A Materialist Metaphysics of the Human Person 9781501725715

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART I. A MATERIALIST METAPHYSICS OF THE HUMAN PERSON
Chapter 1. The Many Problematic Solutions to the Problem of the Many
Chapter 2. Persistence and the Partist View
Chapter 3. Vagueness and Composition
Chapter 4. The Criterion of Personal Identity
Chapter 5. A Portrait of the Human Person
PART II. APPLICATIONS: ETHICS AND PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
Chapter 6. Pre-Persons, Post-Persons, Non-Persons, and Person-Parts
Chapter 7. Nothing But Dust and Ashes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

A MATERIALIST METAPHYSICS OF THE HUMAN PERSON

ALSO BY HUD HUDSON

Kant's Compatibilism

HUD HUDSON

A MATERIALIST METAPHYSICS OF THE HUMAN PERSON

CORNEll UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA AND LONDON

Copyright © 200 I by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell Univmity Press, Sage House, 512 East State Stree~ Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 2001 by Cornell University Press Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hudson, Hud. Amaterialist metaphysics of the human person I Hud Hudson. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8014-3889-6 I. Materialism. 2. Philosophical anthropology. 3. Resurrection. 4. Ethics. I. Title. 8825 .H83 200 I 128-dc21 2001028578 Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low-YOC inks, and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. Books that bear the logo of the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) use paper taken from forests that have been inspected and certified as meeting the highest standards for environmental and social responsibility. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu. Clothprinting

10

9 8 7 6 54

3 2

For Linda Jacobs

Contents

Acknowledgments XI

Introduction I

Port I AMaterialist Metophysiu of the Human Person Chapter I The Many Problematic Solutions to the Problem of the Many II The Problem Posed 2 Clarifications 3 On Nine Alleged Solutions 4 Solution Ten: Many Persons 5 The Threat of Many-Brothers Determinism Chapter 2 Persistence and the Partist View 45 The Partist View 2 Some Familiar Puzzles of Material Constitution 3 The Three-Dimensionalist Partist's Failure 4 The Four-Dimensionalist Partist's Success 5 Taking Stock

viii

Contents

Chapter 3 Vagueness and Composition 72 The Impossibility of Ontological Vagueness 2 Defects of the linguistic View of Vagueness 3 The Virtues of Epistemicism 4 The Special Composition Question 5 Against Material Atomless Gunk 6 Three Objections to Universalism 7 The Inadequacy of the Argument from Vagueness 8 The Case for Universalism

Chapter 4 The Criterion of Personal Identity 113

On the Referent of the Term 'Human Person' 2 Maximal Persons, Temporary Persons, and Person-Parts 3 The Criterion of Personhood 4 The !-Relation and the R-Relation 5 The Puzzle of Diageometric Identity 6 Solving the Semantic Puzzle

Chapter 5 A Portrait of the Human Person 145

A Review 2 APreview

Port II

Applications: Hhiu and Philosophy of Reliaion

Chapter 6 Pre-Persons, Post-Persons, Non-Persons, and Person-Parts 149

Our Preferred Metaphysics and Moral Theory 2 Pre-Persons: Contraception, Abortion, and Infanticide 3 Post-Persons: Irreversibly Comatose Humans and Human Corpses 4 Non-Persons: Human and Non-Human Animals 5 Person Parts: Proper Temporal Parts of Human Persons

ix

Contents Chapter 7 Nothing But Dust and Ashes 167 I An Inconsistent Triad 2 Christian Materialism 3 The Challenge of the Resurrection 4 Five Attempts at Reconciliation and a Common Presumption S The Resurrection of the Body and the Life Everlasting

Bibliography 193 Index 199

Acknowledgments

I

n writing this manuscript, I have become indebted to several persons and to some institutions. I extend my thanks to Western Washington University for a full year of professional leave in 1998--99 (during which the first draft of this book was completed) and to the philosophy department at the University of Rochester for the hospitality and support I received during my visits in the Fall and Spring of that academic year. The great majority of the material which appears in this book (roughly go percent) has not been previously published, but I would like to thank the editors of Philosophy and Phenomenological Research for their permission to use portions of my "Universalism, Four-Dimensionalism, and Vagueness" [vol. 6o, no. 3 (zooo): 547-60] in chapter 3, and I would like to thank the editors of Philosophical Studies for their permission to use portions of my "Temporal Parts and Moral Personhood" [vol. 93, no. 3 (1999): 299-316] in chapter 4· Several philosophers generously provided me with comments on portions of the manuscript that helped me to identify errors and to improve the work considerably. In particular, I would like to acknowledge "my metaphysics colleagues" at Western Washington University-Ned Markosian, Frances Howard-Snyder, and Stuart Brock (who almost never agree with me or with each other on anything save method) as well as "my non-metaphysics colleagues"-Phil Montague, Tom xi

xii

Acknowledgments Downing, Daniel Howard-Snyder, and Paul Olscamp (who patiently endure what must seem an endless stream of metaphysics-intuitionsquestions and convoluted-puzzles). I wish to thank them for their wonderful friendship, their insightful critical remarks, and especially their willingness to argue about damn-near anything. I must say that I regard myself as exceedingly fortunate to work in the midst of such a superb collection of philosophers. I would also like to acknowledge "my e-mail and occasional-conference colleagues" whose thoughtful advice and admirable examples of how to think and write about philosophy have contributed to making the present work much more worthwhile than it otherwise would have been-Michael Bergmann, Andrew Cortens, Neil Feit, Rich Feldman, John Hawthorne, Mark Heller, Shawn Larsen-Bright, Trenton Merricks, Michael Rea, Ted Sider, Peter van Inwagen, Achille Varzi, Ed Wierenga, and Dean Zimmerman. And finally, from among those philosophers who have devoted their time and energy to helping me think my way through the issues that comprise this book, I would like to single out Kris McDaniel for special mention-! have been quite fortunate to have had Kris both as a friend and as a regular conversational partner for the last few years; his great enthusiasm for philosophical discussion and his always-insightful criticism have had a positive impact on nearly every section of the book. Lastly, I wish to express my deepest thanks to Beth Schille-and to my family, for their love, companionship, and encouragement-Aris, Eli, Linda, Leibniz, and Kant. 1 H. H.

1

The dog and cat, not the philosophers.

A MATERIALIST METAPHYSICS OF THE HUMAN PERSON

Introduction

I

n the first four chapters of this book, I develop and defend a monistic account of human persons according to which human persons are highly complex, composite material objects who exactly occupy very precise, scattered regions of spacetime, and who are the subjects of a considerable range of abilities and experiences. Along the way, I will have much to say on the topics of parthood, persistence, vagueness, composition, identity, and various puzzles of material constitution. This metaphysical project (occupying Part I of the book) comes to a close in chapter 5, where I sketch a portrait of the human person drawn from the results of these first four chapters. I then turn my attention to applications of this theory of human persons to issues in ethics and the philosophy of religion (in Part II of the book). In chapter 6, I discuss the implications of this metaphysics on questions regarding the moral permissibility of certain actions involving human persons, human fetuses, human infants, profoundly retarded human organisms, irreversibly comatose human organisms, and human corpses. Finally, in chapter 7, I discuss the implications of this metaphysics on the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body within the context of a defense of the compatibility of Christianity with a materialistic theory of human persons. Thus far (although hardly uncontroversial) we have nothing terribly surprising or new: human persons are material objects, whose interests

2

Introduction

should be taken into account when one is trying to decide what to do from a moral point of view, and which depend for their existence upon a Divine Being with whom they may have certain interpersonal relationships. However, in the attempt to carefully work out some of the fine details of this roughly characterized and moderately fashionable view, I have become convinced that the most respectable story to be told on this topic requires some astounding revisions in our commonly accepted metaphysics of the human person, consequences which should have an expansive and momentous impact on the kind of justificatory accounts we should attempt to offer on behalf of many of our moral and religious beliefs, attitudes, and practices. Even if we set aside the Partist View (which makes its debut into the literature in this book), this particular story has not been told before, for although each of its components when considered individually has its fair number of proponents in the literature, I do not know of any philosopher working on these topics who has undertaken the task of uncovering and exhibiting the impact of these components considered collectively (i.e., the impact of the conjunction of a Materialist view of human persons, a Four-Dimensionalist theory of parthood and persistence, a Counterpart Theory of de re modal properties, Eternalism (or Non-Presentism), an Epistemicist theory of vagueness, a Universalist theory of composition, a Psychological Criterion of personal identity, and so forth) on some of the most hotly contested issues in contemporary ethics and philosophy of religion. There are obstacles to the project of applying the results of the metaphysics from Part I to debates in other subfields of philosophy in Part II. For example, fortified by a recent history of perceived successes in moral-principle-manufacturing and unprecedentedly inclusive ethical reflections (much of which is unencumbered by the addition of any taxing metaphysical details), many of the ethicists working on moral questions regarding the treatment of human persons will be resistant to the suggestion that some of their arguments may be undermined by ontological, mereological, and modal discoveries in metaphysics. Alternatively, many philosophers whose work in ontology, mereology, modality, and the philosophy of science I very much admire are extremely resistant and even uncharacteristically hostile to the prospect of providing accommodation for any kind of theism in their views on the nature of the human person and on the relations human persons bear to their environment. Nevertheless, whereas I find myself in sympathy with a wide range of popular judgments about the moral

3

Introduction permissibility of certain actions involving human persons, human fetuses, human infants, profoundly retarded human organisms, irreversibly comatose human organisms, and human corpses, what I take to be the most defensible metaphysics of the human person simply blocks the most widely adopted defenses of those judgments. I think it worthwhile, then, to show how one can offer a justification for our commonly held moral beliefs, attitudes, and practices which is consonant with the metaphysics I shall recommend. Similarly, I suspect that much (though not all) of the hostility to theism so prevalent among our contemporaries stems from a perceived inconsistency between a materialist view of human persons and theism. Once again, then, I think it worthwhile to show how one can defend the compatibility of materialism for human persons and theism (in this case Christian theism), in addition to showing how my preferred metaphysics can furnish what appears to be the only satisfactory philosophical account available of one notable Christian doctrine, namely, the resurrection of the body. Before embarking on the metaphysical disputes of Part I, however, I would like to identify and to provide an initial overview of six fundamental theses that I here set forth both to inform the reader of my starting points and to clarify the nature of the argument in the text; that is, to note that the argument which follows is largely conditional-if we accept these starting points, then our theory of human persons must take on a certain distinctive character. I will attempt to motivate and to defend some of these positions in the text (namely, theses 2, 3, 4 and 6)-but without the presumption that what I have to say should convert anyone who does not share my intuitions. Others I will simply presuppose without argument (namely, theses 1 and 5), either because I have no argument to give at all (thesis 5) or because I have nothing new to add to an already enormous literature (thesis 1). Much of the value of the book, I believe, lies in the facts that these starting points are both very widely endorsed and independently plausible. To the extent that conscientious reflection on them eventually leads to serious revisions in our views on the nature of human persons, their status, and their relations to other objects in their environment, the book enables us to make rewarding philosophical progress. 1.

A materialist theory of human persons is true. By this I do not mean that everything that exists is a material object, for the number 8214 and my singleton set both exist, and they are not material

4

Introduction

2.

objects. Neither do I mean that every person that exists is a material object, for I believe that there is a Divine person that fails to be a material object, and for all I know there are great numbers of creaturely immaterial persons, as well. Rather I intend by these words only that (i) a human person has material parts and has no immaterial parts, and that (ii) all of the splendid cognitive capacities and psychological properties exemplified by human persons supervene on properties exemplified by certain, intricately organized, composite material objects with which they may be identified. Also, I will speak throughout as if it were settled that there are material simples and no "atomless gunk" -i.e., no material objects all of whose parts have proper parts. Consequently, I will freely use phrases such as "the simples which compose Hannah." (I do not, however, regard this as a separate assumption, for an extended argument against atomless gunk appears in section 5 of chapter 3). 1 Occasionally, however, I will separate cases and show how one agnostic about atomless gunk might reformulate the line of argument in the text. Human persons persist over time. I do not assert this as an essential feature of human persons, for perhaps any human person might have been present for only a moment. (Note the difference between the thesis that (i) any person might have been present for only a moment, and the thesis that (ii) for any moment at which a person is present, that person might have been present at only that moment. The latter is much more controversial than the former.) But claims about how persons might have been notwithstandinghuman persons do persist. Just how persons manage to do sowhether by being wholly present at each of the times at which they are present or by having an instantaneous temporal part at

After this book was completed, however, I became convinced that I really should acknowledge an additional genuine assumption at work in the arguments I there offer against gunk, namely, that the Whiteheadian theory of space-a theory according to which spatial points are constructed out of extended regions and in which every region itself has proper subregions-is either necessarily true or necessarily false. I assert (but do not defend) that disjunction in the last of the three arguments I offer against gunk in the text. Nevertheless, this final argument would remain significant even if it established only the conditional conclusion that gunk requires Whiteheadian space-a partnership that is sometimes recognized as congenial but not usually recognized as indissoluble. For an excellent discussion of a version of the Whiteheadian theory of space, see Forrest 1996a. 1

