February 17, 2000

James presupposed that "thought is a function of the brain"1 . This statement usually would make one think, James says, that if there is no brain there will be no thought either. However, the word "function" does not determine the relationship between brain and thought as exclusively one of a producer and a product. James distinguishes three types of functions: productive, releasing and transmissive. The first one is the one that is usually thought of in the above given context and it means that the brain produces thought. To clarify the releasing function James gives an example with a trigger of a crossbow, whose purpose is to let the bow occupy its normal shape. The function that James emphasizes is the transmissive function. The way it operates is elucidated by an example: there is light and there is a coloured glass through which the light passes and thus the final result is a coloured light. In this example one can substitute "light" for "consciousness" or "mind", "coloured glass" for "brain", and "coloured light" for "person". There is a mind and there is a brain through which consciousness passes and thus the final result is a person. In this case brain does not produce person but it does take an active part in its creation. And here comes the proof for the possibility that there is life after death: if there is no coloured glass there will still be light; if there is no brain there will still be consciousness.

However, this is only true if we assume that logic, mathematics and physics in life after death function in the same way they function in life before death, for the above mentioned analogy is consistent only according to the logic in life before death. This assumption is fundamentally wrong because it implies sameness in two opposite worlds, or rather in a world we know relevantly well and a world of whose existence we are not even sure; we can't claim sameness because we know nothing about this world and logic might as well not exist in the form we know. Thus the second part of the analogy "if there is no brain there will still be consciousness"2 is unverifyable.

Then James goes on to say that "the whole universe of material things... should turn out to be a mere surface-veil of phenomena, hiding and keeping back the world of genuine realities"3 , in which case the brains could be "thin and half-transparrent places in the veil"4. Thought, he says, is entirely dependent on the brain for when there are no brains there are no sources for "special stream of consciousness" either. But "the sphere of being that supplied the consciousness" will still exist.

Further on James discusses a third possibility: that there is a requisite degree of movement in the brain called "threshold" which has to be available in order for consciousness to enter the brain. The height of the threshold varies. "When it falls, as in states of lucidity, we grow conscious of things of which we should be unconscious at other times; when it rises, as in drowsiness, consciousness sinks in amounts."5 This statement, though, could be interpreted in two ways: the height of the threshold falls because the particular person is in a state of lucidity, or the particular person is in a state of a lucidity because the threshold falls. Here arises a serious problem: if it is the first case, then it means that being in lucidity comes before consciousness enters the brain, for it determines the height of the threshold and thus the amount of consciousness to penetrate the brain. This is inconsistent with the theory, according to which consciousness is necessary to make the brain function. If it is the second case, then the consciousness decides according to its own laws how high should be the threshold, which laws are completely inconceivable, and moreover since James is refering to a "universal consciousness" then all people should be in lucidity and in drowsiness simultaneously, which makes no sense. Thus the idea of the threshold makes no sense itself because of failure in the logic of it.

Bertrand Russell disproves the existence of immortality. He says that mind is not a continuing thing but rather consists of occurrences linked together through some "intimate connections"6 . He paraphrases the question of immortality as "the question whether these intimate relations exist between occurrences connected with a living body and other occurrences which take place after that body is dead"7 . However, in order to establish a link between two distinct events one has to have knowledge about both of them. We do not have,though, any knowledge of the occurrences that take place after the body is dead. Therefore such link cannot be established.

Russell, then, includes habits as a necessary condition for a person to be the same person and then asserts that memory and habits are inconceivable without a body. "Habit and memory are both due to effects in the body, especially the brain... Now the effects of the body are obliterated by death and decay, and it is difficult to see how, short of miracle, they can be transferred to a new body such as we may be supposed to inhabit in the next life."8 However, exactly at this point when "effects of the body are obliterated by death and decay" is where logic ceases functioning in the way we are used to using it. Everything beyond this point can not be based on our logic, for it belongs to a different world, different dimension where our brains do not have the power to impose their logic for they are not extended so far. Thus the world after death (if there is such) is left intact, full of miracles according to our concept of them, but not according to the ideas of its habitants, perhaps exactly the miracles about which Russell was writing. So if we go back to the initial sentence and we write it again but stop at the above mentioned point we get the following: "Now the effects on the body, which give rise to habits and memories, are obliterated by death and decay..." Here is the limit of our logic and any assertions beyond it are unverifyable.