afterlife beliefs and mind-body dualism

7/29/2019 Afterlife Beliefs and Mind-body Dualism

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2008 University of Oxford

Afterlife beliefs and mind-body dualism

General questions

What implications does an adaptationist interpretation of afterlife beliefs have for religiousclaims about afterlife survival? Is an adaptationist interpretation of afterlife beliefs persuasive,

or is a by-product interpretation more plausible? Is dualism compatible with the findings of

cognitive science of religion, or would cognitive scientists of religion be more consistent inregarding consciousness as noise or illusion by design? Do Berings [1] simulation constraint

hypothesis or his functional arguments have any important bearing on the possibility of post-

mortem survival? Do the findings of cognitive science of religion about afterlife beliefs and therelated issue of intuitive dualism have any implications for current mind-body debates? Is the

lack of match between ordinary and scientific views of the mind a problem for common sense

dualism, or for the scientific view of the mind presupposed by certain cognitive scientists ofreligion?

Summary

See Afterlife beliefs in empirical summaries

Examples of philosophical and theological issues

Bering [1] has argued that childrens expectation that some mental processes will continue afterdeath is the natural product of a default cognitive stance. His simulation constraint hypothesis

suggests that it is impossible to conceive of what it must be like to be dead and therefore wewould expect children (and, to a diminishing degree, adults) to conceptualise the afterlife interms of the continuation of certain (usually mental) processes. Prima facie it is plausible that

cognitive constraints on our ability to conceive of total annihilation might massively incline us

toward a default belief in the afterlife (and also, one might think, pre-existence). Some mayregard this argument as part of a sufficient naturalistic explanation of afterlife beliefs. Others, on

the other hand, might argue by appeal to physicalist (e.g., bodily resurrection by an omnipotent

God) or dualist considerations (e.g., the possibility of survival granted that mind/soul is aseparate substance) that an inability to conceive of total annihilation is not informative about

whether or not one will in fact survive physical death. Moreover, Astuti & Harris [2] interpret

their more recent findings concerning childrens beliefs about mortality in rural Madagascar as

indicating (following Boyer [3] and other proponents of a by-product explanation) that afterlifebelief may notbe the default cognitive stance children may have mortalist views about the

total cessation of mental and physical processes from as early as five years of age - and it may be

precisely because they have a well entrenched mortalist understanding of death that counter-intuitive beliefs about the afterlife may become more cognitively salient for them (as constituting

a minimal violation of their intuitions in this area), and hence get adopted. The contrasting

findings of the Bering and Harris research groups therefore need to be kept in mind whendrawing out the implications of the current quite ambivalent results.

One broad underlying issue here is the assumption of physicalism by scholars such as

Bering, Astuti & Harris, and Bloom [4] in their interpretations of these and similar findings.


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Despite interpretative differences all seem to agree that the purported scientific consensus in

favour of some form of physicalism establishes that the mature (Astuti, Harris) or scientific

(Bering, Bloom) concept of death is that of the total cessation of all processes, mental andphysical. If, as Bloom maintains, contemporary cognitive science will show us that folk

intuitions about the mind/self are mistaken just as folk intuitions about physics proved to bemistaken, then the evidence for innate dualism cannot count as support for philosophical

dualism, since folk dualistic conceptions, though perhaps adaptive, would not give us the truth

on the matter.There are, however, well known difficulties with physicalism as a solution to the mind-

body question, e.g., those concerned with the hard problem of consciousness and the possibility

of top-down causality. Oviedo [5] sees an assumption of psycho-physical epiphenomenalism inmuch cognitive science of religion theorising, whereby the real causal efficacy that explains

human actions belongs to brain and not to mental states, the latter being mere noise.