5

Introduction each of the times at which they are present or (as I will argue) in some other fashion-will be a topic of interest in chapter 2. 3· Ontological, metaphysical, or in re vagueness is impossible. In particular, there is no such thing as non-epistemic, non-linguistic indeterminateness with respect to existence or identity. It is commonplace to claim that ontological vagueness is unintelligible, but that seems unduly harsh. It's not that I fail to understand the ontologically vague reading of "It is indeterminate whether A at T is identical to BatT*." Instead, it's that I fail to see how it is possible that the indeterminacy in question could be anything other than epistemic or buried in some vague singular referring expression substituted for 'A', 'B', 'T', or 'T*'. Nevertheless, the question of the possibility of ontological vagueness will be center stage in chapter 3· 4· We face no obstacle in our attempts to get clear on the metaphysics of human persons, their nature, their moral status, or their relations to a Divine Being, which requires the abandonment of or even revisions in classical logic. I have two particular points in mind. First, Dialethism-the view that some contradictions are true-is false (and it's not also true!). Second, there is such a relation as classical identity-i.e., meaningful identity claims may be absolute as in "Plato= Aristocles," and hence (despite the fact that there is also such a relation as relative-identity), identity claims need not be indexed to a sortal as in "Plato is the same person as Aristocles." Moreover, identity is reflexive, symmetric, transitive, and utterly unproblematic; admittedly, whereas it is often difficult to answer questions of the form "Is person A at T the same person as person B at T* (T* # T)?" it is always a perfectly trivial matter to provide answers to questions of the form "Is A= A?" and "Is A= C, on the assumptions that A= B and B = C?" 5· Necessitarianism is false. Necessitarianism is the thesis that there is exactly one possible world. I deny this (as I imagine you do, too), but I have no (non-question-begging) argument against it. Perhaps, though, we should distinguish Necessitarianism from its less drastic cousin, Fatalism, in the hopes of recruiting even those who deny free will to our side of the debate. On the doctrine of Fatalism, everything that happens is unavoidable for me (and for any non-Divine person). But Fatalism is clearly consistent with there being an infinity of distinct possible worlds; it only imposes

6

Introduction the restriction that which world is ours is not (even partly) up to us. Necessitarianism, on the other hand, is considerably more austere and forbidding, for, on that view, not only are we unfree, but also nothing (however insignificant) could have been different in anyway whatsoever. 6. One might wonder why it is worth drawing attention to Necessitarianism at all. The answer is that although many are happy to reject that view when straightforwardly confronted with it, many of these many also hold a view that entails it, namely, the Principle of Sufficient Reason. That the Principle of Sufficient Reason entails Necessitarianism has been becoming more widely accepted and blocking the entailment would require drastic measures indeed. 2 But, for the moment, let us just assume that the denial of Necessitarianism leaves us with a rejection of the Principle of Sufficient Reason and consequently with at least one brute fact. By 'brute fact' I shall mean a contingently true proposition without any sufficient reason (i.e., a contingent truth without any explanation for its truth, a truth that is not true in virtue of anything). Being committed to at least one brute fact is awful enough, for it requires forfeiting the ideal of a world without explanatory mystery and permanently raises the cost of the worldview of the great rationalists to a price that only Spinoza, Wolff and a few others were willing to pay-the denial of all contingency. But how much bruteness do we have to endure? Not every fact is brute, yet (inescapably) at least one fact is brute. My sixth thesis is more of a regulative principle for doing philosophy, a bit of advice underwritten by one of the strongest intuitions I have on any topic whatever-"Minimize Bruteness!" This advice, the import of which will be clarified in the sequel, will play two main roles in this work: first, it will figure prominently in our discussion of The Problem of the Many in chapter 1, and second, it will occupy a central place in our reflections on The Special Composition Question in chapter 3· So ends the list of presupposed theses: Human persons are persisting material objects occupying a precise world governed by classical logic-a world which could have been otherwise and a world whose For an example of such drastic measures see the strategy detailed in Hudson 1997 and 1999b.

2

7

Introduction contingent characteristics are (for the most part) subject to explanation and analysis. It is against this rather innocent-looking backdrop that I hope to be able to develop a rather startling view, indeed. In a project as wide-ranging as this one, several different strategies for moving through the material in Part I have presented themselves, each with legitimate merits. A quick comment, then, may be desirable regarding the order of march through the text that upon reflection I have regarded as the best. One of my primary goals has been to position myself to answer the question that now has pride of place in chapter 4: "To which spacetime worms does our term 'human person' refer?" Acquiring the tools to construct such an answer, then, dictated some of the structure of the first half of the book. I begin in chapter 1 with a somewhat neglected problem of material constitution, The Problem of the Many, rather than with a theory of parthood or of persistence or of de re modality or of composition or of vagueness. This opening is motivated by my belief that only by way of an investigation into The Problem of the Many (from among all the puzzles of material constitution) will we discover what is ultimately unsatisfactory in attempting to deal with these puzzles armed only with a combination of the Four-Dimensionalist' s views on parthood and persistence and a counterpart-theoretic treatment of de re modality. By contrast, however, while providing a remarkably satisfying resolution to The Problem of the Many, the Partist View (which is introduced and defended in chapter 2) can lay claim to nearly all the advantages that FourDimensionalism and counterpart theory enjoy over rival solutions to the remaining and better-known puzzles of material constitution. Moreover, with his more flexible variant of the Four-Dimensionalist's views on parthood and persistence (supplemented once again by counterpart theory), the Partist can offer the most compelling approach to the full range of problems of material constitution at the least expensive price. However, a certain measure of modesty should go hand in hand with introducing a new proposal in a field as thoroughly trodden as this one. And although I firmly think that the Problem of the Many deserves to be much more widely discussed and that the Partist solution deserves a place on the list of its most-promising candidate solutions, I had no wish for these objectives to interfere with another of my primary aims in writing the book, namely, to show that Partist and orthodox Four-Dimensionalist alike can offer extremely similar answers to the central question of chapter 4: "To which spacetime

8

Introduction worms does our term 'human person' refer?" So, after exhibiting the advantages of the Partist amendments to orthodox Four-Dimensionalism, I then wanted to show how those willing to opt for some less attractive way out of The Problem of the Many (in order to avoid relinquishing an orthodox Four-Dimensionalism) could nevertheless join the Partist in almost everything else the book has to say about the metaphysics of human persons and its various applications to ethics and philosophy of religion. So, equipped with two quite similar views and a common objective, I selected what seemed the most natural method of exposition-namely, to pursue the objective in question throughout the remainder of the book in the language most accessible to the widest audience (i.e., the considerably more-familiar and less-cumbersome language of the orthodox Four-Dimensionalist) pausing when necessary to provide the Partist gloss on the discussion when the translation was not apparent or when a problem arose for the Partist alone as an artifact of his peculiar resolution of The Problem of the Many. (In fact, I am quite certain that adhering to the practice of speaking as an unrelenting Partist throughout the work would have been highly counterproductive and would have made some of the central sections of the book-say on composition and atomless gunk-all but unreadable, since the debates in which I wished to participate are firmly entrenched in a very different language; attempting simultaneously to initiate a new and taxing way to frame the discussion while attempting to persuade an audience of the impossibility of atomless gunk would, I strongly suspect, have failed twice over.) The current arrangement of topics, then, should make the work of interest to a very diverse audience, while exhibiting most clearly many of the unexplored virtues shared by the Partist and the Four-Dimensionalist in constructing a metaphysics of the human person, but without sacrificing the opportunity to explore the unique advantages of the Partist over his betterknown cousin. Finally, allow me a brief comment on what does not appear in this book: Given the rather enduring, perennial problems in philosophy it takes up, some readers may wonder why there is so little history of philosophy in the work and why so little attention is given to particular historical thinkers who have had something or other worthwhile to say on these topics. The explanation is straightforward: with only a small handful of exceptions, I do not have sufficient expertise in the outstanding historical figures or in the general history of philosophy to warrant such an approach. My attempts at providing a comprehensive,

9

Introduction

sweeping overview or even a careful exegesis of selected prominent historical texts by way of introduction to my main theme would be either radically incomplete or transparently unsophisticated. Consequently, whereas I have a profound respect for the splendid achievements of certain historical figures, the present work remains firmly rooted in contemporary, analytic metaphysics, ethics, and philosophy of religion.

PART I A MATERIALIST METAPHYSICS OF THE HUMAN PERSON

I The Many Problematic Solutions to the Problem of the Many

§ 1-The Problem Posed Let us suppose that you have just been introduced to a man whose name is Legion, and who is sitting before you as you read the present chapter. Here is a sensible speech: Legion is a material object. He does not have nor has he ever had any immaterial parts. He is composed at each moment of his existence by material simples (i.e., by material objects that do not have any proper parts). Additionally, at each moment of his existence there exists a set that has as its members all and only those material simples that compose him at that moment. Furthermore, Legion is currently a human person. In fact, he is the only person who is presently sitting in that very chair before you today. The facts that Legion currently exemplifies the property of being a person supervenes on facts regarding the environment, histories, types, arrangements, and intrinsic properties of those material simples that compose him now, a supervenience relation which is insensitive to certain extremely minor differences regarding the facts in question. Finally, sentences of the form "xis identical toy" and "xis a part of y at t" and "xis a member of y" are well formed. In other words, there is such a thing as classical, non-relative identity, parthood is a three-place relation between two objects and a time, and set-membership is an alior-nothing affair, never a matter of degree. II

12

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person I believe that the claims just reported would enjoy widespread acceptance among contemporary philosophers, especially among those philosophers who would describe themselves as three-dimensionalists, proponents of a materialistic theory of human persons, defenders of classical identity, enemies of fuzzy-set talk, members of the sensible party, and, of course, friends of Legion (were he only a real character). 1 However, a wonderful little puzzle known as The Problem of the Many threatens to show that this popular collection of plausible claims leads to contradiction, and thus that not all of them are as innocent as they seem.2 In order to facilitate the initial presentation of The Problem of the Many, I will speak as if parthood were temporally relative, and I will assume that there are no restrictions on composition. In chapter 2, I will present arguments against the view that parthood is temporally relative, but it will make the puzzle more accessible at first glance to assume otherwise. To this end, I would like briefly to introduce a temporally relativized version of a controversial, mereological thesis that I endorse, namely, The Principle of Unrestricted Mereological Composition-or, as it is sometimes called,

(Temporally-Restricted) Universalism Necessarily, for any collection of objects, the xs, and any time, t, if the xs are present at t, then there exists an object, y, such that the xs compose y at f.

Informally, (Temporally Restricted) Universalism is the view that absolutely any collection of contemporaneous objects whatsoever manages to compose something, no matter how widely scattered and incongruous they should happen to be. Although I will later show how The Problem of the Many may be generated without the help of this controversial thesis, I will begin by presupposing it (without argument) only in order to present the puzzle before us in a particularly vivid form. (I will, however, present a sustained defense of an a temporal version of Universalism in chapter 3 below.) So, back to Legion. Let 'T' name one of the innumerably many 1 It makes no difference which human person we choose to play the role of Legion in the puzzle. You may even choose yourself if you wish. I have noted, however, that invoking a fictional protagonist tends to prevent certain misunderstandings of the puzzle at the outset. 2 Unger 1980 contains a forceful introduction of this puzzle into the contemporary literature.

13

The Many Problematic Solutions to the Problem of the Many moments that have elapsed since you began reading this chapter just a few moments ago. According to our supposition above, Legion exists at T. But in our sensible speech we assumed that at each moment of Legion's existence there exists a set which has as its members all and only those material simples that compose him at that moment. Consequently, there is such a set at T that we hereby name 'The Primary Set'. Furthermore, Legion is a person at T. But in our speech we assumed that Legion's being a person at I supervenes on facts regarding the environment, histories, types, arrangements, and intrinsic properties of those material simples that compose him at T, the very members of The Primary Set. Why these kinds of facts? Well, environmental ones are important, since we could have a duplicate of the fusion of the members of The Primary Set which was a proper part of a plumper person than Legion, but we would have very little reason to think that that object would be a person. The types and arrangements are important, too, since many of Legion's admirable cognitive capacities (those in virtue of which he qualifies as a person) may well depend on particular configurations of particles of specific kinds that can stand in the requisite chemical and causal relations in his brain. And to avoid unnecessary controversy, let us simply grant that historical ones are important, too. Perhaps the particles in question have to enter into the arrangements in question in accordance with specific kinds of causal stories, stories so complete that they even make very restrictive claims about the possible origins of the being in question. But let us postpone the project of filling in the details and simply use the phrase "satisfying the Person-Composing Conditions" to denote the exemplification of whatever environmental, historical, kind and relational properties turn out to be jointly sufficient for some collection of material simples to compose a person at a time. Even without filling in the details, we may draw the following conclusion: The members of The Primary Set have what it takes at T; since Legion is a person at T, and since The Primary Set contains all and only the material simples that compose him at T, those material simples clearly manage to satisfy the Person-Composing Conditions at T. Now the problem starts to arise. The Primary Set is gigantic with some 1028 +members; that's over a billion members for each second that has elapsed since the big bang (on an estimate of some 20 billion years). It's a big set. Still, the fusion of its members doesn't really take up all that much room. In fact, there are lots of things left over, some of them quite close to the members of The Primary Set at T. Consider

