Death

There is one thing I can be sure of: I am going to die. But what am I to make of that fact? This course will examine a number of issues that arise once we begin to reflect on our mortality. The possibility that death may not actually be the end is considered. Are we, in some sense, immortal? Would immortality be desirable? Also a clearer notion of what it is to die is examined. What does it mean to say that a person has died? What kind of fact is that? And, finally, different attitudes to death are evaluated. Is death an evil? How? Why? Is suicide morally permissible? Is it rational? How should the knowledge that I am going to die affect the way I live my life?

Note: The file was originally hosted on GitHub¹

1: Death with Shelly Kagan

The nature of persons: dualism vs. physicalism

"Is There Life After Death?" Asking the Right Question

Before asking, "do I survive?", it is important to ask, "who am I". Or more generally, what is a person? The second thing we need to be clear about is, what is the concept of surviving? What does it mean when a person existing today exists at some other time in the future?

Recommended Reading: Rosenberg, Jay. “Life After Death: In Search of the Question.” In Thinking Clearly About Death. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1983. pp. 18-22

Here, we have two objections. If death is defined as the end of life, then asking whether there is more life after death is "stupid". Thus, there couldn't possibly be life after death. Maybe now, we ought to ask the question in a different manner, "might I survive my death?" Again, the answer is no, surviving is the act of not dying when you were supposed to. Kind of in a twist here.
What happens when a body dies? Forgetting the initial cause that set's in the condition of death. We usually have the following things happen: oxygen stops moving through the body, cells don't metabolize anymore, blood doesn't circulate, the body stops repairing damage, decay sets in, yada yada. This entire sequence is a characteristic of bodily death.
Next question, do I still exist after the abovementioned - in graphic detail - bodily death. The answer could be nyet but it's not obviously no. Now that we sorted out these nitty-gritty details, we'll just ask, "Is there life after death" instead of messing around with words.

Ways to conceptualize self-identity

What kind of an entity is a person? One answer is that a person = body + something else that is separate, immaterial and distinct from the body (people like using the word soul to describe the latter part). This is the dualist view.
The monoist view is, as the name suggests, the idea that a person is just a body. And it's a special sort of physical object which can do all sorts of crazy things (think, play footy etc). Another monoist view is idealism, the idea that all that exists is the soul and the body is just an illusion that we entrap ourselves in.

Dualists: The Body-Soul perspective

The soul directs the body and body generates input that is felt by the soul. Where is the soul located in space by the way? The attraction of this view is that, once the body is non-functional, the soul still exists. So, maybe death is the severing of the connection between the body and the soul.
Suppose that a person = body + soul. Now, once the body dies, by definition, the person dies. Ergo, in order for the concept of life after death to have validity, we need the person to be strictly defined by only the soul. The first question with regards to this point is whether souls and bodies are actually distinct. And secondly, does the soul survive the destruction of the body? And if it survives, how long does it survive? Forever? Am I immortal?

Physicalists: The Body is a Body

People are just objects for doctors and biologists to play aound with. The body however, is not just any body. It is a very sophisticated body. My pencil is a body which is less sophisticated than my laptop which is less sophisticated than me who is probably less sophisticated than Richard Feynman or Ramanujan. I'm starting to think sophistication might not exactly convey the right meaning here but eh.

Arguments for the existence of the soul, Part 1

The Mind according to Physicalists and Dualists

To talk about a mind is to talk about the various mental abilities of the body according to the physicalists. But the mind isn't exactly the brain. A dead person has a brain. Death is just the inability to function.
The dualist view is that the mind is a soul and it is immaterial. When we want to choose between the two factions, the question we need to answer is, "should we believe in the existence of a soul?"

Inferencing to the Best Explanation to Prove the Soul's Existence

What reasons do we have to believe in anything? How do we prove the existence of things? Trivially, by using our senses. That isn't going to work for our souls. Another approach is to prove assumptions about things we can't sense by relating them to things we can. Example, atoms, quarks, x-rays etc. Demon-theory vs germ theory of disease

Can Only the Soul Justify Feature F?

