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The Possibility of Reincarnation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Harold W. Noonan
Harold W. Noonan
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham, England
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Man has always hoped to survive his bodily death, and it is a central tenet of many religions that such survival is a reality. It has been supposed by many that one form such survival might take is reincarnation in another body. Subscribers to this view include Pythagoras, Plato sometimes, and a large number of Eastern thinkers. Other thinkers have, of course, disputed that reincarnation is a fact, and some have even denied that it is a possibility. But seldom has it been claimed by its opponents that reincarnation is a logical impossibility.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 26 , Issue 4 , December 1990 , pp. 483 - 491
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

References

1 MacIntosh, J. J., ‘Reincarnation and Relativized Identity’, Religious Studies, xxv (1989), 153–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 See Shoemaker, S., ‘Persons and their Pasts’, American Philosophical Quarterly, VII (1970), 269–85.Google ScholarParfit, D., ‘Personal Identity’, Philosophical Review, LXXX 3–27Google Scholar and Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984)Google Scholar, Nozick, R., Philosophical Explanations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981)Google Scholar, Lewis, D., ‘Survival and Identity’ in Rorty, A. (ed.), The Identities of Persons (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976)Google Scholar, Perry, John, ‘Can the Self Divide?’, Journal of Philosophy, LXXIII (1972), 463–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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5 This is only a rough statement of the Only x and y principle: for a discussion of its inadequacies and a reformulation designed to avoid them see H. W. Noonan, Personal Identity, Ch. 7.

6 S. Shoemaker, ‘Persons and their Pasts’ and R. Nozick, Philosophical Explanations.

7 Robinson, D., ‘Can Ameobae Divide without Multiplying?’, Australian Journal of Philosophy, LXIII (1985), 299–319.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Lewis, D., Philosophical Papers, vol. 1 (Oxford University Press, 1988)Google Scholar, postscript to ‘Survival and Identity’.

9 See Nozick, Philosophical Explanations, pp. 656ff.

10 See Salmon, N., Reference and Essence (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982), Appendix 1Google Scholar.