~George Burns modified
One of the points where there is a significant, long-lasting intersection of the interests of many philosophers with the interests of many people of all kinds and conditions concerns the nature and significance of death. How should we understand the mortality of all living things and, closer to home, how should we understand our own mortality? Is it possible for persons to survive biological death? This is a topic that has occupied both analytic and continental philosophy in the twentieth century (e.g., Fred Feldman, Martin Heidegger). When the topic of death is ignored or denied in popular culture, some philosophers, theologians, social and political critics rail against the inauthentic complacency of ignoring one of the most important facts about our lives (see, for example, Søren Kierkegaard’s essay “At a Graveside” or Ernest Becker’s famous 1974 book, The Denial of Death). But what precisely are the facts of death? Is it true that a person is annihilated when she dies, or is there a possibility or even a likelihood that she may survive death? Are any of the religious conceptions of an afterlife promising from a philosophical point of view?
Afterlife
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- Augustine, Keith, 2008, Hallucinatory Near-Death Experiences, extensive critical survey of the evidence concerning NDEs.
- Near-Death Experience, a brief presentation of a skeptical view of NDEs.
- The Junkyard, a scholarly blog on imagination
- Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Imagery and Imagination
- Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Imagination
- PhilPapers collection of papers on Imagination
Looking to get yourself a present this Valentine’s Day? The El Paso Zoo has you covered. It will name a cockroach after your ex and then feed it to a meerkat live on camera.You can message the zoo on Facebook with your ex’s name, then wait patiently for February 14 to watch the roach get devoured during the “Quit Bugging Me” meerkat event, which will live-stream on Facebook and the zoo’s website. The names of those exes will also be displayed around the meerkat exhibit and on social media starting February 11. The zoo calls it “the perfect Valentine’s Day gift.”
Here is the story, via LegalNomads. Just when I think I have all of these covered, one comes along that is worse than anything I was expecting…
