What kind of survival do I have in mind? Actually, there is more than one notion of survival, and we should take a look at some of them. First, there is of course the Christian notion of the soul’s surviving with all its memories and personal characteristics. Some Christians think of this survival in terms of bodily resurrection, others in the more Platonic terms of the soul leaving its body and entering a purely spiritual realm. The distinction between these two notions is not too significant for our present purposes; both are certainly concerned with individual or personal survival. Next we consider reincarnation. According to this notion, the spirit of the departed enters the body of a new living organism—human, animal, or possibly even plant—but without its memories. Many people who have a perfect understanding (though not necessarily belief) in the Christian notion of survival with one’s memories find this Eastern notion of reincarnation—survival without memories—simply inconceivable ! What on earth, they ask, could the self be without its memories and own individual characteristics? I myself don’t have the slightest difficulty with this notion. I have a most definite concept of what I mean by I, and my memories and particular personal characteristics seem to me to be no more part of this essential I than the clothes I wear! If the reader asks me what then do I mean by I, I’m afraid that I can no more tell him than I can describe my sensation of red to a blind man. If the reader wishes to conclude from this that I only deceive myself in thinking that I have such a notion, that such a notion is really meaningless, of course he is free to. I think, however, that he should bear in mind that the inability to define a given notion in terms of a set of other “known” notions is not necessarily indicative of the meaninglessness of that notion; it may in principle simply not be so definable. I recall that someone once said to me, “After all, when you die, various babies will be born. How do you know one of them won’t be you?” Several persons present simply could not understand what he was saying. I think that I understood perfectly! Of course, one of them could be me; the question is, Will one of them be me?
How attractive is this notion of reincarnation compared with, say, the Christian notion of survival with one’s memories? This, of course, is a matter of individual taste. Personally, I find the idea of reincarnation extremely attractive. The idea of cyclic rebirth has a wonderful, sparkling freshness that appeals to me even more than the idea of continuing, as it were, on a straight line, which seems rather stale and tiresome. But this, of course, does not mean that I necessarily believe it. There is all the difference in the world between finding an idea attractive and believing it is necessarily true. This is beautifully brought out in the following passage of Suzuki on transmigration (reincarnation):
I do not know whether transmigration can be proved or maintained on the scientific level, but I know that it is an inspiring theory and full of poetic suggestions, and I am satisfied with this interpretation and do not seem to have any desire to go beyond it. To me, the idea of transmigration has a personal appeal, and as to its scientific and philosophical implications, I leave it to the study of the reader.2
There is a curious variant of reincarnation that I wish to mention briefly. According to this variant, the soul is not a simple, indecomposable substance but a composite that after death simply gets recycled (just like the material of our bodies gets recycled). After death, instead of my entering the body of just one newborn baby (or other organism), I would split up into a multitude of them. If there is one thing I cannot imagine, it is the thought of my splitting up! (Even total annihilation is easier for me to comprehend than that!) Perhaps, though, I should modify this statement in light of the following past experience.
I am not sure whether it was during a dream or a hypnagogic reverie; I rather believe it was the latter. At any rate, I experienced myself as dead and turning into a cluster of bacteria—fresh, live bacteria! It was not as if I were detatchedly watching my body turn into bacteria; it was I who was turning into them and gaining my very life through them. Also—and this is most important—I did not at all feel as if I were a victim, as if the bacteria were preying upon me, sacrificing me for their own ends. I was the principal gainer of the transaction. Indeed, it was not quite clear to me where I left off and the bacteria began; the bacteria were me! Thus, I should have more understanding for the recycling hypothesis. The only difference is that I did not think of the bacteria as individuals; I did not have any sense that I was splitting up into these individuals. Rather, I thought of this bacterial cluster as a whole unit, and I was simply becoming this unit.
