The question of what transpires to the physical body beyond death has plagued humanity for centuries, and the only means to be convinced looks to be too one-sided. As a consequence, hypotheses can only be formed about conceivable outcomes, and the central issue in these ideas is the inner self and afterlife, terms created to understand the coherence of the Survival Hypothesis. Two key schools of thought regarding the Survival Hypothesis are H.H. Price’s argument and materialism. Price contends that though there is a separation between the body and the true self, sometimes known as the soul, they both exist as one entity.
Price argues that the “self” will discover itself in a fantasy realm of reminiscences and conceptual pictures from its existence after death (Peterson et al., 2014). Materialism, on the other hand, maintains that the body is the actual human identity, yet without the flesh, the self-image is nothing (Peterson et al., 2014). The current study refutes materialism and supports Price’s notion that there is an embodied and disembodied idea to the existence, a dream analogy of life after death, and a communal idea of the afterlife.
In the book, “Philology of Religion”, under the subtitle “Life after Death”, Price contrasts two kinds of survival: embodied and disembodied continued existence. According to Peterson et al. (2014), an individual endures death in a somatic kind, according to the embodied idea of survival. Moreover, the human entity has a body of some kind, for example, a reincarnated body or a psychic body comprised of celestial substance (Peterson et al., 2014). Humans, according to the disembodied concept of survival, transcend death as a wholly corporeal essence, soul, or spirit (Amiri et al., 2020). Hence, the primary characteristics are personal identity are cognition, reasoning, recollection, aspiration, and emotional capability.
A quasi-physical realm, comprised of some kind of substance, corresponds to the embodied view of life after death. In the context of an astral form of existence, the next universe would theoretically be made of the same material as the etheric body. Disembodied survival, on the other hand, necessitates emotional competencies of the Next World altogether (Peterson et al., 2014). It must be a universe made up of imagery generated by the brain or living consciousness. Price hypothesizes that the dystopian future will be a realm of true mental representations in this sense.
The notion of dream analogies in the hereafter implies that the self may be capable of drawing on reminiscences of earlier corporeal existences to construct a milieu of completely novel imagery. Price demonstrates in his article “Life after Death‘” how the combined input of thoughts and desires is contingent on the recollections and wishes of the people encountering it (Peterson et al., 2014). The kind of visions people experience would be determined by their recollections and desires.
Price says that unfulfilled or restrained desires in current life may have a part in forming the afterlife, supposedly in an identical fashion that dissatisfied and inhibited wishes of conscious nature impact the state of a person’s thoughts (Peterson et al., 2014). In this case, Price’s case for the rationality of disembodied life is taking form. As such, the dream world is envisioned as a location where thoughts and feelings occur. However, because disembodied existence would be pertinently analogous to the imaginary realm, it may also be envisioned.
Price’s connection between the imaginary world and the afterlife results in numerous additional intriguing statements concerning the existence of the Next World and the ethereal people that inhabit it. Price, for example, says that in the imaginary world, people consider themselves to have a physical form, which, together with the spatial relationships of elements in such a sphere, makes the world feel real (Peterson et al., 2014). As a consequence, humans should anticipate the Next Universe to be one in which people use visions of their bodies (developed before death) to sense themselves as embodied. Price believes that the hereafter may feature a realistic and permanent vision of one’s flesh. As a result, the living person, according to this definition of survival, is an ethereal object.
The communal or semi-public feature of the hereafter refers to the fact that each disembodied individual dwells alone in the next realm. Because the Next World is made up of visual imagery, it should be feasible for disembodied entities to converse together via telepathic apparitions. A telepathic apparition is a conception of a person’s physique that is conveyed to the thought process of another individual (Amiri et al., 2020). The general concept of a communal realm is elaborated in a variety of ways. For instance, Price hypothesizes that people with comparable wants and dreams are prone to automatically telepathically connect. The concept here is that like-minded individuals would create a shared visual world, which will include depictions of their flesh.
Materialists, on the other hand, hold that conscious thought is nothing more than the activity of the mind and that upon loss of consciousness through death symbolizes the culmination of a human’s life. For example, Gilbert Ryle argues in The Concept of the Mind that talking about “souls” is a category mistake (as cited in Nnaemeka & Chukwunenye, 2018). This indicates that just because there is a language that portrays body and soul as distinct does not imply they exist together.
Therefore, the soul is only a phrase for the aggregation of the body, brain, and memory. Furthermore, according to Peterson et al. (2014) on “Life after Death” in “Philosophy and Religion”, materialists are skeptical about claims that for a person to have a continued existence, more is expected than just the formation of a replica. Peterson et al. (2014) further state that it is not entirely reassuring for a person to be informed that at death, an identical replica of oneself will be created since “replica” does not correlate with somatic self-identity. This begs the question: if the duplicate survives death, what might “you,” the real body, be doing?
In conclusion, Price understands that an impartially fundamental argument to his idea about the afterlife is that neither recollections nor impulses can exist in the absence of a functional brain. Consequently, Price’s dream world comparison is flawed, because people’s visions are formed by brain activities while they sleep. Price’s reaction to the body-soul notion, on the other hand, is very obvious. In this situation, Price is contending for the causal inference of disembodied existence rather than its conceivability. Case in point, no scientific or verifiable assertion is pertinent to the philosophical question of the hypothesis’s intrinsic coherence.
If consciousness or cognitive processes are dependent on a functional brain, then Price’s model is false, although it may still be logical. Furthermore, although resurrection is exceedingly doubtful from the materialist’s perspective, it is theoretically feasible in Price’s view, and hence plausible based on the above arguments.
References
Amiri, Z., Kashfi, A., & Alizamani, A. A. (2020). The Conceivability of a disembodied personal life beyond death based on David Lund’s views. 22(85), 69-88.‎ Web.
Nnaemeka, C. J., & Chukwunenye, D. G. (2018). Concept of mind in Gilbert Ryle: A philosophical examination, Elixir International Journal, 119 (1), 51152-51161. Web.
Peterson, M. L., Hasker, W., Reichenbach, B., & Basinger, D. (2014). Philosophy of religion: Selected readings (5th ed.). Oxford University Press, USA.