The Mind-Body Problem IIB
14
The Mind-Body Problem IIB
The Main Physicalist Alternatives to Substance Dualism
But this idea of immaterial souls, capable of defying the laws of physics, has outlived its credibility thanks to the advance of the natural sciences.
Daniel Dennett, Freedom Evolves
The view of human persons I defend is known in the literature as the constitution view. According to it, we human persons are constituted by our bodies without being identical with the bodies that constitute us.
Kevin Corcoran, In Search of the Soul
Animalism says that each of us is numerically identical with an animal: there is a certain organism, and you and it are one and the same.
Eric Olson, What Are We?
Materialism is waning in a number of significant respects—one of which is the ever-growing number of major philosophers who reject materialism or at least have strong sympathies with anti-materialist views.
Robert C. Koons and George Bealer, The Waning of Materialism
1—Introduction
In chapter eleven we looked at the arguments for and against property and mere-property dualism. In chapter twelve we examined physicalist alternatives to dualism regarding consciousness and mental properties. In chapter thirteen we turned our focus to the subject of consciousness and analyzed different versions of and arguments for and against substance dualism. Following our pattern, in this chapter we offer a brief treatment of the main physicalist alternatives to substance dualism: animalism, the material constitution view, the brain view, and worm theory.
2—Animalism
2.1 The View
According to animalism, while there may be nonhuman persons (e.g., angels), we are essentially identical to animals, biological organisms, members of the species Homo sapiens, or living bodies without artificial parts. As such we are substantial continuants that sustain absolute identity through accidental change even though we are made up entirely of matter and may gain and lose parts over time.
What explains an animal’s ability to retain literal sameness through part replacement? The answer is that animals have lives or, more accurately, lives “have” organisms. A life is a self-organizing, self-sustaining event that enables the organism to sustain its internal structure despite material turnover. A life is a vast array of biological events/processes. How does a life provide the ability for an organism to retain identity through part replacement? In this way: Consider organism O1 at time t1 composed of all and only the parts called “the p’s.” Each part is constantly undergoing events, changes, and biological processes. Let us call the set of all the events of the p’s at t1 “the e’s.” Now consider an organism O2 at a later time t2. Let all and only its parts at t2 be called “the q’s,” and let us call the set of all the events of the q’s at t2 “the k’s.” Now we can state persistence conditions for organisms/animals in this way:
Po: O1 at time t1 is identical to O2 at time t2 just in case the e’s are caught up into or constitute life L1 at t1, the k’s are caught up into or constitute life L2 at t2, and L1 is identical to L2.
Put more simply, if the activities of an organism’s parts and those of “another” organism’s parts are both caught up into the same life, then the “two” organisms are actually identical. The idea is that the event called “a life” is ontologically more fundamental than an organism, and the life is the organism’s career such that the life—a special kind of event, namely, the sum of the metabolic activities of the organism’s parts—sustains the delicate, complicated structure among the organism’s parts. A life is a homeodynamic storm of atomic simples (a dynamic set of processes over time that draw in and expel parts while maintaining its structure), a self-maintaining, well-individuated, jealous event. An organism persists just in case the metabolic process that is its life continues to impose its characteristic organization on new parts. Moreover, what is it for a set of entities—the x’s—to count as parts? The x’s compose (are parts of) some y (and y will always be an organism) if and only if the activities of the x’s constitute a life. Finally, while we are essentially animals, we are accidentally persons. Being a person is like being a teenager—a phase we go through when certain psychological criteria are met (e.g., capable of reasoning, forming goals and developing ways to achieve them). Thus you exist at conception, but since you are merely an animal, you have little value, eventually you become a person for a while, and if at the end of life you fail to satisfy the relevant psychological criteria for personhood, you continue to exist, but now as a nonpersonal animal. Key animalists are Eric Olson, Peter van Inwagen, and Trenton Merricks.
2.2 Assessing Animalism
Besides the fact that animalism allows one to avoid what some take to be problematic substance dualism, the main argument for animalism is that it solves the thinking animal problem. Suppose we see Bob sitting in a chair. Now there seems to be a thinking animal in that chair—a living organism/body with a mental life indistinguishable from Bob’s—and this living body is intimately related to Bob. Since the thinking animal and Bob are indistinguishable—they are like each other physically and mentally—it seems obvious that we should just identify Bob and the thinking animal. Otherwise, we have to believe there are (at least) two thinkers in the same chair—the thinking animal and Bob. But this is to multiply entities without warrant, and animalism solves the problem nicely.
Many philosophers offer two responses to this argument. First, the intuition on which the argument is built—there seems to be a thinking animal in that chair—is just plain false. Except for a small handful of Western intellectuals who have accepted physicalism (and most physicalists are not animalists), the overwhelming majority of people throughout the world today and since Neanderthals have been dualists regarding the self. This is evidenced by the widespread belief throughout human history that when we die, we leave our bodies and continue conscious existence in an afterlife. Almost no one looking at Bob in the chair would think that he qua living body is a conscious, thinking being. No, virtually everyone would think that if Bob were shot dead in that chair, he would leave his body and continue to think and be conscious. When a television show comes on that features near death experiences, virtually everyone, including skeptics of their validity, will say something like this: “I am skeptical about these NDE claims, but I’ll admit they could be true and whether they are veridical is a matter of the quality of the evidence for and against them.” No one would say this about the search for evidence of square circles in Montana. We all know such things cannot be found because a square circle is broadly logically impossible. We don’t have to look for evidence one way or another by trudging through Montana! The fact that people are willing to look at the evidence means they take disembodied existence to be broadly logically possible; they would not believe this if they were animalists since an animalist holds that we are essentially living, physical organisms. As such, an organism existing in a disembodied state is broadly logically impossible. No search for evidence is needed to rule out disembodied existence.
A few years ago, I (Moreland) teamed up with two other Christian philosophers to debate three atheist thinkers about the reality of disembodied life after death. Not one said, “We don’t have to look at any evidence presented here tonight, because we already know that disembodied existence is like the existence of a square circle, namely, it is impossible because we are living, physical organisms.” No, everyone on both sides said the issue needed to be settled by evidence. But that means that the debate participants, along with all who watch a television show on NDEs with a view toward the evidence, are admitting that disembodied existence is metaphysically possible. And disembodied existence is metaphysically possible only if we are not essentially physical beings as animalists would have it. So the claim that most people see Bob as a thinking animal is simply false.
Second, if animalism is true, then it is hard to see how the problems of free agency and the unity of consciousness can be solved. These problems were addressed in chapter thirteen and won’t be repeated here except to note that they present difficulties for those who think that a living, physical organism thinks. It seems, then, that the main argument for animalism (besides it allows one to reject substance dualism) does not succeed. Are there strong arguments against animalism? We believe so, and the following set of arguments form a cumulative case against animalism that, in our view, makes it untenable.
