erned in neuroscience commentary, which straddles hard science and speculative philosophy. Patricia Churchland's work in what she calls neurophilosophy is exemplary of this. In the background of afterlife theory in this context is a theory of present life that obliterates body-soul dualism. She explains in an interview:
[Q]uestions I was interested in as a philosophy graduate student were really questions about the human mind . . . about what it is for something to be conscious . . . it became increasingly clear to me that these were really questions about the brain . . . The more neuroscience I knew, the more it seemed to me that we really had the key to understanding the nature of the mind via neuroscience. . . . I was always unconvinced by arguments that in addition to the brain, there is a nonphysical soul; and it's the soul that makes decisions, the soul that feels and thinks (Campbell 154).
Churchland rejects the view that "in addition to the brain, there is a nonphysical soul . . . If you're unconvinced by that, then the nature of the brain . . . [is] relevant in understanding these fundamental questions that philosophers are interested in" (Campbell 154-5). This materialist conception of life, rejecting as it does body-soul or mind-body dualism, is implicated in objections to a scientific theory of the afterlife that give special place to life-consciousness as an attribute of the immortal soul and to an idea that such consciousness, perhaps in a more purified form, will survive physical death. Churchland's answer is unequivocal, although she acknowledges that tragedy, death, and similar issues are "deeply troubling." Nevertheless, she says, "in lots of ways the idea of an afterlife does you an enormous disservice. It gives you the idea that you can defer lots of things and make it all come out right later" (Campbell 156). Paul Churchland's position is that the fact that neuroscience does not yet give a full materialist ac...