Next I wish to consider the so-called scientific arguments against the probability of survival. Frankly, these seem to me incredibly poor! What I now have to say is, of course, only pertinent to dualists, who think of mind and matter as distinct substances and who know perfectly well what it means for the soul to survive but who have grave doubts that in fact it will. I am thinking of one dualist who argued thus: In principle, it is conceivable that the soul survives, but in the light of scientific evidence, it is extremely improbable. Since the parallelism between psychical and physical events during our lifetime is so clearly in evidence, then scientific induction requires us to believe that the parallelism should continue after our death.
There are two aspects of this point of view that I wish to dispute. The first is this: Does scientific induction really require it? Suppose, for example, that a certain reaction between two chemicals is always observed provided that they are mixed in a platinum container. Scientific induction does indeed require us to predict that the same reaction will occur if they are again mixed in a platinum container but does not allow us to predict what will happen if they are mixed outside such a container. Similarly, the fact that a parallelism exists between psychic and physical events and that this parallelism exists during one’s lifetime does not warrant the belief that it should probably continue to exist after one’s lifetime.
I have a second objection, perhaps more serious yet. Suppose it be granted that the parallelism does continue to hold after death. Does this imply the annihilation of the psyche? It seems to me that it does not! After all, when the body dies, it does not just disappear. It gets eventually transformed (in all likelihood) to other living beings like bacteria, worms, and so forth, which in turn are transformed into the bodies of higher living mammals. Strangely, the dualist who disbelieves in the survival of the soul nevertheless believes that the body still exists after death. This certainly does not seem like a continuing parallelism but rather a drastic bifurcation: The body continues to exist, but the soul gets annihilated! In this regard, it is curious that one speaks of dead bodies but never of dead souls, except in the form of ghosts or sometimes departed souls. But a departed soul seems to mean something very different from a dead soul. The former is a soul that has gone elsewhere; the latter, one that no more goes elsewhere than a dead body goes elsewhere but rather somehow changes its state. I must confess that I hardly know what I mean by a dead soul, but if the parallelism between mind and matter should persist after death, then just as the body dies but does not go out of existence, the soul should also die but not go out of existence. If the body (or perhaps rather the material of the body) comes to life again in the form of other living organisms, then similarly the corresponding soul substance should come to life. So if anything, it would seem that if scientific induction requires us to project into the future an assumed parallelism between body and mind, then this should add support to something like reincarnation rather than annihilation. But as I said before, I do not believe that sound scientific methodology does require us to make this projection. Goodness gracious, if I have a remarkably consistent dream in which I observe a high correlation between certain experiences and others, what rational grounds exist for my expecting this correlation to continue after I wake up? To put the matter another way, it is not at all inconceivable to me that one day scientific technology will enable us to anesthetize the body of a subject and then connect a mass of electrodes directly to his brain and nerv
e centers, thus inducing a whole artificial life or sort of “dream world.” (This idea is, of course, quite common in science fiction.) So if, for instance, the correct visual and tactile nerve centers are stimulated, the subject will have as vivid an experience of a material object as we have of objects in the (so-called) real world. Now, in this artificially induced life, the subject might also experience a “body” that he thinks is his own. He will observe a perfect correlation between his own perceptions and feelings with events that he observes taking place in his “body.” Let us also assume that his “dream” is programmed to last, say, ten years. As part of his “dream,” he observes other bodies, like the body that he calls his own, dying. Also let us assume that all memories prior to his “dream” have been obliterated; his “dream world” is the only world he knows. My point now is that under these conditions the subject would have the same grounds as we have for believing that upon the death of his “body” he would go out of existence, but of course he would be wrong. Furthermore, I have no reason to believe that this situation is not right now happening to me! I don’t for a moment believe that it is, but I have no rational evidence that it is not. Some may say that it is highly improbable that I am now in the state of this subject. But I do not see any way of evaluating the probability of such an event, and what experiments could I possibly perform to throw any light on its probability? What experiments could a dreamer possibly perform in his dream to evaluate the probability of his dreaming? It seems to me none whatsoever! Thus I believe: (1) It is logically possible that I am in this state; (2) as a matter of fact, I am not in this state; (3) I have no evidence for this belief, but I believe it anyhow; and (4) probability has absolutely nothing to do with the matter. And so I believe about the question of survival after death: (1) that there is not the slightest rational or probabilist evidence that one survives; and (2) that there is not the slightest rational or probabilist evidence that one doesn’t.