Objection 1: For animalists, lives are ontologically basic or primitive, and an organism is a derived entity that gets its existence and identity from the relevant living event. But this seems backward. Lives do not “have” organisms in the animalist sense; organisms have lives. According to contemporary biology, lives are not self-sustaining; organisms are, and in fact life is characterized as a set of certain activities that occur within an organism. Thus organisms are primitive and lives are derivative. This is the overwhelming majority view since Aristotle, and surely the burden of proof is on the animalist to overturn this burden. But so far as we can tell, there are no arguments—surely no sufficient arguments—for flip-flopping lives and organisms, and thus the burden of proof has not been met.
Objection 2: While mereological essentialism may hold for a mere collection of cells, animalists assert that it is just false when applied to living organisms. Unfortunately, things aren’t that simple. Admittedly, the vast majority of us have strong intuitions that living beings sustain absolute sameness even if they undergo part replacement. But, as we discussed in chapter thirteen, given the atomic theory of matter and the reduction of living things to mereological aggregates, some argue that the best explanation for why this is true is some form of substance dualism. So, while animalists seem correct about organisms being continuants, their ontological analysis of organisms undermines this possibility. Biological structure and a life are themselves in constant flux and, thus, are not metaphysically robust enough to ground the identity of organisms through part replacement. The animalist ontology cannot provide a metaphysical analysis of organisms that avoids treating them as mereological aggregates subject to mereological essentialism.
Why do some philosophers think that mereological essentialism is a problem for virtually all versions of physicalism—including animalism—besides those who identify us with an atomic simple? Because, at the end of the day, these versions of physicalism identify us as mereological aggregates, and mereological essentialism cannot be avoided for such wholes.
Here is a definition of a mereological aggregate: It is a particular whole that is constituted by (at least) separable parts and external relation-instances between and among those separable parts (e.g., causal relations or spatial and temporal relations). And organisms are mereological aggregates whose lives are a collection of myriads of events at a time that wax and wane and undergo rapid flux and radical replacement of activities through time.
Why think that mereological essentialism characterizes mereological aggregates? Because a proper metaphysical analysis of such wholes does not provide an entity adequate to ground their literal identity through part alteration. To see this, suppose we have some mereological aggregate W, say a car, in the actual world w at some time t, and let “the p’s” refer distributively to all and only the atomic simples (assuming such) that make up W. Now, given that the p’s just are a specific list of simples taken distributively without regard to structure, it would seem obvious that if we have a different list of simples, the q’s, it is not identical to the p’s even if the two lists share all but one part in common. This same insight would be true if we took “the p’s” and “the q’s” collectively as referring to some sort of mereological sum. In either case, there is no entity “over and above” the parts that could serve as a ground of sameness through part alteration.
Now, W (a car) has different persistence conditions than and thus is not identical to the p’s (all and only the ultimate parts that make up the car). W could be destroyed and the p’s (taken in either sense) could exist. Now, let S stand for all and only the various relations that stand between and among the p’s. S is W’s structure. Is W identical to S and the p’s? Many don’t think so. W has its own structure, say in comparison to some other whole W* that is exactly similar in structure to W. W and W* have their own exactly similar structures. Given that S is a universal (a type of structure that many cars could exhibit), it is not sufficient for individuating (making particular) W’s specific structure. For that we need SI, W’s structure-instance. W’s token of S and SI will consist of all and only the specific relation-instances that are instantiated between and among the p’s. Let “the r’s” stand for all and only the relevant relation-instances that compose SI. It is now obvious that SI is a mereological aggregate composed of the r’s. If the r’s undergo a change of relation-instances, it is no longer the same collection of relation-instances. Given that SI just is a mereological aggregate or, perhaps, a specific ordering of the r’s, if the r’s undergo a change of relation-instances, SI will cease to exist and a different structure (perhaps exactly similar to SI) will obtain since there is no entity to serve as a ground for SI’s sameness through part replacement. If W is the p’s plus SI, it seems to follow that W is subject to mereological-essentialist constraints.
Appealing to a life won’t help either. At any given moment, a life is a collection of numerous activities, and from moment to moment, those activities change. When an organism sleeps, runs, loses an organ, and so forth, different living activities obtain. A life, then, is an extended event that is composed of a waxing and waning flux of very different subevents. Thus a life in the animalist view is not the same from one moment to the next. Some animalists claim that as a primitive fact, life itself is a continuant that is wholly present at each moment the life exists. But besides the fact that this move seems to turn a life into a substance and not an event, there is no evidence for this claim. We know that “life” is reducible to a set of living activities that occur at a time, and a moment later they are over and replaced with other activities in serial succession. In sum, life as animalists construe it is not itself a continuant; it is in constant flux, and thus it cannot serve as the ground for an organism’s being a continuant.
Objection 3: Some argue that animalism gets the wrong answer to how many living beings there are because animalism tracks biological features instead of the more preferable psychological traits. To see this, consider two conjoined twins fused from the upper to lower region of the chest area. How many living beings are there? It is clear that even if there were only one living organism, there are nonetheless two persons, each with his own stream of consciousness.
So far so good. Now consider the fictitious case of Arnold. Let us assume Arnold is a living human being in some sense or other. Arnold has only one living body, but miraculously, there are two completely independent streams of consciousness and subjects of those streams. When a single living animal such as you or I has thoughts like “I am hungry” and “I am tired” it is appropriate to say that the animal has the conjunct-thought “I am hungry and tired.”
But this is not so with Arnold. One stream/subject thinks “I am hungry” and the other thinks “I am tired,” but we cannot infer from this that there is a thinking being with the conjunct-thought. It seems clear that there are two living thinking things, in this case, persons, and not one. If we track biological traits like the animalist does, we will say that there is just one living, thinking animal. After all, there is just one living body. But if we track psychological traits, there are two streams of consciousness/two subjects of experience and, therefore, two unified persons present. According to some, by emphasizing biological life instead of unified consciousness, animalism selects the wrong criterion for counting the number of living, thinking beings.
Objection 4: Animalism suffers from a sorites paradox (sometimes called the paradox of the heap). Grant that 100,000 grains of sand piled on one another is a heap of sand. If we remove one grain of sand it seems it still is a heap. If we remove just one more grain of sand it still is a heap, and so on and so on. It seems that we could get down to one grain of sand and still call it a heap, which is absurd, or admit that there is some seemingly arbitrary point such that if you remove one particular grain of sand at that point, the heap goes out of existence. Many have solved this particular sorites paradox by claiming either that heaps don’t really exist in the first place or that our concept of being a heap is a vague, unclear one that we use for various purposes but which is not precise enough to spell out exactly how many grains of sand one needs for a heap. “Heap,” like “baldness,” is a loose, vague concept.
