Death from a rational perspective (I)
Getting into the problem of the self and personal identity, demands that we define it. Philosophically, the self is the continuous unity of our body, especially our mind capacities, such as the sense organs and their use, and our various mind-entities such as memories, personality, reasoning capacities, and so on.
This unity is an unbroken link between the self's past, present and future. When I say, "I am writing an article (at this moment, at 26 years old)" and "When I was 6 years old, I started going to school", the one important thing in common between those two "I's" is the unbroken continuity of a singular physical body between 6 and 26 years of age.
Now, we know that most of our atoms are recycled every seven years. So obviously any understanding of the self has to proceed solely at the macroscopic level. Also, there is no separation between the body and the mind, as they are one and the same. However, less strict definitions only use the mind as standard for the maintenance of personal identity.
We will use this loose definition since in our case it doesn't matter anyway - the notions of the afterlife and reincarnation both fail to fulfill even this loose definition.
If proponents of the afterlife are correct, our death is followed by a dimensional transport of our "soul" to an immaterial place of eternal life. Despite the presence of some vague form of continuity, this assertion still suffers from two fatal problems. First, it suffers from major ontological problems; we cannot define what a soul is, or what immaterial means.
Secondly, we know for a fact that most of our brain functions are purely material, and there is no reason to think that any are not. My memories, emotions, reasoning capacities, personality are all matter-based, and thus cannot be part of the "soul" and cannot co-exist with immateriality.
My sense organs are likewise material and cannot co-exist with immateriality. Whatever my "soul" is, it cannot be me. Therefore the notion of an afterlife cannot in any way apply to me as a material, human being.
Reincarnation is not much better. According to this doctrine, the body perishes but the mind survives and enters another body, as part of an eternal cycle of births and deaths. While this idea does not suffer from the same ontological problems, it does suffer other problems, such as the impossibility of a
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