Death

[mediamogul]

I feel as though I have seen this dualist myth reduced to an absurdity by my experience working with those who have serious mental illness and traumatic brain injuries. When you watch someone's personality change drastically as a result of either you realize how subordinate our "consciousness" is to brain function and how dependant upon brain function our personality and decision making abilities are. To claim that there is "spirit" or an essence of a person external to these physiological processes seems unfounded. This is the materialists argument, which I think is valid. Consciousness does not exist outside of brain function and personality is dependant upon the latter.

In short we don't fully understand why one person's consciousness is bound to their particular body as opposed to another but I will venture a guess that it has nothing to do with a "soul" or "spirit" inhabiting that body.

Any dualist might ask in cases of brain trauma - where did they go? Where is their personality or self or whatever? I agree with you that asking such questions makes no more sense than asking where we go after we die.

The answer would be that they don't "go" anywhere. Their brain simply doesn't not function the same as it did and they experience drastic changes in everything from cognition to perception to reasoning to their senses.

Asking where we go when we die is like asking where a flame goes after it is extinguished. Or where a harmony goes when we stop singing. We all know what it was like to not exist. It's what happened before we came into existence and will most likely happen when our life is extinguished.