Theories of Reality
Tuesday 11/12/02
Reincarnation

-Test starting Thursday 11/14 going till Wednesday 11/20
-Journals back on Thursday
-Review on Thursday
-Look over life after death and free will for Thursday

God and Life after death
-Can’t assume because there is a god that there is life after death
-Early Judaism- there are 1 or 2 parts in their religious text that gives the idea of life after death. Most of it just says that we’re physical beings, once we die, we die
-If god exists, at least one disembodied consciousness exists
Eastern concept of life after death
-Hindu
1.) Reincarnation – Individual soul that jumps from body to body
2.) Eventual union with Brahmin (Ultimate reality, or god)
-Objections
1.) There are more people now, where do the new souls come from?
-There could be many souls, reincarnated at different times
-There is only one-we are all the same soul
-Souls could be created over time or “broken off” from the Brahmin as needed
2.) Does it preserve psychological continuity/personal identity?
-Memories are repressed for educational reasons but are still there
-Who are you?
-People usually answer that with their occupation, name, age, race/gender.
-Are you the same person in successive incarnations?
-There are different people united by the same spiritual substance
-Material rationalization – Matter can neither be created nor destroyed
-I cannot be destroyed in death
-Why does the same spiritual substance preserve personal identity any more than the same physical substance?
-Assuming it doesn’t carry memory and character with it
-In Hinduism the individual person (ego) isn’t ultimately real or important to begin with, it’s all a part of Brahman
-Either the self isn’t real to begin with or it will one day be absorbed in Brahman (like a drop of rain merging with the ocean)
-Psychological continuity preserved by
-Physical stuff
-Spiritual stuff
-Early Buddhism
-If one extinguishes desire at death, one goes to Nirvana (a realm of desire less bliss)
-Reincarnation without believing in souls
-Objection – Can you be the person you are now (or a person at all) without desires?