric $lair. $ut in *oc"e:s words, -being not conscious of any of

'ocrates:s actions or thoughts, could you really be the same person as that snub#nosed 8ree"&>an you attribute 'ocrates: actions to yourself, or thin" them your own -more than the actions of

any other man, that ever eisted& Plainly not, *oc"e thin"s) even if the immaterial soul

inhabiting 'ocrates:s body turns out to be numerically the same soul as the one inhabiting yourbody, this would not be the discovery that you are identical to 'ocrates. 'o our survival does not

consist in the survival of immaterial souls.

>ould our survival consist instead in the survival of our bodies& f so, the resurrection of theflesh, provided that involves the reassembly of bodies numerically identical to those that once

wal"ed the !arth, would secure our survival after death. *oc"e uses his famous story of the

prince and the cobbler to argue that this view is also incorrect. magine, he said, -the soul of aprince, carrying with it the consciousness of the prince:s past life, enters the body of a cobbler

-as soon as deserted by his own soul. That is, the mind or psychology of the prince has been

transferred to the body of the cobbler. 9That this is accomplished by transferring the prince:s soulis not essential.; 3or symmetry, we can suppose the mind of the cobbler has gone in the opposite

direction, transferred to the body of the prince.

'uppose that before the mind swap Peter the prince wears a crown and >harlie the cobbler wearsa cap. After the mind swap, who is the person wearing a cap) Peter or >harlie& >learly Peter,

*oc"e thin"s. The -mind swap has had the effect of switching the two people) they have

swapped bodies, as two people might swap houses. That can seem very plausible) after all, the

person in the cobbler:s body will claim he is the prince, will have the prince:s personality, willbe able to give detailed answers to /uestions about the prince:s past eperiences, and

9presumably; will loudly complain that the humble wizened body of the cobbler does not befit aman of his noble stature. f a palace coup results in the prince:s body being chopped into tiny

bits, the person in the cobbler:s body will congratulate himself on his good fortune) according to

him, his original body is no more, but he himself lives on. And from >harlie:s point of view, thecontinued eistence of the cobbler:s original body is no comfort at all. 9A version of *oc"e:s

eample is the central plot line of the children:s boo"reaky riday, now on its third film


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merely consist in psychological continuity and connectedness. Parfit:s fi is simply to say that

personal identity consists in -non#branching psychological continuity and connectedness)

identity is preserved provided one:s psychological life continues in a single line, with no for"ing.

The neo#*oc"ean theory s"etched so far(somewhat simpler than Parfit:s official view(is

admirably suited, as *oc"e hoped, to securing survival on the other side. To bring you bac" from

death, 8od does not need to give you an immaterial soul or go to the bother of collecting theatoms that composed your body when you drew your last breath. 9As was well "nown in *oc"e:s

time, the possibility that cannibals consume your corpse poses a problem for the latter route. f

your atoms end up in the cannibals: bodies then 8od is going to have a hard time resurrectingeveryone.;

8ranted neo#*oc"eanism, all 8od has to do is ensure that your psychological life continues on ina non#branching way. That could be accomplished by a divine form of teleportation, perhaps in

the process replacing your clapped#out body with a new and improved model. -The dead shall be

raised incorruptible, as the Apostle Paul says. 3urther, 8od is not needed, at least in theory)

=urzweil:s -uploading would also do the tric". 'o the neo#*oc"ean theory offers something tobelievers and unbelievers ali"e.

There:s an ironic twist, though. According to Parfit, neo#*oc"eanism shows that survival isnowhere near as important as we thin".


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The division and other eamples show, according to Parfit, that what fundamentally matters isthat your psychology flows on, in you or in someone else. $ut notice that a wea" "ind of

psychological flow between you and others occurs all the time. 3riends and family may come to

share some of your beliefs and preferences, and sometimes they act to fulfill your plans, as when

you as" someone to do you a favor and bring over some mil". 4hat:s more, psychologicalconnections such as these(flows from you to others(usually remain after death, at least to

some etent. -@ow that have seen this, Parfit says, -my death seems to me less bad. Parfit

observes that his position bears some similarity to the $uddhist -no#self doctrine of anatta, atleast on one interpretation. As the philosopher Mar" 2ohnston understands the doctrine in his

Surviving #eat$96E7E;, -There are no persisting selves worth caring about.

'urvival is nowhere near as important as we thin".