Unfortunately, neither of these options is available for animalism. There clearly are (according to animalism) living organisms and thinking ones at that. And lives that give existence and identity to organisms are self-maintaining, well-individuated (ontologically speaking, for any part, it either is or is not part of the organism as a whole; organisms are not ontologically vague) and jealous (“desiring” to retain their structure and identity) events. But now, the sorites paradox seems to present a very serious problem for animalism. If we remove one tiny part (and thus its activities) from an organism, does the organism still exist and retain its identity? Clearly, the animalist will say yes. If we remove one more tiny part, do we still retain the same organism in existence? Yes. But we know that if we reach a point at which, say, we just have five tiny particles jumping around, the organism no longer exists.
These facts raise two uncomfortable problems for animalists. First, it seems odd to say that at some point the removal of just one tiny atomic simple causes the entire organism to go out of existence. Such a tiny cause is hardly adequate to explain such a significant metaphysical effect. Second, the removal of that one, specific atomic simple seems entirely arbitrary for causing the organism to pop out of existence. Why not the atomic simple removed just before the correct one? Why not the one removed after the correct one? Any answer to this question will have an air of arbitrariness and ad hocness about it. And this counts strongly against animalism.
Objection 5: Animalism raises the too many thinkers problem. To understand this problem, consider a cloud you are viewing from a long way away. It seems like a single, well-contained existent object with clear boundaries. But if you get very close to the cloud, it is now seen as a gappy, ethereal collection of water vapor such that it does not have clear boundaries. At various points towards the “edges” of the collection of water vapor, streams of water vapor seem to be trailing off and away from the collection while at other locations a trail of water vapor is being drawn into the collection.
Now, if we grant that clouds are real things, we have a problem on our hands. What we thought was one cloud in the sky now turns out to be myriads of overlapping clouds. Why? Consider the original collection of water vapors to be one cloud. Now take away or disregard a single water molecule from the cloud’s west side that was previously considered to be part of the collection, and add or take into account a single water molecule from the cloud’s east side that was previously not considered to be a part of the collection. This new object has just as legitimate a claim to be a cloud as the original collection. But then, we can repeat this process over and over again as we go around the collection, constantly forming new groupings of water molecules with the same total number as the original collection. If the original collection of water molecules is a real cloud, then all these myriads of other collections are overlapping clouds too. But now we seem to have too many clouds. We thought there was one cloud, but there are actually myriads of them.
One way to avoid this consequence is to deny that clouds exist as well-individuated objects and instead say that a cloud turns out to be an arrangement of water molecules cloud-wise, that is, all that is there is a loosely connected group of molecules arranged in a way that, from a distance, we take as a cloud.
Animalism (and most other versions of physicalism) is subject to the same problem. If we accept something like the atomic theory of matter, brains, animals, and so on have a manifest image (what they look like to the naked eye) and a scientific image (what we actually believe them to be, given microphysics). The manifest image looks at the living body (or brain) and sees there a continuous blob of mass that is well-delineated regarding its boundaries. But this is a misguided view. More accurately, the scientific image turns the body (and brain) into a cloud-like reality. If we could shrink down to the level of an electron, we would see the body is mostly empty space with particles relating to each other at quite a distance at that level of measurement. The whole collection of molecules is moving, and waxing and waning in terms of which molecules are in the collection. At some points, particles are being sloughed off. At another point they are being assimilated, and all of this is going on rapidly and all the time. As with the cloud, we could move clockwise around the collection of tiny parts, disregarding one part but incorporating another into the mereological aggregate. But this means that we have myriads of living, thinking animals overlapping each other at the same location.
The animalist could respond that the argument works with clouds but not with living organisms because the latter are well individuated, not vague, by the activities of the parts being caught up into the life. Those parts whose activities are caught up into the life are parts of the organism; those whose activities are not caught up into the life are not parts of the organism. Epistemologically, we may not be able to tell which parts are which, but metaphysically, living animals are well individuated, unlike clouds.
Sadly, this response will not work. Why? Because as we saw above, lives are just not stable or robust enough to do the job required of them here. A life is a collection at a time of myriads of activities, and from moment to moment the collection changes. Indeed, a life is just as much in need of providing an account of how it avoids the too-many-clouds (or thinkers) argument as are living organisms. And it is not a brute fact that lives can do this. No, lives can be broken down into the sort of flux, with waxing and waning activities, as was just mentioned. Thus this response fails.
Objection 6: Animalism does not have a metaphysically deep answer as to the difference between living organisms like a dog and a nonliving entity like a tornado or hurricane. Certain versions of substance dualism do have such an answer—living things have souls and nonliving things do not. But it seems a bit arbitrary and vague for animalists to draw such a line. Consider a hurricane. It is a collection of parts that come and go, but the activities of those parts sustain the hurricane’s structure and seem to be caught up into the life of the hurricane, which, after all, seems to have a life of its own consisting of all the activities that allow the hurricane to be a self-maintaining, jealous, well-individuated continuant. The difference between a hurricane and a dog seems to be one of degree, not of kind. If this is so, then there is no nonarbitrary, deep metaphysical answer regarding the difference between living things and nonliving things. In this case, the animalist could be charged with a degree of arbitrariness for drawing a line that allows dogs in but hurricanes out.
We have looked at six arguments against animalism. In our view, it is not a promising position. But perhaps there are other physicalist views that fare better than animalism. We now turn to a prominent physicalist alternative to animalism.
3—Material Constitutionalism
3.1 The View
In the last fifteen to twenty years, reflections on material composition have become all the rage, and accordingly, a growing number of thinkers have attempted to use material composition as a way of fleshing out a view (including a Christian view) of the human person. Two major advocates of material constitutionalism are Kevin Corcoran and Lynne Rudder Baker. In this section, we will interact briefly with Baker, who is the most prominent advocate of this view.
Before we proceed, we must get clear on the distinction between the composition relation and the constitution relation. Composition is the relation most familiar to people, and it is a many-to-one relation; for example, many atomic particles compose a table, many cells compose a body, and so on. By contrast, constitution is a one-to-one relation between two objects that exist at the same place at the same time; for example, a certain piece of plastic constitutes a driver’s license, a chunk of marble constitutes a statue, a body constitutes a person. Constitution will become clearer as we go deeper into Baker’s views.
