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" 'You will observe that the essential immortality of the soul is not exactly the Christian doctrine, which is that the body is reproduced, and with it presumably the memory. There is nothing at all to prove it except that it was a belief clung to by St. Paul and founded by him upon the resurrection of Jesus."
Peirce: CP 6.521 Cross-Ref:††
521. "'If the power to remember dies with the material body, has the question of any single person's future life after death any particular interest for him?' As you put the question, it is not whether the matter ought rationally to have an interest, but whether as a fact it has; and perhaps this is the proper question, trusting as it seems to do, rather to instinct, than to reason. Now if we had a drug which would abolish memory for a while, and you were going to be cut for the stone, suppose the surgeon were to say, 'You will suffer damnably, but I will administer this drug so that you will during that suffering lose all memory of your previous life. Now you have of course no particular interest in your sufferings as long as you will not remember your present and past life, you know, have you?'†1"
Peirce has the salient habit of interviewing himself. As I am quoting him, I must put his interview questions with ' rather than " to achieve such clarity as is possible.
Steeped as I am in matters related to immortality, I must wonder what Peirce would have made of the world he surmised. I assume he knew what was coming as Nietzsche did and Wittgenstein knew. Now more than a century after Peirce died, one could imagine with some possible veracity that memory remains specific to the spirit (person) and that conscious is nonlocal, and that the spirit survives with a body that approximates the earth body without being a physical entity.
Memory is abolished in some near death accounts and appears to function with complete clarity minus the active participation of the body -- brain.
On the other hand I have no trouble believing that the body is a largely misunderstood wonder. Largely misunderstood because we apparently assume the way to cure folk is to zap alleged internal enemies. That may seem reasonable. But whether it is better than approaching the situation with love and changing the underlying energy patterns.
In our binary world one way trumps the other. How ironical.
Peirce: CP 6.521 Cross-Ref:††
521. "'If the power to remember dies with the material body, has the question of any single person's future life after death any particular interest for him?' As you put the question, it is not whether the matter ought rationally to have an interest, but whether as a fact it has; and perhaps this is the proper question, trusting as it seems to do, rather to instinct, than to reason. Now if we had a drug which would abolish memory for a while, and you were going to be cut for the stone, suppose the surgeon were to say, 'You will suffer damnably, but I will administer this drug so that you will during that suffering lose all memory of your previous life. Now you have of course no particular interest in your sufferings as long as you will not remember your present and past life, you know, have you?'†1"
Peirce has the salient habit of interviewing himself. As I am quoting him, I must put his interview questions with ' rather than " to achieve such clarity as is possible.
Steeped as I am in matters related to immortality, I must wonder what Peirce would have made of the world he surmised. I assume he knew what was coming as Nietzsche did and Wittgenstein knew. Now more than a century after Peirce died, one could imagine with some possible veracity that memory remains specific to the spirit (person) and that conscious is nonlocal, and that the spirit survives with a body that approximates the earth body without being a physical entity.
Memory is abolished in some near death accounts and appears to function with complete clarity minus the active participation of the body -- brain.
On the other hand I have no trouble believing that the body is a largely misunderstood wonder. Largely misunderstood because we apparently assume the way to cure folk is to zap alleged internal enemies. That may seem reasonable. But whether it is better than approaching the situation with love and changing the underlying energy patterns.
In our binary world one way trumps the other. How ironical.
