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Price, Hick, and Disembodied Existence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Bruce R. Reichenbach
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Philosophy, Augsburg College, Minneapolis

Extract

In an attempt to make the idea of surviving one's own death in a disembodied state intelligible, H. H. Price has presented a possible description of what the afterlife might be like for a disembodied self or consciousness. Price suggests that the world of the disembodied self might be a kind of dream or image world. In it he would replace his present sense-perception by activating his image-producing powers, which are now inhibited by their continuous bombardment by sensory stimuli, to produce mental images. Though he would be cut off from any new supply of sensory material, he might be able to draw upon his memory of his previous physical existence to create an entire environment of images. A nexus of perspectively inter-related images would constitute an object; this would serve as a substitute for the material objects which he perceived in his past life. The entire environment of the disembodied individual would be composed of such families of mental images and would serve to constitute his world. It need not, however, be a solipsistic world, for by means of telepathy the discarnate individual could communicate with other disembodied selves and in this way acquire new information. Price notes that since this world would be as real to the discarnate self as our present world is to our embodied self, in the afterlife the disembodied self in effect would create for itself a real world, though of course if it took it to be anything other than an image world it would be deceiving itself.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

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References

page 317 note 1 Price, H. H., ‘Survival and the Idea of “Another World”’, Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research L (part 182, January 1953).Google Scholar Reprinted in Penelhum, T., Immortality (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Pub. Co., 1973), pp. 2147.Google Scholar References are to the latter and are indicated by P in the text.

page 317 note 2 Hick, John H., Death and Eternal Life (N.Y.: Harper & Row, 1976), ch. 14. Hereafter indicated by H in the text.Google Scholar

page 321 note 1 It might be objected that we have unfairly compared Hick's and Price's worlds on this point, for just as there would be no ship were there no shipbuilder who willed to make it, so there would be no public idea of a ship had not Joe or Jane willed it. But the difference lies in the fact that there would still be a public environment-in-general even if particular humanly constructed constituents of that world had not been willed or made, but there would not be a public environment between Joe and Jane had they not willed the communication or reception of particular ideas.

page 322 note 1 Of course, the principle of non-contradiction would still hold for Joe's own wishes: he could not consistently wish and consequently image that the sea was both smooth and tempestuous simultaneously.

page 323 note 1 Hick, John H., Evil and the God of Love (N.Y.: Harper & Row, 1966).Google Scholar

page 325 note 1 For further development of this point see Reichenbach, Bruce R., Is Man the Phoenix? A Study of Immortality (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1978), ch. 4.Google Scholar