This chapter examines whether agnosticism with respect to personal ontology should lead us toward agnosticism with respect to the possibility of life after death. Two afterlife scenarios are considered: resurrection and reincarnation. It is argued that all the major accounts of personal ontology are compatible with both resurrection and reincarnation, except for the non-self thesis, which is incompatible with resurrection. Various arguments for the conclusion that resurrection or reincarnation are impossible are considered and rejected. But it is argued that reincarnation faces a difficulty: the standard evidence cited for reincarnation, namely the presence of mental states apparently from a previous life, would, even if corroborated, not show that one is identical with someone from a previous life. What’s more, it would not provide any evidence for substance dualism.

This chapter examines mind uploading, in which one allegedly thwarts death by “uploading” oneself to a computer. This chapter examines various possible ontologies which might be associated with “uploaded” persons: the non-self view; the view that they would be immaterial souls; the view that they would be computers, or particular physical parts of computers; the view that they would be patterns; the view that they would be simulated objects. Various problems with each proposal are identified. An additional problem is discussed: regardless of which personal ontology is true with respect to us now (pre-upload), it seems doubtful that one could be moved into a computer by way of the processes which would be involved in mind uploading (e.g., copying one’s mental states to a computer). Finally, practical matters are considered, chief among them being the question of whether one should attempt to “upload” oneself if given the opportunity.

Socrates provides here an eschatological account that is thoroughly integrated into a novel cosmology. I argue that the Phaedo’s cosmology draws on and reflects the account of forms and ordinary objects that Socrates presented over the course of the Phaedo. The result is a distinctly Platonic account of the cosmos and the afterlife, one that treats the best parts of the cosmos as form-like and the worst parts as the source of flux. How we live now determines whether after death we will live in a more form-like or flux-like area; this dwelling, in turn, determines whether our souls are benefited or harmed in the afterlife. Since Socrates does not suggest in the Phaedo that any god is responsible for the cosmos, I argue that he avoids needing to explain why our souls can be harmed in the afterlife. In the secondary literature, this section of the dialogue is universally called “the myth,” which has led to treating the entirety of his account as having the same epistemic status. I argue instead that the account has five distinct stages, only the fifth of which Socrates calls a “myth” (muthos).

Chapter 7 continues unpacking the enhancement thesis with a focus on life after death: believing in life beyond death can enhance the meaning of life. It can do so because with life after death there is a larger context, there is an additional virtue, namely, hope, the urge to “transcend” oneself can be satisfied better, and existential boredom can be cured. This chapter, too, ends with an “existential move”: those who do not believe in life beyond death should be distressed by the thought that there is no life after death. The chapter responds to Bernard Williams’s claim that an eternal afterlife would be boring, and it discusses the existential harm of death with extinction.