Baker claims that I am most fundamentally a person, and a person (human or nonhuman) is an entity with the potentiality for a first-person perspective. The first-person perspective is a property persons have that is grounded in the causal powers of the brain and constitutive of persons. The capacity to conceive of oneself as oneself is necessary and sufficient for having a strong, robust first-person perspective. A human person is a person wholly constituted by a body that is a human organism, an animal of the species Homo sapiens. So the person’s relationship to his or her body is that the latter constitutes the former; they are not identical.
According to Baker, constitution is not identity. Why? Consider David the statue and “Piece” the lump of marble that constitutes David. These cannot be identical because they have different modal properties or persistence conditions (e.g., if the lump changes shape, Piece could survive but David would not). Constitution is a type of unity relation whose relata (the things being related) are neither identical nor two independent (separable) particulars. David and Piece spatially coincide, have all their physical separable parts and properties in common (size, mass, color), are such that David’s aesthetic properties depend on the properties of Piece, and David does not have Piece as a proper part. Constitution is a relation somewhere between identity and separable existence. If x constitutes y, then there is a unified individual whose identity is determined by y. The identity of the constituting thing (x) is submerged or encompassed by the identity of what it constitutes (y). Baker lists the following examples to illustrate the ubiquity of the constitution relation: pieces of paper constitute dollar bills, and DNA constitutes genes.
Baker also claims that things can have properties in different ways: derivatively and nonderivatively (i.e., derived and nonderived properties). For example, Piece has many properties (e.g., being a statue) derivatively (i.e., in virtue of constituting David) and some nonderivatively (mass). David has properties derivatively, that is, in virtue of being constituted by Piece (e.g., being made of marble) and some nonderivatively (being a statue). Yet derivative properties are not additive (e.g., there is not twice of Piece’s mass present). X’s having P derivatively just is x constituting some y that has P nonderivatively.
Since the relata of the constitution relation can belong to many kinds (being a piece of plastic and being a driver’s license; being a piece of paper and being a dollar bill; being a lump of marble and being a statue; being a living organism/body and being a person), it is the primary kind (being a driver’s license, being a dollar bill, being a statue, being a person) that determines an object’s persistence conditions. Certain circumstances are sufficient conditions for an object x constituting an object y, where x, y are nonidentical and belong to different kinds (e.g., being marble, being a statue); namely, a whole class of new kinds of causal powers are present in the constituted object (the statue) in virtue of its kind (being a statue).
Regarding human persons, the mereological collection of atoms/molecules compose the body (and the person) at a given time, but the collection is not identical to that body. And the human body (the human organism) constitutes the human person. A human person is a particular that is wholly constituted by a human organism/body and that has a capacity for a first-person perspective. Baker also rejects mereological essentialism and claims that material objects are enduring continuants and not sums of temporal parts; thus human persons are such continuants. She has not given detailed arguments for why she rejects mereological essentialism for material objects.
And while a person is essentially a person, a human person is not essentially a human. What makes human persons human is that they are constituted by biologically human bodies, that is, a human animal or human organism. Still, it may be possible for a human person to come to be constituted by a nonbiological body and still exist if, for example, one’s body were gradually replaced entirely by bionic parts without losing one’s first-person perspective. In fact, because constitution is not identity, one could survive the death of one’s body in an intermediate state before the final resurrection by being constituted by a new kind of body.
3.2 Assessing the View
While there is much to admire in Baker’s account, at the end of the day many philosophers believe it fails to deliver a coherent account of human persons as conscious, unified, enduring continuants. At least two virtues have been claimed for the material constitution view. First, it solves problems of material composition without appealing to substance dualism; for example, it explains why persons and their bodies have different modal properties (the living body could survive, say, being in a coma while the person ceases to be) without appealing to dualism. In response, many substance dualists will claim that it is far from clear that avoiding substance dualism is an intellectually responsible thing to do. Moreover, we will see later that there are simpler, more commonsensical ways to solve some of the problems associated with material composition.
Second, material constitution solves certain other puzzles—amputation puzzles, for example—while avoiding substance dualism. Here is an amputation puzzle. Consider the person Peter and Pete. Pete is identical to the object Peter absent his left hand, so prior to the amputation, Pete is an arbitrary undetached part of Peter. Now, before the amputation of Peter’s left hand, Peter and Pete seem nonidentical because Peter has a part (a left hand) Pete lacks. But after the amputation, they seem to be identical since they are at the same spatial location and are completely indistinguishable from a physical point of view. But how could Pete be identical to and not identical to Peter? According to material constitution advocates, the solution is to say that Pete never was identical to Peter either before or after the amputation. This is obvious before the amputation. But after the amputation, Peter is constituted by Pete, not identical to Pete. So the puzzle is solved. As we will see, this small advantage to the material constitution view is vastly offset by the problems it faces. And the substance dualist has a much simpler solution. Peter was not identical to his body before or after the amputation, but he survives the operation because he—a specific soul—was present in the body before and after the operation.
It is time to look at several objections to material constitution. First, as we have already seen, it cannot explain the possibility, much less the actuality, of disembodied existence in NDEs. And for Christians, the Bible clearly teaches a disembodied intermediate state between death and final resurrection. Further, it is hard to see how libertarian freedom is consistent with material constitution. Since the person is a material object that exemplifies the first-person perspective, it seems that its physical nature is basic, the exemplification of the first-person perspective depends on their being an ontologically prior living material body and, thus, that body would determine the behavior of the person according to the laws of nature. In addition, given that the body and the person are both composed of separable parts, it is difficult to see how advocates of this view can make good on their dismissal of mereological essentialism (more on this below). Finally, material constitution seems to fall victim to the “too many thinkers” problem we raised above against animalism.
Second, it seems just plain false to say that two physical objects (a piece of plastic and a driver’s license; a lump of marble and a statue; a living body and a person) can exist at the same time at the same place. This is just plain odd. In response, Baker claims that colocation is possible just in case the two objects are members of different natural kinds (being marble, being a statue). But there are millions of counterexamples. Lions and tigers, electrons and protons, sofas and refrigerators, are members of different kinds but they cannot exist colocated. It seems that only those natural kinds that are such that one is the constituting object (the marble) and one the constituted object (the statue) allow for colocation. But now the question-begging, ad hoc nature of the view is laid bare.
Third, how is it possible for two objects that are at exactly the same place in space at the same time, and that are completely physically indistinguishable (composed of the same parts, have the same mass, size, shape, and so on), to have different properties? This seems utterly inconceivable. And it will not do to say that this is possible because the two objects belong to different natural kinds (being marble, being a statue) since this just pushes the problem one step further: How is it possible for two such objects to be members of different natural kinds? So far as we can see, no non-question-begging answer to this is available.
