IS ANYONE THERE? AN INTERDISCIPLINARY EXPLORATION OF THE SELF

Belief in a personal afterlife is a central tenet of Christianity as well as other religions; but how do such convictions fare under the scrutiny of philosophical analysis and scientific inquiry? Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, this study explores current thinking about the nature of consciousness and what, if anything, constitutes the self. It examines the subjective quality of mental activity, together with other phenomena not readily accommodated within a physicalist belief-system, along with seminal early Christian expositions of afterlife, before concluding that personal consciousness and a sense of the self are neither accidental nor illusory, but genuine phenomena that supervene the electro-biochemical processes of the brain and could, in principle, be animated by other substrates - findings that resonate with Christian insights relating to afterlife as resurrection, as re-embodied, form-full, trans-physical being.