Volume 16, Issue 2, April 1999
Dean W. Zimmerman
Pages 194-212
The Compatibility of Materialism and Survival
The “Falling Elevator” Model
It is not easy to be a materialist and yet believe that there is a way for human beings to survive death. Peter van Inwagen identifies the central obstacle the materialist faces: Namely, the need to posit appropriate “immanent-causal” connections between my body as it is at death and some living body elsewhere or elsewhen. I offer a proposal, consistent with van Inwagen’s own materialist metaphysics, for making materialism compatible with the possibility of survival.