Fourth, there are two problems with Baker’s use of “being a first-person perspective.” For one thing, if there is such a property (and this is doubtful), it is an impure one. An impure property, for example, being identical to Socrates or to the left of a desk, requires reference to a particular to be described. Such a property cannot constitute such a referent (Socrates, the desk) without being circular—the property presupposes and, therefore, cannot constitute the particular—Socrates, the desk, or an individual person—to which reference is made. And it is hard to know what has this property. When x exemplifies property P, then x is what it is ontologically prior to its having P. This is even true when P is an essence. Lion y cannot exist ontologically prior to being a lion, but, strictly speaking, it is not the lion that exemplifies being a lion, it is an individuator in the lion (e.g., prime matter, a bare particular) that exemplifies being a lion, and it is the resulting entity—an individuator’s being a lion—that is a particular lion. Thus it cannot be the person who exemplifies being a first-person point of view. But, then, it does not seem to be the body either on pain of arbitrariness. Ontologically prior to the exemplification of being a first-person point of view, there are two colocated, physically indistinguishable objects—the living body and the object constituted by the living body that exemplifies being a first-person point of view to yield a person. By why does this object instead of the living body exemplify this property since they are indistinguishable?
For another thing, there most likely is no such property. In general, one may give a reductive analysis of the first-person perspective as follows: S has the property of being a first-person perspective if S is a personal, viewing kind of point; that is, S is a kind of substance (point), a sentient (viewing) substance, with the properties (including ultimate potentialities) characteristic of persons (e.g., self-awareness). The first-person perspective is not a property persons have, it is the thing persons are—substantial centers of a personal kind of consciousness. Persons qua substantial, unified centers exemplify ordinary mental properties—being-a-thought-that-P, being-a-sensation-of-red, being painful. But they do not have in addition to these the property of being a first-person point of view. When a substantial personal ego exemplifies an ordinary mental property, that is ipso facto a first-person perspective. There is no additional fact that needs grounding in a superfluous property—being a first-person point of view. The “first-person point of view” is just a way of describing/referring to an ontologically prior substantial, sentient person with ordinary mental properties to which that perspective can be reduced.
Fifth, it is unclear that Baker has made it intelligible that a human person could be a continuant even though his original body ceases to exist (through significant part replacement or through death) and another body comes to constitute that person. Following Dean Zimmerman, as Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro point out, organisms and aggregates of matter cannot lose all their parts at once, and there are limits to how latter stages can evolve out of earlier ones. But Baker’s persons seem free of such limitations. They can miraculously jump from one body to another with radically different traits. But mere hunks of matter or organisms cannot do this. Such “bodies” that can pass from organic matter to bionic parts are really souls by another name, and, indeed, one suspects that Baker’s account of persons is really a substance dualist one with an unclear account of personal identity in these cases.
Baker does offer a criterion for personal identity over time: “Person P1 at time t1 is the same person as person P2 at time t2 if and only if P1 and P2 have the same first-person perspective.” However, this is both uninformative and empty. Baker admits that she can give no noncircular account of sameness of first-person perspective, and our criticisms above show why: being a first-person perspective is an impure (circularly described) property, and it can be reduced to substantial, personal souls. In this case, sameness of person just is sameness of soul.
Further, some believe that neither Baker nor other contemporary advocates have made clear how a composed mereological aggregate can avoid mereological essentialism. In their view, the problem lies in the way analytic ontology is too often done today, namely, that truth conditions are given for some analysandum (the thing being analyzed) with no ontological analysis of that analysandum to show how the truth conditions could, in fact, obtain. Thus it is typical to say that vases versus the atomic simples that compose them or organisms versus the atomic simples that compose them have different modal properties and, thus, are not identical. While true enough, such claims fail to provide an ontological analysis of vases or organisms such that we can see how it could be that their modal properties are different, and whether the relevant ontological factors cited to solve this problem are sufficient for the vase/organism to survive part replacement. For anyone who says that constitution is not identity, it would seem that they must give an ontological analysis of the constituted thing to clarify its ontological constituents that go beyond and prevent it from being identical to the constituting thing. And whatever these extra constituents are, they must be sufficient to clarify how the constituted thing has a sufficient unity to avoid a mereological essentialist treatment.
Sixth, there are far simpler and more commonsensical ways to solve various puzzles of material composition without appealing to such a metaphysically extravagant view as material constitutionalism. To see this, let’s take another look at David and Piece and grant that there are atomic simples. Let “the p’s” denote all and only Piece’s atomic simples. Let us take a plurality theory of masses according to which terms like “the p’s” do not denote an individual material object (an object identical to the collective group “the p’s”); rather, “the p’s” refers distributively to a plurality of objects—this p and this p and . . . —each of which is a separable part of Piece. So we start with a list of atomic simples.
In addition, we have Piece, the lump of marble. What, exactly, is Piece? Minimally, Piece would seem to be identical to the p’s plus all and only the relational instances between and among the various n-tuples of the p’s. It would seem that Piece could not be identical to the p’s and the relational structure involving them because that relational structure is a universal, not a particular. It (the relational structure) cannot help individuate (make something a particular) Piece since it could be in several objects at once. So Piece must be identical to the p’s plus the relation-instance of that structure. And given that the p’s are atomic simples and separable parts, the relation-instances are external relation-instances. Additionally, Piece may have a surface boundary as a simple, dependent part. Piece is a mereological aggregate.
Third, we have an Aristotelianly shaped chunk of marble. Whenever a particular x has a property P, the-having-of-P-by-x is a mode of and stands in a modal distinction with x. If two entities stand in a modal distinction with each other, then one can exist without the other but not conversely. One of the two is a dependent entity. Moreover, modes are particulars, albeit dependent ones/inseparable parts (e.g., the having of being such-and-such a shape by the marble). Thus the entity in view is a chunk of marble with a mode that is constituted by the exemplification of the relevant shape by the chunk.
Finally, we have the statue, which is the Aristotelianly shaped chunk of marble taken or intended to be a statue. For what it’s worth, some do not take intentional properties (intendings, valuings) to be relations; instead, they think they are monadic properties. Thus the various purposes, intentions, valuations, goals, and so on directed toward our shaped chunk are constituents of the statue. The statue is identical to the chunk plus the relevant intentional states in people’s minds. There is no property of being a statue that Piece or the shaped chunk of marble exemplifies; there is just a community of intentional entities (persons) whose mental states are directed on the chunk by taking the chunk in the same way—as a statue.
In general, an artifact is an object on which the relevant mental states are directed. We may say that these states take the object to be a representation of such-and-such or to function thus-and-so. Some objects like our chunk actually resemble the represented object. And in this case, while the resemblance is what qualifies the chunk to be a statue of Aristotle, it is not what constitutes it as a statue. It has often been said that there is no physics of money, and this saying is true. No God’s-eye view of the constituents of an artifact such as money or a statue will tell one that it is such. The intentional states that are constitutive of artifacts involve properties of the people in the relevant community, not properties of or relations within the relevant object.
