This link has been bookmarked by 27 people . It was first bookmarked on 06 Oct 2008, by Nathan Rein.
-
28 Sep 11
-
01 Apr 10
-
12 Jan 09
-
16 Dec 08
Almost everyone has a tendency to imagine the mind continuing to exist after the death of the body.
Even people who believe the mind ceases to exist at death show this type of psychological-continuity reasoning in studies.
Rather than being a by-product oresearch psychology article philosophy science mind brain religion death life nature cognition beliefs buddhism consciousness belief scientificamerican cognitivescience inspiration
-
03 Dec 08
Kristine HAlmost everyone has a tendency to imagine the mind continuing to exist after the death of the body.
Even people who believe the mind ceases to exist at death show this type of psychological-continuity reasoning in studies.
Rather than being a by-product of religion or an emotional security blanket, such beliefs stem from the very nature of our consciousness.-
My psychological research has led me to believe that these irrational beliefs, rather than resulting from religion or serving to protect us from the terror of inexistence, are an inevitable by-product of self-consciousness. Because we have never experienced a lack of consciousness, we cannot imagine what it will feel like to be dead. In fact, it won’t feel like anything—and therein lies the problem.
-
This position holds that our ancestors suffered the unshakable illusion that their minds were immortal, and it’s this hiccup of gross irrationality that we have unmistakably inherited from them. Individual human beings, by virtue of their evolved cognitive architecture, had trouble conceptualizing their own psychological inexistence from the start.
-
When we die, what’s next is nothing; death is an abyss, a black hole, the end of experience; it is eternal nothingness, the permanent extinction of being. And here, in a nutshell, is the error contained in that view: It is to reify nothingness—make it a positive condition or quality (for example, of “blackness”)—and then to place the individual in it after death, so that we somehow fall into nothingness, to remain there eternally.
-
Consider the rather startling fact that you will never know you have died. You may feel yourself slipping away, but it isn’t as though there will be a “you” around who is capable of ascertaining that, once all is said and done, it has actually happened. Just
-
-
21 Nov 08
-
12 Nov 08
-
06 Nov 08
J. D. EbberlyAlmost everyone has a tendency to imagine the mind continuing to exist after the death of the body.
Even people who believe the mind ceases to exist at death show this type of psychological-continuity reasoning in studies.
Rather than being a by-product of religion or an emotional security blanket, such beliefs stem from the very nature of our consciousness. -
26 Oct 08
-
23 Oct 08
-
21 Oct 08
-
19 Oct 08
-
15 Oct 08
-
12 Oct 08
"And so person permanence may be the final cognitive hurdle that gets in the way of our effectively realizing the dead as they truly are—infinitely in situ, inanimate carbon residue. Instead it's much more "natural" to imagine them as existing in some vag
self-consciousness terror_management_theory illusion_of_immortality mind-body_problem personal_permanence jesse_bering scientific_american linkingthinking assimilating delicious_import
-
06 Oct 08
-
03 Oct 08
-
02 Oct 08
Would you like to comment?
Join Diigo for a free account, or sign in if you are already a member.