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C. J. Ducasse
(1881-1969), French-born, highly respected Professor of
Philosophy at Brown University. Awardee of the Carus Lectures
prize (American Philosophical Association). Contributed to the
"Journal Information for Philosophy and Phenomenological
Research", "Causation", "Immortality" (Edited by Paul Edwards),
"Philosophical Dimensions of Parapsychology" (edited by James M.
O. Wheatley). Ex-student of Josiah Royce. Pursued a career in
philosophy but retained a strong interest in logic - so much so
that he took the initiative to create the Association for
Symbolic Logic with its Journal of symbolic logic. Among his
many important papers on survival are "How the Case of The
Search for Bridey Murphy Stands Today" Journal of the ASPR 54:
3-22, and "What Would Constitute Conclusive Evidence of Survival
After Death?" Journal of the SPR 41: 401-406. His books
included "A Critical Examination of the Belief in Life After
Death", "Paranormal Phenomena, Science and Life After Death"
(Monograph), "A Philosophical Scrutiny of Religion", "Nature,
Mind, And Death", "Truth, Knowledge and Causation", "Philosophy
As a Science: Its Matter and Its Method" and "Philosophy of
Art". |
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THE QUESTION whether there is, or can be, or cannot be a life after death for
the individual is seldom formulated unambiguously, or approached with a
genuinely open mind, or discussed objectively on the basis of the relevant
empirical or theoretical considerations. Persons in whom survival after death is
an article of religious faith generally assume that it and other dogmas of their
religion are, as such, authoritative; and hence that the point of engaging in
discussions of the matter is not to try to find out whether or not survival is a
fact, but only to convince others that it is a fact - or at least to show them
that the reasons which lead them to doubt or to deny it are invalid.
Persons, on the other hand, who have had training in science, or at least those
among them who do not lay aside their scientific habits of thought when subjects
reputedly religious are concerned, commonly take it for granted today that the
progress of physiological and behavioristic psychology has finally proved that
the consciousness and personality of man is - as they are wont to phrase it - a
function of the nervous system and of certain other constituents of the living
human body; and hence that there cannot possibly be for the individual any life
or consciousness after the body has died.
A position in some ways intermediate between the two just described is that of
the Spiritists or Spiritualists. Survival of the personality after death is held
by them to be not an article of faith but a matter of knowledge. That is, they
hold it as something for the truth of which they have adequate empirical
evidence in the communications, received through the persons they
call mediums, that purport to emanate from the surviving spirits of the
deceased. Thus, irrespective of whether or not that evidence really proves what
it is alleged to prove, the fact that empirical - or more specifically
testimonial - evidence is what Spiritualists appeal to for support of their belief
means that, in so far, they conceive the question of survival as a scientific
rather than as a religious one.
On the other hand, two factors have cooperated in making Spiritism or
Spiritualism claim for itself also the status of a religion. One of these
factors has been the need to protect the activities of mediums from the
application of ordinances or laws against fortune-telling. The other has been
that, because of the widespread vagueness as to what questions are or are not
essentially religious, and because of the fact that most religions have asserted
that there is for the individual a life after death, therefore belief or
knowledge as to such life has uncritically been assumed to be religious
inherently, rather than perhaps only instrumentally.
In the present book, the question as to the possibility, reality, or
impossibility of a life after death is approached without commitment, explicit
or implicit, to any one of the three positions concerning it just described.
What the book attempts is a philosophical scrutiny of the idea of a life after
death. That is, it attempts to set forth, as adequately as possible, the various
questions which, on reflection, arise on the subject; to purge them both of
ambiguity and of vagueness; to point out what connection the subject does, and
does not, have with religion; to examine without prejudice the merits of the
considerations - theological or scientific, empirical or theoretical - which have
been alleged variously to make certain, or probable, or possible, or impossible,
that the human personality survives bodily death; to state what kind of evidence
would, if we should have it, conclusively prove that a human personality, or
some specified component of it, has survived after death; and to consider the
variety of forms which a life after death, if any, could with any plausibility
be conceived to take.
Needless to say, this ambitious program is not likely to be carried through with
complete success. Nor - in view of the prejudices and the wishful thinking either
on the pro or on the contra side which infect the great majority of persons who
take some interest in the question - is much of what will be said likely to be
found agreeable by all readers; for the sacredness of a number of the "sacred
cows" which have influenced the beliefs or disbeliefs entertained on the subject
of survival after death will have to be questioned.
Moreover, at a few places, the issues to be considered cannot, by their very
nature, be discussed with any prospect of deciding them in a responsible manner
unless they are first formulated with greater precision, and their implications
then developed more rigorously, than has usually been done in discussions of the
question as to a life after death. But precision and rigor - even when utmost care
is taken, as it will be, to make its literary form as psychologically painless
as possible - entails the need on the reader's part of closer attention than many
are willing to give. For it is much easier to jump to conclusions than to draw
them responsibly - to jump to conclusions provided they be favorable, if one is
moved by wish to believe; or to jump to conclusions provided they be adverse, if
one is moved by wish to disbelieve.
The issues involved, however, are ultimately so important that wishful thinking,
on either side, will, to the best of the author's ability, be excluded in this
book from his consideration of their merits.
The author's obligations to the works of the various writers discussed or
referred to in the text are indicated by the footnotes. Some portions of the
text have appeared as articles in periodicals. Several Sections of Chapter XI
formed part of a communication presented by the author at the 1957 Interamerican
Congress of Philosophy, which later appeared in the journal, Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research, as an article entitled "Life, Telism, and Mechanism."
Chapter XVI borrows extensively from an address by the author at the celebration
in 1956 of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the founding of the American Society for
Psychical Research, which, with the other addresses, was published in the
Society's journal. Chapters XX and XXV were published as articles, respectively
in the International Journal of Parapsychology, and in the Journal of the
American Society for Psychical Research. Grateful acknowledgement is here made
to the editors of these periodicals for permission to incorporate into the text
the materials mentioned.
C.J.D.
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