Abstract

The fundamental conceptual framework of this attempt to demonstrate not only the "plausibility" of personal immortality but also its actual nature, is the body/mind distinction taken as ontologically ultimate. That is also, in my view, its fatal weakness: there is not the slightest indication of how "mind" or the varieties of subjective experience have come to be "attached," either at the moment of conception or later, to what Marsh calls "the organic self." Therefore his interpretation of "the mental"--in particular, memories--is essentially in terms of the presupposition of a self-existent mental realm. And consequently, his interpretation of survival is something like that of a quasi-solipsistic, faded and pastel-colored mode of existence, something like Hume's conception of "ideas" as "faded sense impressions." For instance, there will be none of the strong "feelings" of the physical realm, but a "gentle feeling," a sort of "cosmic consciousness".