Moreover, cognitive scientists of religion who assume both evolutionary naturalism and thecausal inefficacy of conscious beliefs will need to address difficulties connected with this

position, e.g., why nature should have provided us with the ability to have conscious

representations if conscious states do not have any real causal importance in the survival ofindividuals or species? Critics of the cognitive science of religion have also pointed out that no

approach to the mind can afford to overlook the phenomenological aspect of qualia;

consequently (given that religious experiences are also conscious ones) any completeexplanation of religion must also have something to say about these qualitative features which

manifest themselves in religious experiences [6], but this presents a challenge to a merely

physicalist interpretation.One solution might be to push a third-person approach to consciousness along the lines

philosophers such as Dennett [7, 8] have proposed. Another might be to grant some form ofdualism and make a case that the arguments of dualist philosophers basically refine and show thecorrectness of common sense dualist intuitions about the conscious self. Dualism is commonly

perceived as an unpopular option, but dualists also have some strong arguments on their side and

physicalism would need to be justified rather than simply assumed. Even if it can be shown thatthere is a very compelling evolutionary story to tell about why people would probably form

afterlife beliefs, this does not as such diminish the strength of dualist arguments, e.g., for the

possibility of afterlife survival from mind/soul as a separate substance. Were dualism to be thecase, this would have implications (and create difficulties) for functional illusion by design/by-

product explanations of consciousness.

Berings further hypothesis that human cognition is apparently not very good at

updating the list of players in our complex social rosters [1, p. 456] by adapting to the recentnon-existence of any one of them suggests that peoples tendency to have afterlife beliefs may be

explicable in terms of a residue of habitual social behaviours. If this hypothesis were to find

increasingly solid empirical support, it may well oblige certain religious traditions to abandon ormake substantive revisions to their afterlife conceptions. Also, Berings suggestion that afterlife

beliefs can be explained functionally as an illusion by design conferring survival advantages on

those who curbed their selfish (and reputation damaging) behaviours through fear of thewatchful dead could be construed as an updated evolutionary version of the venerable political

imposture argument for the explanation of afterlife beliefs. On the face of it the implications of

these hypotheses for religious belief are negative. However, even were one to grant the


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adequacy of these hypotheses to explain all relevant features of afterlife beliefs, it cannot simply

be assumed that these hypotheses as they stand are sufficient to explain away afterlife beliefs

naturalistically e.g., they are compatible with dualism and the possibility of afterlife survivalwhich substance dualism at least opens up. Nevertheless, the evolutionary stories which scholars

are beginning to tell about these beliefs may force very substantial changes on certain religiousconceptions of the afterlife, even if they arguably do not force an abandonment of the possibility

of afterlife survival as such.

Outstanding issues

Implications of findings on innate dualism and afterlife beliefs for debates within philosophyof mind/philosophy of religion.

Implications of innate dualism for philosophical dualism. Physicalist versus dualist readings of cognitive science of religion findings concerning

afterlife beliefs/innate dualism.

Evaluation of evolutionary (adaptationist/spandrelist) accounts of afterlife beliefs/innatedualism.

The warrant of afterlife beliefs in the light of cognitive science of religion findingsSee also

Broad doctrinal implications of cognitive science of religion for religion and theology; Cognitivescience of religion and evolutionary theory (coming soon)

References

1. Bering, J.M., The folk psychology of souls. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2006. 29: p.

453-498.2. Astuti, R. and P.L. Harris, Understanding mortality and the life of the ancestors in rural

Madagascar. forthcoming.

3. Boyer, P.,Religion explained: the evolutionary origins of religious thought. 2001, NewYork: Basic Books.

4. Bloom, P.,Descartes' baby: how the science of child development explains what makes

us human. 2004, New York: Basic Books.

5. Oviedo, L.,Is a complete biocognitive account of religion feasible ? Zygon, 2008. 43(1):p. 103-126.

6. Nreaho, L., The cognitive science of religion: philosophical observations. Religious

Studies, 2008. 44: p. 83-98.7. Dennett, D., Sweet dreams: philosophical obstacles to a science of consciousness (The

Jean Nicod lectures). 2005, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

8. Dennett, D.,Breaking the spell: religion as a natural phenomenon. 2006, New York:Penguin.

afterlife beliefs and mind-body dualism

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