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Dualism and the Problem of Individuation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Charles Taliaferro
Charles Taliaferro
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts
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Extract

H. D. Lewis once remarked he did not think ‘any case for immortality can get off the ground if we fail to make a case for dualism’. Lewis vigorously defended both mind body dualism, the theory that minds (or persons) are nonphysical, spatially unextended things in causal interaction with physical, spatially extended things, as well as the conceivability of an after life. Lewis defended the intelligibility of supposing distinct, individual persons continue existing after bodily death, possibly even after all physical objects pass out of existence. Prominent philosophers such as Plato, Augustine, Descartes, Locke, Liebniz, and Reid have subscribed to both the truth of dualism and belief in continued personal existence after bodily death. Descartes' work might even be construed as reversing the order of Lewis' dictum. For Descartes, the case for dualism ‘gets off the ground’ because of the conceivability of an afterlife. Briefly put, Descartes sought to establish that a person (or mind) is distinct from physical objects on the basis of it being metaphysically possible for a person to exist without his or her body, indeed without there being any physical objects whatever. If A can exist without B, then A is not identical with B. Thus, if it is possible for God to bring it about that I exist and there be no physical objects, I am not a physical object. The purpose of this article is not to develop a case for dualism, nor to query whether the case for immortality can get off the ground assuming nondualist theories of the self. I hope instead to assess a popular objection to dualism, and consequently to a dualist conception of the afterlife, which could be termed the problem of individuation.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , June 1986 , pp. 263 - 276
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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References

page 263 note 1 Lewis, H. D., ‘Immortality and Dualism’, in Reason and Religion ed. by Brown, Stuart (Ithaca: Cornell University Press), p. 282.Google Scholar

page 263 note 2 Descartes' argument appears in numerous places, including the Discourse, the Meditations, The Search for Truth, Objections and Replies, and his correspondence. Among the best treatments of his argument for dualism is Wilson's, MargaretDescartes (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982).Google Scholar

page 264 note 1 Geach, Peter, God and the Soul (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), chapter two.Google ScholarFindlay, J. N., ‘Identity and Identification’, Religious Studies XX, no. 1 (03 1984).Google Scholar

page 264 note 2 Pollock, John, Knowledge and justification (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974).Google ScholarBoyd, Richard, ‘Materialism without reductionism: what physicalism does not entail’, in Readings in Philosophy of Psychology, edited by Block, Ned, Volume 1 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980).Google Scholar In ‘Counterparts of persons and their bodies’ David Lewis also seems to allow that persons may have final ‘ghostly stages’, journal of Philosophy, LXVIII (1971), p. 203.

page 265 note 1 Black, Max, ‘The Identity of indiscernibles’, reprinted in Universals and Particulars, edited by Loux, Michael (Notre Dame: Notre Dame Press, 1976).Google Scholar

page 266 note 1 Cf. Purtill's, Richard ‘Disembodied survival’, Sophia, XII no. 2 (07 1973).Google Scholar

page 266 note 2 The following works defend the existence of haecceities: Chisholm's, RoderickPerson and Object (La Salle: Open Court Publishing Company, 1976)Google Scholar, Plantinga's The Nature of Necessity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978)Google Scholar, and Brody's, BaruchIdentity and Essence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980).Google Scholar Haecceities are criticized by Chisholm in later works, notably The First Person (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981).Google Scholar

page 267 note 1 Levin, Michael, Metaphysics and the Mind-Body Problem (Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 79.Google Scholar

page 268 note 1 Cf. Butler, Joseph, ‘Of Personal Identity’, in Body, Mind, and Death, ed. by Flew, Antony (New York: Macmillan, 1964)Google Scholar and Reid, Thomas in An Inquiry into the Human Mind (various editions).Google Scholar Reid and Butler held that a person does not have any parts. Furthermore, they contended that the identity over time of an object which does not change its parts, indeed which has no parts, is more intelligible than supposing an object is the same over the course of its gaining and losing parts. Is your car the same after you have changed all its parts? Strictly speaking, is it precisely the same after you have changed even a single part? Philosophers continue to debate these issues, e.g. Identity and Individuation, ed. by Munitz, Milton (New York University Press, 1971).Google Scholar

page 272 note 1 Pollock, , pp. 140, 141.Google Scholar

page 273 note 1 Price, H. H., ‘Survival and the Idea of “Another World”, in Smythies‘ Brain and Mind (New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965).Google Scholar Price writes: ‘Mental images, including dream images, are in a space of their own. They do have spatial properties. Visual images, for instance, have extension and shape, and they have spatial relation to one another. But they have no spatial relation to objects in the physical world’ (p. 12).

page 274 note 1 Allaire, Edwin, ‘Bare Particulars’, reprinted in Universals and Particulars, p. 300.Google Scholar

page 274 note 2 Ibid. p. 289.

page 274 note 3 Ibid.

page 274 note 4 Long, Douglas, ‘Particulars and Their Qualities’, reprinted in Universals and Particulars, pp. 310–30.Google Scholar