Are there things that need to be explained that we could explain if we posited the existence of a soul? Another way to ask this question is, "are there things about us that the physicalist can't explain or does a bad job of explaining?" Call these things, Feature F.
Explanation of the animation of physical bodies could be a candidate for feature F, but the physicalists will immediately say, the reason a dead body isn't animated is because the physical parts are broken.
What about free will?

Abilities, Desires, Emotions -- Candidates for Feature F

Ability to think, reason, planning etc. No mere machine could do these things. Lawnmowers don't want to cut grass and certainly don't plan in advance as to how they're going to go about it. But with computers, this argument is falling apart. AlphaZero is an example.
We get emotional rewards to our actions, while computers will never get emotional rewards to their actions. No matter, how much they strategize etc.

Introduction to Plato's Phaedo; Arguments for the existence of the soul, Part II

Recommended reading: Phaedo by Plato

Introduction to Plato's Phaedo

About Socrates' death. Debate between how much of the character Socrates' dialogues are Platonic or Socratic.

Feelings in Machines

Could a chess playing computer feel fear when it is losing to a very strong grandmaster? What does feeling mean, if we ascribe the act of trying to protect its pieces to fear, who is feeling like something wrong is being done?

"Qualia" in Emotion and Consciousness: The Dualist's Defense and Its Weakness

The dualist would say here that there are in fact, two qualities to emotions. One is the behavioural aspect of feeling emotions, where we react to situations and plan accordingly. Another is the "feeling" aspect, what's happening on the inside? The machines work very well behaviourally but not the feeling part. For example a blind scientist could know that an apple was much redder than a tomato (using a light frequency reader or something) but never feel the colour red.
No machine could have qualia, or qualitative experience. That's a pretty good objection. For a physicalist to respond to this, they would have to provide a recipe for building a machine that can have qualitative experience. Unfortunately, we aren't anywhere close to doing that. We don't know enough about consciousness yet.
The dualist is standing on some pretty high ground but the height is just an illusion. True, the soul theory has a better explanation. But it is not even an explanation of consciousness. It just says consciousness is just due to a soul and runs out of points. It's no better than not having a soul. The jury's still out.
Shelly Kagan loves to play and follow chess.

Free Will as a Defense of the Soul

Even is we had programs that can be creative, all they can do is follow instructions. We can deviate.
We have free will, and we know that nothing subject to determinism has free will because the determinism states that given a certain initial conditions and input, the machine or system will end up at a known final state via known paths. All purely physical systems are subject to determinism. And so it follows that we are not a purely physical system.

Arguments for the existence of the soul, Part III: Free will and near-death experiences

Recommended Reading: Schick, Theodore and Lewis Vaughn. “Near-Death Experiences.” In How to Think About Weird Things. New York: McGraw Hill, 2005. pp 307-323

Determinism and Free Will Cannot Coexist -- Inspecting Incompatibility

Some philosophers argue that we dont have free will and I find myself partially agreeing with them. This sorta avoids the whole argument. But let me satiate the part of me that thinks we have a free will and go on.
Quantum mechanics says that the fundamental laws of physics are non-deterministic. So, maybe physical systems aren't really deterministic after all. Determinism is not true. There falls apart the dualist's argument. Let's actually destroy it further.
Why can't we have both determinism and free will?

Positing the Soul's Existence for Near-Death Experiences

The remarkability of near-death experiences lies in the fact that almost all the stories are alike. What explains the correlation? An easy answer is to posit that there exists a soul that leaves the body on death.
The objection is trivial. They haven't died. Death is the permanence of no life. If these people have not died permanently, how can their experiences count for anything. The objection is also, quite stupid. You don't invalidate a person's experience of Norway because they didn't permanently move there.
The physicalist will argue that near-death experiences can also be looked at as just technical glitches in the body but even as I write it, for the first time, I am not convinced by the physicalist argument.

Does a Physical Understanding of Supernatural Phenomena Exist?

When the body is in stress, it releases certain endorphins. Is this a good explanation for all the visions that people see? Well, this seems more convincing. Dreams could be just dreams, not callings from the otherworld.

