Afterlife
William Hasker, Charles Taliaferro · 2024 · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
This source is used as context evidence across 5 linked claims and 8 related evidence hubs. Its citation record is marked verified; that verifies the source trail, not the truth of any linked claim.
Summary
Surveys philosophical arguments for and against personal survival of bodily death, including dualist, materialist, personal-identity, and religious approaches.
How this source is used on the map
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.
Citation record
- Authors
- William Hasker, Charles Taliaferro
- Year
- 2024
- Publication
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Source type
- Philosophy reference
- Map role
- context
- Credibility level
- primary
- Citation status
- Verified
- DOI
- Not recorded
- PubMed
- Not recorded
- Not recorded
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.
Related research reports
A comparative guide to the strongest survival-adjacent evidence: NDEs, terminal lucidity, deathbed visions, past-life memories, mediumship, and after-death communication.
What NDE studies support, what they do not prove, and why the phenomenon remains one of the strongest spiritual-adjacent evidence clusters.
A source-linked synthesis of past-life memory cases, birthmark claims, reincarnation interpretations, and skeptical alternatives.
Related sources
Reference for claims about postmortem destinations within Christian frameworks; it clarifies the conceptual options before any evidential claim is assessed.
Standard reference body for NDE-related claims; archives many first-person accounts and links to peer-reviewed work.
The leading academic group publishing on cases of children claiming past-life memories and on Greyson's NDE work.
Any claim about surviving death or being reincarnated presupposes a theory of personal identity. This entry sets the terms.
The reference for what mind-body dualism means and why most contemporary philosophers reject it.
Useful background for claims involving God, religious figures, or traditions because it clarifies what counts as a religious claim before evidence is weighed.