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Informationen zum Autor Michael Martin is professor of philosophy emeritus at Boston University. In addition to more than 150 articles and reviews, he is the author or editor of several books, including The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, Atheism, Moralit y, and Meaning, and Atheism: A Philosophical Justification. Klappentext In TheMyth of an Afterlife: The Case against Life after Death, Keith Augustine and Michael Martin collect a series of contributions that provide a strong, comprehensive, and up-to-date casebook of the chief arguments against an afterlife all in one place. Divided into four separate sections, this essay collection opens the volume with a broad overview of the issues, as contributors consider the strongest available evidence as to whether or not we survive death—in particular the biological basis of all mental states and their grounding in brain activity that ceases to function at death. Next contributors consider a host of conceptual and empirical difficulties that confront the various ways of "surviving" death—from bodiless minds to bodily resurrection to any form of posthumous survival. Next essayists turn to internal inconsistencies between traditional theological conceptions of an afterlife—Heaven, Hell, karmic rebirth—and widely held ethical principles central to the belief systems undergirding those notions. In the final section, authors offer critical evaluations of the main types of evidence for an afterlife. Inhaltsverzeichnis Foreword by Steve Stewart-Williams Preface 1. Introduction Keith Augustine PART 1 EMPIRICAL ARGUMENTS FOR ANNIHILATION Introduction to Part 1 2. Dead as a Doornail: Souls, Brains, and Survival Matt McCormick 3. Explaining Personality: Soul Theory versus Behavior Genetics Jean Mercer 4. Dissolution into Death: The Mind's Last Symptoms Indicate Annihilation David Weisman 5. The Argument from Brain Damage Vindicated Rocco J. Gennaro and Yonatan I. Fishman 6. No Mental Life after Brain Death: The Argument from the Neural Localization of Mental Functions Gualtiero Piccinini and Sonya Bahar 7. The Neural Substrate of Emotions and Emotional Processing Carlos J. Álvarez 8. Brain, Language, and Survival after Death Terence Hines 9. The Brain that Doesn't Know Itself: Persons Oblivious to their Neurological Deficits Jamie Horder 10. The Dualist's Dilemma: The High Cost of Reconciling Neuroscience with a Soul Keith Augustine and Yonatan I. Fishman PART 2 CONCEPTUAL & EMPIRICAL DIFFICULTIES FOR SURVIVAL Introduction to Part 2 11. Why Survival is Metaphysically Impossible Raymond D. Bradley 12. Conceptual Problems Confronting a Totally Disembodied Afterlife Theodore M. Drange 13. What Could Pair a Nonphysical Soul to a Physical Body? Jaegwon Kim 14. Nonphysical Souls Would Violate Physical Laws David L. Wilson 15. There is No Trace of Any Soul Linked to the Body David Papineau 16. Since Physical Formulas are Not Violated, No Soul Controls the Body Leonard Angel 17. The Implausibility of Astral Bodies and Astral Worlds Susan Blackmore 18. The Pluralizability Objection to a New-Body Afterlife Theodore M. Drange 19. Life After Death and the Devastation of the Grave Eric T. Olson PART 3 PROBLEMATIC MODELS OF THE AFTERLIFE Introduction to Part 3 20. Problems with Heaven Michael Martin 21. Can God Condemn One to an Afterlife in Hell? Raymond D. Bradley 22. Objections to Karma and Rebirth: An Introduction Ingrid Hansen Smythe PART 4 DUBIOUS EVIDENCE FOR SURVIVAL Introduction to Part 4 23. Giving Up the Ghost to Psychology Rense Lange and James Houran
