Never Say Die: Why We Can’t Imagine Death

Jesse Bering on why so many of us think our minds con­tinue on after we die; rather than being a by-product of reli­gion or an emo­tional secu­rity blan­ket, such beliefs stem from the very nature of our consciousness.

And so per­son per­ma­nence may be the final cog­ni­tive hur­dle that gets in the way of our effec­tively real­iz­ing the dead as they truly are — infi­nitely in situ, inan­i­mate car­bon residue. Instead it’s much more “nat­ural” to imag­ine them as exist­ing in some vague, unob­serv­able locale, very much liv­ing their dead lives.