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Immortality

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"_Immortality_ is a compilation of numerous authors, ancient and modern, who address the question of whether or not there is a life after death. Edwards provides an excellent seventy page introduction which guides the reader through other relevant philosophical issues, such as the nature of the vehicles' for survival of bodily death, the mind-body problem, the traditional Christian concept of bodily resurrection, the evidence and arguments for and against reincarnation, and the relationship between belief in God and belief in survival of bodily death--where Edwards stresses an often overlooked fact that one can believe in either without believing in both (Voltaire, for example, was a deist who believed that the universe had a Creator because he accepted the argument from design, but rejected belief in life after death; and many modern-day parapsychologists who believe they have evidence for survival are also atheists). Edwards also emphasizes that mind-brain dependence does not entail the truth of a strict materialism that contends that mental states are identical to brain states; thus arguments against reductionist materialism are irrelevant to the factuality of the dependence of consciousness on the brain. _Immortality_ includes essays on life after death from such prominent historical thinkers as Plato, Lucretius, Tertullian, Descartes, Hume, Voltaire, and Kant to contemporary philosophers, parapsychologists, and theologians. _Immortality_ is clearly written and well-structured, allowing both a historical survey of differing opinions on the issue and an evaluation of the state of the evidence and arguments today from authors with opposing viewpoints."

This is not a debunking work, but one to broaden our outlook into what other possibilities may exist. Who knows for sure? This book will make your brains do overtime, expand the mind, soothe the soul and caress the spirit. Paul Edwards has done an excellent job with this anthology of great thinkers.

This text works well in college classes and for general readers interested in the range of views (pro and con) on the issue of life after death.

As some reviewers already write, this book (initially published in 1992) is a very much academic one; it starts from the ancient Greek philosopher Plato (428-348 BCE) up to modern Prof. Ian Stevenson (1918-2007 AD), the champion of academic "Reincarnation" study. I like Stevenson's idea based on his lifelong work on the subject; hence what I write below may be a little biased. In chap. 33, Paul Edwards (editor of this book) referred to a BBC program (in 1976), in which Stevenson was "interrogated" by two professors, John Taylor, professor of mathematics at London University, and John Cohen, professor of psychology at Manchester. Let me quote some of the interrogation:

Taylor: Professor Stevenson, do you have any evidence, other than these reincarnation cases, that memories can survive the destruction of physical tissue?
Stevenson: No. I think the best evidence comes from the reincarnation cases.
---
Taylor: But are you suggesting, in fact, that memories themselves are in some way nonphysically bound up, and can be stored in a nonphysical manner?
Stevenson: Yes, I'm suggesting that there might be a nonphysical process of storage.
Taylor: What does that mean? Nonphysical storage of what?
Stevenson: The potentiality for the reproduction of an image memory.
Taylor: But information itself involves energy. Is there such a thing as nonphysical energy?
Stevenson: I think there may be, yes.
Taylor: How can you define it? Nonphysical energy, to me, is a complete contradiction in terms. I can't conceive how on earth you could ever conceive of such a quantity...
Stevenson: Well, it might be in some dimension of which we are just beginning to form crude ideas, through the study of what we parapsychologists call paranormal phenomena. We are making an assumption of some kind of process that is not, and maybe cannot be, understood in terms of current physical concepts. That is a jump, a gap, I freely admit.

Edwards quoted Stevenson's answer once again in the final part of the essay: "the dimension which cannot be understood in terms of current physical concepts," and said: It must surely be dismissed as nothing but a vague picture which is of no scientific value whatsoever.
Any reader sees Stevenson's position being very much jeopardized in this interrogation.
The author died in 2004 at the age of 81. Obviously, he was an unbeliever of afterlife, as he wrote in the book. I recently read a book by Stafford Betty, "The Afterlife Unveiled (2011)." Stafford Betty is a Professor of Religion at CA State University in Bakersfield (according to the book's back cover). In chap. 5 Betty presents the case of Catholic priest Robert Hugh Benson (1871-1914), the author of "The Necromancers (1909)," in which he ridiculed spirit communication as `dealing with the devil,' and who allegedly tried from the other side to correct his mistake made in the book. Paul Edwards, if he still is on the other side, knows whether or not afterlife is a reality, and I wonder if he is trying to write some posthumous afterword from the other side. I recently posted my review for Betty's book, closing it with the following:

Finally let me refer to a scientific paper recently published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, 2010 Spring Issue, Vol. 24, No.1, pp. 5-39: Rebuttal to Claimed Refutations of Duncan MacDougall's Experiment on Human Weight Change at the Moment of Death. (This volume is available from amazon.com.) Scientifically speaking, whether or not the missing 21 g (i.e., unaccountable energy balance) is the weight of a soul is quite problematic, but if the missing weight is verified authentic, the materialistic monism will be scientifically undermined.

Where did the 21 g go? Maybe it's gone to a nonphysical dimension, which cannot be understood in terms of current physical concepts, as Prof. Stevenson speculated.

I was very disappointed when I read chapter 20: Karmic Tribulations by Paul Edwards. The chapter is concerned with a version of karma that is very simplistic and highly speculative. The simplistic version of karma being argued against can be found in the first sentence: "The Law of Karma asserts that the world is wholly just, where justice is equated with retribution or, more accurately, with appropriate rewards and punishments for all morally significant acts"(Immortality, p. 200). It should be said that justice, retribution, rewards and punishments are not proper terms in relation to karma. They connote a legalistic-social point of view which isn't related to the stronger, more well developed conceptualizations of karma.

