Scientific American has recently published a provocative article explaining humans’ seemingly universal inability to imagine a lack of consciousness and, thus, an end to consciousness at death. In short, the conscious imagination never experiences non-consciousness. When we’re not conscious, we’re not aware and thus can’t remember what it was like. At most, we can remember regaining consciousness. This inherent quality may be a key part of the explanation for the widespread belief in some sort of afterlife.
But the article does not address at least one important dimension of this issue: imagining that other beings – human or otherwise – have the same kind of consciousness. It is a categorical leap to apply insights about one’s own experience to that of others. (more…)
