Jayarava's Raves: There is No Life After Death, Sorry.: In this essay, I begin with a longish introduction in which I recap some important points made in previous essays about the idea of life ...
According to Jayarava, the dynamic of afterlife beliefs is like this:
1) The fact of universal death creates cognitive dissonance.
2) According to testimony, certain experiences appear to demonstrate that consciousness is not tied to the body, but can exist independently.
3) So the idea that something might survive the death of the body and continue to "live" seems plausible.
4) Emotional weighting of facts (salience) makes this seem probable, and the finality of death improbable.
5) Since the finality of death causes intense cognitive dissonance, post-mortem survival seems preferable.
6) We make the leap from probable/preferable to actually true; and it feels satisfying because we have resolved the dissonance created by the fact of death and been consistent with our other beliefs.
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