Abstract

William Hasker thinks that his emergent dualism provides a plausible account of the mind’s survival of bodily death, giving it a crucial advantage over physicalism. I do not share this appraisal. Emergentism by its very nature works against the (immediate) survival of death. The analogies that Hasker employs to overcome this initial implausibility fail due to factual errors, and his position ends up in no less a difficult position than the physicalism that Hasker rejects. Hasker’s attempt to escape this difficulty results in what is effectively an abandonment of emergentism, and the adoption of a more traditional dualism.