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Ch. 11 - Can We Survive Our Own Deaths? (1993) 
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Post Ch. 11 - Can We Survive Our Own Deaths? (1993)
by Antony Flew

Edited by: Chris OConnor  at: 10/30/05 4:39 pm
Sat Mar 01, 2003 7:02 am
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Post Flew
As best I can understand it, Flew's argument is that we can't really imagine ourselves outside our own dead bodies. The logic has to do with identifying who is watching and who is in the coffin. Since we can't really imagine it nor really identify the watcher, this proves that there is no such thing as an incorporeal "me".

I find the whole argument confusing and unconvincing. This probably simply means that I don't really understand it. I'm inclined to go with Hobbes on this; when people talk about "souls" and "afterlife", they are not wrong, they are simply saying words that have no meaning.




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Post Subjective death experience
I don't have the book so I'm just going to post my personal thoughts:

A common aspect of psychedelic experiences is the subjective change in time (of course all perception of time is subjective) so that a few seconds can seem like eons. I suspect death results in something similar, a subjective eternity. It would be impossible to watch the disappearance of your own consciousness, so the last moment of consciousness would seem like forever, maybe a tiny grain of spacetime holographically representing eternity and infinite expansion of self. What that moment would look/feel like is another question, would it be the same for everyone, or would it depend on one's judgement of himself?

Michael




Wed Mar 12, 2003 3:32 pm
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Post Lack of imagination
I was really looking forward to the Flew article, but had the same reaction as Jeremy. That Flew cannot imagine himself viewing his own funeral is not a philosophical argument, it's merely an admission that he has a poor imagination. :\




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