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Brains, Minds, and the Afterlife
There is a clear correlation between mental states and brain states; between mental function and brain
function. And this fact gives a prima facie reason to think there is no afterlife, although not an
absolutely conclusive reason. After all, if mental function and brain function are correlated, then when
brain function ceases, so, one would expect, will mental function.
We do not begin life with thoughts or feelings or sensory qualia; as our brains develop, so do our mental
lives. As we age, our mental lives change in character; a child's mental life surely isn't the same as a
teenager's, and the teenager's surely isn't the same as a fifty-year-old's, and so on. Moreover, when a person
suffers a brain injury, it affects his mental function. And when a person is afflicted with Alzheimer's disease,
changes in his brain correspond to his loss of memory and other mental function.
Thus, we have every reason to think that our mental lives are not independent of our physical lives; on the
contrary, we have a lot of reason to think that our mental lives are dependent on our physical lives, and that,
therefore, when our physical lives end, so do our mental lives.
One may, of course, suppose that the human brain is only a conduit for the nonphysical mind to express itself
in the physical world; that the brain provides a means of connecting the nonphysical mind with the physical world.
One may suppose that the physical brain's existence is transitory but that the nonphysical mind's existence is eternal.
One might say that as a child's brain develops, it becomes a better and better conduit for the mind; and that injury
or disease damages the brain's ability to connect the mind to the physical world. By thus hypothesizing, one might
maintain the possibility of his mental life's continuing after death.
I am not sure that such a hypothesis doesn't have fatal flaws; but in any case, without such a hypothesis, the
correlation between mental function and brain function, together with the surety that brains cease functioning,
provides prima facie reason to doubt that there is an afterlife.
(© 2007 by Keith Brian Johnson)
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