Russell and the Afterlife

Russell and the Afterlife

The best-known version of dualism comes from RenÐ"© Descartes' statement that the mind is a nonphysical substance. Descartes was the first to clearly identify the mind with consciousness and self-awareness and to distinguish this from the brain. The brain had previously been thought of as the organ that made decisions and controlled the thought process.

Bertrand Russell suggests that dualism is now widely accepted because of the fear of death. This is because dualism separates the mind from the body. He was the first to formulate the mind/body problem in the form in which it exists today. Descartes' formal reasoning for separating the mind and body is that he can doubt the existence of one without doubting the existence of the other; therefore, even if you die, you are still alive through your mind.

I think this will relieve some pressure and anxiety from people who fear death. My view of this is similar to what has been said. I think that if someone was to believe that their mind would still exist after their body has died, it would make it easier for them to think about and accept death, instead of being scared of it. However, I think it is valid for someone to be extremely afraid of death and not believe in dualism, not everyone is willing to believe that a spiritual mind can exist after death.

Having separated mind from body, Descartes then raises the question that has haunted dualism forever: how do mind and body interact? Many critics have argued that there is no definite answer to this question. For some people this is because it is just impossible in principle. They argue that the body, if it obeys the laws of nature as Descartes suggests, are restricted solely to those laws, leaving no room for ghostly interference. The mind could only affect and interact with the body, they argue, if it too obeyed the laws of nature, but according to Descartes, it does not.

We could put it another way. How could the body, which obeys the laws of nature, affect the mind, if the mind doesn't obey the laws of nature? And how could the body, as a physical thing, be affected by something which is non-physical? Some have argued that this Ð''in principle' objection is not so problematic as the bigger problem that we now know enough about the brain to feel confident in stating that it is not subject to ghostly interference. This conclusion has strong implications for sociology, because social actions are both embodied and mindful. Actors perform meaningfully, which means that mind and body, if they are separate in the first place, must interact.

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