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Personal Identity
Thesis - Chapter 11 (Resurrection)
(Text as at 22/07/2014 22:23:31)
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AbstractIf mind-body substance dualism is false, and we are identical to human animals, then the only possibility for post-mortem existence is some form of bodily resurrection. Since the body is destroyed at death, it would seem that any resurrected individual could only be a copy of the original. It might think of itself as the resurrected pre-mortem individual, but it would be wrong. Consideration of arguments by Peter Van Inwagen in this respect. This chapter is likely to be controversial, so needs to be very carefully argued, and factually correct concerning what is actually believed by intellectually-aware Christians and Muslims (unlike what seems to be the case with most swipes against religion). Maybe I should also cover reincarnation.
Research Methodology
- Follow this Link1 for a generic statement of how I intend to pursue each Chapter.
- The method is broken down into 12, possibly iterative, stages.
- This Chapter is at Stage 2/3.
Chapter Introduction
- While I wish in this chapter to consider seriously the religious hope of resurrection, I do not want to get side-tracked onto matters of Scriptural exegesis, or into evidential matters of whether particular resurrections – specifically of Jesus – happened or not. In this regard, I’m interested only in what they take resurrection to be, and whether they provide any detailed metaphysical account of how it is supposed to work.
- As in the chapter on Thought_Experiments2, this chapter is partly aimed at checking how (my version of) animalism copes with projected situations. As such, I may extend this to other posited versions of post-mortem survival, though most are ruled out by the essentially physical nature of the human person as proposed by animalism.
- Further text to be supplied.
Main Text
- To be supplied.
Links to Books / Papers to be Addressed3
- In this Chapter I will consider the following papers or book chapters (together with some others referenced by these). There are doubtless many more that are relevant and which will be addressed in the course of the thesis, but these are probably sufficient to get us going.
- "Badham (Paul) & Badham (Linda) - Immortality or Extinction", especially (maybe) … Badham
…"Badham (Paul) & Badham (Linda) - The Meaning of Resurrection, Immortality and Eternal Life",
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Material Persons and the Doctrine of Resurrection", Baker
- "Bynum (Caroline) - Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200 - 1336", Bynum
- "Carruthers (Peter) - After-Life for Physicalists", Carruthers
- "Jones (Nicholas K.) - Too Many Cats: The Problem of the Many and the Metaphysics of Vagueness", Carter
- "Corcoran (Kevin), Ed. - Soul, Body and Survival: Essays on the Metaphysics of Human Persons", Corcoran
- "Davis (Stephen T.) & Martin (L. Michael) - Debate: Is It Rational for Christians to Believe in the Resurrection?", Day+Martin
- "Edwards (Paul), Ed. - Immortality", Edwards
- "Flew (Antony), Ed. - Body, Mind and Death", Flew
- "Gasser (Georg), Ed. - Personal Identity and Resurrection: How Do We Survive Our Death?", Gasser … especially
… "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - Persons and the Metaphysics of Resurrection", Baker
… "Hudson (Hud) - Multiple Location and Single Location Resurrection", Hudson
… "Olson (Eric) - Immanent Causation and Life After Death", Olson
… "Zimmerman (Dean) - Bodily Resurrection: The Falling Elevator Model Revisited", Zimmerman
- "Gillman (Neil) - The Death Of Death: Resurrection and Immortality in Jewish Thought", Gillman
- "Hershenov (David) - Van Inwagen, Zimmerman, and the Materialist Conception of Resurrection", Hershenov
- "Hudson (Hud) - Nothing But Dust and Ashes", Hudson
- "Merricks (Trenton) - The Resurrection of the Body", Merricks
- "Olding (A.) - Resurrection Bodies and Resurrection Worlds", Olding
- "Penelhum (Terence), Ed. - Immortality", Penelhum
- "Penelhum (Terence) - Resurrection", Penelhum
- "Perrett (Roy W.) - Death and Immortality", Perrett
- "Peters (Ted) - Resurrection of the Very Embodied Soul?", Peters (Neuroscience + Soul)
- "Shoemaker (David) - Personal Identity and Immortality", Shoemaker
- "Tipler (Frank) - The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead", Tippler
- "Thomas (Janice L.) - What matters for survival and the logical possibility of resurrection", Thomas
- "van Dyke (Christina) - Human Identity, Immanent Causal Relations, and the Principle of Non-Repeatability: Thomas Aquinas on the Bodily Resurrection", van Dyke
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - The Possibility of Resurrection", van Inwagen
- "Van Inwagen (Peter) - I Look for the Resurrection of the Dead and the Life of the World to Come", van Inwagen
- "Wright (N.T.) - Can a Scientist Believe in the Resurrection?", Wright (talk)
- "Wright (N.T.) - The Resurrection of the Son of God", Wright (Book)
- Further papers to be supplied.
- Many aspects of these papers will need to be either ignored or reserved for other chapters.
- The motivation for these works is as follows:-
- Gasser is the most important work I need to address.
- Wright’s big book (hopefully) supplies all there is from the Christian side – even though the focus is on a specific – and theologically and metaphysically special – resurrection.
- Bynum and Gillman provide background information from the Christian and Jewish perspectives, respectively.
- Badham, Corcoran, Edwards, Flew and Penelhum are useful surveys, but with a lot of dross to be ignored.
- Perrett and Tippler may be a little off-centre, and I may reject them on closer inspection.
- The other individual papers – especially those by van Inwagen and Shoemaker – are probably important, but justification is to be supplied.
- Books / Papers Rejected: There are a number of works that I have in my possession that I considered investigating, but in the end decided not to. They are listed here, with reasons for rejection. Of course, there are very many others less tempting that appear in the topical reading lists but are not specifically mentioned here.
Links to Notes
- A lot of my notes seem to mention resurrection. So far, I’ve only looked at the reading list for the first4 – which is by far the most important, and the most salient items were given above. I will look at the others if and when I’ve completed the first lot.
- Anyway, the Notes fall into at least three categories:-
- Thesis:-
… Resurrection5,
… Death6,
… Corpses7,
… Immortality8,
… Life_after_Death9.
- Philosophy of religion:-
… Resurrection10,
… Resurrection_Metaphysics11,
… 1_Corinthians_1512,
… Bynum13,
… Heythrop14.
- Write-ups:-
… Russell15,
… Fine_116,
… Fine_217,
… Markosian18.
Final Remarks
- This is work-in-progress19.
In-Page Footnotes
Footnote 3:
- See the section on Research Methodology for what is to be done with these.
- The author’s surname is repeated in the text to make it easier for me to see what’s going on in the encoded text I work on.
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