Introduction to Descartes's Cartesian Argument: The Mind and the Body Are Not the Same

Imagine a scenario where one fine day, you get up from bed and go to brush your teeth. You look at the mirror and don't see your reflection, you look down at yourself and see nothing. What's more, you don't even feel any sensation in your body. Is this an imagination of your body ceasing to exist? We're thinking clearly, we're experiencing strong emotions, namely fear (I guess panic is the right term) and yet, our body doesn't exist.
Descartes says that this thought experiment is enough to show that there is clearly something beyond the body. Because after all, we just imagined existing without our body. If we tell a story in which A exists and B does not exist, it follows that A and B are quite different things. And thus, it means our minds and bodies are quite different.
It is important to understand here that the argument is not saying that since we can imagine unicorns, unicorns exist. It only says that imagining one thing without the other gives a reason for believing that the two are not the same. We can't imagine a smile without any accompanying body parts but Descartes says it is quite easy to imagine the mind without a body.

Arguments for the existence of the soul, Part IV; Plato, Part I

Refuting the Cartesian Argument: The Morning and Evening Stars

It's quite hard to provide a counter-example to Descartes' conjecture because it's hard to pin down where it went wrong. One one hand, we can argue that imagination is not a substitute for possibility checks. In other words, our imagination needn't be correct. On the other hand, isn't imagination our greatest weapon while fathoming the mysterious?
Here's my two cents worth as to where this fails, *the argument that if something can be imagined, then it is logically possible is nonsense. This is trivial since we have no concept of the mind except an intuitive one, rooted in language. This argument is allowed only because of our ability to equivocate on the word, not because of knowledge of it -- i.e. the argument is built upon our ignorance of these matters, not knowledge of them. Also, how do you see without a body? How does your mind focus light onto the hypothetical optic nerve?*

Platonic Forms and the Immortality of the Soul

In the Phaedo, Socrates is in a pretty jovial mood even though it is his last day on earth. That happiness arises from the fact that he believes in a good heaven and an immortal soul. Socrates says that the soul can think and all other emotions like happiness, anger etc are the jobs of the body. The soul can think about abstract concepts like justice, health, beauty etc.
These abstract concepts are called Platonic forms and Socrates says that the job of philosophers is to forget material/bodily hungers and think about Platonic forms

Plato, Part II: Arguments for the immortality of the soul

Concerns and Issues Leading to the Development of Platonic Forms

Reiterating, Socrates says that in life, the goal should be to separate ourselves from our bodies so much that the final separation (death) can be viewed as an entry into heaven where we can spend all our time thinking about Platonic forms.
The first objection raised in the dialogue is as follows, "Okay, you've been training all your life for this final separation under the assumption that your soul will go to heaven, but where's the guarantee that your soul won't get destroyed due to this separation?"

The Argument from the Nature of the Forms

Why can't the body grasp the Platonic forms? This is the second objection raised in the dialogue. An answer can be provided here, ideas and forms are eternal/nonphysical. That which is eternal can only be grasped by the eternal. This implies that whatever grasps the forms is definitely non physical (not the body) and eternal (which means the soul is eternal and will not get destroyed by the separation.) Is the second assumption really true that only eternal entities can grasp eternal forms?
Elon Musk studies cars, but that doesn't mean he's a car. Ohhh, but cars aren't eternal. We don't have a counter-example yet for eternal forms. And again, the score favours the side I don't support.

The Argument from Recycling

Our body parts existed before we existed and will exist forever after we're gone. Everything is recycled in nature. In a similar vein, the argument states that the soul existed long before we existed and will continue to exist after we're gone.
The counter-argument is simple here, we can't just conclude that the soul exists after our death without further evidence. For the body though, mass balance will suffice. This isn't very good either.

The Argument from Recollection

What does it mean to be reminded of something? A photograph of Feynman reminds us of the great man but no one would ever feel like it is Feynman himself. What if I showed you a picture of someone you never met? In that case, you wouldn't have any recollection whatsoever. We need prior acquaintance and then we recollect.
We all recognize platonic forms, but they aren't physical objects. Plato says that certain objects in the physical world remind us of platonic forms. We've never encountered perfect justice, perfect circularity etc in this life. So it must have existed before. The soul must have existed before our birth.