Thus we have four different entities, with the p’s either being an object (a list of atomic simples construed as a whole) or, more likely, just a number of individual atomic simples. Our ontological analysis shows why they are nonidentical and why they have different modal properties: they are composed of different constituents. Focusing on Piece, could it sustain identity through part replacement? It is hard to see how. If a part is replaced, the p’s change to a new collection. And even if only one of the p’s is replaced by a qualitatively identical simple that stands in the same type of relation, one would still have a different relational structure because that structure is itself a mereological compound of relation-instances, and the new set of relation-instances is different from the set involving the original simple. The relational structure (and life itself is a flux of myriads of changing living activities) is in constant flux as parts come and go, or as those parts simply change relations relative to each other. Given that the entire relation-instance is a mereological collection just like the p’s, and given that these both seem to be like mere heaps or collections of entities, it is hard to avoid mereological essentialism with respect to them. And adding a boundary doesn’t help. If a collection of marbles inside a balloon changes members (or changes in relation with respect to each other) then you no longer have the same structured collection of marbles in a balloon. The presence or absence of the balloon doesn’t affect the situation.
To the degree that living organisms or persons are constituted entities, then they are to be analyzed according to mereological essentialism too. They are not unified continuants. But why, then, do we have such strong intuitions that living organisms are continuants? It is because we are either attributing a self, an I, a spiritual substance to the living organism, or we are taking it (along with chunks of marble, and things like tables) as it presents itself to our senses, namely, as an ontological blob of goo that is not composed of microparts (we still take tables to have legs and a top, but not as composed of atoms and molecules). Our senses present us with smoothly continuous, unchanging blobs of being; they do not present us with the mereological compounds science describes. Our intuitions are “pumped,” as it were, by one of these two sources.
It is only if organisms or persons are simple spiritual substances that they can be continuants. Consider the category of property for a moment and distinguish a structural supervenient property, which is a relational structure composed of parts, relations, and properties at the subvenient level (e.g., H2O) from an emergent supervenient property, which is a simple sui generis property (e.g., wetness). It seems clear that a structural property cannot remain the same if it gains or loses constituents because it just is a relational entity constituted by those constituents and their relation-instances. But as long as the subvenient base sustains the emergent property in existence, a change in subvenient entities does not cause the emergent property to lose its identity. Why? Because it is an uncomposed simple. The same seems to be true of entities in the category of substance, and it seems that Baker has not provided a sufficient case that qua composed mereological compound, an organism or a person can be a continuant. Since we are, in fact, continuants, one could conclude that Baker has not provided a sufficient case for thinking that we are (1) composed mereological compounds and (2) not personal spiritual substances.
4—The Brain View
4.1 The View
The brain view is likely the position held by most practicing scientists—especially neuroscientists—who are physicalists. The position is fairly easy to characterize: I am identical to a brain. Now as stated, the view is clearly false because many parts of the brain have no direct connection to consciousness (e.g., certain tissues, blood in the brain) and certain nonbrain parts do have direct connection to consciousness (e.g., certain parts of the nervous system like the optic nerve). Moreover, as stated, the view does not explain why one would select the brain as opposed to, say, the liver, the lungs, or the heart. Thus the brain view (I am a brain) must be supplemented with two other principles:
Thinking subject maximalism: A thinker’s (a conscious person’s) parts are all and only those directly involved in thinking (i.e., consciousness).
This explains why the brain is chosen and why certain brain parts are ruled out and certain nonbrain parts are ruled in (e.g., the nervous system). But thinking subject maximalism (TSM) leads to a difficulty with the brain view. It leads to many different selves because different subregions of the brain have parts such that all and only those parts are directly involved in different, isolated states of consciousness, for example, sensing color, sensing shape, feeling empathy, and so forth. Thus “I” actually turn out to be a collection of selves, a color-sensing self, a shape-sensing self, and so on. So the TSM principle must be supplemented with the following principle to unify the brain into one person and rule out the problem of subsystems.
The psychological individuation principle: Conscious states belong to the same person if and only if they causally interact with each other and with no other person’s thoughts.
This is a brief but accurate depiction of the brain view.
4.2 Assessing the View
However popular the brain view may be, it suffers from very significant difficulties. First, it suffers from all the difficulties mentioned in regard to other physicalist views (it cannot explain NDEs and the metaphysical possibility of disembodied existence; it cannot permit libertarian free will; it cannot avoid mereological essentialism; and so forth).
Second, it needs TSM and the psychological individuation principle (PIP) to avoid problematic entailments mentioned above. Take TSM. The phrase “directly involved with” is extremely vague and most likely means “that directly cause conscious states.” But this seems to violate two key roles for any entity taken to be the human person: (1) the owner of consciousness and (2) the possessor of a point of view. The brain view seems to depict various brain states as subvenient causes for emergent supervenient mental properties/states. But it is hard to see what emergent supervenience is if it is not causal. Thus TSM becomes “A thinker’s (a conscious person’s) parts are all and only those that cause emergent supervenient conscious properties/states.” But in general, if x causes y, y does not belong to x nor does x own y. When fire causes smoke, lightning causes thunder, exposing sodium to oxygen causes a flame, the effects may be produced by their respective causes, but those effects are independent entities that do not belong to their causes. In order for the entity that is a human person to possess consciousness, that entity must exemplify consciousness, and that is not what the brain does if it causes emergent properties/states. Moreover, the principle seems backward. A thinker’s (separable) parts are not all and only those that cause consciousness. No, the reason some (inseparable) parts cause consciousness and others do not (e.g., digestive juices) is that the former are parts of a thinker. Things do what they do because of the parts and properties they have, not vice versa.
Now take PIP. First of all, PIP is not necessary. One can have a brief idle thought that has no causal relation whatever to other thoughts. Again, while some mental states (a feeling of pain) do cause others (a desire for pain medication), this is not always the case. When one thinks through a syllogism—for example, If P, then Q; P; therefore, Q—one undergoes a sequence of three different thoughts. But the first two do not cause the thought of conclusion. No, they entail the thought of the conclusion, and the thinker freely draws that conclusion by having an insightful awareness of the first two thoughts and their logical relations. In general, the stages of rational deliberation are not sequences in which earlier insights cause later ones. The earlier insights give evidence for later ones. Finally, in NDEs, a very high percentage of the millions of people who have had such experiences (and the tens of thousands who have been studied and researched about their experiences) claim that communication is direct between God and the subject of the NDE or between different subjects of NDEs. In these cases, no intermediate sentences or assertions are needed; communication is a form of telepathy. But in these cases (and surely these are metaphysically possible even if one thinks—irrationally—that they are all false) another person directly causes someone to have a thought, PIP is not satisfied, yet the thought is still the recipient’s.