14

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person some simple in the neighborhood of Legion's left hand at T which is not a member of The Primary Set (here named'Lefty') and also consider some outermost simple on Legion's right hand at T which is a member of The Primary Set (here named 'Righty'). We are now in a position to characterize a new set of material simples (here named 'The Secondary Set') as follows: The Secondary Set contains all the material simples found in The Primary Set except Righty, and it contains no other items except Lefty. So, each of our two sets has exactly one member the other lacks, and accordingly neither of our two sets is a subset of the other. If we agree to call the fusion of the members of The Primary Set at TTweedledee, and the fusion of the members of The Secondary Set at T-Tweedledum, then we may also note that neither Tweedledee nor Tweedledum is a part of the other. Of course, the intersection of the two sets is huge and the physical overlap (and overall resemblance) between Tweedledee and Tweedledum is considerable, two features of our case that will prove very significant in a moment. What do we know about The Secondary Set? Well, we know that it, too, is a set of some 1028 +material simples that (given the truth of Universalism) together compose an object at T. We also know that the environment, histories, types, and arrangements of the members of The Secondary Set at T are exceedingly similar to those of The Primary Set at T, which (we should remember) is a set whose members satisfy the Person-Composing Conditions at T, and which, thereby, is a set whose members compose a person at T. But in our speech we assumed (and with good reason) that the supervenience of personhood on the PersonComposing Conditions is insensitive to differences as overwhelmingly insignificant as those between the members of The Primary Set at T and the members of The Secondary Set at T. Consequently, we have every reason to believe that if the fusion at T of the members of one of these sets is a person at T, then the fusion at T of the members of the other set is a person at T, as well. But that's significant-since we have agreed that Tweedledee is a person at T, we are then committed to the claim that Tweedledum is a person at T, too. Now things start to get crowded: Tweedledee (a human person) is sitting in Legion's chair at T. But Tweedledum (a human person) is sitting in Legion's chair at T. So, just how many persons are in Legion's chair at T? Recall that when I introduced Legion a few moments ago, I described him as the only person who is presently sitting in that very chair before you today. We might still hope that there is just one, and

IS

The Many Problematic Solutions to the Problem of the Many that we have three names for the same object. But that won't do. Tweedledee is not identical to Tweedledum, for Tweedledee has Righty as a part at T and Tweedledum does not have Righty as a part at T, and no object both does and does not have something as a part at the same time. So, it would seem that we have at least two persons in Legion's chair at T. But in our speech we assumed that there was exactly one person in Legion's chair at T. Contradiction! So, what went wrong?

§2-Ciarifications Perhaps the problem arises only because we were foolish enough to concede the truth of Universalism. Legion exists at T, and since we introduced The Primary Set in such a way as to guarantee that its members composed a person at T, we were committed to the claim that Tweedledee exists at T, as well. But without Universalism we have no automatic answer to the question "Why should we think that the members of The Secondary Set compose anything whatsoever at T?" After all, if they did, then Tweedledum would be a person at T and Legion's chair would be overcrowded at T. So, it is much more reasonable to believe that they don't and that Universalism is false. Unfortunately, the problem doesn't go away that easily. Let's abandon Universalism and recreate the problem. Once again, there you and Legion are in your room. Now consider all the sets of material simples in Legion's half of the room at T. Moreover, let us simply help ourselves to an exclusion principle and insist that at most one of those sets has as its members all and only the material simples that compose at T a human person who is in that chair at T. We still have a stunning array of candidates. At least a billion, billion, billion sets which are as intimately related as were The Primary Set and The Secondary Set present themselves for the office. The problem, as before, is that there does not seem to be any significant qualification possessed by one of the applicants that the others can't also lay claim to. In short, The Problem of the Many is not merely an exclusion problem-it is also a selection problem. In other words, even if we eventually find some way to confirm that there is at most one person in that chair at T, that achievement won't put us any closer to identifying which collection of material simples in the vicinity has the honor of composing him, or of composing

16

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person

anything at all, for that matter. Once again, then, we may remind ourselves that we assumed (and with good reason) that the supervenience of personhood on the Person-Composing Conditions is insensitive to differences as overwhelmingly insignificant as those between the members of the sets in question. Consequently, we have every reason to believe that if the members of any of these sets have a fusion at T which is a person at T, then the members of all of these sets have fusions at T which are persons at T, thus leaving us with the very unappealing options-many persons or none. Our exclusion principle, then, would only encourage us to select the alternative none, which is a curious resolution, indeed. Accordingly, I find that The Problem of the Many is just as worrisome with or without Universalism. In the present context, then, I will continue to presuppose it only because it affords the convenience of speaking of the fusion of the members of any set of material simples at any time we care to name, not because any philosophical advantage is thereby gained. Alternatively, perhaps the problem arises only because we were incautious enough to grant that human persons are composed at times by collections of material simples. But why should we grant that there are such things as material simples in the first place? On the contrary, isn't it possible that human persons don't have any parts that fail to have proper parts, and instead, it's composites "all the way down"? Although I will argue that this is not possible (in section 5 of chapter 3 below), as with the previous proposal that we relinquish Universalism, this just calls for a minor reformulation of the puzzle. We could simply let the term 'littlebit' pick out the items we would currently identify as particles (with no assumptions about having or lacking proper parts built into the meaning of the term) and then let the term 'littlebit' do the work that 'material simple' did in the original formulation of our problem. Thus, we could remain neutral on whether there is any atomless gunk-i.e, on whether there are any material objects each of whose parts has proper parts. Again, then, for convenience only I will continue to presuppose that there are material simples, and that human persons are not composites "all the way down." With indifference to debates regarding Universalism or restricted composition, atomless gunk or simples, we still may locate several different targets to take aim at in this puzzle. Unfortunately, one common reaction to this puzzle by philosophers working on problems of com-

17

The Many Problematic Solutions to the Problem of the Many position and material constitution has been to ignore it, since every out seems to involve some severe embarrassment or other. Indeed, it hasn't received anywhere near the amount of attention that has been lavished on the other puzzles of composition and material constitution. Nevertheless, unraveling this particular knot is of crucial importance in our project of providing a materialist portrait of the human person that satisfies the constraints laid down in the Introduction. Moreover, careful attention to this neglected puzzle will expose the limitations of the current strategies in the literature for dealing with the various problems arising from reflection on composition. Much of the literature on this problem is widely scattered, and there has of yet been no attempt to bring the several strands together. In this chapter, I would like to discuss critically ten currently available solutions to The Problem of the Many, some of them in considerably more depth than others. The advantages of a side-by-side comparison will repay the effort involved in inquiring into such a large number of proposed solutions for many reasons that will become clear in the sequel, not the least of which is that it will be much more difficult to dismiss the view that I will eventually endorse in chapter 2 below as outrageous, once it is seen that all the solutions on offer can make claim to that distinction.

§3-0n Nine Alleged Solutions Two of our attempts deny the existence of some of the items mentioned in our characterization of the puzzle. Let us turn to those first.

Solution !-Eliminating Legion What about the suggestion that the puzzle shows that if Legion exists a contradiction is true, and thus that Legion doesn't exist? Well, Legion is make believe, and to deny his existence is no great loss. But before you find yourself attracted to this bit of silliness as a general strategy for response to this puzzle, consider running the argument first-person and thus entertaining a conclusion you might paradoxically express with the words "I don't exist." Although the one-time champion of The Problem of the Many, Peter Unger, published an article related to this topic with the misleading title "I Do Not Exist," it turns out that he didn't mean it as it sounds, and we shouldn't mean it,

18

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person either. 3 I regard this as a hopeless move and one to be avoided at all costs. Of course, the reductio is just as easily generated by reflecting on your real neighbors as it was with our fictional hero. And if it works to eliminate one of us, the prospects for the rest of us are dim. So, if you were hoping to off Legion as a way of escaping this difficulty, realize that the axe will come down on you as well.

Solution 2-Where Have All the Persons Gone? Here's another out. Legion exists. So do you, and so do I. But none of us is a person. 4 There is a loosely-related precedent for this kind of move in dealing with other problems of material constitution: How shall we respond to the puzzle of the Ship of Theseus-a ship that undergoes part replacement until none of the original parts remains and perplexing questions of identity arise? Perhaps with van Inwagen' s theory of composition and its result that there are no ships to have puzzles about. 5 If I had to, I could live without ships and paraphrase away when somethings shiplike come over the horizon. But could I really live without persons (figuratively or literally)? Striking out all persons is a desperate move, but perhaps it's worth a look. One way the story might unfold is that we insist that the very concept of being a person rules out substantial overlap between persons, and then we concede that what the puzzle shows is that no actual item satisfies our rather intricate conception. Something could satisfy it, in a world much more precise and compact and minimal than ours, but nothing does. Well, suppose we grant all that-it doesn't really seem to help much. Since this solution leaves us with the claim that we still exist as material objects (albeit, as unfamiliar, non-person objects), severe problems are still before us. Suppose we are shmersons instead-highly complex, physical composites, which boast a wide range of cognitive abilities and psychological states, and which enjoy a certain kind of See Unger 1979a. For the sense in which "he didn't mean it," see the following note. Again, Unger once seemed to be attracted by something like this account. See Unger 1979b and 1979c. But not exactly. Unger exploits sorites (or little-by-little) arguments in an attempt to defend the view that the term 'person' (and many other ordinary terms) are logically inconsistent and have no possible application. For more on the relevance of the sorites and vagueness to The Problem of the Many, see section 4 below. 5 See van Inwagen 199ob. The precedent is only loosely related, for whereas van Inwagen argues that particles arranged shipwise really compose nothing at all, the present solution to The Problem of the Many suggests only that none of the composite objects in question is a person. 3 4

19

The Many Problematic Solutions to the Problem of the Many moral status. We have no conceptual ban on vastly many shmersons, unlike persons, simultaneously occupying a rather modest chair, since the concept of being a shmerson does not rule out substantial overlap as the concept of being a person (allegedly) does. But then, we're back where we started. Shmersonhood will supervene on the same sorts of properties that make for personhood, and the satisfying of the Shmersonhood Conditions will be insensitive to certain kinds of minute differences among collections of material simples, as well. Accordingly, given the actual distribution of material simples at T, we will still face the unappealing options that there are many shmersons or no shmersons-right there in Legion's chair at T. I suspect that telling Legion "Look, no need to worry, there aren't lots of persons in your chair at T" won't soften the blow, particularly when he is then informed that there aren't any persons there, but rather a great horde of shmersons, just like him. Incidentally, the claim "I am not a person" may be even worse off than the claim "I do not exist." Whereas it is impossible for me to token the sentence "I do not exist" and thereby express a truth in English, the proposition thus expressed is only contingently false. However, if personhood is an essential property of those objects that exemplify it, not only would it be impossible for me to token the sentence "I am not a person" and thereby express a truth in English, the proposition itself would be necessarily false. Two of the remaining eight solutions challenge the assumption that human persons are material objects, and despite our general intention to discuss only the consequences of a materialistic view of human persons, it will prove instructive to briefly suspend that rule and to turn our attention to them, as well.

Solution 3-Dualism to the Rescue The Dualist speaks: The puzzle shows us something truly surprising but not something incredible. Here's the surprising bit: The Problem of the Many arises everywhere and applies to everything from star-sized material objects to those that would fit on the head of a pin. For example, reasoning similar to that we have just seen will show that I am wearing trillions of shirts, holding trillions of pieces of paper, and glancing out trillions of windows. In short, we grossly underestimated the number of shoes, and ships, and (bits of) sealing wax, and cabbages. But not of kings. Kings are persons, and, as we all know, only one king may occupy a throne at a time. The result, then, is that kings

20

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person are quite unlike material objects; in fact, kings, just like all persons, are (at least partly) immaterial objects. A variety of theories on human persons all go by the name 'Dualism'. On some such accounts, a human person is a composite objectpart immaterial substance, part human organism (with the optional, additional thesis that the person in question can survive the loss of its human-organism part). Another account identifies the person with an immaterial object and then proceeds as follows: What makes one of these immaterial persons-a human person-is the fact that it bears some very intimate relation (other than having-as-a-part) to some particular human organism. For example, on one popular version, an immaterial person counts as a human person when there is a two-way causal connection in which the immaterial person can directly cause changes in some human organism without directly causing changes in any other organism (excepting the cellular parts of that human organism), and in which the human organism can directly cause changes in that very same immaterial person. On whichever account we adopt troubles soon arise, but let us focus on the second version in order to give a Dualist response a fighting chance. To which particular human organism is Legion, the immaterial person, related? We have as many human organisms equally suited to that role as we might have thought we had persons in Legion's chair at T just a moment ago. It is worth noting that given our popular characterization of the two-way causal relation above, none of the human organisms is Legion's body, for he can directly cause a change in one of them only if he thereby directly causes a change in many distinct human organisms, as well. So, suppose we find some way to tolerate these unavoidable changes with some suitable clause about overlap. Still, we haven't answered our question: To which particular human organism is Legion, the immaterial person, related? Maybe we should try to respond that each of them is Legion's body. No help there, for given our popular characterization above, that would yield the result that we have only one person, but also trillions of human persons on the scene-one for each pairing of Legion with a different human organism. Lastly, we could relax our description yet again and count just one human person when we have some immaterial person connected to many substantially overlapping human organism. This, I submit, is exactly what the Dualist should do in response to the problem. And then, if I were numbered among the Dualists, I suppose that

21

The Many Problematic Solutions to the Problem of the Many my bodies and I would have to go about the rather difficult and unenviable task of defending this very non-traditional representative from traditional objections to Dualism.