Do Plato's Arguments Suffice?

Is it really true that we need to have encountered perfect straightness in order to think about it? It certainly helps, but is it necessary? We come across things that are bent, some are straighter and some look really straight in this life. Can't we extrapolate from there?

Plato, Part III: Arguments for the immortality of the soul (cont.)

Frailties in "Recycling" and "Recollecting" Arguments

Reminder from where I left off, we don't really need a memory of perfect forms for us to think about them. We could have an idea of an incomplete or an imperfect form and extrapolate from there. And even if this premise is true, it only shows that the soul existed before death and says nothing or close to nothing about what happens to it after death.
Aha, but by saying that, we have forgotten our earlier argument about recycling. So, if we assume that the soul is also recycled like all other atoms in the body, the soul also has to exist after death. Okay, in vein of all the cynicism running rampant throughout this thought process, what proves that the soul doesn't decay after death? In other words, immortality of the soul isn't answered by just giving it's states before birth and after death.

The Argument from Simplicity

How do we know the soul can't come apart? Here, Socrates starts a discussion about the kinds of things that can break and the kinds of things that cannot. Things that have parts can be destroyed, cars, books, bodies, trees etc. The number 7 can't be destroyed, the name and form could be, but the abstract concept cannot be touched.
The argument from Socrates is as follows: only composite things can be destroyed. Only changing things are composite and invisible things don't change. This means that invisible things can't be destroyed. Since the soul is invisible, it follows that it is eternal. Why don't invisible things change? Why can't they be destroyed.

Does Indestructibility and Invisibility of the Soul Necessarily Mean Immortality? Objections from Cebes and Simmias

Cebes pipes in now, even if the soul is indestructible, it doesn't guarantee immortality. Socrates doesn't answer this.
Simmias says that invisible things can be destroyed. He gives an example of the harmony of a harp, it is invisible but some careless tuning will destroy the harmony. Again, Socrates doesn't answer this. He spends some time wondering whether we could compare harmony to a soul which is a stupid thing to do because even if he proved his point, it still remains that harmony is invisible. The correct thing to do here is to argue that harmony isn't invisible.

Harmony as a Counter Analogy

Using harmony is a great weapon for physicalists here. Because the argument essentially states that perfect harmony arises out of the perfect state of the harp and not anything alien.
When we were asking whether invisible things could be destroyed, we need to understand invisibility. The first interpretation is that anything that can't be seen is invisible, second, anything that cannot be observed. And third, can't be detected. I hope the difference is clear. I think Socrates meant interpretation number 2 when he was talking about invisibility. Harmony no longer works as a counter-example.

Radio Waves - To Detect Rather Than to Sense the Soul

Radio waves are invisible to our sensible but they can be detected. The number 7 is truly invisible. Is it true that the soul can't be detected? It ain't, we detect souls every day, all the time. Woe to thy argument, Socrates.

Plato, Part IV: Arguments for the immortality of the soul (cont.)

Assumptions Made in the Argument from Simplicity

Plato suggests that in order to be destroyed, you need to have parts. So, does the soul have parts? is it changeable? Also, there is no reason to suggest that the soul is simple. In the Republic, Plato himself argues that there are three parts, a rational part, spiritual part and one responsible for appetite.
And if the soul is simple, it doesn't follow that it is indestructible. Breaking apart something is not the only way to destroy something. The soul could very well just go out of existence.

Plato's Defense against the Harmony Analogy

The analogy is characteristic of the physicalists. Harmony clearly cannot exist before the existence of the harp itself. Also, harmony can vary. We can have varying degrees of "soulfulness". The soul could be good/evil, and similarly, certain harmonies are good/bad.
More important is the point is that the soul can direct the body but this doesn't work for the harp and its harmony. Maybe the harp is too simple a machine to have a good analogy. If we really wanted to side with Simmias, we could say that plucking two or more strings together is a way of directing harmony. But this is too complicated.

