The various authors of The Myth of an Afterlife present evidence against the Survival Hypothesis, the claim that the mind can exist after the demise of the body.  One such author is David Weisman, author of “Dissolution into Death.”  There, after supporting the thesis that the close correspondence between the deterioration of the brain and that of the mind undermines the Survival Hypothesis, he concludes, “As neuroscience erodes the tenability of belief in a soul, there are three main options available to those who believe in one: (1) change your belief in accordance with the evidence; (2) ignore the data; or (3) fight against the data using all of the rationalizations available to you.” (99)  This succinct summation is a microcosm for the general status of the debate between survivalists and mortalists.  After reading The Myth of an Afterlife, option (2) is rendered impossible and option (3) becomes overwhelmingly difficult for the survivalist.

The work is intended as a comprehensive summation and presentation of the evidence mounted against the survivalist view.  It consists of thirty chapters, twenty-three of which are newly published for this volume.  Authored by philosophers, cognitive scientists, biophysicists, psychologists, and neurobiologists, The Myth of an Afterlife traces and connects strands through many disciplines in order to provide a complete picture of the herculean challenge facing the survivalist.  The work is organized into four major parts:  The first, empirical arguments for annihilation, uses mainly neuroscientific evidence to persuade the reader that the mind will not survive the death of the brain, such as the aforementioned correspondence between the deterioration of the brain and the mind.  The second part, conceptual and empirical difficulties for survival, focuses mainly on challenges to the metaphysics of mind that a survivalist must defend, such as the problematic interaction between the laws of physics and a non-physical soul.  Complimenting this, the third part discusses the problematic models of the afterlife, where the traditional and popular notions of afterlife and reincarnation create major conceptual difficulties, such as considerations of sensation, of justice, and of identity.  The fourth part, dubious evidence for survival, fills an important gap.  This is because, strictly speaking, survivalism has been defended in three different ways.  Two ways avoid the evidence almost entirely, resting one’s case either entirely on metaphysical arguments (addressed in parts two and three of this volume) or by appealing to unquestioned/blind faith.  But this latter tack clearly puts the burden of proof squarely on the survivalist, as there is sufficient evidence to show that an appeal to faith is inappropriate here.  The third, more tenable approach would be to provide scientific evidence for a body-independent mind, such as through mediumship, evidence of ghosts and spirits, clairvoyance, etc.  The fourth part of The Myth of an Afterlife therefore goes through such purported sources of empirical evidence, showing how they fall short of the standards of scientific evidence and showing that many have been doctored or rigged.  In this way, the volume is comprehensive in showing both what the empirical evidence shows and what it does not, while also addressing the difficulties inherent to the standard metaphysical accounts.

Though the chapters and arguments of these four parts are varied, some common themes emerge.  One is the chronic tendency of the survivalist to confuse considerations of probability with those of possibility.  When confronted by the evidence of neuroscience, it is an insufficient response by the survivalist to insist that a body-independent soul is still possible given said evidence.  As in every other domain of thought, rational belief must be accorded to what is probable, not merely what is possible.  A second, related theme is that the mortalist evidence itself is not disputed, only the interpretation of the evidence.  For instance, survivalists agree with mortalists that there are biochemical events that happen in concurrence with the altered mental states of intoxication, that there are physical events and changes that happen in concurrence with degenerative mental disorders such as Alzheimer’s and dementia.  However, they disagree with the mortalist claim that such concurrence is due to or best explained by the fact that the mind itself is dependent upon physical processes, and will instead general assert this evidence to be correlation without causation.  For this reason, many of the authors emphasize the distinctions between possibility and probability, evidence versus interpretations of evidence, and when one should cease talking about correlation and begin talking about causation (for a crystal-clear elucidation of the last, see the discussion by Augustine and Fishman in Chapter Ten of this volume).  And while such discussions might seem redundant if one reads The Myth of an Afterlife cover-to-cover, such discussions remain necessary because obfuscation through the blurring of such concepts is a primary survivalist response to the types of evidence presented by the authors.

Ultimately, the value of The Myth of an Afterlife lies in its comprehensiveness.  It recognizes that “…a volume that focuses on arguments against an afterlife is essential for revealing the full force of the case against life after death,” (xxix) and in this capacity, it delivers.  For the novice, it serves as an advanced but approachable introduction to the facets and literature of the survivalist-mortalist debate across a wide variety of disciplines, with especially helpful introductions and overviews provided by the editors.  For the more advanced scholar, it serves as a reference work, providing convenient summaries and surveys of the literature and studies in addition to the proffered arguments.  Lastly, for any intellectually honest survivalist, it is a catalog of the myriad challenges against his or her view that must be neutralized in order to render the view defensible.

© 2016 C.M.Lorkowski

C.M. Lorkowski. Department of Philosophy, The University of Akron