Is it rationally possible to believe in a sensationless soul after death?

Question

Epicurus's thoughts on death were:

-Death is the cessation of sensation
-Good and evil only make sense in terms of sensation
Therefore: Death is neither good nor evil

My (sort of related) question about death:

I was wondering if it's possible to rationally believe in a soul after death, but that after death there is still a complete cessation of sensation?

1.) One with a soul must have the ability to remain some level of consciousness after physical death.

2.) Consciousness does not require the ability to feel sensation ("Floating Man experiment" by Avicenna).

3.) Therefore: having a soul requires no sensation after death (but does not require a lack of sensation after death).

4.) In order to be "alive", sensation is required. Since the afterlife is "life after death", the afterlife requires sensation.

Then can you rationally believe in the soul (that some level of consciousness after physical death exists), but not in the afterlife (something which requires sensation)?

An idea: Does it depend on whether or not we pick a case in which one is or is not feeling sensation and holding consciousness at the same time?

Note: The question Does idealism allow for thought without any sensory input? Is discussing the validity of statement 2, not addressing my overall question. I would also argue that due to the "Floating Man experiment" by Avicenna, statement 2 has been fairly well proven.

Answer 1

can you rationally believe... that some level of consciousness after physical death exists) but not in... something which requires sensation)?

Your second assumption is doing all the work here, the rest are junk. 1 and 4 are defining your terms, and 3 restates your conclusion without the definition in 4, of the afterlife.

Consciousness does not require the ability to feel sensation ("Floating man experiment" by Avicenna).

If Avicenna is right then yes the mere fact that you don't have sensation after death does not mean you won't have consciousness. That's deductively certain, it says the same thing as Avicenna. Maybe it would help you if you rewrote it into symbolic logic?

However, you will need further assumptions to argue that there actually is consciousness after death. Doesn't consciousness depend upon a brain?

Answer 2

I suspect that memories are stored in the brain, and so a soul would probably be bored without a body; without sensation, it might not be worth calling such a soul's existence "life" at all.

Answer 3

Belief: feeling of surety about existence of something.

Knowledge: to have awareness about something as experienced by our five senses, namely - sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell.

Life is when humans are alive. Are you sure that you are alive? Then you know what life is.

When you see a human not alive biologically, are you sure he is dead? If yes, then you know what death is.

But when death occurs to you, will you know you have died? No! because you would not be biologically capable of being alive and thus to perceive. Then, how can you be capable of knowing (let alone living), that you are dead? If you aren't capable of knowing that you are dead, how can you be capable of knowing you are alive after you die. Hence, if knowledge is incapable of being preserved after death, how can a living body even think that he knows he had a previous life. If he can't be certain that he had a previous life, how can he be sure that he is a consequence of another life? If he can't be a consequence of another life, how can another life be a consequence of his? If another life can't be a consequence of his, how can there be an afterlife? He can only know that there is no afterlife.

Answer 4

If you believe that the soul is a physical entity (perhaps made of some substance unknown to science), then you'll struggle with this problem.

But what if the soul is in fact made of literally nothing. In the same way that the concept of pizza is made of nothing. That is, Pizza itself is a thing which is created by humans, who have first been given the 'meme' of pizza by someone else. The 'idea' or 'recipe' for Pizza has no mass. It is simply an idea.

So it is with the soul. When you die, the shape of your person, how you behaved, the things you said and did, are remembered by those who survive you. That, is your soul. You become an idea, a massless entity.

Death, is essentially no different from Birth. At birth, your consciousness appears from nothing. In death, your consciousness goes back to nothing. Death, in and of itself is absolutely a-moral. The 'act' of your death on the other hand, is not. If you were murdered for example, or neglected to death. But death.. the act of ceasing to be.. well that just is.

Answer 5

Is it rationally possible to believe in a sensationless soul after death?

Rationality is essentially logic plus facts, i.e., empirical data, including the data of subjective experience, such as pain, colours etc. As far as I know, we have no empirical data about the mind of a dead person, so there is no logical reasoning that could justify the belief that any dead person has a mind.

The concept of "sensationless soul" seems also terribly problematic. The essence of the mind seems precisely sensations, broadly conceived, that is, including the "sensation" of our own ideas, memories etc. It is precisely because we have such sensations that we think we have a mind. In this sense, a sensationless mind is by definition impossible.

If we restrict our notion of sensation to sensations related to the body and the material world at large, so essentially pain, hunger, colours, sounds etc., then it is perfectly possible for a mind to be sensationless in this sense. This can happen in various states of consciousness and, in particular, in dreams. However, all these cases are still cases where the subject is alive, although not conscious of the world outside. Thus, these empirical data still do not support the idea that a dead person could have a mind, although they perhaps suggest it.

Answer 6

It depends on how you define 'rational'. A reasoning process can be engaged in that weighs evidence, and concludes either that the guidance of a cultural interpretation of religious texts is sound, or something like pascal's wager can be engaged in that the hazard of eternal punishment requires acting as though a given picture is correct.

Souls can also be pictured as 'continuing' as potential, without sensation, and by say remembrance or appeal to their qualities, be 'made conscious' by others, who 'do as they would do'. I think that is, at least reasonable. It would require a particularly vivid picture of that person's character. It can be used to understand intervention by saints and bodhisattvas.

Christian theology really holds we get eaten by worms, and remain dead until the resurrection, when the righteous get a new Heaven and a new Earth, and the 144,000 chosen go to serve god. A special few get the lake of fire, which like Gehenna in Judaism is not a place for all that 'failed to be religious enough' but a place of special torment for those who opposed god's plan. Mostly the unchosen just disappear with death, cease to be. Post-Biblical Hellenic influences fused Gehenna with Tartarus where (most of) the Titan's were consigned, and Hel the Norse realm of the unrighteous dead and antipode of Valhalla/Folkvangr. I'd argue this is synchretism. A very few saints and prophets ascend directly to stand with god, I'd compare this to the Greek tradition of naming constellations as ascending to Olympos, taking up an honoured place in the core cultural text that all people know. Eternal heaven or eternal punishment can't be rationally or morally explained, and conflict with our understanding of entropy. The Bible focused on the new Heaven and new Earth, where embodiment will occur again.

The Mahayana Yogacara tradition has the most theologically developed Buddhist picture of rebirth. It occurs through Eighth Consciousness, which I think can be productively compared to the Memesphere or Noosphere. Buddhist thought deconstructs the conventional self, replacing a permanent unique identity with a bundle-theory very akin to that of Hume. We all contain threads which are visible and threads which are latent potential in this picture, and they are all attached to causes and conditions, which is to say karma. Core Buddhist doctrine of all schools is there are six consciousness or vijnana, one for each of five senses, plus mental awareness. Consciousness begins at these vinaya 'gates', as pairs of the internal and external. That is, by interaction. And as they unite to build a joined picture of the world outside, they join inside to make a unified mind. So for Buddhists consciousness always involves interaction, ultimately meshed with Indra's Net, the reflection of all minds in each other. But, at least for Yogacara Buddhism, the 'Mind Only' school, mentality not physicality has primacy, and non-corporeal travel and transcending physical constraints are commonly described as spiritually attainable skills.