Essential and Contingent Properties and the Argument from Essential Properties

We need to keep in mind that Plato wasn't as well equipped as we are. Now comes the difference between an essential property and a contingent property (I hate jargon). An essential property is a property that the object needs to have while the latter is a property that isn't really necessary for the existence of the object. The paint of a car is a contingent property and the engine is an essential property.
Here's an essential property for the soul according to Plato, whenever there's a soul, it is alive. By alive, he means that it is capable of thought. We don't like minds that aren't capable of thinking. He says that life is an essential property of the soul and that means that the soul can't be destroyed and hence, it is deathless.
The part where is goes wrong is deathless. What does it mean to say that something is deathless? One possibility is that the soul can't exist and be dead at the same time. Another possibility is that the soul can't be destroyed. What's the difference?
The first interpretation just means what it says but the stronger question is posed by the second interpretation. If Plato can convince us that the soul is indestructible, we are set.

Kagan: "There is No Good Reason to Believe in Souls"

From now on, we only care about the physicalist view because the whole burden of proof lies with the dualists. They aren't able to offer any convincing argument. Smell bias?
When do we need to prove something doesn't exist? How do you prove the non-existence of unicorns? So, shouldn't we first disprove the existence of unicorns before doing anything else? The way to debunk the existence of unicorns is just to disprove the people who put forth evidence that there are unicorns, not set out to do it ourselves and wander throughout wherever unicorns could be. And on we march.

Personal identity, Part I: Identity across space and time and the soul theory

Introduction

From now on, we're all physicalists. The reasons are listed above.

What Does It Mean to Survive? The Train Metaphor

What does it mean to survive? Existence in multiple points of time? Suppose there's someone alive 20 years from now, could that be you? Is that the same person as you are? What does it mean when someone in the future is the same person as now?
One way to go wrong here is to say things like, "The person isn't the same, he's bald and bent over". So we need to get clear about identity across space and identity across time. One example that Kagan gives is of a train, when we're at the end of the train and point at the train, it is quite different from when we're at the beginning of the train and point towards the engine. Even though they're the same train, they look quite different. So by pointing, we're pointing at the whole extended space occupied by the train and not a single carriage.
Now, imagine a yard where they take the trains in for inspection and maintenance. While walking across the tracks, we come across the end of a train and after a while, we see the engine on the other side. Since we cannot see through the yard, we don't know if the end and engine are connected or they're actually two/more trains.

The Aging of a Car and Space-Time Worms

Consider a brand new car bought in 2020, by 2030, it doesn't look so good and by 2040, it's probably not even working. But when we talk about the car, we refer to the same thing. Here, we're referring to an extended block of time that the car is occupying. Let's say we sell the car in 2030 and get a new one. Now, while driving past a dump in 2035, we see a car that looks a lot like our old car, but we can't really tell if it's our car because of the same issue from the previous section. We're blinded by the mist of time.
Points to takeaway: don't confuse the various parts/stages with the entire space-time worm, what's the glue that joins up the space-time worm? In the case of trains, it's the links between carriages. In the case of cars, what makes a 2020 car the same as a 2022 car?
We definitely need some essential elements like the metal, plastic etc. But then, we replace the tires, we wear out the seats, the steering wheel etc. So what should a car have to convince us that. How many changes of the constituent parts could we have and still be the same car? He doesn't talk about this.

Will I Survive My Death? The Dualist's Soul as the Metaphysical Glue

Now, we have a framework for thinking about people across time. Are people glued together in time. What is the metaphysical glue? Suppose there's a person X in 2020 and he's lively and fun until 2040, then he dies in 2041. What does it mean for X to survive his death? It means, in 2042, could there be a somebody who's part of the very same space-time worm that X occupied. We can only answer this question if we're clear about the metaphysical glue.
One argument: the metaphysical key to having the same identity is to have the same soul. That's the kinda thing a dualist would say. For physicalists, the prospect of death and life after it doesn't seem so attractive now. Suppose that next week, while you're sleeping, by some strange turn of events, your soul gets replaced and this new soul has all your memories, desires etc. You wake up and say, "Great morning, I'm so and so". But according to the soul view, you're not you. Your soul has been switched. You'd be wrong and none the wiser about it. How do you it already didn't happen?

Is the Soul Truly the Key to Personal Identity?

