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Evidence for early dualism and a more direct path to afterlife beliefs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 December 2006

David Estes
David Estes*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY82071
*
[email protected]
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Abstract:

Ample evidence for dualism in early childhood already exists. Young children have explicit knowledge of the distinction between mental and physical phenomena, which provides the foundation for a rapidly developing theory of mind. Belief in psychological immortality might then follow naturally from this mentalistic conception of human existence and thus require no organized cognitive system dedicated to producing it.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 29 , Issue 5 , October 2006 , pp. 470
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2006

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References

Notes

1. In addition to abundant naturalistic evidence documenting that they spontaneously talk about their mental states (e.g., Bartsch & Wellman 1995), there is also experimental evidence indicating that preschool children have conscious access to some types of mental activity (Estes 1998), which of course would be a prerequisite for abstracting the mental–physical distinction from their own experience.

2. And who knows for sure? Not Bering. And not Francis Crick (1994), Theodosius Dobzhansky (1967), Martin Gardner (1999), or me.