Professor Masahiro Morioka: ‘Animated persona and the existence of dead persons.’

In 2016, a series of terrorist attacks occurred in Brussels and more than 30 people were killed at the Brussels international airport (Zaventem) and metro stations. After the incident I visited l'Université Libre de Bruxelles for participating in a conference. At the Brussels airport I saw many flowers being placed on an airport corridor and many people surrounding the place. We can see similar scenes around the world. One question that often comes to me is why we place flowers at the place where victims were killed. If we believe that one’s soul goes to the heaven or the hell, the killed person does not exist there. If we believe that a person’s mind returns to nothing, the killed person does not exist there as well. In my country, Japan, there are many people who vaguely believe that a killed person still exists at the site of the event for a long period of time. Japanese people usually place food or a bottle of juice at the site in addition to flowers. In this case, it makes sense to offer flowers at the place the event took place because by offering flowers we could communicate with deceased people who might be still hovering over there. I personally do not believe in the existence of a soul as entity, but I truly sympathize with their view of life and death. Over the past ten years, I have investigated the “communication” between a deceased person and their family members from a philosophical point of view by using the concept of “animated persona.” We can find this kind of communication in hospitals, in various memoirs of bereaved families, and in theatrical plays. This topic is also closely connected with phenomenology. In my presentation, I would like to show some of the typical examples of the appearance of an animated persona and try to explain them in terms of philosophy and phenomenology.