How do you know your soul isn't replaced every single night, every hour, every minute, every moment? If that's happening, people don't last very long, their bodies sure do but the people don't. John Locke's work, all this.
This is not an argument against the existence of souls, it's an argument that even if souls do exist, they do a horrible job at explaining personal identity. More points to my tribe.

Personal identity, Part II: The body theory and the personality theory

Recommended Reading: John Perry, A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality

The Body Theory of Personal Identity

We're not rejecting the soul theory here, we're just asking whether using the sameness of souls to justify the continued temporal existence of man is right. Another way to go about identifying the same person is to ask whether they have the same body. Just like we did for cars, same body same person without getting too much into the details.
So at first glance, the question, will I survive the death of my body? gives us an obvious no. But there is a logical possibility of me surviving the death of my body, all it takes is for someone to put my body back. Logically possible.
The important question here is, when someone puts back our body after we die, is that still our body? Suppose we take our phone to the repair guy because it stopped working, the repair guy takes it apart, cleans it and puts it back. Lo and behold, my phone's working again. No one's going to say, "hey, that ain't mine!" There was a time when the phone was disassembled when he was cleaning it, it was "dead" at that time, and now it's back and fine.
An excellent counter argument coming up, so brace thyselves. Suppose my friend wrote a very huge program that could solve sudoku on my laptop for an contest because his was broken. He goes to sleep all excited about presenting it the next day. I am browsing around and I permanently delete his files by mistake. As expected, I panic and code the entire thing from scratch exactly as he did. I even get the line numbers and variable names correct. The next day, my friend gets all gung-ho about the contest where he wants to present his code. But is it though? The point is that putting back an object doesn't make it the original object.
I personally can't find fault with either the phone or the code example. What to do, what not to do? Like proper scientists, we need to find the difference that makes one not a good example. And then, we need to check whether the phone example is closer to what happens to the body than the tower. Open problem.
What parts of the body are allowed to change before the body isn't the same as before? It's clear that some parts of the body aren't as important as the others. Losing some tummy fat doesn't make you a different person, losing an arm doesn't make you a different person, so what does? Is the most important part of the body, the brain?

Equating the Brain with the Identity -- Implications of the Body Theory

Liver, heart, lung transplant are all trivial. But what about brain transplants? I'm inclined to say that no one gets a brain transplant, the brain just gets a new body a.k.a the person no existo.
Do we need all of the brain? Research says that you could lose a fair proportion of the brain and still work perfectly well. This is getting crazy.

Physicalists: Personality as the Key to Personal Identity

We could say that the key to sameness of the person was the sameness of personality. This view is perfectly compatible with being a physicalist. And also with dualists. Even if our soul changes every second, as long as our personality doesn't change, we're the same person. But even the personality changes. So maybe we just require enough gradual overlap.
We have three theories right now, the soul theory, the brain version of the body theory and the personality theory.

Soul, Body, and Personality -- Is There a Correct View? Assessment by Torture

We need to think about cases in which bodies and personalities come apart and go their own way. So, suppose we split these, which one would we like to torture or better put, which don't we want to be tortured?

Personal identity, Part III: Objections to the personality theory

Recommended Reading: Williams, Bernard. “The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality.” In Language, Metaphysics, and Death. Edited by John Donnelly. New York: Fordham University Press, 1978. pp. 229-242

A Mad Scientist's Experiment to Determine Personal Identity

How do we choose between the body view and the personality view? (We've discarded the soul earlier) Suppose we switched brains with another body and were asked to choose which body we would prefer tortured, we would choose the body in which our brain doesn't exist even if it was our own body. What are the implications of that intuition?
Does that mean that the body isn't the key to personal identity, but the personality is?

The Science Experiment Continued: Dilemmas in Mixed Personalities and Bodies

Absolutely unconvincing argument given here, watch and decide for yourself. At least he accepts that fact that this is a very weak analogy and offers to switch.