Solution 4-ldealism to the Rescue The Idealist speaks: The Dualists don't go far enough. Having a great multitude of human organisms in Legion's chair at T is just as absurd as having a great multitude of persons in Legion's chair at T. There is only one remedy for our present difficulty-full-blown, unabashed Idealism. Persons are immaterial objects. They do not bear any special relation to human organisms or to any other material objects (because there aren't any such things). And they count as human persons only insofar as their mental states may be characterized in certain ways. I have two things to say about this solution. First, I can't bring myself to believe a word of it. And second, it's the best argument for Idealism I am familiar with; it certainly outstrips defenses which turn on the (alleged) meaninglessness or contradictoriness of the words 'material substance', or on problems regarding the infinite divisibility of material objects, or on obscure arguments for the claim that all relations are internal. Of course, by 'best' I do not mean sound. I simply mean that the philosophical price one pays in adopting a non-Idealist response to this puzzle is significantly higher than the price one pays in denying some premise in the other arguments for Idealism with which I am familiar. If we had not imposed Materialism as a restriction on our theorizing, then we would have to enter into the debate on the merits of these non-Materialistic views, and (as against Dualism) this would consist in trotting out classical problems facing Idealism, too. Still, it should be admitted that the Idealists have an advantage here, for they may adopt an answer to our main puzzle that (unlike the Dualists' answer) doesn't require cobbling together some perversion of their theory first. The Idealist is in the unique position to point out that since there aren't any material objects at all, there certainly aren't more than we thought there were. To this extent, it is worth observing that the Idealists may have found a better friend in The Problem of the Many than in Berkeley, Leibniz, or Bradley. I must admit that I'm not a fan of any of our first four solutions. But six solutions remain. Let us now turn our attention to two solutions

22

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person

that preserve a Materialist theory of human persons while trying to reduce the number of persons in Legion's chair at T to one.

Solution 5-Brute Facts Due largely to Peter van Inwagen's excellent book, Material Beings, there has been a recent flood of interest in mereology, much of it centering around what van Inwagen calls The Special Composition Question.6 Here is one way to think about that question: What shall we put in the blank in the sentence "Necessarily, for any xs, there is an object ," which will yield a true and composed of the xs if and only if informative (i.e., non-trivial) answer to the question "When is it true that there exists a y such that the xs compose y?" As I noted earlier, I am a Universalist. I think any old collection of objects compose something. But one of my colleagues, Ned Markosian, has recently defended another view; according to Markosian there is no true and informative answer to The Special Composition Question. Whenever composition occurs, it's just a brute fact that the relevant objects compose something, and whenever composition fails to occur, that's a brute fact, too? Earlier I suggested that The Problem of the Many arises whether or not we accept Universalism. The idea was that any restricted theory of composition either will be wildly implausible or will be insensitive to the differences between the members of The Primary set at T and the members of The Secondary Set at T, so that if one collection of simples has what it takes for composition to occur at T, then the other collection will, too. Perhaps that was too hasty. If composition is brute, then there is nothing in virtue of which the simples in one group compose anything at T and the simples in another do not, and thus, the strong resemblance between the members of the two sets at T is simply irrelevant. As confessed in the Introduction, I agree that there are some brute facts in the world, but owing to my very strong intuition that there is a true and informative answer to The Special Composition Question, I do not believe that the bruteness makes its appearance in the world at the level of composition. Here, certainly, I think it best to follow the 6 van Inwagen 1990b. (Occasionally, for ease of exposition, I will suppress the temporal index in claims about parthood, but it should be remembered that whenever we are discussing the views of Three-Dimensionalists such as van Inwagen, parthood is always regarded as temporally relative.) 7 See Markosian 1998a.

23

The Many Problematic Solutions to the Problem of the Many advice--"Minimize Bruteness!"-the "in virtue of" relation terminates somewhere, to be sure, but not in inexplicable facts about mereological sums. Accordingly, I take the Brutal Composition view to be among the very implausible ones (but maybe not among the wildly implausible ones-such as the one according to which composition occurs only when all of the xs are in New York). One notable feature of the Brutal Composition thesis is that it is the only response to The Special Composition Question, which is consistent with all of our ordinary intuitions about particular cases of composition, even if it fails to square with our intuitions about general principles such as the one according to which The Special Composition Question has a true and informative answer. None of the other most prominent answers to The Special Composition Question can make this boast of consistency, including van lnwagen's Life and my own Universalism. Whereas van Inwagen denies the existence of non-living composites and then undertakes a paraphrase project to show us how we can still say things we are inclined to say about chairs and ships, Universalists usually insist that all sorts of odd fusions exist (such as shipchairs), and then try to explain away our intuitions to the contrary by pointing out why we don't tend to care much about the vast majority of them. Markosian suggests an advantage of the Brutal Composition view when he says that such a theorist "has an easy solution to The Problem of the Many. [He] can simply maintain that not every set of objects is such that the members of that set compose anything ... only one of the relevant sets is such that its members actually compose anything, namely, the one whose members compose the person in question. And when [he] is asked why it is that the members of that set compose something while the members of the other relevant sets do not, [he] can just shrug and say, 'There is no reason. It is a brute fact.' "Accordingly, Markosian can maintain that there is exactly one person in Legion's chair at T and it is Tweedledee. Tweedledum is in no need of a place to sit, since (for no reason at all) there is no fusion of the members of The Secondary Set at T. Note that there are two ways to understand the claim that the proponent of the Brutal Composition thesis can claim that there is exactly one person in Legion's chair at T. The first is that his theory gives him special reason to believe that there is exactly one. The second is that it is consistent with his theory that there is exactly one. The Brutal Composition view (all by itself) does not entitle us to anything more than the second reading (a point Markosian himself happily concedes). Perhaps

24

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person unlike Universalists and Nihilists, the proponent of the Brutal Composition thesis does not commit himself to more or less than one composite object in that chair at T, but neither does his theory commit him to exactly one composite object in that chair at T. Perhaps we should note that it is also consistent with his theory that there are no composite objects anywhere in the vicinity of what looks like Legion's chair, and that it is consistent with his theory that there are exactly eight-hundred and sixty-seven people in Legion's chair at T. Having a view that is consistent with all of one's intuitions about particular cases is not the same thing as having a view according to which all of one's intuitions about particular cases are satisfied. Accordingly, whereas Markosian can shrug off the question "In virtue of what do these simples compose a person at T and those simples fail to compose a person at T?" he must still face the questions: "So, how many persons are there in Legion's chair at T?" and "What good reasons do we have to believe the answer to that last question (which will undoubtedly be 'exactly one')?" Nor should the proponent of the Brutal Composition thesis retreat to the view that there may be several composite objects present but only one person. Suppose we were to agree for the sake of argument that composition is brute; accordingly, we would concede that when the xs compose some y, we have a state of affairs that does not admit of any sufficient reason and that is not subject to any illuminating analysis. Now suppose that (for no reason at all) the members of some set of simples compose an object at T. Suppose further that this composite object is a person at T. But thus far we have no reason at all to suppose that this composite object's being a person at T is also a brute fact. In other words, if (for no reason at all) exactly two of the relevant sets in our puzzle have members which compose objects at T (say, The Primary Set and The Secondary Set), both objects will be persons at T, since personhood (at least) does admit of an illuminating analysis. Consequently, whereas the Brutal Composition thesis is consistent with everything we might hope for, namely, some reason to believe that there is exactly one person in Legion's chair at T, it fails to provide that reason. Well, so far so good; that much is not worrisome-why think that the view should provide such a reason? The difficulty, though, is not that it fails to provide the reason, but rather (as I will argue momentarily) that there are good grounds for thinking that it undercuts our hopes for finding such a reason elsewhere. But for now, doesn't it seem an exceedingly improbable coincidence that each time we target a human subject for The Problem of the Many, exactly one of

25

The Many Problematic Solutions to the Problem of the Many the some 1028 +relevant sets has members that compose anything at all, for no reason at all? 8

Solution 6-Sensitive Person-Composing Conditions Let me introduce this next solution with a story. Suppose that indeterminate existence is impossible and that time is continuous, and thus, that for any moment and any human person, the person either definitely exists at that moment or definitely fails to exist at that moment. Here's a mystery-are human persons the sort of thing that have a last moment of existence but no first moment of non-existence (let's call such things Terminators), or are they the sort of thing that have no last moment of existence but a first moment of non-existence (let's call such things Lingerers), or are there some of each? Let us further assume that the man in the street is firmly of the opinion that we are Terminators, and that we tend to care a great deal about being Terminators, and that the very idea that we are Lingerers strikes most of us as laughable. In fact, I can imagine the philosophers among us saying to one another, "The intuition that we are Terminators is a strong one indeed, and is not to be relinquished without very good cause." Now suppose that when our philosophers apply themselves to the task of giving a theory of lifespans, the best they produce is one according to which if something is a Terminator it's a brute fact that it's a Terminator, and if something is a Lingerer, well, that's a brute fact, too. I should be astonished if all six billion of us were Terminators, for no reason at all. Of course, that outcome is consistent with the Brute Fact theory of lifespans, but we would have no reason to suppose that the bruteness just happens to coincide continually with what we commonly believe and care about, not unless we have good reason to think that such intuitions about brute facts are truth-guiding. But what would count as good reasons here? The mere fact that we might have an intuition to that effect does not seem to carry sufficient epistemic justificatory weight. Moreover, no amount of empirical investigation could ever confirm or disconfirm the intuitions in question; for example, natural selection wouldn't favor such intuitions (thinking that tigers are Terminators or that there is one rather than many overlapOf course the number is much higher than this, since we are here considering that collection of sets which differ only by two members from one another. There are also plenty of sets that differ by three and so on.

8

26 AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person ping predators doesn't afford you any evolutionary advantage!). And since the fact in question is allegedly brute, there's no analysis into which one might have rough and ready insight underscoring one's intuitions. So, apart from a Divine Being insuring or revealing that our intuitions about such brute facts are truth-guiding (an option I think the Brute Fact theorists should take seriously), again, what could that reason be? Suppose, however, that we weren't ready to relinquish that strong intuition so easily. What kind of theory of lifespans would generate support for the intuition that we are all Terminators? Presumably, it would be one according to which we were Terminators in virtue of something, perhaps something partially hidden from us, something into which we have only limited insight, but something. The moral of the story seems to transfer to our puzzle. To the extent that we are convinced that each and every time we target a human subject for The Problem of the Many, exactly one of the some ro 28 + relevant sets has members that compose a person, we should suspect that there is something in virtue of which this is the case, perhaps something partially hidden from us, something into which we have only limited insight, but something. Suppose, then, we entertain the idea that the Person-Composing Conditions are highly sensitive, and that, despite their fantastic degree of similarity, exactly one of the relevant sets has members with that little extra something, that something that makes the difference between personhood and its lack. Is this credible? How can such an insignificant thing as a single material simple mark the difference between personhood and its lack? Well, a little reflection should convince us that a single simple can always make the difference. Consider the item which is the fusion at T of the members of The Primary Set and a simple somewhere in Kaliningrad. That thing is not a person at T, even though it differs from something that is a person at T by only a single simple. Better yet, consider Little Legion, an object which is the fusion at T of all the members of The Primary Set except Righty. Despite the difference of a single simple, that thing fails to be a person at T, too, since Tweedledee (the fusion at T of the members of The Primary Set) is a person at T, and since Little Legion would be a proper part of Tweedledee, and since no human person is ever a proper part of another human person. 9 9

See Hudson 1999a and chapter 4 below for further reflections on this line of argument.

27 The Many Problematic Solutions to the Problem of the Many

Elsewhere I have argued that the principle that no human person has another human person as a proper part can drastically reduce the number of persons at Tin Legion's chair, but not to one. 10 Whenever we have a series of sets of material simples, each set larger than the last by one simple, and each set a proper subset of the next, this maximality principle will help us to establish that at most one of the sets has members which satisfy the Person-Composing Conditions. The rest either have fusions which are proper parts of a person or which have a person as a proper part, features which disqualify them for personhood themselves. But even if satisfying the Person-Composing Conditions is sensitive to these sorts of minute differences, the strategy promised by the maximality principle simply has no application here. Recall that neither The Primary Set nor The Secondary Set is a proper subset of the other, and that neither Tweedledee nor Tweedledum is a proper part of the other. Consequently, the thesis (whether true or not) ruling out one person as a proper part of another simply never comes into play. Instead, it only offers the small comfort that if both Tweedledee and Tweedledum are distinct persons in Legion's chair at T, at least there won't be any other persons there too that have either of them as proper parts or that are numbered among their proper parts. The utility of dwelling on this point is simply that it does make reasonable the claim that personhood might supervene on one set of material simples but not on another which is so remarkably similar to the first. As we have just seen, however, it is powerless to furnish an exclusion principle and thereby to resolve our problem in favor of one person in Legion's chair at T. And as for the Legion scenario (which involves only overlap rather than proper parthood) it still seems intolerably arbitrary that there could be two sets of material simples whose members are as much alike in their spatial, temporal, and causal relations at T as are those of The Primary Set and The Secondary Set, and yet in only one of the two cases do we have a person at T. Let me make a final remark on sensitive Person-Composing Conditions. Perhaps only one of the relevant sets has members which compose a person, because only one of the sets has the special distinction of being such that God wills that those material simples compose anything at all. Then we might have reason to suppose that there is but one person in Legion's chair at T, but at a very high cost-even for theists like myself-namely, that for all fusions that fail to have a Divine part, 10

See Hudson zooob and chapter 3 below for a discussion of this argument.

