Theo Todman's Web Page - Notes Pages

Personal Identity

Resurrection

(Text as at 02/03/2018 17:54:14)

*** THIS IS NOT THE LATEST VERSION OF THIS NOTE ***

Plug Note₁

• This is a sub-topic of Life after death², the others being:-
  → Immortality³, and
  → Reincarnation⁴.
  To these historical options we can now add the various hopes of:-
  → Transhumanism⁵
• This topic – the subject of the projected 11th Chapter⁶ of my Thesis⁷ – will add interest, though hopefully some of the Islamist topicality will have gone by the time my Thesis is presented.
• As the motivation for this discussion is partly the occasionally pernicious effects of a belief in a resurrection to paradise, the metaphysical possibility of the resurrection of beings like us is very important. It is also important to millions of non-explosive Americans.
• The Thesis will aim to prove that resurrection requires substance dualism.
• I will need to ensure I understand just what is believed by intellectually-respectable Christians and Muslims (though the topical believers are not amongst the ranks of the intellectually-respectable).
• Some discussion will be had about the orthodox Christian view being that there is no continuity of matter (the conundrum about the person consumed by cannibals was early recognised), and that the resurrection body is said to be in some sense a “spiritual” body.
• A good place to start for an understanding of what resurrection meant to Christians prior to the modern era is "Bynum (Caroline) - Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200 - 1336".
• As for the worries of contemporary Christian philosophers, the best place for evaluating contemporary Christian philosophical views on the metaphysical possibility of resurrection is "Gasser (Georg), Ed. - Personal Identity and Resurrection: How Do We Survive Our Death?".
• One thing that strikes me is that the resurrection of Christ, taken to be the guarantee of our own resurrection, is no such thing in the sense of “showing it can be done”. The physical and metaphysical issues in resurrecting Jesus (or Lazarus, or Jairus’s daughter, or any recently-deceased person whose body is substantially intact) are much less than in the case of those whose bodies have been destroyed. Indeed, it might one day be possible to resurrect the recently-deceased by way of microscopic repair; at least this seems conceivable, whereas the resurrection of a human being whose body has become dispersed and whose parts have been recycled doesn’t even seem to make sense (on a materialist account of what we human persons are).
• I have some other notes on this and related topics as part of Philosophy of Religion⁸ and my Blog⁹:-
  → 1 Corinthians: 15¹⁰
  → Death and Eternal Life¹¹,
  → Resurrection¹², and
  → Resurrection (Metaphysics)¹³.
• Currently, the categorised reading-list below includes a host of Biblical or theological discussions of resurrection of very variable quality which are irrelevant to my philosophical concerns.
• Works on this topic that I’ve actually read₁₄, include₁₅ the following:-
  1. Resurrection - Purely Philosophical:
     1. "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Material Persons and the Doctrine of Resurrection", Baker
     2. "Bynum (Caroline) - Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity: Preface + Introduction - Seed Images, Ancient and Modern", Bynum
     3. "Carruthers (Peter) - After-Life for Materialists", Carruthers
     4. "Carruthers (Peter) - After-Life for Physicalists", Carruthers
     5. "Chappell (Tim), Chappell (Sophie Grace) - Seeds: On Personal Identity and the Resurrection", Chappell
     6. "Davis (Stephen T.) & Martin (L. Michael) - Debate: Is It Rational for Christians to Believe in the Resurrection?", Day & Martin
     7. "Gasser (Georg) - Personal Identity and Resurrection: Introduction", Gasser
     8. "Hudson (Hud) - Multiple Location and Single Location Resurrection", Hudson
     9. "Loose (Jonathan) - Constitution and the Falling Elevator: The Continuing Incompatibility of Materialism and Resurrection Belief", Loose
     10. "Olson (Eric) - Immanent Causation and Life After Death", Olson
     11. "Olson (Eric) - Life After Death and the Devastation of the Grave", Olson
     12. "Perry (John) - A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality", Perry
     13. "Price (H.H.) - Motives for disbelief in life after death", Price
     14. "Price (H.H.) - The post-Resurrection appearances", Price
     15. "Price (H.H.) - Two conceptions of the Next World", Price
     16. "Russell (Bertrand) - Do We Survive Death?", Russell
     17. "Shoemaker (David) - Personal Identity and Immortality", Shoemaker
     18. "Singh (Yii-Jan) - Semen, Philosophy, and Paul", Singh
     19. "Thomas (Janice L.) - What matters for survival and the logical possibility of resurrection", Thomas
     20. "Van Inwagen (Peter) - I Look for the Resurrection of the Dead and the Life of the World to Come", Van Inwagen
     21. "Zimmerman (Dean) - Bodily Resurrection: The Falling Elevator Model Revisited", Zimmerman
     22. "Zimmerman (Dean) - Video: Can We Survive Our Death?", Zimmerman
         