Duplication as an Objection to the Personality Theory

Imagine a child who thinks he's Keanu Reeves killing all the bad guys in John Wick, he tries so hard to emulate Keanu's character that he (hypothetically) gets his character. Now, is the child the same as Keanu just because he's got the same personality? Obviously not, so we can reject the personality view point.
Not so fast, just one very unusual belief is not enough to make somebody another person. To be, say, Einstein, you need to have the very same personality overall, all the beliefs, all the memories of writing those legendary papers, ability to speak German. Case closed.
Haha, we're not done. What if Einstein, after having lived all his life died peacefully and woke up one day morning in the south of Bangalore. Then it's not wrong to say that this person, granted with his other memories isn't Einstein. This stuff is science fiction, but if this reincarnation works, then is the personality theory correct?
The body theorists say that even if he had the memories of Einstein, he isn't the German scientist because he hasn't got Einstein's body.
Possession: Every now and then, people claim to have been possessed by some ancient people's souls and they provide factual evidence of the same. Some really phony studies were done regarding this and I invite the reader's to do their research before getting any ideas. Also, what's stopping more than one person to claim possession by the same soul?

No Branching Clause - Acceptable under the Personality Theory?

For now, we'll assume possession is just quackery. This requires a revision of the personality theory. We need to talk about branching/splitting of the human soul. So, we throw in a no-branching clause. What this means is that in cases where there aren't any multiple possessions, we accept that Einstein is alive in a new body, but if there are claims of multiple possessions, we say Einstein is dead.
How can we accept the no-branching rule? It's very bizzare to say that my existence right now depends solely on whether anyone else is not claiming to be me. I'm not prepared to accept this incoherent chain of thought and I will stick with my body theory.

Personal identity, Part IV; What matters?

Fission Is Not Allowed -- The Body Theorist's No Branching Rule

Human bodies can't branch and duplicate is the conjecture that the body theorists put forward. Is this true? Not really, at a fundamental level, bodies come about via duplication or splitting. Suppose we had Alice's left hemisphere put into Bob's torso and her right hemisphere into Carol's torso. According to the body view, which one is Alice?
Body theorists will counter this by saying, no fission allowed. But again, we see exactly the same problem that the personality theory has.

The Metaphysics of Soul-Splitting

Looking at all this, the soul-theorists are laughing. Does the soul avoid the problems of duplication and fission? Possibility number one is that souls, just like bodies and personalities can split. We hit the no-branching rule again.
What if the soul can't split? Alice's soul only goes to Bob or Carol and not both. But to whom? We don't know.

What Matters in Survival? Refocusing the Question on Personal Identity

We were fixated on trying to answer the question, "what does it take to survive?" and we were stuck with the personality theory and the body theory. But shouldn't we have been asking a different question?
We don't really care about the bare survival of the soul if it meant that the soul would be wiped clean after the death of our bodies. What we really want is survival with the same personality. Similarly with the body theory, we don't care if we survive death but with complete amnesia, we would put that right next to death itself.

What matters (cont.); The nature of death, Part I

Introduction: A Case for the Same Evolving Personality

If we lived for a 1000 years, we wouldn't be the same people then as we are now. In fact, it is very plausible that almost none of our core desires, goals and emotions about life survive the millenium. But according to the personality theory, it is still me, because the personality was gradually evolving and not all of a sudden.
Some among us can argue that even that isn't really what matters. Who cares if I survive if it means that my very personality will change, albeit gradually? But this is the first argument that reeks of stupidity to me, and I invite the reader to see why.

What is it Like to Die? A Breakdown of Functions from a Physicalist's View

We reach the conclusion of this long debate here with the knowledge that whatever happens after our death, our personality will be so fundamentally altered that it wont matter to us whether we survive or not. Let's go onto more pressing issues now.
When do I die? What does it mean to die? What is death? From a physicalist's perspective, Death means that the body is broken and cannot function properly anymore. So, which functions are crucial in defining the moment of death? The easy answer is to say that death happens when both the personality and the body stop functioning.
But the right question here is, which of the two needed to stop in order to initiate death, the body or the personality?

Identifying the Moment of Death for the Body

When do I cease to exist? Do I exist after both the body and personality stop functioning? Haven't we been through enough of this already? In the normal case, the body and the personality stop at the same time and we can't really infer anything. So, let's look at an abnormal case.
What if the personality dies before the body (coma, etc)? When do I die now? The body theorist doesn't find any problems with this new situation. The person dies when the body stops functioning.