28

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person

whether the xs compose anything at all would always depend on facts external to the xs. Now let us turn our attention to proponents of solutions who think The Problem of the Many is serious enough to warrant revising our views about set membership and identity.

Solution 7-Fuzzy Sets Peter van lnwagen has recently denied that there is any classical set whose members compose a person at a time. His reason is straightforward: membership in a classical set is all or nothing, whereas composition and parthood admit of degree. Following van lnwagen, one may adopt instead the proposal that Legion is composed at T by the members of a fuzzy set. Fuzzy sets are ideally suited to our purposes, argues van Inwagen, since any item can be a member of a fuzzy set to any degree represented by a real number from o to 1, and thus the membership relation can perfectly mirror the parthood relation; for example, if some material simple is a part of Legion at T to degree .0118919, then the fuzzy set whose members compose Legion at T has that simple as a member to degree .0118919. With fuzzy sets at hand, van Inwagen then claims "it is evident from our definition that at any given moment of my career the members of exactly one f-set of simples will compose me. There is, therefore, no "problem of the many" for the £-sets. No selection principle is needed to pick out the one f-set among many equally suitable candidates to be the one whose members compose me, for only one is suitable." 11 This solves one variant of The Problem of the Many, but leaves our version of the puzzle untouched. Suppose that the suitability of exactly one fuzzy set is guaranteed by the definition of the phrase, "the fuzzy set that composes me now." What will that do for us?-It will decisively answer questions of the form, "Which of these many fuzzy sets has members that compose me?" and thereby provide us with a nonarbitrary way to pick out one set with that special feature. Of course, one might have thought the definition of the phrase, "the classical set that composes me now," similarly guaranteed that only one classical set is suitable. Van Inwagen, however, can complain that this remark presupposes that each thing is a part of me either to degree o or 1, and that this is an unacceptable commitment. Let us give in on that point; if 11

van Inwagen 1990b, 223.

29 The Many Problematic Solutions to the Problem of the Many

parthood comes in degrees, then only van Inwagen has solved the selection problem with respect to questions of the form, "Which of these fuzzy sets has members that compose me?" But now recall that our worry has also largely been centered on the exclusion problem and on the number of distinct persons in Legion's chair at T. Suppose for a moment that there are many overlapping persons on that chair (i.e., the view to be explored in section 4 below), and invite all the Legions to say with one voice, "There is exactly one fuzzy set that composes me now." Owing to the indexical 'me', each of those many persons will thereby express a different proposition. We can concede that they are all definitionally true if we care to, but we will still have just as many persons on Legion's chair at T as we did before. As I see it, the move from classical sets to fuzzy sets may improve matters with respect to the selection problem, but it does nothing to dissolve a version of The Problem of the Many which threatens us with ontological commitment to many distinct persons; it simply relocates it at the level of fuzzy sets. Even if he is right to regard parthood as coming in degrees, and thus even if fuzzy sets are better suited to our purposes than their classical cousins, the trouble for van Inwagen is to explain why the members of one fuzzy set compose a person, while the members of a remarkably similar fuzzy set either compose a non-person or nothing at all. In fact, two such fuzzy sets may be even more intimately related than were The Primary Set and The Secondary Set, for they may match degrees of membership for all of the simples they hold in common right out to the eight-hundred-trillionth place of their decimal expansions. Although van Inwagen briefly responds to this criticism, his discussion which attempts to eliminate the apparent arbitrariness in favoring one fuzzy set with the distinction of composing a person and withholding that honor from another so similar, succeeds only in once again relocating the problem-this time at the level of lives. We may admit that if lives are jealous, as he describes them, then any simple will be a part of at most one human person to any degree greater than o. Accordingly, one of our solutions would be thereby decisively eliminated-the many persons solution. Still, puzzles would remain; that is, even if we became convinced that lives are jealous, we would still want to know why lives are jealous (e.g., Is it brute that lives are jealous? Do sensitive Person-Composing Conditions yield the contingent result that lives are jealous?). Perhaps, though, we will not get far enough along to ask those questions. Fuzzy sets and jealous lives would clearly yield exactly one per-

30

A Materialist Metaphysics of the Human Person

son and a non-arbitrary way to specify his parts, but it is unclear that van lnwagen can provide any compelling support for the thesis that lives are jealous, especially in the face of apparent empirical evidence to the contrary. Is it so implausible that some simple might be simultaneously caught up in the lives of two conjoined twins, and be a part of each twin to some degree greater than o? Van Inwagen' s final remarks on the issue take the form of an analogy between the problem (as it appears at the level of lives) and a certain concrete event, namely a riot (with which our problem shares certain salient features), declaring it a desperate move to believe in a plurality of lives where there appears to be only one. Maybe so, but we haven't yet encountered a better one. I conclude that van Inwagen' s final remarks serve only to remind us that we can find The Problem of the Many everywhere we look, not as its successful solution.

Solution 8-Relative Identity If a revision in our notion of set-membership leaves us where we started, how about something even more radical? Perhaps the culprit responsible for this mess we find ourselves in is none other than our unfailing commitment to classical identity. How might we have many, each of which is a person, and yet not many persons? We need only employ relative identity and ban classical identity. (Once again, even though our restrictions in the Introduction have ruled out such a revision of classical logic, due to the attention that the doctrine of relative identity continues to receive, it will prove instructive to walk through this alleged solution and make an attempt to expose its defects along the way.) 12 We may begin by observing that while Tweedledee is a person-constituter and Tweedledum is a person-constituter, Tweedledee is not the same person-constituter as Tweedledum. Thus, with a series of similar moves we gain the many-many fusions of material simples, hunks of matter, person-constituters or what have you. Next we note that Tweedledee is a person and Tweedledum is a person, and so on for the rest of the fusions at T of the members of the relevant sets. Thus, we avoid the arbitrariness of favoring one fusion over the others. And finally we submit that Tweedledee is the same person as Tweedledum and so on 12 For an early discussion of this approach, see Geach 1962; for a detailed presentation, see Griffin 1977.

31

The Many Problematic Solutions to the Problem of the Many

up the line, a procedure which (together with the symmetry and transitivity of "the same person as") will guarantee only one person in Legion's chair at T. Thus, we avoid the great horde of persons which threatened Legion's solitude only moments ago. The cost of this three-fold advantage-recognizing the many, tolerating no arbitrariness, and yielding one person-is exceedingly high: it is the loss of classical identity and of singular reference. It is worth noting that relative identity by itself is no threat to classical identity or singular reference. If classical identity is not contraband, the natural reading of "xis the same F as y" is simply "xis an F & x = y." (Natural, not necessary.) But the force of this peculiar application of relative identity to The Problem of the Many depends crucially on being unable (coherently) to raise the question "Is Tweedledee identical to Tweedledum simpliciter?" For if we could raise that question coherently, then in our present context we would undeniably wish to count persons by identity rather than simply partitioning them into equivalence classes and counting by partial indiscernability. Consequently, the claim that Tweedledee is a person-constituter is (at best) really shorthand for the claim that Tweedledee is the same person-constituter as himself. Similarly, our common-sensical conclusion that "There is only one person in Legion's chair at T" becomes the awkward and unfamiliar "3x [x is the same person as x & x is on Legion's chair at T & 'ily ([y is the same person as y & y is on Legion's chair at T] only if y is the same person as x)]." Of course, this conclusion leaves open the possibility that some x will be the same person as some y, but not the same F, even though both x andy are F. Don't try to ask whether any of these persons who are the same persons as one another but different hunks of matter are numerically distinct, however, for you won't manage to make any sense. So, the price we pay for being able to say "There is only one person in Legion's chair at T," is being unable to count properly (i.e., by identity) and being unable to pick out that so-called solitary individual with any singular referring expression which isn't first transformed (along the lines presented above) into its suspicious and unsatisfying relative-singular-reference cousin. Moreover, what shall we make of the following pointed question, given the restrictions imposed by our present solution? "Does the only person in Legion's chair at T have Righty as a part or not?" Recall that on the current view the only person there and then is Tweedledee, a fusion of material simples that does have Righty as a part and the only person there and then is Tweedledum, a fusion of material simples that

32

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person

does not have Righty as a part. Same person different fusion. Clearly, our proponent of the present solution can't answer us both "Yes" and "No," and still be in the running. But either answer seems to have just as much claim as the other. Perhaps we should hold that the claim that "The only person in Legion's chair at T has Righty as a part" suffers a truth-value gap-that such a statement is neither true nor false. But this is disastrous; if that's enough for a truth-value gap, we will be unable to say truthfully of any simple at all that the only person in Legion's chair at T has that simple as a part at T, for the reason that there always will be some fusion of material simples, which also is the only person in Legion's chair at T, and which lacks that simple as a part. Consequently, we have given away classical identity and singular reference, and in return we are left with a great swarm of different fusions of simples (each of which is a person). We are instructed to count them as the same person under some partial indiscernability relation. And, when finished, we cannot identify even a single one of that person's simple parts. So, after eight solutions, I find myself still without a candidate to endorse. Perhaps what all of this shows us is that we shouldn't turn our backs on the many.

Solution 9-A Crowd of Constituters Let us acknowledge that there is a multitude of things in Legion's chair at T but then claim that they are person-constituters rather than persons. Familiar conundrums which arise when material objects acquire new parts or when cats suffer tail-losing accidents simply cry out for such a distinction between a thing and that which constitutes it. Once made, this distinction will help us to see that person-constituters belong to a different ontological category than persons and that openly acknowledging the many will no longer pose a threat to common sense. This position, characterized by the slogan "constitution is not identity," permits us to say that there is exactly one person in Legion's chair at T, and that there are many person-constituters there also, and that it is indeterminate just which person-constituter constitutes the person in question. 13 Such a resolution has its enemies and is unlikely to appeal to those

13

See Johnston 1992, Noonan 1993, and Lowe 1995.

33 The Many Problematic Solutions to the Problem of the Many

with Four-Dimensionalist sympathies like myself. 14 The alleged colocation of constituters and constitutees is frequently defended as an ineliminable element of a response to certain puzzles of persistence and change, puzzles that I think are better handled by a combination of counterpart theory and (a variant on) an ontology of temporal parts under the slogan "constitution is identity." Accordingly, quite apart from worrying about the familiar objections to coincident entities that confront the present solution with severe difficulties, we may well find the appeal to two very different kinds of entities in our puzzle wholly unmotivated. However-unmotivated or not-the solution fails, for once they are recognized, there is no good reason to deny the so-called personconstituters the official title of persons. As David Lewis puts it (when talking about alleged cat-constituters rather than person-constituters), "the constituters are cat-like in size, shape, weight, inner structure, and motion ... any way a cat can be at a moment, cat-constituters also can be; anything a cat can do at a moment, cat-constituters also can do. They are all too cat-like not to be cats." 15 Indeed, I think that Lewis grants too much to his opponent when he then concedes that perhaps the cat-constituters cannot be credited with having a feline past. No need to give that away. On the contrary, they all have feline pasts. Perhaps short-lived temporal parts of the cat do not have feline pasts, but that's not what the many are. For each candidate-cat on the mat at T, we could trace a history (involving the loss and addition of various parts) right back to a certain stage of prenatal development. Since I side with (a version of) Four-Dimensionalism in the rejection of multiple constituters, perhaps a word about introducing FourDimensionalism into our puzzle is in order here. For all its virtues, Four-Dimensionalism appears only to make The Problem of the Many worse, infinitely worse. Recall that a simple is just an object without proper parts. It is tempting, then, to regard such things as quarks and classons and leptons as simples, but this is too extravagant from the FourDimensionalist's point of view. Those objects have uncountably many proper parts, proper temporal parts. Moreover, Four-Dimensionalists take parthood to be an atemporal relation, unlike the Three-Dimensionalists who take parthood to be temporally relative (and who by the way are to be held responsible for most of the cumbersome "at Ts" Once again, I will offer an extended defense of a version of Four-Dimensionalism in chapter 2 below. 15 Lewis 1999. 14

34

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person

which appear in this chapter). Consequently, Four-Dimensionalists will take Legion to be a crosstime fusion of spatially scattered simples; that is (given that time is continuous), they will take Legion to be (atemporally) composed by an infinity of momentary temporal slices of objects such as quarks, classons and leptons. So, whereas we were confronted by some 1028 + candidates for personhood on the ThreeDimensionalist picture, now we face a great infinity of personhoodhopefuls all on the edge of Legion's seat at T, differing only by a few person-slices here and there at the ends of what we might imagine will be a rather lengthy lifespan. After our final inquiry into solution 10 below, we will need to return and to decide the fate of this infinity of personhood-hopefuls, for there (in section 4) we will abandon the Three-Dimensionalist's supposition that parthood is temporally relative, a pretense that has now exhausted its function of simplifying and thus making more accessible the puzzle at hand.