Wishful Thinking?
Now let us consider the psychological approach to the motivations of beliefs about survival from the point of view of how much of our beliefs concerning these matters are merely the result of wishful thinking. The unfortunate aspect of this approach—or rather about many of those who take it—is that they seem to regard the statement, “That’s only wishful thinking,” as a valid counterargument. I’m sure most of my readers are too sophisticated for that, but it is surprising how many people are not! At any rate, this approach is curiously one-sided when applied to the subject of life and death. The usual argument, of course, is, “First there is no evidence for the existence of the soul. Secondly, even if there is a soul, there is absolutely no evidence for its survival after death, and plenty of evidence against it. Yet many otherwise intelligent people in fact do believe in survival. Why is this? The only sensible explanation is that —whether they consciously know it or not—their desire for immortality is so intense, that it totally warps their objectivity about the matter.”3 Now, to those who dismiss belief in survival as mere wishful thinking, I would like to ask the following questions: What would you say about those who claim not to care whether or not they survive, or even express preference for nonsurvival, but who nevertheless strongly believe that they will survive? Would you say that really deep down they do want to survive and that they are only fooling themselves in thinking that they don’t? What about those who believe in hell and that they are utterly evil and are frightened to death of their impending damnation, and who say, “I wish that we didn’t survive, but the horrible thing is that we do!” I guess you would say that even the thought of hell terrifies them less than the thought of extinction, so it still is a matter of wishful thinking even though superficially it seems like fearful thinking. (As some Freudians say, fears are often disguised wishes.) What about those Eastern philosophers who believe in reincarnation but regard it as a curse rather than a blessing. All their endeavors are geared toward avoiding rebirth, and they believe and hope that with sufficient effort and insight rebirth can be avoided. Perhaps you would again say that deep down even the Easterner desires some form of survival but really knows that he cannot have it and so turns to the remarkable extreme of not merely saying that rebirth is undesirable (which is merely a sour grapes attitude) but makes it his most profound life purpose to try to prevent the very thing that he (unconsciously) most desires! Of course, one can also attack the Easterner for his wishful thinking along very different lines, but I imagine this line of attack would occur to relatively few Westerners. What I have in mind is this: Imagine someone brought up in the East who has absorbed the attitude that existence is suffering and has absolutely no doubts about rebirth, but who is a total skeptic concerning the possibility of avoiding it. He might well say, “We all know damn well that none of us wants to be reborn, and we all know—deep down—that we must be. So this Buddhistic and Hindoo talk that it is possible to avoid rebirth is sheer wishful thinking!”
A somewhat amusing incident comes to mind. I was once telling a friend (a gifted mathematician) that the hypothesis of survival seemed to me perfectly plausible. His immediate reaction (like that of Ayer) was that the idea was totally meaningless. But later in the conversation, he insisted that my belief in the possibility of survival resulted purely from the fact that I wanted to survive. Several years later, we met again, and I reminded him of the conversation. I said, “One thing puzzles me. I can understand what you mean when you say that my views on survival reflect wishful thinking. And I can understand—at least in part—when you say that my notion of survival is meaningless. But I cannot understand what you can mean when you put the two together. If, as you say, I wish to survive, then I must be wishing for something. Hence, I fail to sec how that which I wish for—which ! I call survival-can be an empty notion. I can’t see how I can wish for nothing.” He replied, “I thought of that, and I was a little hard on you.” I then pointed out that it was not that he was hard on me but that there was a purcly logical difficulty to be straightened out: How can I wish for x when x is not merely nonexistent but meaningless? He replied, “W hat I really should have said is that what you are really wishing for is that your body live forever, and since you know that is impossible, then you have invented this notion of soul, and, as a substitute, hope that it will survive.” I must confess that I am still puzzled! If I really have invented this notion of soul (or more realistically, if I have borrowed this notion from others who have invented it), then I have also invented the notion of the survival of the soul. I therefore have attached some meaning to the term, so how can it be meaningless?
