First, think about death.
In the author's theory, Shelley Kagan tries to convince readers that immortality without soul is not a good thing, that fear of death is not an appropriate reflection of death, that death is not particularly mysterious, and that suicide may be both rational and moral in some cases. ...
These views are not common to us, so he also tried to get everyone to enter the following content with these dialectical thoughts.
Second, is there life after death?
According to ordinary people, the answer is definitely no.
From a philosophical point of view, to answer this question, we need to know what am I? What is death and life? If death is defined as the death of the body, the question that may be asked is, can I continue to exist after the death of the body? What am I? One position is called dualism. I think I may be a body and a soul, and I will separate them. Another view, called physicalism, will say that people have only one body. In the dualist's view, death is the permanent separation of spirit-immaterial soul-and body, because the body is destroyed. But in the physicalist's view, if there is no soul, the mind is the function of the brain. After the physical operation ability is destroyed, the mind is destroyed and death is the end.
The next question is, who should we trust? Does the soul exist or not?
Third, prove the existence of the soul.
The soul cannot be observed, whether external or internal, so we have to prove it in other ways. If we assume that a phenomenon can not be explained by physicalists, but can be explained by dualists' assumptions about the existence of souls, then we prove the existence of souls.
A new question: must something other than the body control the body?
Dualists will say that pure physical objects are far from experience and sensibility, and even have no imaginable possibilities. But physicists will think that this phenomenon cannot be explained by current scientific cognition, and where does the free will of human beings or creatures come from?
In supernatural phenomena, people often don't come down from the operating table and die, but come back to life in a few minutes or in time. The parties often mentioned that they had a very magical experience. There are also some psychic people whose souls have left the present body and gone to another world, either in the afterlife or in the afterlife. Maybe the people on the operating table are not dead yet, and the psychic's tricks may only be known to them.
So in the interpretation of the soul, at least for now, all the arguments of dualism cannot be established.
(To be continued)
Frankly speaking, reading philosophy books is very tiring. After turning over two or three pages, I will turn it back and forth several times. Because I am constantly comparing and arguing, I have to say that I read this book slowly, but I really finished reading it, which is thought-provoking! !