Where You Go When You’re Dead

Abstract

Where do you go when you’re dead, when you leave this world? The dead, like the unborn and the living, are possible persons. To be possible, arguably, means to exist in some possible world. It’s tempting, therefore, to assume that when you die, you simply “travel” to another possible world. The temptation, however, should be resisted. There is no travel between possible worlds. What happens in one possible world has no effect on what happens in another. And the same is true of coming to exist. You don’t enter this world by traveling from another one. How you get to this world depends on the type of object in question. Buildings are “born” by being built. People are born (usually) via sexual intercourse. These ordinary facts need to be understood from an ontological point of view. Just as you don’t enter this world from another, when you leave it, you don’t go to another.