Parfit:s route to anatta departs from the assumption that the neo#*oc"ean view is the correcttheory of personal identity. 2ohnston, however, has been a forceful, albeit sympathetic, critic of

this theory over the years, so his argument for the same, no#persisting#selves conclusion is

different. t defies easy summary, but one of the main ideas is that the sort of -everyday

egocentrism you 9and the rest of us; display, this sense that you are particularly important, canonly be 0ustified if you are very special(if you are the uni/ue possessor of what 2ohnston calls a

-superlative self. $ut you are not special in this way, and neither is anyone else. The discovery

that we are not in any sense deserving of -premium treatment, 2ohnston argues, -eliminates thedeath we feared most.

$oth Parfit and 2ohnston agree, then, that too much fuss is made about mortality) ceasing to eistis not so terrible. $ut 2ohnston thin"s that %eath has another threat up his sleeve. - am in hope,

'ocrates says in Plato:sP$aedo, -that there is something for us in death, and as was claimed

from old, something better for the good than for the bad. 'ocrates: hope will not be in vain if

the righteous dead find happiness in ?omer:s !lysian 3ields, 2oseph 'mith:s >elestial =ingdom,or some other paradise, but what if there is no such destination&

And even if there is, 2ohnston thin"s that the good couldn:t get there. ?e argues at length that wearen:t the "inds of things that could survive a 0ourney to the other side) there is no immaterial

soul, no sense can be made of bodily resurrection, and neo#*oc"eanism is mista"en.

Yet, according to 2ohnston, 'ocrates: hope is notin vain. The truly good, unli"e the bad, do

survive death. %oes he mean that the good survive in some metaphorical sense, as 'teve 2obs

survives in the iPad& @o) he means it literally. f you are truly good, then after you die, there willbe someone around who is numerically identical to you.

?ow does 2ohnston pull this rabbit out of a seemingly empty hat& magine, as we did at the start,that transporter technology has been developed. The /uestion, -%o we survive teleportation&naturally becomes pressing. Two opposing camps arise. The members of one camp(the

Transporters(are convinced that they survive teleportation. 3or them, teleportation is a

convenient means of superfast travel. The Transporters are opposed by the *uddites, who areconvinced that teleportation is destruction, slightly ameliorated by the creation of a replica. The

Transporters use the new technology to found a forward#loo"ing civilization on Mars, while the

*uddites stay here on !arth, boarding buses and pedaling bicycles.


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literally, live on in the onward rush of man"ind, 2ohnston writes.

$oth the neo#*oc"ean view and 2ohnston:s proteanism about personal identity give us ways wecould survive bodily death. 3or the religiously inclined, neo#*oc"eanism eplains how the

raising of the dead could be accomplished by ensuring that their mental lives flow on in new

bodies. 3or the ungodly, it shows how pursuit of the technology of -uploading might achieve a

similar result. And proteanism offers, if not any "ind of practical path to survival after death, atleast a glorious vision of a material universe not wholly indifferent to our good deeds.

The two views have something else in common) they both tie our survival closely to ourpsychology, although in very different ways. $oth neo#*oc"eanism and proteanism privilege our

mental properties over our bodily ones, and to that etent can be seen as distant descendants of

%escartes:s dualism, according to which we are essentially -thin"ing things.

ne might wonder, though, about the wisdom of retaining even these vestigial bits of

>artesianism. Ta"e neo#*oc"eanism. f personal identity consists in certain sorts of

psychological connections, then you did not come into eistence before you had the necessarypsychological capacities. $y the same to"en, you cannot survive the loss of these capacities. 'o,

according to neo#*oc"eanism, you were never a fetus, and you will cease to eist if Alzheimer:s

destroys your mind.

That result should sound odd. You are an animal, a primate li"e a chimp or a bonobo. f you

aren:t, who is the member of the speciesHomosa%ienssa%ienswearing your underwear rightnow& 'omeone else& And if you are an animal, then personal identity begins to loo" rather

different. A chimp did not pop into eistence after birth) it was present earlier in the womb. Andif a chimp has large areas of its brain removed in the interests of science, the living, breathingchimp is still around, despite the fact that its psychological life has been obliterated. The survival

of animals over time is not intimately connected to psychology1 if we are animals, then neo#

*oc"eanism is false. 'imilarly, although less straightforwardly, with proteanism. n the face of

it, mere animals are not the sorts of things that can survive bodily death, no matter how muchthey care for their conspecifics.

The claim that we are animals is not new) it was considered and swiftly re0ected by *oc"e. @owcalled -animalism, it has lately eperienced something of a revival, due in no small part to !ric

lson:s 7BBG boo" T$e Human Animal. Fnfortunately animalism holds out little prospect for

en0oying life beyond the grave. To paraphrase $ertrand


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is the idea that our own survival is greatly over#valued. Philosophy cannot offer immortality, but

it might be able to draw the sting of death a little.

byrne - cheating death.pdf

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