If one must persist in using the ad hominem argument of wishful thinking, then I can think of another target that, it seems to me, has not yet been sufficiently or widely attacked. I am thinking of people like, for instance, Bertrand Russell, who reject survival as highly improbable but still maintain that there is nothing to worry about. They then proceed to give a whole host of reasons why survival is not even desirable and to explain the benefits that will accrue if individuals don’t survive. These people pride themselves on their lack of wishful thinking. But it seems to me that their attitude can just as much be interpreted as a sour grapes attitude: “Who wants to survive, anyhow?” Of course, they are free from the (wishful) thought that they do survive, but the belief that they don’t want to survive may be wishful thinking. I would like to put the matter another way. The groups to whom I refer evidently take the attitude, “It is only wishful thinking to believe that we survive. But we can be perfectly happy and content with the universe without this childish belief that we survive.” My question now is, “Is it not possible that it is only wishful thinking to believe that we can be content without the belief in survival?” In a way, one might admire some of the existentialists who see this, and whose attitudes might be paraphrased, “Of course we don’t survive, and of course we want to survive, so let’s stop kidding ourselves that we don’t want to survive. Instead, let us squarely face the infinitely painful fact that we do want to survi
ve, but we can’t. This is the true tragedy of life.” To the great annoyance of many—and at the risk of being accused of rationalizing—I must nevertheless raise the question whether this attitude may not also be a form of wishful thinking, though perhaps of a somewhat different sort. Is there perhaps not such a thing as masochistic or sadistic wishful thinking? Is there not such a thing as pessimistic wishful thinking just as well as the (perhaps) more usual optimistic wishful thinking? For people who take a delight in how bad things are, is it so inappropriate to suspect them of wishful thinking when they exaggerate the bad aspects of life so ridiculously? While we are at it, is it not possible that all forms of thought are wishful thinking? Who knows, maybe one day some psychologist will prove that the real reason I believe in the laws of logic and mathematics is that I want to. At least, I cannot prove that some psychologist will not prove this.
At this point, things are getting a little ridiculous, aren’t they? I think that the upshot of all this is that to be overly concerned about whether one’s beliefs are or are not the result of wishful thinking is very bad, ultimately destroying, rather than aiding, the objectivity of one’s judgment. Not only that, but this concern may well prevent one from knowing what he really thinks. How many fine thoughts have been repressed because it is feared that they may be only wishful thinking? This consideration is not unrelated to our next topic, for which I will coin the phrase fearful thinking.
I understand wishful thinking to be that thinking based on wish rather than evidence. Similarly, I would define fearful thinking as that thinking likewise not based on evidence but based purely on fear. Both wishful thinking and fearful thinking are equally lacking in objectivity.
Why would one engage in fearful thinking? I have already suggested masochism as one explanation. But another explanation may be more pertinent. I think tht one tends to believe that the worst will happen so as not to build up false hopes and thus be disappointed. So, for example, those who hysterically and fanatically insist that there is no afterlife are terrified lest they expect something good that in fact may not come to pass. Their fear, so to speak, is that they may live in a fool’s paradise. Fearful thinking may be described as bending over backward to avoid wishful thinking. But I must again emphasize that it is just as open as wishful thinking to subjective error. To put the matter another way, I would say that just as those who insist that there is an afterlife may be engaged in purely wishful thinking, those who insist that there isn’t are just as subjectively biased, only in the direction of fearful thinking.
Five Thousand B.C. and Other Philosophical Fantasies Page 9