§4-Solution Ten: Many Persons So why not many persons, after all? We have enough room for all of them on Legion's chair at T due to the admirable way they overlap at T so as not to push one another off. For that matter, we have enough chairs to go around, too: perhaps even one per person. But the Legions seem content enough to each sit on them all. Biting this bullet turns out to be Lewis's solution. 16 Were it not for the Partist View I will defend in chapter 2, I'm afraid it would also be the outrageous solution I would tentatively and unhappily endorse. Lewis tries to sugar the pill by pleading that there is no harm in admitting that there are many persons, so long as we can find some good and natural sense in which to say there is only one person, as well. Unfortunately, despite his efforts this pill will remain a difficult one to swallow, since (as we shall soon see) both of his two attempts at identifying such a sense have their share of repulsive and unnatural features. Lewis's first sense in which we can say that there is but one person in Legion's chair at Tis to count by relations other than identity. The idea is to treat overlap as a species of identity-partial identity-with complete identity and disjointness at either end of the spectrum. In cases such as ours, we will say that each of the hopefuls is a genuine person, but they overlap to such a considerable degree they are "almost identi16

Again see Lewis 1999.

35

The Many Problematic Solutions to the Problem of the Many cal." And then (providing we first let our guard and our standards down), counting by almost-identity provides us with just what we wanted to say all along: "There is only one person in Legion's chair at T." Feel better?-I, for one, feel swindled. I had hoped (in vain, I knew) for a way to say that "There is only one person in Legion's chair at T" which isn't compatible with counting by identity and saying "There is an infinity of distinct persons in Legion's chair at T." But that's not what I got. I submit that counting by almost-identity is not the good and natural sense we are after. You can do it, and often you would do it (e.g., if you were a many-persons proponent selecting the starting line for the basketball game), but it doesn't make the ontological picture any prettier. In short, Lewis is perfectly right to maintain that he can say something that would be useful and even indispensable. But the real complaint isn't that he can't say something that appears to be useful; it's that he must say something that appears to be intolerable. Lewis's second sense in which we can say that there is but one person in Legion's chair at Tis to apply the method of supervaluations. The general idea in such a strategy is that the term 'person' is vague, and that vagueness is a matter of semantic indecision. We language users (sensibly) have never attempted to settle on exactly what the term 'person' means (not that an attempt on our part would prove successful), but fortunately, it often just doesn't matter what we meant. When what we manage to say turns out true in all the admissible ways the indecision might be resolved (i.e., in all ways of drawing a precise line through the so-called borderline cases of personhood that does not violate any rules governing the term already in force), then what we have said is supertrue. If, on the contrary, what we say turns out false in all admissible ways of making the decision, what we have said is superfalse. And, finally, if the vote should be split among such admissible precisifications, what we have said falls into a supertruth-value gap. Lewis then is free to claim that despite all the startlingly good personhood candidates in the vicinity, when we say "There is only one person in Legion's chair at T" what we have said is supertrue, for what we have said is true on all admissible precisifications of the term 'person'. Once again, then, we seem to have what we're after-a way to say there is just one, without really giving up on the qualifications of the many. Time for complaints. I don't like the supervaluationist approach here for three reasons. First, I am a proponent of a theory known as Epistemicism according to which vague terms have sharp and unknowable

36

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person cutoffs-a rival of Supervaluationism and the subject of a more sophisticated defense than one might first imagine. In fact, in Timothy Williamson's book, Vagueness, we have a formally competent, historically sensitive, splendidly argued case for the epistemic theory of vaguenessP Second, even if Epistemicism is set aside, the method of supervaluations leaves one with very odd consequences, indeed. According to the way the supervaluationist approach is supposed to work, the claim "Exactly one of the many in Legion's chair at T is a person" comes out true, since supposedly on each admissible valuation exactly one of the many falls into the extension of the word 'person'; nevermind that it isn't the same one for each admissible valuation. But I do mind! And I encourage you to mind, too. This resolution yields true existential generalizations with no true instances and true disjunctions with no true disjunct. How can we reconcile our counting as true the claim that "There is a person in that chair at T," when every time we say of one of the many "Here is our person," our assertion disappears off into a truth-value gap, never to ground the true existential generalization to which we have just committed ourselves? My third complaint is that I do not think that the method of supervaluations really manages to provide us with a way to say Legion's chair contains only one person. There are, of course, the familiar worries about the indeterminacy of the term 'admissible precisification' put to use by the supervaluationist. In other words, the predicate 'an acceptable way of drawing the line through borderline cases of personhood' will itself have borderline cases of application, and thus worries of higher-order vagueness can revive exactly the same kind of threat that the method of supervaluations was designed to combat. Setting these complaints aside, however, let us simply ask the question "Why, exactly, on every precisification, is just one of the many put into the extension of the term 'person' and the rest left out?" Is it because the precisification is so detailed as to leave open only one spatial-temporal region that could be occupied by a person? No-for with that kind of hyper-sharpening, the claim that we have one person in Legion's chair at Twill suffer from a truth-value gap, since not every admissible way of carving out a spacetime shape will have an occupant in Legion's chair. Is it because it will be sufficiently qualitatively exhaustive that no two candidates will have the right stuff? No again-for no mere quali17 See Williamson 1994. For more on Epistemicism, also see Sorensen 1988 and 1996, Williamson 1997a, 1997b, 1997c, 1997d, 1996a, 1996b, and 1995, and chapter 3 below.

37

The Many Problematic Solutions to the Problem of the Many tative restriction (such as a minimum degree of cohesiveness among the simples) will guarantee that our precisification is uniquely satisfied. Moreover, if the qualitative details become too elaborate, we would once again run the risk of truth-value gaps where they're not welcome. Is it because the precisifications need not be given purely qualitatively, but rather can be put forth extensionally with general qualitative constraints on the class of precisifications-(including, for example, that each "person precisification" is a set of people and that in the vicinity of any cluster of simples arranged personwise there is exactly one member of the set)? 18 No yet again-for this strategy goes beyond merely offering a precisification and illicitly stipulates away the problem at hand with its gratuitous assumption that exactly one person is to be found in environments of a certain kind. But what, then, is excluded? Lewis hints at the form of his answer when he asks: "When is something very cat-like, yet not a cat? When it is just a little less than a whole cat ... or when it is just a little more than a cat ... or when it is both a little more and a little less." So, too, for persons. Presumably, then, each admissible precisification will permit one "to line up" some of the candidates along some dimension of difference (say, by the increase of a single simple or perhaps by the decrease of degree of cohesion in their parts) and then it will furnish us with sharp cutoffs (at least relative to this precisification) disqualifying (by identifying) many of the candidates as a little less than a person or a little more than a person. Unfortunately, this application of the Supervaluationist theory (under the relevant maximality principle) won't manage to guarantee only one person in Legion's chair. Let us simply grant that any lineup of candidates along some dimension of difference will be reduced to one by way of supervaluations. But our problem is not merely a simple selection problem in a single such series. In particular, recall once again that neither The Primary Set nor The Secondary Set is a proper subset of the other, and that neither Tweedledee nor Tweedledum is a proper part of the other. So, whereas both Tweedledee and Tweedledum will appear in their own respective series (involving the addition of simples), they will not figure in the same such series. Thus (in the numbers game) the method of supervaluations could at best offer the small comfort that if both Tweedledee and Tweedledum are distinct persons in Legion's chair at T, at least there won't be any other persons there too that have either of them as proper parts or that are numbered among their proper parts, for 18

This last strategy was suggested to me in personal correspondence by Ted Sider.

38

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person

those things would either be a little more than a person or a little less. Tweedledee and Tweedledum, however, may nevertheless be a pair of overlappers both of which are "just the right size." Perhaps it is worth noting that matters will not be much improved by invoking a rival theory of vagueness such as my own Epistemicism. Once again, Epistemicism says that all indeterminacy is epistemic and that there are sharp cutoffs in the application of meaningful predicates such as 'is a person' and 'is a part of a person'. Initially, it seems that Epistemicism furnishes all the resources we need to solve The Problem of the Many on its own. Just ask of each simple in the vicinity of Legion's chair-"Is this simple a part of a person?"-and Epistemicism guarantees the answer (unknowable as it may be) will always be either 'yes' or 'no', but never 'indeterminate'. Now take all the 'yes'-simples, consider their fusion, and we have Legion, right? But not so fast. We are here openly assuming that there is only one person and then using Epistemicism to identify his parts (thereby shifting the inevitable charges of arbitrariness to our theory of vagueness). Epistemicism is consistent with such an assumption to be sure, but it is also consistent with the assumption that there are two or more persons (say, Tweedledee and Tweedledum) and that the fusion of all the 'yes' -simples is no more a person than is the fusion of me and you (notwithstanding the concession that every simple in both of these fusions has the distinction of determinately being a part of a person). Once again, though, if I were without recourse to the Partist solution I will introduce in chapter 2, I think I would have to recommend the many-persons approach as the least embarrassing of the currently available alternatives open to materialists who are committed (as I am) to eschewing bruteness where possible. For the reasons we have just seen, however, unlike its most visible champion, David Lewis, I do not believe that this is the kind of solution we can hope to make more attractive by hiding behind a good and natural way to say there is only one person in Legion's chair at T. There is no such way. Rather, for better or worse, adopting the many-persons solution should be recognized for what it is-the view that there are several distinct persons in that chair right now, and either they are all named 'Legion' or none of them has the distinction of having ever been named at all. At least we might take some comfort in the fact that they are all brothers. 19 19 The reader will recall that Legion was introduced as a man seated in a chair at T. We have nothing to take back on behalf of the many-persons advocate, but we should note

39

The Many Problematic Solutions to the Problem of the Many

§5-The Threat of Many-Brothers Determinism Apart from the predictable and common response of incredulity, philosophical difficulties have been raised in response to the manypersons solution. Among the most troublesome are worries about naming and singular reference: for example, take my (our) present predicament in composing the present paragraph-if there really are uncountably many distinct but overlapping persons typing on the uncountably many keys before us with our uncountably many hands at these uncountably many computers, sharing most of our parts and all of our thoughts-how can any of us ever hope to successfully refer to himself without referring to his brothers as well? Or how might we have a little private time to tell just one of our sons of our affection for him without sharing the moment with uncountably many of his brothers? Or how might we follow through on our vow to practice monogamy? The answers are unsettling. Whereas some attempts at singular reference would be successful (such as the one in which we say "the set of simples which compose me" and thereby each pick out a different set by way of the indexical 'me'), it would be a harder task than one might think. Note that this trick would not work if you replace 'me' with 'him' in an attempt to name a child. Any view of names that requires singular reference would yield the result that (for instance) you did not name (any of) your newborn son(s) on the grounds that you never managed to pick one out uniquely. If such a theory of names appeals to you, I recommend the following speech: "Let [your name here] name the composite object which is identical to the fusion of the simples which compose me." That should secure a name for you. Your son's name will have to wait until he can speak! I must admit that I find myself less troubled by this consequence, though, since I favor a view of names according to which each of the many overlapping persons would sport the same ones. As for the other question, genuine privacy would be forever lost. Notwithstanding the splendid world literature on the themes of isolation and loneliness, of alienation and separation-the present view suggests a radically different picture (undoubtedly equally loathsome to many) of forced togetherness, of unavoidable community. Perhaps, though, one only has to live with the many for awhile to come to love them. that given that kind of introduction, this solution presupposes that each of the persons in that chair was named Legion. Then it just doesn't matter which one we started with

to motivate the puzzle; any of them would have sufficed.

40

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person

In the present section (despite the fact that I am willing to award the many-persons solution second-best honors), I would like to raise a new and disturbing objection against it that has been (curiously) left alone by its opponents. The idea behind the objection is that freedom is incompatible with the kind of overlap at issue. For instance, if I am genuinely free to take the bribe, then it should be up to me and not to my brother whether I do so; but if my brother freely refuses, this ensures a refusal on my part as well. Consequently, to the extent that we believe ourselves to be free, we should resist a many-persons scenario. Here is a more careful version of the argument I have in mind made explicit.

The Many-Brothers Determinism Argument 1.

2.