When Does Personality Begin or Cease to Exist?

I'm tempted to say with regards to this abnormal situation that the body theory might be wrong. The person is clearly dead when his personality dies, unless you put a coma or a brain stroke as part of the human personality albeit rare. Also, isn't there the possibility in this case that the personality could be revived?
Are fetuses alive?
Dependence on the mother's body vs. dependence on life-support machines?

What Has the Right to Live -- Me or My Body?

Can we take the heart of a person in a coma and give it to someone who could live a healthy life with that heart? Who or what has the right to life? Me or my body?

The nature of death (cont.); Believing you will die

The lecture explores the question of the state of being dead. Even though the most logical claim seems to be that when a person stops P-functioning he or she is dead, a more careful consideration must allow for exceptions, such as when one is asleep or in a coma. Professor Kagan then suggests that on some level nobody believes that he or she is going to die. As a case in point, he takes Tolstoy's famous character Ivan Ilych.

Recommended Reading: The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy

Introduction -- Accommodating Sleep in the Definition of Death

Is NREM sleep death? It is clearly not, this draws us to make an important revision to what we consider are human/person functions and what are not.

Specification: The Ability to Engage in P-Functioning

Maybe the right thing to ask is not whether the person is p-functioning at that time but to ask whether he/she can. If you wake a person up, they can sing, dance and do math. Whereas, when we are dead, we aren't able to engage in doing theoretical physics.
Take someone in a coma, they aren't engaging in p-functioning, but can they? How do we get them out of the coma in the first place? But if we could get them out of the coma, they would go back to doing normal things. The other side of the fence here is if the brain has gotten all soupy during the long coma and it's of no use trying to revert them.
What if we put people in suspended animation? Cool their body down so that their metabolic processes stop. This reminds me of Heinrich Himmler's doctor who performed some absolutely gruesome experiments on humans out in the cold. This suggests the need of a third category outside of death and life, let's call it Schrodinger. We need some more information to distinguish between Schrodinger and being alive, how do we get that information?

Nobody Believes that they will Die: An Analysis

Since it's impossible to picture being dead, we cannot possibly die. The idea at the core of this argument is that it is impossible for things to happen if we can't imagine them. The vanity of Homo sapiens. That argument is ridiculous, but let's assume that things don't exist if we can't imagine them. We can picture being ill, we can maybe imagine the moment of our death, but not being dead.
Imagine being a football, imagine being a laptop. There's nothing to imagine there, it's not that there is something to imagine and we can't imagine. There is seriously nothing to imagine there. No mystery. Similarly, there is no mystery in imagining death. There is nothing happen to be imagine. So our inability to picture death is not a failure of our imagination.

Can Imagining Death Work? Flaws in Freud's Argument

Freud's idiotic argument where he argues for immortality by saying we all can picture our funerals and hence we can't die. Are we at the Oval Office right now just because we can picture it? Are we on beaches we can imagine?

Nobody Believes in Bodily Death: The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Why would people take out life insurance and write out wills? Also, people seem to be surprised when they are told that they're terminally ill. We give lip service to the claim that we're going to die but at some level, we don't believe it. I agree.
Ivan Ilych is taken aback by the fact that he is mortal, his bodily mortality surprising him throughout the novel. Even though it is highly possible that Ivan Ilych had life insurance and had written a will.
"All men are mortal, Socrates is a man, so Socrates is mortal. Ivan Ilych says, "yes, yes, I knew that. But what does it have to do with me?""

Dying alone; The badness of death, Part I

Professor Kagan puts forward the claim that Tolstoy's character Ivan Ilych is quite the typical man in terms of his views on mortality. All of his life he has known that death is imminent but has never really believed it. When he suddenly falls ill and is about to die, the fact of his mortality shocks him. In trying to further access how people think about death, Professor Kagan explores the claim that "we all die alone," presents a variety of arguments against it and ends by considering whether the primary badness of death could lie in the effects on those who are left behind.