Karma, in a nutshell,is causality that includes feedback. An example would be vocalizing a thought (causal output)and consciously registering that vocalization via the ear (casual input). All intentional acts (either psychological or physical) can be considered causal outputs and these causal outputs can be said to influence and interact with other systems (mind-brain-body-other living and non-living systems)to a minimal or maximal degree. These interactions, in turn, inevitably influence the agent of intention immediately, some time after, or in the distant future. The effects are not mutually exclusive and they are dependent upon the conditions of the agent and the surrounding systems and their resistance or malleability to change.

Edwards also states "To begin with, the Law of Karma has no predictive value whatsoever"(Immortality p. 3). He then uses a very complex example to illustrate his point. The example includes a number of agents that experience death because of a plane crash. He fails to recognize the significance of intention in relation to death. First of all, these people would not have met death on an airplane if they did not intend to fly on the airplane. Nor would that have intended to fly if they hadn't had a primed disposition to fly somewhere, which is result of past experience and conditioning. Percentages can be applied to each causal factor(including intention and dispositional traits)that lead to the event which included the plane crash and deaths. Without the intention and dispositional traits of the specific people in question the event of plane crash and death could not have happened. To say otherwise is simply attempting to use counterfactual thinking (imagining alternative scenerios and outcomes that might have happened, but didn't). Edwards is right to say that, "The Law of Karma has no predictive value whatsoever" (Immortality, p. 203). In this particular example it doesn't, but nor does any other law of physics. The best form of prediction comes from using statistical probabilities. The reason for this is epistemic. The system is simply too complex and chaotic. The same can be said about the mind-body-social complex. It is a very chaotic system, but that doesn't mean that the occurence is entirely unpredictable. Statistical predictions can be made in relation to the event of suffering. This is done frequently in psychology. Certain types of intentional acts and dispositional traits produce suffering on a regular basis. If this didn't happen psychology would be reduced to mere speculation.

I have illustrated two examples in which Edwards does not grasp the strong version of karma and instead puts forth strawmen. The rest of the essay on Karma runs the same course. I would suggest that he study karma in it's complex forms and argue against them if he wants to convince anyone that karma is a bogus concept. Until then, he is merely taking an active role karmic-belief innoculation.

;;;

I was very disappointed when I read chapter 20: Karmic Tribulations by Paul Edwards. The chapter is concerned with a version of karma that is very simplistic and highly speculative. The simplistic version of karma being argued against can be found in the first sentence: "The Law of Karma asserts that the world is wholly just, where justice is equated with retribution or, more accurately, with appropriate rewards and punishments for all morally significant acts"(Immortality, p. 200). It should be said that justice, retribution, rewards and punishments are not proper terms in relation to karma. They connote a legalistic-social point of view which isn't related to the stronger, more well developed conceptualizations of karma.

Karma, in a nutshell, is causality that includes feedback. An example would be vocalizing a thought (causal output)and consciously registering that vocalization via the ear (casual input). All intentional acts (either psychological or physical) can be considered causal outputs and these causal outputs can be said to influence and interact with other systems (mind-brain-body-other living and non-living systems)to a minimal or maximal degree. These interactions, in turn, inevitably influence the agent of intention immediately, some time after, or in the distant future. The effects are not mutually exclusive and they are dependent upon the conditions of the agent and the surrounding systems and their resistance or malleability to change.

Edwards also states "To begin with, the Law of Karma has no predictive value whatsoever"(Immortality p. 3). He then uses a very complex example to illustrate his point. The example includes a number of agents that experience death because of a plane crash. He fails to recognize the significance of intention in relation to death. First of all, these people would not have met death on an airplane if they did not intend to fly on the airplane. Nor would that have intended to fly if they hadn't had a primed disposition to fly somewhere, which is result of past experience and conditioning. Percentages can be applied to each causal factor(including intention and dispositional traits)that lead to the event which included the plane crash and deaths. Without the intention and dispositional traits of the specific people in question the event of plane crash and death could not have happened. To say otherwise is simply attempting to use counterfactual thinking (imagining alternative scenarios and outcomes that might have happened, but didn't). Edwards is right to say that, "The Law of Karma has no predictive value whatsoever" (Immortality, p. 203). In this particular example it doesn't, but nor does any other law of physics. The best form of prediction comes from using statistical probabilities. The reason for this is epistemic. The system is simply too complex and chaotic. The same can be said about the mind-body-social complex. It is a very chaotic system, but that doesn't mean that the occurrence is entirely unpredictable. Statistical predictions can be made in relation to the event of suffering. This is done frequently in psychology. Certain types of intentional acts and dispositional traits produce suffering on a regular basis. If this didn't happen psychology would be reduced to mere speculation.

I have illustrated two examples in which Edwards does not grasp the strong version of karma and instead puts forth strawmen. The rest of the essay on Karma runs the same course. I would suggest that he study karma in it's complex forms and argue against them if he wants to convince anyone that karma is a bogus concept. Until then, he is merely taking an active role karmic-belief inoculation.

An example of the strong version of karma can be found in this philosophical journal: The Law of Karma and the Principle of Causation By Bruce R. Reichenbach Philosophy East and West
Vol. 38, no. 4 (October 1988) pp. 399-410 (...)