3·

45·

6. 7·

Suppose (toward reductio) that I freely clap my hands at T. If I freely clap my hands at T, then at least one of my M-brothers (say, Edward) freely claps his hands at T. [Premise] So, Edward freely claps his hands at T. [(r), (2)] Necessarily, if Edward freely claps his hands at T, then I clap my hands at T. [Premise] If (i) A's freely doing x at t entails B's doing y at I, and (ii) A freely does x at t, and (iii) A is distinct from B, then B does not freely do y at t. [Premise] Hence, I do not freely clap my hands at T. [(2), (3), (4), (5)] Reductio complete. [(r), (6)]

The result generalizes, and thus proponents of the many-persons solution seem to be in a fix. Since (1) is just our reductio assumption, and (3), (6), and (7) are inferences, the targets are (2), (4), and (5). But (2) is surely safe; if one brother is free, then they are all free. Besides it would be of no comfort to think "Well, at least one of us is free," since even though an infinity of distinct persons would share that thought and even though one of them would be the fortunate fellow, the chances that you would be the lucky one are one-over-infinity, that is, no chance at all. Proponents of the many-persons solution have then one of three choices: (i) deny freedom, (ii) reject premise (4), or (iii) reject premise (5), with the last two of these three choices amounting to something we might call many-brothers compatibilism. Interestingly, there is a strategy for rejecting (4) that is not likely to appeal to those who are in need of it. Consider the following: By

41

The Many Problematic Solutions to the Problem of the Many hypothesis, I am distinct from Edward, and although we overlap considerably, we do not exactly occupy the same four-dimensional region. Moreover, suppose that all identity claims are necessary, and that for any object in some possible world, W, that object is identical with at most one of Edward and me. But now, let world W be a world as much like ours as possible with the exception that the region that I exactly occupy in our world is not exactly occupied by anything in that world. All of my unique parts-that is, just those items which are parts of me but not parts of Edward in our world-are altogether missing from W. What shall we say of our W? Given everything conceded above, it seems reasonable to say this-Edward exists at Wand I don't. And so, the story continues, since Edward freely claps his hands at T (in W), our premise (4) is false. Here's the obstacle. The complaint we have just presented against (4) does not make use of a counterpart-theoretic treatment of modality. (Of course, there are those who regard this as a clear virtue of that attack on (4), but the proponents of the many-persons solution tend to endorse counterpart theory (e.g., Lewis), and since our primary objection is leveled against them, it is after all only fair to let them identify the virtues and vices in some defense on their behal£.)20 Once we employ counterpart theory, however, it turns out that whereas that object in W bears the hunk-of-matter-counterpart relation to Edward and not to me, it nevertheless is more reasonable than not to believe that it bears the person-counterpart relation to each of us. Consequently, since both Edward and I are thereby credited with existence in W, the example does not give us any reason to doubt the truth of premise (4). Premise (5), then, despite its intuitive plausibility, is the culprit. Sometimes an action is freely performed, even though someone else's free action entails that the action in question is performed. Once again, let us consider (5): 5· If (i) A's freely doing x at t entails B's doing y at t, and (ii) A freely does x at t, and (iii) A is distinct from B, then B does not freely do y at t.

What reasons do we have to accept (5) as it stands? One traditional line of support for (5) comes by reflecting on questions about God. "Why," we ask the theist, "doesn't God freely act in such a way as to

°

Counterpart theory is also a common commitment of those who accept an ontology of temporal parts, since an appeal to temporal parts does not solve all the puzzles of material constitution. These topics will be discussed in some detail in chapter 2 below.

2

42

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person ensure that I will satisfy my moral obligations and thereby prevent moral evil?" The answer, usually, is that this would undermine our freedom, and thus something of great (and compensating) value would be forfeit. That is, the answer seems to appeal to something like (5). But those who are sympathetic with theism should not turn to (5) for support, for we may easily invoke God to provide a counterexample to (5), as follows: Suppose that Hannah freely claps her hands at T and that Hannah is not God. But in every metaphysically possible world in which Hannah freely claps her hands at T, God permits Hannah to clap her hands at T. Now, substitute 'Hannah' for 'A', 'God' for 'B', 'clapping her hands' for 'doing x', and 'permitting Hannah to clap her hands' for 'doing y', and we have our counterexample. Clearly, God's permitting Hannah to clap her hands at T is an exercise of Divine freedom. A principle which would support the intuition that God could not ensure that we satisfy our moral obligations without jeopardizing our freedom, might instead read: 8. If (i) A causes B to do y at t, and (ii) A's causing B do to y at t is unavoidable forB at t, and (iii) A is distinct from B, then B does not freely do y at t. Principle (8) still leaves the theists with their answer to our question above, and the fact that God freely permits Hannah to clap her hands at T casts no doubt upon (8). Consequently, the initial support for (5) from theistic motives transfers to (8), and (5) is left unmotivated. Moreover, (8) poses no worries for the proponent of the many-persons solution. One M-brother does not cause another to act (on either event-or agentcausation scenarios), and it seems that whenever one M-brother freely performs some action, x, that action is always avoidable for each of the other M-brothers (since if one does it freely he could have done otherwise, and since each of his M-brothers will be-once again by way of counterpart theory-thereby credited with the ability to do otherwise, too). For instance, if I do x freely, then there is something, y, that my Mbrother, Edward, can do (namely, refrain from doing x) such that if Edward were to do y, then I would not do x. Thus, Edward's freedom appears not to be compromised by mine, nor mine by his. Better yet, this result does not require a controversial, non-causal control over the past or the laws of nature, a feature which has traditionally been at the

43

The Many Problematic Solutions to the Problem of the Many heart of disputes between causal-incompatibilists and those who term themselves altered-law or altered-past compatibilists. 21 However, the mere fact that principle (8) leaves the theists with their answer without threatening the many-persons solution, leaves open the question of whether some true principle about freedom really does pose a threat to that solution. After all, the counterexample to (5) did rely on a peculiar feature of God's, and the actions of my M-brothers (none of whom has the distinction of being Divine) are (unlike the case of Hannah's clapping and God's permitting) both necessary and sufficient for my own. Accordingly, consider the somewhat plausible g. If (i) A's freely doing x at t entails and is entailed by B's doing y at t, and (ii) A freely does x at t, and (iii) A is distinct from B, then B does not freely do y at t. Whether or not principle (g) is better off than principle (5) should not trouble us, however, since (g) has no application to the M-brothers. Note that my freely clapping my hands at T entails that Edward claps his hands at T, but Edward's clapping his hands at T does not entail that I freely clap my hands at T-only that I clap my hands at T. (Edward and I may both be unfree.) Better to state the double-entailment in this way 10.

If (i) A's freely doing x at t entails B's doing y at t, and (ii) B's doing y at t entails A's doing x at t, and (iii) A freely does x at t, and (iv) A is distinct from B, then B does not freely do y at t.

Principle (ro) is troublesome-it is admittedly plausible, and (if true) it is lethal to the many-persons solution. 22 That is to say, (10) would undercut any ascription of freedom to theM-brothers, for (unlike the I am willing to side with the altered-law or altered-past compatibilists in the traditional debate on the relation between free will and causal determinism, and in my recent book on Kant, I attempted to show that the claims about certain backtracking conditionals involved in such ascriptions of freedom are not as problematic as they seem (see Hudson 1994, especially chapter 3). But, once again, nothing that radical appears to be required for ascriptions of freedom to theM-brothers. 22 One potential counterexample comes from substituting 'Alice' for 'A', 'votes for the same candidates as Hannah' for 'doing x', 'Hannah' for 'B' and 'votes for the same candidates as Alice' for 'doing y'. But I feel rather underconfident that exploiting an action description whose content explicitly reports the actions of individuals other than its agent really diminishes the intuitive force behind principle (10). 21

44 AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person case of Hannah's clapping and God's permitting) the double entailment holds. Note that on the scenario proffered by the many-persons solution and interpreted as above (i.e., by way of counterpart-theory), my freely clapping at T entails Edward's clapping at T, and Edward's clapping at T entails my clapping at T. Consequently, with principle (10) and another reductio patterned on The Many-Brothers Determinism Argument stated above, we could easily show that neither Edward nor I would clap at T freely. I suppose that the proponent of the manypersons solution might complain that (10) seems plausible only when thinking of non-overlapping persons, but it would certainly be desirable to have some response to the principle that does not require taking sides on the very case under fire. Alternatively, I suppose that the proponent of the many-persons solution might simply be willing to bite a bullet yet again by denying (10) without counterexample and simply accept one more counter-intuitive consequence of his theory on the grounds that it still manages to outstrip its competitors in handling The Problem of the Many. But, one does want to avoid the policy of biting bullets when some of them are going off.

A Brief Summary After our first chapter, then, we are left with the following piece of the puzzle: The best of the currently-available solutions to The Problem of the Many leaves us with considerably more human persons than one might have thought and with grave doubts about their freedom! In the next chapter I propose to challenge the many-persons solution (as well as the nine runners-up we have encountered) with a theory that will let us emerge from a confrontation with The Problem of the Many without denying the existence of Legion or of any persons, without rejecting Materialism, without need of brute facts or of sensitive person-composing conditions, without dualism of constituters and constitutees, without fuzzy sets, and (best of all) with exactly one person in Legion's chair at T, counting by classical identity. That schedule of advantages, I submit, should put the Partist solution first in line for the prize among the list of serious-candidate solutions to The Problem of the Many.

2 Persistence and the Partist View

§1-The Partist View The following solution is, I believe, entirely new. Admittedly, that attribute is often more of a vice than a virtue in a metaphysical thesis, and it is with some reservations that I advance such a radical proposal. Still, the overwhelmingly unattractive alternatives which face us at the end of our discussion of The Problem of the Many give me the courage to proceed. Despite the fact that the Partist View has its own fair share of counter-intuitive features (several of which will be exposed and discussed in this chapter), I think that on balance it is the best treatment of The Problem of the Many (i.e., I think that the consequences of the Partist View will emerge as the least unappealing of a great host of unappealing alternatives). Moreover, I intend to show that the Partist View can be combined very naturally with the two main theses at work in what I take to be the best treatment of the other prominent puzzles of material constitution, namely, with the theses of Four-Dimensionalism and counterpart theory. In this chapter, then, I propose to give the Partist View the best introduction into the relevant literature that I can, with the hope that even those who decide that they must eventually vote against this strategy will come to believe that the Partist can make a remarkably respectable showing in this debate. The Partist View is best understood by first glancing at the contest 45

46

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person

between the Three-Dimensionalists and the Four-Dimensionalists. Whereas the standard Four-Dimensionalist regards parthood as an atemporal, two-place relation, the standard Three-Dimensionalist regards parthood as a three-place relation between two objects and a time. Consequently, a Four-Dimensionalist will understand "pis a part of a at t," but will regard it as analyzable, whereas the (non-Presentist) Three-Dimensionalist will regard "pis a part of a" either as containing an implicit 'now' or an implicit 'at all times' or as simply ill-formed. 1 A proponent of (what I will call) the "Three-Dimensionalist" Partist View [= 3DPartist], however, regards parthood as a four-place relation between two objects, a time, and a region of space. Accordingly, the proponent of the 3DPartist View takes "p is a part of a at t" to be illformed, too, requiring instead something of the form "p is a part of a at rat t." (Hence, the nickname 'partist' .) In the present section, I will first characterize the solution to The Problem of the Many afforded by the 3DPartist, and then I will clarify that view by way of raising and responding to a series of objections. In sections 2-3, I will put forth and discuss three familiar, mereological puzzles in an effort to exhibit the shortcomings of the 3DPartist View. In section 4, I will show how a "Four-Dimensionalist" proponent of the Partist View [= 4DPartist] can overcome these obstacles without giving up on the Partist resolution to The Problem of the Many. Finally in section 5, I will take stock and summarize the position we have developed throughout the first two chapters of this work. Before we begin our examination of the Partist View, though, perhaps a word of explanation concerning the order of march in the present chapter is in order. In particular, one might wonder why I spend so much time on the 3DPartist View only to reject it in favor of the 4DPartist View. The answer is two-fold. First, since the core of the Partist approach is initially much more intelligible without the complication of a Four-Dimensionalist characterization, it seems that the best chance of making the 4DPartist View appear an attractive position comes by way of first introducing its more accessible but less successful 3D cousin. Second, I think it will make the 4DPartist View more comprehensible if we develop our discussion along the lines of the standard Three-Dimensionalism/Four-Dimensionalism debate, since 1 I note (for the record) that I deny Presentism, the thesis that, necessarily, only present objects exist, and embrace Eternalism according to which objects may exist at times at which they are not present.

47 Persistence and the Partist View ultimately the 4DPartist can be said to embody a kind of compromise position between these two theories. So, on to the view. Recall that Tweedledee was introduced as the fusion at T of the members of The Primary Set, and that Tweedledum was introduced as the fusion at T of the members of The Secondary Set. According to the 3DPartist, however, each fusion also requires a spatial index. Which shall we choose? Initially, the most natural choices are those scattered regions of space exactly collectively occupied by the respective simples which are the members of the two sets in question. So, Tweedledee is the fusion at T of the members of The Primary Set at the region of space exactly collectively occupied by the members of The Primary Set at T, and Tweedledum is the fusion at T of the members of The Secondary Set at

the region of space exactly collectively occupied by the members of The Secondary Set at T. How many persons are in Legion's chair at T? One. Who is it? Legion. Are Tweedledee and Tweedledum there, too? Yes. Are Tweedledee and Tweedledum persons? Yes. Are they all material objects? Yes. What are the relations between Legion, Tweedledee, and Tweedledum? Classical identity, all around. So much for the presentation.

Objection 1: "As you yourself said earlier, Tweedledee is not identical to Tweedledum, for Tweedledee has Righty as a part at T, and Tweedledum does not have Righty as a part at T, and no object both does and does not have something as a part at the same time." Reply: We were then speaking from the point of view of the nonPartist, Three-Dimensionalist. Consider the problem of change when Legion acquires a new part (here named 'Atom'). Someone might object to the non-Partist, Three-Dimensionalist as follows: "Without recourse to temporal parts, you can't say that Legion ever gains parts, for then Legion (that very same person who is allegedly wholly present at different times) would have Atom as a part and would fail to have Atom as a part, and that's a contradiction." The non-Partist, ThreeDimensionalist's reply should be to maintain that this criticism assumes that parthood is a two-place relation, and that this is a mistake. Two collections of material simples, the xs and the ys, can compose the same person, even when one or more of the xs is not among the ys, provided that they do so at different times. Similarly, then, the 3DPartist's reply should be to maintain that the criticism above assumes that parthood is a three-place relation and that this is a mis-

48

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person take, too. Two collections of material simples, the xs and the ys, can compose the same person at the very same time, even when one or more of the xs is not among the ys, provided that they do so at different regions of space. Consequently, if R1 is the region of space exactly collectively occupied by the members of The Primary Set at T and R2 is the region of space exactly collectively occupied by the members of The Secondary Set at T, then according to the 3DPartist, it is correct to say of Legion or of Tweedledee or of Tweedledum, that whereas he is composed by the members of The Primary Set at Rr at T, he is also composed by the members of The Secondary Set at R2 at T. Thus, our three names, 'Legion', 'Tweedledee', and 'Tweedledum', simply name the same person who is composed by different collections of material simples at the same time in different places.