  2. Resurrection - Religio-Philosophical:
     1. "Bullinger (E.W.) - The Resurrection of the Body", Bullinger
     2. "Ozanne (Charles) - If there is no resurrection of the dead … What then? An exposition of 1 Corinthians 15", Ozanne
        
• A reading list (where not covered elsewhere) might start with:-
  1. Resurrection - Purely Philosophical:
     1. "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Persons and the Metaphysics of Resurrection", Baker
     2. "Braude (Stephen) - Personal Identity and Post-Mortem Survival", Braude
     3. "Davis (Stephen T.) - Physicalism and Resurrection", Davis
     4. "Drange (Theodore M.) - The Pluralizability Objection to a New-Body Afterlife", Drange
     5. "Gasser (Georg), Ed. - Personal Identity and Resurrection: How Do We Survive Our Death?", Gasser
     6. "Hershenov (David) - Van Inwagen, Zimmerman, and the Materialist Conception of Resurrection", Hershenov
     7. "Hershenov (David) - The Metaphysical Problem of Intermittent Existence and the Possibility of Resurrection", Hershenov
     8. "Hudson (Hud) - Nothing But Dust and Ashes", Hudson
     9. "Martin (L. Michael) & Augustine (Keith) - The Myth of an Afterlife: The Case against Life After Death", Martin & Augustine
     10. "Merricks (Trenton) - The Resurrection of the Body", Merricks
     11. "Olding (A.) - Resurrection Bodies and Resurrection Worlds", Olding
     12. "Penelhum (Terence) - Resurrection", Penelhum
     13. "Perrett (Roy W.) - Death and Immortality", Perrett
     14. "Peters (Ted) - Resurrection of the Very Embodied Soul?", Peters
     15. "Unknown Paper", Puccetti
     16. "Strickland (Lloyd) - The doctrine of 'the resurrection of the same body' in early modern thought", Strickland
     17. "Swinburne (Richard) - The Possibility of Life after Death", Swinburne
     18. "Tipler (Frank) - The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead", Tippler
     19. "van Dyke (Christina) - Human Identity, Immanent Causal Relations, and the Principle of Non-Repeatability: Thomas Aquinas on the Bodily Resurrection", van Dyke
     20. "Van Inwagen (Peter) - The Possibility of Resurrection", van Inwagen
     21. "Zimmerman (Dean) - Personal Identity and the Survival of Death", Zimmerman
     22. "Zimmerman (Dean) - The Compatibility of Materialism and Survival: The “Falling Elevator” Model", Zimmerman
         
  2. Resurrection - Religio-Philosophical:
     1. "Alter (Michael J.) - The Resurrection: A Critical Inquiry", Alter
     2. "Anders (Paul C.) - Material Being and the Survival of Death: A Dilemma for the Religiously Oriented Materialist", Anders
     3. "Bacchiocchi (Samuele) - Immortality or Resurrection? A Biblical Study on Human Nature and Destiny", Bacchiocchi
     4. "Badham (Paul) & Badham (Linda) - The Meaning of Resurrection, Immortality and Eternal Life", Badham
     5. "Bynum (Caroline) - Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200 - 1336", Bynum
     6. "Corcoran (Kevin) - I Believe in the Resurrection of the Body and the Life of the World to Come", Corcoran
     7. "Cullmann (Oscar) - Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead?", Cullmann
     8. "Gillman (Neil) - The Death Of Death: Resurrection and Immortality in Jewish Thought", Gillman
     9. "Hick (John) - The Doctrine of the Resurrection of the Body Reconsidered", Hick
     10. "Hick (John) - The Recreation of the Psycho-Physical Person", Hick
     11. "Ozanne (Charles) - The Life and Soul of Mortal Man: His Composition, Disintegration, and Resurrection", Ozanne
     12. "Steinhart (Eric) - The Revision Theory of Resurrection", Steinhart
     13. "Vasalou (Sofia) - Personal identity across temporal gaps: an Islamic view of the problem", Vasalou
     14. "Wright (N.T.) - Can a Scientist Believe in the Resurrection?", Wright
     15. "Wright (N.T.) - The Resurrection of the Son of God", Wright
     16. "Wyatt (John) - Matters of Life and Death", Wyatt
• This is mostly a place-holder¹⁶.