Oct 30, 2014 04:44 AM
http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc...278&cn=394
Death and the Afterlife, by Samuel Scheffler, Oxford University Press, 2013
Review by Peter Stone
EXCERPT: ...The topic of Scheffler's book is the "collective afterlife," or "the continued existence of other people after one's own death". Scheffler contrasts the collective afterlife with the personal afterlife, in which many people (but not Scheffler) believe. Scheffler argues that "the survival of humanity matters more to each of us than we usually realize; indeed...it matters more to us even than our own survival," at least in some respects. Scheffler believes that a fuller realization of this fact might motivate people to care more about the continued survival of the species--a goal that Russell, to be sure, would wholeheartedly endorse. Scheffler further argues that while the collective afterlife is critically important to human life, a personal afterlife, if it existed, would threaten our entire way of being. "Our confidence in our values," he concludes, "depends both on death, which is inevitable and which many of us nevertheless fear, and on the survival of human life, which is not at all inevitable and threats to which most of us do not fear enough"...
Death and the Afterlife, by Samuel Scheffler, Oxford University Press, 2013
Review by Peter Stone
EXCERPT: ...The topic of Scheffler's book is the "collective afterlife," or "the continued existence of other people after one's own death". Scheffler contrasts the collective afterlife with the personal afterlife, in which many people (but not Scheffler) believe. Scheffler argues that "the survival of humanity matters more to each of us than we usually realize; indeed...it matters more to us even than our own survival," at least in some respects. Scheffler believes that a fuller realization of this fact might motivate people to care more about the continued survival of the species--a goal that Russell, to be sure, would wholeheartedly endorse. Scheffler further argues that while the collective afterlife is critically important to human life, a personal afterlife, if it existed, would threaten our entire way of being. "Our confidence in our values," he concludes, "depends both on death, which is inevitable and which many of us nevertheless fear, and on the survival of human life, which is not at all inevitable and threats to which most of us do not fear enough"...