Process philosophers: Life after death?

Philosopher Robert McDermott asserts that process thought regards life after death and other paranormal experiencing as completely natural phenomena: “Besides expanding William James’s radical empiricism, with its acceptance of nonsensory perception, Whitehead also developed an ontology that explains the possibility of not only extrasensory perception, but also psychokinesis and evidence for life after death.”

McDermott clarifies that Whitehead “did not believe life after death to be actual.” Nonetheless, Whitehead “acknowledged its possibility because psyche is potentially free to exist and perceive apart from its physical body.”

Robert McDermott, “David Ray Griffin on Steiner and Whitehead, Rethinking Consciousness: Extraordinary Challenges for Contemporary Science (Anoka: MN, Process Century Press, 2020).

David Ray Griffin argues that Whitehead’s panentheism offers two reasons for concluding the universe is meaningful. “On the one hand,” given the primordial nature of God, “our world reflects a divine purpose. On the other hand, every value that is achieved is then preserved everlastingly in God’s receptive side, called the ‘consequent nature of God.’” This means, Griffin explains, that: “Whitehead’s rejection of the materialist identification of the mind with the brain allows life after death to be affirmed, if it is supported by trustworthy evidence.”

Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, 345-51, in Griffin, “Whitehead’s Naturalism and a Non-Darwinian View of Evolution,” in John B. Cobb, J., Back to Darwin: A Richer Account of Evolution (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2008), 389-390.