Supervenience and afterlife

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Kharazmi University, Tehran

Abstract

In this paper, an explication of the term "supervenience" is presented. Then, this explication is used to clarify the meaning of the supervenience of the soul (mind) on the body (brain) and its effect on the philosophical problem of the afterlife. It has shown that physicalism about soul cannot be formulated upon supervenience per se, since reductivity is an essential aspect of physicalism. So, the main thesis of this paper is that supervenience of the soul on body is consistent with non-physicalistic/non-reductive versions of an afterlife as well as the physicalistic ones.

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