Second, PIP is backward. The reason it is generally (but not universally) true that one’s conscious states causally interact with each other and not someone else’s is because those states belong to a specific person ontologically prior to their causal interaction with other states.
Third, the brain view cannot avoid or accommodate certain indexical facts. According to the brain view, I am identical to a brain. But which one? No exhaustive third-person description of all the brains in the world will provide us an answer. Why? Because we would have to already know that the brain we are third-person describing is mine or else we would not know whose brain was being described.
Nor can the brain view adjust itself and say that I am identical to my brain. There are two problems lurking in the neighborhood. First, “my” is classified as either a possessive adjective or possessive noun. In either case it is derivative of the first-person indexical I (e.g., “I have this brain,” where the italicized words are indexicals). So there is an indexical fact about the owner of the brain being a specific I that is not captured by third-person physicalist language. In addition, if I am my brain, then the phrase “my brain” is like “my thumb” or “my car.” In all cases, I am not identical to the thing I possess; I am its owner. Thus “I am my brain” implies that I am not identical to my brain; rather, I am the thing that has a brain.
Fourth, the brain view suffers from the problem of too many thinkers in two ways. First, as mentioned above, there are various subsystems to the brain that are involved with their own, isolated sort of conscious states, and therefore we should consider the brain view to entail several selves, not one. And given that TSM and PIP are failures, the brain advocate cannot appropriate them to avoid this problem. Second, the same sort of argument that was raised against animalism and applied to material constitutionalism (e.g., the one involving comparing the body or, in this case, the brain to a cloud such that several overlapping clouds seem to be present if we take clouds to be real) applies with equal force to the brain view. And while we are in the neighborhood, we should mention that the problem of the unity of consciousness (see chapter thirteen) provides a defeater for the brain view.
Fifth, brains are divisible and can be present in percentages, as can brain functioning, but persons are all or nothing and cannot exist as a percentage of a person. In certain operations, over half of the brain is removed and a certain amount of functioning is lost, but there is still a complete person present. This would not be the case if a person were identical to a functioning brain.
For these reasons, we believe the brain view must be rejected.
5—Worm Theory: We are Four-Dimensional Hunks of Matter
5.1 The View
Before we can understand the 4D-temporal-parts view, we need to introduce a series of distinctions:
1: Two Theories About the Ontological Status of Time
Presentism: It always has been, is now, and always will be the case that there are no actual but nonpresent objects.
Four-dimensionalism: Presentism is false. The most popular version of four-dimensionalism is eternalism: everything that did, does, or will exist does exist tenselessly “out there.”
2: Two Theories About Persistence
Endurance: Things last over time by being wholly present at each moment they exist. Things do not have temporal parts.
Perdurance: Things last over time by having parts (temporal stages or counterparts) at every moment at which they exist. Things are like events in being temporally extended.
3: Two Theories About Tense (Passage, Temporal Becoming): Is Tense an Objective, Irreducible Feature of the World?
A-series view: Time is a series such that for any x, either x is past, present, or future. (Temporal becoming is real, irreducible, and fundamental.)
B-series view: Time is a series such that x is either earlier than, at the same date as, or later than y. (Time is static, and the sense of flow, passage, or becoming is illusory.)
Summary
Commonsense view: Presentist, endurantist, A-series
Chief rival: Worm theory (eternalism, perdurantism, B-series)
As you can see, according to worm theory, we are material objects that are extended in time by having different temporal parts that exist tenselessly at different static times. We are temporally extended events much like a baseball game. The entire game is never present at any moment; rather, the entire game is a sum of nine temporal stages called innings (and these, in turn, could be considered temporal stages with further temporal stages that make them up, but we wave this for ease of exposition). Similarly, a human being is never present at any given moment; rather, what one encounters at a time is a person-stage. The entire human is a theoretical entity that is never present for observation. For most advocates of worm theory, one is tenselessly identical to one’s history just as World War I is tenselessly identical to its history (i.e., specific series of temporal stages making it up). Moreover, a person is like being a teenager—a phase in a human being’s life. Thus “person” is a phase sortal (it sorts and refers to things as temporal phases) not a natural kind sortal (which sorts and refers to kinds of things). This may be captured in figure 14.1.
As you can see, the human being exists from the time of birth (t0) to death (t16). But the person runs from t2 to t12. Each stage within this latter event from t2 to t12 satisfies some psychological criterion for personhood (e.g., being capable of using language, having a self concept, being able to formulate goals and the means for achieving them), while the period from conception to t2 and from t12 to t16 represent stages of a human nonperson; the latter stage may be a period characterized, for example, by being in a coma or persistent vegetative state.
Figure 14.1.
Worm theory contrasts with a more commonsense view according to which we are enduring continuants that move through time, are wholly present at each moment of our lives, and who fail to have temporal parts.
5.2 Assessing the View
Advocates of worm theory claim it has two philosophical features that count in its favor. First, it solves the problem of temporary intrinsics. This is the problem of change over time with respect to intrinsic properties, for example, an apple changing from green to red, a person changing from bending over to standing straight. The problem is that the changing objects (the apple being green at one time and the apple being red at a later time) can’t be the same thing because “it” fails to conform to Leibniz’s law of identity—“it” has a property at the earlier time (being green) that “it” does not have at a later time (being red replaces being green), and since sameness through change entails the identity of the object before and after the change, “the” apple cannot be the same through change since it has different properties. Worm theory solves this problem by saying that different temporal parts (which are not identical to each other) tenselessly have different properties at different times. Thus the apple as a whole is not green and then red; rather, the-apple-at-t1 is green and the apple-at-t2 is red. The hyphenated phrases pick out temporal stages of the apple. In general, x is F at tn is reduced to x-at-tn is (tenselessly) F.
Second, worm theory solves various puzzles without having to employ a bogus material constitution view that is unmotivated, given worm theory. Consider a lump of marble being made into a statue. Since the lump and the statue have different persistence conditions (the lump could survive squashing but not the statue), material constitution advocates claim that the lump and the statue are colocated, physically indistinguishable objects such that the former constitutes the latter. Worm theorists reject this solution in favor of a 4D solution depicted in figure 14.2.
Figure 14.2.
