Afterlife
William Hasker, Charles Taliaferro · 2024 · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Summary
Surveys philosophical arguments for and against personal survival of bodily death, including dualist, materialist, personal-identity, and religious approaches.
Why it matters here
Direct background for any claim about whether something of the person survives death, and a useful guardrail against treating survival as a single simple proposition.
Linked claims
A near-universal religious claim with massive cultural footprint and zero empirical evidence. Sits downstream of theism and survival-after-death — its plausibility tracks theirs.
Massively documented in tradition, zero direct evidence, and substantial harm record from belief — eternal-torment doctrines have warped lives for centuries.
A handful of veridical NDE cases are striking. The leap from 'unexplained by current models' to 'proof of afterlife' is large.
If past-life cases are taken seriously, reincarnation is the most economical narrative — but several other models also fit the data.
NDEs, past-life cases, terminal lucidity and mediumship cluster suggestively. Each line is contested; together they earn a hearing.
Related evidence hubs
Physics-adjacent worldviews — block universe, many-worlds, simulation, free will.
World religions and traditions, scored as systems.
Whether anything of mind continues.
Evidence around dying, near-death experience, and what (if anything) continues.
Structured experiences during cardiac arrest and crisis.
Children's past-life memories, birthmark cases, and the rebirth interpretation.
Past-life memories, karma, soul contracts.
The nature of subjective experience.