Bodily continuity, personal identity and life after death

Abstract

Many today hold the view that our survival of bodily death is inconceivable because they th ink bodily survival and continuity are necessary conditions for personal survival. Prominent among the reasons for their holding the view is the following consideration which it is the aim of this essay to answer. Memory, i t is thought , is indispensable to personal survival. But memory may be false and so bodily identity is needed to authenticate it. It is fur ther thought that it is conceivable to have in the after life more than one person with a resurrection body and memories similar to the body and memories of the premortem person. Thus only bodily continuity would enable the identification of the right person as the postmortem continuation of the premorten one. Without recourse to bodily continuity, the choice of any one of the identical beings to be the premortem person would be arbitrary. Any one and therefore none can be premortem person? It will be seen that there are three separate issues which have been conflated in this view. They are (1) the survival of the centre of consciousness which inter alia constituted the premortem person; (2) tha t centre of consciousness having survived, recognising itself as being the continuation of the premortem person; and (3) the surviving consciousness being recognised by others as being the premortem person. The first posits death being survived even without memory of premortem life. The second and third concern not survival per se but the quality of survival. I shall appraise the purpor ted difficulties in the conception of our personal survival of death in this light. First, when we envisage a person's survival of death, we have in mind, among other things, tha t unique and irreplaceable centre of consciousness continuing, or being revived, after bodily death. We do not have in mind a mere