re: Constraints on the aferlife

frick it. You asked a serious question so I will give you a serious start of an answer.

quote:

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I do presume that if there is an aferlife it follows the laws of nature, yes.

I don't think that's unreasonable.

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You're sort of missing the point here. People believe in an afterlife because the very existence of your own subjective experience is clear evidence that there is more than physical laws involved in the operation of the universe.

You can get bogged down arguing about the definition of nature, but whatever you call it, your subjective experience is ruled by laws that are simply not observable. I think this is Roger Penrose's position on the matter fwiw.

Thus, there is evidence for an afterlife, which even the ancient philosophers like Socrates and Aristotle acknowledged, and the very subject you are raising was discussed a lot in medieval philosophy, most notably by Aquinas. So if you want to read how other people have answered the question, pretty much all roads will eventually lead back to Aquinas.

Google "aquinas disembodied memory" and you will get lots of links (like LINK) that discuss thought on what kind of memory disembodied souls are logically allowed to have in between the time of the second resurrection. Generally, medieval philosophers focused on whether and what types of memories were formally associated with the intellect, because the intellect was thought to survive physical death, even though there was no chance for using its union with the physical body to learn new things and have new memories.