METAPHYSICS BY DEFAULT:
A NATURAL MECHANISM OF TRANSMIGRATION
ABSTRACT:
Naturalists and metaphysical philosophers today share little common ground. And we wonder, can metaphysical philosophy be reconciled to naturalism? The author of this paper argues that it can. The challenge of the reconciliation is shown to lie in finding a natural mechanism for transmigration.
The paper begins with a review of the concept of personal identity. This review highlights the three criteria most universally accepted as being necessary for the maintenance of personal identity over time. Physical continuity, episodic memory, and subjectivity are the criteria reviewed.
After presenting the criteria, the paper delves into the known natural mechanisms of their operation. Very specific advances in cognitive science are cited: these theoretical and experimental advances are shown to correlate personal identity with the function of particular living structures of the vertebrate brain. This correlation leads to a pair of related deductions: personal identity is shown to be both corporeal and temporally finite in its operation.
The paper weaves these deductions into William James' "stream of thought" paradigm. James' "time-gap" physiology is extended by means of a classical illustration. When extended through the illustration, time-gaps are shown to encapsulate the subjective experience encountered at the temporal limits of personal identity. These limits are interpreted as "terminals" of the time-gaps — their beginning and ending coordinates, in analogy to the coordinates which delimit physical transportation lines.
The illustration maps subjective conditions of a death and a birth to two corresponding time-gap terminals. This mapping reveals an exact metaphysical relation between the two personal identities which the illustration has sketched. When the illustration's time-gap is compared against a time-gap known to occur in nature, we see that a natural mechanism emerges for the transfer of personal identity between lives. This mechanism is a passive, insensate condition of existence — an "existential passage" — which relies upon nature's causal substratum for execution of the transference. Subjective awareness is transferred between lives; not by any physical or epiphenomenal action, but through a failure of personal identity. This transference constitutes a natural form of transmigration.
The essential properties of this transmigration mechanism are briefly limned: the temporal conditions of passage are emphasized. Also, karma and other social rules of afterlife are shown to be incommensurate with existential passage.
The four distinct types of existential passage are diagrammed. Diagrams are presented alongside results of a formal probability calculus. This formal calculus has proved the relative frequency of occurrence, for three of the four passage types, to be expected under conditions of population stability.
The philosophy has application to the concerns of contemporary environmental ethicists and animal-liberation activists. Discussion of this practical application is reserved for a post-presentation venue. [ full essay at http://mbdefault.org ]
