No Mental Life after Brain Death: The Argument from the Neural Localization of Mental Functions

The paper samples the large body of neuroscientific evidence suggesting that each mental function takes place within specific neural structures. For instance, vision appears to occur in the visual cortex, motor control in the motor cortex, spatial memory in the hippocampus, and cognitive control in the prefrontal cortex. Evidence comes from neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, neurochemistry, brain stimulation, neuroimaging, lesion studies, and behavioral genetics. If mental functions take place within neural structures, mental functions cannot survive brain death. Therefore, there is no mental life after brain death. We will argue that the mind is located in the brain in such a way that there is no mental life after brain death. A fortiori, there is no mental life after the body decays. Our conclusion is overwhelmingly supported by neuroscience. Before we can present samples of the evidence, some preliminaries are in order. First, whether there is an afterlife is an empirical question, which we can attempt to answer on empirical grounds to the best of our ability. We will rely on empirical evidence. Believers in the afterlife often discuss empirical evidence too, but sometimes they also appear to engage in wishful thinking. Many people wish to survive their bodily death. But wishing doesn’t make it so. Wishful thinking is an understandable human proclivity that nevertheless has no role to play in determining how things are. Because of this, we establish from the outset that whenever we encounter a conjecture about the afterlife that is completely unsupported by empirical evidence, we may dismiss it as wishful thinking: No Wishful Thinking Principle: Empirically unsupported conjectures about empirical questions need not be taken seriously. The No Wishful Thinking Principle rules out two kinds of conjecture. First, there are conjectures that are empirically testable but for which there is currently no evidence whatsoever. Examples from other areas of inquiry include the hypotheses that there are unicorns and fairies. Second, there are conjectures that are not empirically testable even in principle. Examples include the hypothesis that the universe was created five minutes ago complete with memories, fossil records, etc. and the hypothesis that we all live in a perfect computer simulation (like the movie The Matrix, except that each of us is just a piece of software with no physical body). Sometimes it is difficult to determine whether an empirically unsupported conjecture about the afterlife is empirically testable in principle. It may depend on whether divine actions must follow accepted physical principles and whether divine actions are physically detectable.