Unamuno’s Paradox: Jesse Bering on the problem of death.
My friend Rohan drew my attention to some interesting articles at Edge.org: The World Question Center. One article in particular caused Rohan to think about the contradictions involved in our understanding of death and what happens to us after it. Jesse Bering, a psychologist at the University of Arkansas, examines this dilemma, which he has named ”Unamuno’s Paradox” after the Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno. Unamuno wrote Tragic Sense of Life and was tormented with the problem of death. Or, as Bering clarifies, Unamuno was tormented by his own death and what will happen to him death, what will things be like then. Bering summarises this dilemma as:
the materialist understanding that consciousness is snuffed out by death coming into conflict with the human inability to simulate the psychological state of death.
The paradox is this: Say you belong to the minority of human beings alive right now calling themselves “materialists.” If so, you believe that there is no life after death. You believe that after death you have no body, no soul, and no consciousness. Good for you!
If you were to meet Bering, it’s quite possible, just for fun, that he would ask you: “How will you know you are dead when you are dead?”
And you’ll probably answer: “I’ll know because I won’t be around, I won’t exist, there’ll be nothing left of me, zilch.” [I’ve thought this…]
Aha! You have fallen into the trap of Unamuno’s Paradox! You believe you are a materialist, but you have answered as a dualist. Dualists believe that we have two “lives” - the first (during life) is contained in our bodies, the second (after death) is bodiless. In the afterlife we are a soul or a consciousness or something…floating about. If dualists are right about the after life they’ll be able to answer Bering’s question. But, they are wrong, of course.
Now. If materialists are right, which we are, always, of course, if there is no afterlife and if there is no consciousness, then we won’t know, will we, because we won’t a mind, and without a mind, it would be hard to cogitate such things.
There. Problem solved.
Did Epicurus not ease Unamuno’s torment? Epicurus once said (something to the effect of): Death is nothing to us, since when were are here, death is not, and when death has come, we are not!
Hmm. Not very comforting.
Meanwhile: Ian McEwan is also there as a materialist and he says:
That this span is brief, that consciousness is an accidental gift of blind processes, makes our existence all the more precious and our responsibilities for it all the more profound.
And Paul Broks offers his own response to Bering’s article, in which he examines his own “Broks’s paradox.”
Posted by By: kathryn | 
2006/04/15 | Philosophy | Trackback | Comments [RSS 2.0]
