Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-8-2024
Journal Title
TheoLogica: An International Journal for Philosophy of Religion and Philosophical Theology
Volume Number
8
Issue Number
2
DOI
https://doi.org/10.14428/thl.v8i2.82213
Version
Publisher PDF: the final published version of the article, with professional formatting and typesetting
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC-ND License.
Disciplines
Philosophy
Abstract
Can a materialist look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come? Dean Zimmerman’s Falling Elevator Model is a speculative account of how persons, understood as material beings, might survive in a post-mortem resurrected state—a just-so story. It assumes endurantism, the doctrine that persons and other ordinary objects are three-dimensional beings which are wholly present at every time they exist. I argue that neither endurantism, nor purdurantism, according to which persons are four-dimensional ‘worms’ who have proper temporal parts at every time that they exist, provides a plausible account of personal survival. If you want to be a Christian materialist you should embrace exdurantism, the ‘stage theory’, according which persons are instantaneous stages and are not identical to their temporal successors either in this world or in any world to come. Exdurantism provides a plausible account of survival in ordinary cases and extraordinary cases of this-worldly fission, and of post-mortem survival.
Digital USD Citation
Baber, Harriet, "Personal Persistence and Post-Mortem Survival" (2024). Philosophy: Faculty Scholarship. 27.
https://digital.sandiego.edu/philosophy_facpub/27