Question Hi A common response to the question of life after death is that it can't exist because of an identity problem- i.e. if I was reincarnated I would no longer have my memories and therefore not be me...However isn't this more a problem of perception rather than identity. When I go to sleep at night I am still 'me', even if I have bizzare new memories and have taken on some odd new shape and form. Similarly, if I forget a large part of my dreams, is this some form of mini death?

Accepted:
October 20, 2011

Comments

Great question and suggestion! While some philosophers (most notably John Locke) have claimed that the key to personal identity is memory, probably the majority of philosophers today do not. Most grant that you might endure as the self-same subject despite all kinds of memory loss and replacement.... So, if it is a fact that no one does remember their past lives, it would not follow (on many accounts of what it is to be a self), this may be only a problem of epistemology and we cannot from that alone assume that reincarnation is false. Probably one reason why some today think reincarnation cannot occur is because they think that for reincarnation to occur, a person (self, subject, soul, mind) would need to switch bodies. Those of us who are dualists or who think there is something to persons more than the material body, may well grant that it is possible for a person to come to have a new body. But materialists who think that you and I are our bodies will have grave doubts about whether we can survive the destruction of our bodies.