The statue is a phase in the life of the lump and the two objects overlap from t1 to t2. Now consider Tibbles the cat and Tib, which is identical to that object consisting of Tibbles minus his cut-off tail. Before the operation, Tibbles and Tib are surely nonidentical since Tib is actually an arbitrary undetached part that is within Tibbles. Yet they seem to be identical after the operation (they share all and only the same parts at the same location). But two things can’t be different entities at one moment and identical to each other at a later moment. Material constitution advocates solve this by saying the two objects are not identical at the later moment; rather, Tib constitutes Tibbles at that time. Advocates of worm theory provide an alternative solution (see figure 14.3).
Figure 14.3.
From figure 14.3 it becomes clear that Tibbles (represented by the whole, larger object that shrinks in size when his tail is removed) is not identical to Tib (which is the entire smaller space-time worm such that before t1 Tib is an arbitrary undetached part of Tibbles and after t1 Tib and Tibbles overlap).
What should we make of worm theory? For a number of reasons, it is hard to accept. First, we have extremely strong intuitions that an A-series view of time is true—there is a flow to time, temporal becoming is primitive and real, and temporal indexicals (“now,” “then”) refer to real features of the world, namely, tensed facts. And we seem to be enduring continuants that exist wholly at each time of our lives as we move through time. Right now, I myself as a whole person am writing this sentence; there is no temporal part of me that is tenselessly doing the writing. It is very hard to make intuitive sense of the idea that I turn out to be a temporally static, extended event whose temporal parts tenselessly have properties.
Second, it is I myself who thinks. I am identical to a thinker. And thinking involves a continuous flow through time during a process of thinking. I don’t think in virtue of having a (temporal) part of me that tenselessly thinks. To avoid this problem, a worm advocate can adjust his view to include the notion that the thinker, I myself, is identical to each thinking stage. But this response seems to be once again the cure that killed the patient. For now, I become a series of momentary, fleeting I’s, and this is very hard to believe.
Third, consider the fission case depicted in figure 14.4.
Figure 14.4.
At time t2 a brain operation occurs in which each half of my brain is put into two different but exactly similar bodies. Further, after t2, Y and Z are psychologically indistinguishable from each other. Now, which person am I? Am I X-Z? It depends on whether Y exists. If Y does not exist, then I am the space-time worm X-Z. But if Y exists, there is no reason to say I am X-Z, and, in fact, it is unlikely that I am. This dilemma is an example of the closest continuer problem. Whether one entity A is identical to “another” entity B should be a matter that involves only A and B. No other existing entity is relevant to the question. But this truism fails to be the case in our example. For whether I am identical to X-Z depends on whether Y exists. Y is a closest continuer of the stages leading from X to the time of the brain surgery in the sense that, since Y is psychologically indistinguishable from Z, X-Y has an equal claim on being me as does X-Z. Y is just as close of a continuer of the person-stages as is Z. But this means that whether I am identical to X-Z depends on whether some completely different entity (Y) exists, and this is a serious metaphysical conundrum.
Also, consider the person-stages from t1 to t2. Remember, I am not a person during this time since a person is either the whole space-time worm or an extended subsection of the space-time worm. Rather, I am a person-stage at a given time. But if worm theory is true, during this period, I do not know who I am because I do not know to which worm I belong (X-Z or X-Y). And since such a fission operation is always metaphysically possible for all of us, then our current person-stage cannot know to whom it is a part. But surely I know right now which person I am and there is no ambiguity about this.
Fourth, since many advocates of worm theory claim a person is identical to his or her history, it follows that one’s temporal parts are essential to one’s identity. But this means I could not have had an alternative history, for example, being born a bit earlier or later than I was, in fact, born, or dying at a different time from when I do, in fact, die. But this is absurd. My history is an accidental feature I have, it is not an essential thing I am.
But what about the worm theory advocate’s claim to provide the best solutions to the philosophical puzzles described above? Many think there are better and more commonsensical solutions to these puzzles that avoid having to pay an extremely high price in embracing an extravagant, extremely counterintuitive worm theory. Consider the problem of temporary intrinsics where an apple changes from being green to being red. If we accept an A-series view of time in which there are tensed facts (Lincoln was shot in 1865, I am now writing this sentence, next year’s Super Bowl will occur), then time is not a property of an object like an apple. Rather, it is a theater, a background context in which the apple exists. Now suppose we consider the apple as a substance qua living thing and not a mereological aggregate. In this case, since the apple itself moves through time, remaining the same through accidental change, we can say the apple is now red but it was green, and when it was green, it was later to become red. Thus the apple shares all its properties with itself, but as it moves wholly through time, it has them at different moments.
What about the problem of the lump of marble being shaped into a statue and later squashed? Let us assume the lump of marble is a substance and not a mereological aggregate since if we consider issues involved in mereological essentialism, it will cloud the topic at hand. During the time the (substantial) lump of marble is a statue, we do not have one object (the lump) constituting another object (the statue) while existing at the same place at the same time and being physically indistinguishable (as the material constitution view implies). Nor are there two overlapping space-time worms (as worm theory implies). The lump was just shaped differently for a period of time, and during that time it was treated as a statue by its designer and/or his community of intenders. So only one object exists during the whole time period—the lump of marble—but it was just shaped and treated differently for a period of time. What about Tibbles and Tib? If you deny the existence of arbitrary, undetached parts, then prior to the tail being removed, you simply have Tibbles who is a soul with a body, and after the removal, the same soul (Tibbles) exists and his body has shrunk. If you believe in arbitrary, undetached parts, then prior to tail removal, Tibbles’s body has a subregion within it that overlaps with Tib. After the removal, Tibbles (a cat soul) still remains the same thing, but his body has shrunk.
We have examined the major physicalist alternatives to substance dualism, and we found that there are major difficulties with each. As a result, we believe that some version of substance dualism is preferable, but we leave it to the reader to decide if we are right.
Chapter Summary
In this chapter we offered a brief treatment of the main physicalist alternatives to substance dualism: animalism, the material constitution view, the brain view, and worm theory. For each view, we started out by providing a brief but accurate description of the view itself, followed by an assessment of each position by looking at the arguments for and against it. We concluded that these physicalist alternatives to substance dualism fail to be viable views of the human person.
Checklist of Basic Terms and Concepts
A-series view of time
analysandum
animalism
B-series view of time
brain view
closest continuer problem
composition relation
constitution relation
derived properties
emergent supervenient property
endurance
eternalism
first-person perspective
fission
four-dimensionalism
impure property
indexical
individuator
life
material constitution
mereological aggregate
mereological essentialism
modal property
mode
nonderivative properties
ontological blob of goo
perdurance
person-stage
presentism
psychological individuation principle
sorites paradox
structural supervenient property
structure-instance
temporal parts
temporary intrinsics
thinking animal problem
thinking subject maximalism
too many thinkers problem
worm theory