Objection 2: "The 3DPartist has no acceptable answer to the question 'Where, exactly, is Legion at T?' he can't say that Legion exactly occupies the region of space exactly collectively occupied at T by the members of The Primary Set and that he exactly occupies the region of space exactly collectively occupied at T by the members of The Secondary Set, for those are different regions. And he can't select just one of the relevant regions on pain of intolerable arbitrariness." Reply: Once again, the 3DPartist should turn to the non-Partist, Three-Dimensionalist for a strategy. Let us ask the non-Partist, ThreeDimensionalist, 'Where, exactly, is Legion in time?" How should he answer? According to the non-Partist, Three-Dimensionalist, Legion is not "spread out in time" as he is in space, but instead he is wholly present at each of the plurality of times at which he exists. Subsequent problems which then arise from the "wholly-present" slogan are dealt with by the non-Partist, Three-Dimensionalist along the lines of the treatment of parthood-i.e., what appears to be a temporary intrinsic property becomes a multi-place relation. For example, whereas the standard FourDimensionalist will say that xis just plain straight, the standard ThreeDimensionalist may maintain either that (i) x bears the 'having at T' relation to being straight, or that (ii), x has the time-indexed property, 'straight-at-T,' or that (iii) x bears the 'straight at' relation to T. 2 The 3DPartist agrees that Legion is wholly present at more than one time but adds that Legion exactly occupies a plurality of spatial regions at 2

See van Inwagen 1990a and Balashov 1999 for a discussion of these alternatives.

49 Pe~istence

and the Partist View

each of the times at which he is wholly present. Accordingly, once again the price of a new peculiarity in property exemplification is properly paid: that is, the 3DPartist may maintain either that (i) x bears the 'having at T at R' relation to being straight, or that (ii) x has the doubly indexed property, 'straight-at-R-at-T', or that (iii) x bears the 'straight at T' relation to R, or that (iv) x bears the 'straight at R' relation to T. (I acknowledge a slight preference for adverbialism over indexicalism here by preferring option (i), but regardless of just which alternative emerges as the most appealing, I submit that in response to this objection the 3DPartist may simply adopt the counterpart to the non-Partist, Three-Dimensionalist's answer to the analogous objection to standard Three-Dimensionalism.)

Objection 3: "You just suggested on behalf of the 3DPartist that Legion exactly occupies R1 at T, but that can't be right, for if Legion exactly occupies a spatial region at a time, then all of his parts at that time must fall within that region. The 3DPartist, however, admits that Lefty is not located in that region at T, whereas he must maintain that Legion does have Lefty as a part at T (since he believes that Legion is identical to Tweedledum and Tweedledum has Lefty as a part at T)." Reply: But he doesn't grant that Legion or Tweedledum has Lefty as a part at T. In fact, a 3DPartist should claim that such an assertion doesn't express any proposition at all; on his view, parthood is a fourplace relation. What he does grant is that Legion has Lefty as a part at R2 at T, but that's not trouble. Incidentally, whereas the standard Three-Dimensionalist has some difficulty in producing a non-trivial reading of the phrase 'xis wholly present at t,' 3 the Partist will be able to furnish non-trivial definitions of 'wholly present' and of 'exactly occupies' that make intelligible the apparently outrageous claim that not only can an object be wholly present at more than one time, it can also exactly occupy more than one region of space at a time. I will postpone this task, however, until we finish with our informal introduction by way of objection-and-reply, and return to it in section 4 below. Let us acknowledge at the outset that opponents will undoubtedly object strenuously to the 3DPartist's willingness to countenance a plurality of spatial regions that an object exactly occupies at each of a plurality of times at which the object is wholly present. However, classical mereol3 See Sider 1997 and 2001 for a discussion of various ways to understand the ThreeDimensionalist's claim that an object is wholly present at a time.

50

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person

ogy is absolutely neutral on whether or not an object can be wholly present at (or exactly occupy) multiple regions, and given the definitions and the amendments to the classical mereological framework proffered by the Partist in section 4 below, the claims are free from contradiction. The question, then, becomes whether this counter-intuitive result is worth the theoretical advantages. For the Partist-especially in the present market-the price is right. One point worthy of note at this juncture is that since he is willing to maintain that numerically one and the same object can be wholly present at distinct regions of space at the same time, there is a new and intriguing puzzle that faces the 3DPartist-the puzzle of identity across space. The non-Partist, Three-Dimensionalist only faces questions of identity across time such as "Is person A who is wholly present at Tr identical to person B who is wholly present at some T2 (tTr)?" However, in addition to familiar problems of diachronic identity, the 3DPartist must consider open questions of the form "Is person A who is wholly present at Rr at T identical to person B who is wholly present at some R2 (:;tRr) at T?" I suspect, however, that a sophisticated, psychological criterion of synchronic, diageometric identity (!) together with some requirement of significant overlap between the two spatial regions in question would yield plausible results here, including the identification of Legion with both Tweedledee and Tweedledum. (Incidentally, we may take our strong intuitions that there is exactly one human person in Legion's chair at T to impose an adequacy condition on any proposed account of synchronic, diageometric identity, namely, that it had better identify legion with both Tweedledee and Tweedledum in our puzzle.)

Objection 4: "You keep speaking of collections of material simples composing Legion at different places at the same time, but the 3DPartist has no good way to say what we non-Partist, Three-Dimensionalists would say with the words 'Legion is also the fusion at T of his left hand and his left-hand complement.' " Reply: He may say it like this: Legion's left hand is subject to The Problem of the Many as is his left-hand complement. Accordingly, there are (right now) several places where his left hand is wholly present and several other places where his left-hand complement is wholly present. Consider two non-overlapping regions, Rr and R2 (construed as sets of points in space at T), whose union is R3, such that (i) Rr is one of the regions where Legion's left hand is wholly present at

51

Persistence and the Partist View T (i.e., there are some simples that compose his left hand at R1 at T), and (ii) R2 is one of the regions where his left-hand complement is wholly present at T, and (iii) R3 is one of the regions where Legion is wholly present at T. Then, we will be able to provide what you have asked for: Legion's left hand and his left-hand complement compose him at R3 at T. Objections: "It turns out that the 3DPartist needs simples. You continue to exploit the fact that there is no Problem of the Many for simples, which enables you to use them to pick out an exact region of space at a time where some simples compose Legion. If, however, all of Legion's parts are themselves aggregates, you'll be without resources to specify the multiple regions of space he simultaneously exactly occupies, and the 3DPartist's solution to The Problem of the Many will be forfeit." Reply: Right, the 3DPartist seems to need simples. Whether atomless gunk is possible is a controversial debate/ and if material persons could be made of atomless gunk, then it might appear that the 3DPartist solution is (at best) a contingent victory, which in this game may be no victory at all. Nevertheless, even if the 3DPartist must take a stand against atomless gunk, he need not be embarrassed about this presupposition of his view, since (as we will see in section 5 of chapter 3 below) we have good reason to believe that atomless gunk is impossible. Objection 6: "The 3DPartist's view does not leave any room for the intuition that it is indeterminate whether something is a part of Legion at T, and that's a strike against it." Reply: On the contrary, there are at least two ways to cash out such an intuition for the 3DPartist. First, one's intuition that it is indeterminate that some item is a part of Legion at T-an incomplete phrase from the 3DPartist's point of view-is preserved in the fact that it may be a part of him at R1 at T and not a part of him at R2 at T (even though he exactly occupies R2. at T, as well). Second (if one denies Epistemicism as a theory of vagueness), one may believe the item to be part of some composite object (here named 'Quasi') at R1 at T which is neither definitely a person nor definitely not a person and not also a part of anything which is definitely a person anywhere or anywhen. Then, those who can tolerate indeterminacy in sentences of the form "Legion= Quasi" can invoke 4

See Zimmerman 1996 for an interesting contribution to this debate.

52 AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person the 3DPartist's account in a manner consistent with their own commitment to the ontological vagueness of identity and existence.

Objection T "The 3DPartist asks us to believe that two collections of material simples, the xs and the ys, can compose the same person at the very same time, even when one or more of the xs is not among the ys, provided that they do so at different regions of space-for instance, when the xs compose Legion at R1 at T and the ys compose Legion at R2 at T. But as Universalists we can always ask 'What is the thing which is the fusion of the xs together with the ys?' Whatever the answer is, it won't be our man Legion again. But since the 3DPartist says that the fusion of the xs is identical to the fusion of the ys, he should just interpret our question as the harmless 'What is the fusion of Legion with himself?', a question whose answer is simply Legion once again. Consequently, something has gone wrong." Reply: What has gone wrong is the objection. If parthood is relative to a time and a place, then so are overlap, fusion, and any other mereological concepts which are analyzed in terms of parthood. Think again of the standard Three-Dimensionalist who will concede that two collections of material simples, the xs and the ys, can compose the same person, say Hannah, at different times, T1 and T2. When we ask him-"What is the thing which is the fusion of the xs together with the ys?" -he will want to know of which time we are speaking. So, pretend we refine our question and ask about their fusion at T1 (i.e., a time at which the xs compose Hannah). His response, presumably, will be that their fusion at Tr is likely to be a widely scattered thing which possesses the interesting property of having Hannah as a proper part at Tr, but which is certainly not a person itself. If pressed to interpret the question as 'What is the fusion at T1 of Hannah with Hannah?', he will properly protest that that is not a good reading of the original question. The fusion at Tr of Hannah with Hannah is the fusion at T1 of the xs with the the xs, not of the xs with the ys. The fusion at T1 of Hannah with Hannah is just Hannah; the fusion at Tr of the xs with the xs is just Hannah; the fusion at Tr of the xs with the ys-well, that's another thing altogether. Similarly, when we asked the 3DPartist-"So what is the thing which is the fusion of the xs together with the ys?" -he will demand some spatial and temporal index. So, pretend that we offer Rr and T (i.e., a place and time at which the xs compose Legion). Then he will be happy to agree with the objector that the answer to our question is not just Legion again. But for reasons similar to those just given for

53

Persistence and the Partist View

the standard Three-Dimensionalist, he will be quick to remind us that this is not the same question as 'What is the fusion at R1 at T of Legion with Legion?' The fusion at R1 at T of Legion with Legion is just Legion; the fusion at R1 at T of the xs with the xs is just Legion; the fusion at R1 at T of the xs with the ys-well, that's nothing at all, for R1 is simply too small a region to be an appropriate spatial index for the fusion at T of the xs and the ys; not all of the ys are present at R1. There is, of course, a fusion at (the union of R1 and Rz) at T of the xs and the ys, but even though that object has Legion as a proper part at R1 at T-it is certainly not a person itself.

Objection 8: "The 3DPartist will have to choose between his solution to The Problem of the Many on the one hand and his commitment to the mereological theses of Universalism and constitution-as-identity on the other. But surely, he should retain the latter." Reply: On the contrary, a number of familiar theses are still available on the 3DPartist's solution. First, the Special Composition Question may still receive a respectably-Universalist response: "Necessarily, for any collection of objects, the xs, any time, t, and any region of space, r (if the xs exactly collectively occupy rat t, then there exists an object, y, such that the xs compose y at r at t)." Second, he may still hold that constitution is identity and deny co-location, thus: "For any collection of objects, the xs, any individuals y and z, any time, t, and any region of space, r (if the xs compose y at rat t and the xs compose z at rat t, then

y = z)." Objection 9: "This view is nuts." Reply: Could be. It would be good to say exactly why, though. Let's distinguish between two kinds of criticisms of candidate-solutions to The Problem of the Many: (i) the solution can't do the work it is assigned, (ii) the solution is nuts. All ten of the solutions we considered in chapter 1 seem equally deserving of the second kind of criticism. That's one of the reasons this puzzle is so much fun-it continually calls forth defenses of the form "my metaphysics is less crazy than your metaphysics." But unlike many of the views we have canvassed, the 3DPartist solution is able to do the work it is assigned. Once again, then, after this brief introduction to the 3DPartist View we seem able to emerge from a confrontation with The Problem of the Many without denying the existence of Legion or of any persons, without rejecting Materialism, without need of brute facts or of sensi-

54

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person

tive person-composing conditions, without dualism of constituters and constitutees, without fuzzy sets, and (best of all) with exactly one person in Legion's chair at T, counting by classical identity. That schedule of advantages, I submit, puts the 3DPartist first in line for the prize among the list of serious-candidate solutions to The Problem of the Many.

§2-Some Familiar Puzzles of Material Constitution Unfortunately, what appears to be good medicine for one type of puzzle of material constitution often seems only to worsen the prospects for resolving some of the others. In this section I wish briefly to rehearse the details of three widely-discussed, mereological puzzles, our reactions to which will help us refine and improve the 3DPartist View. 5 As is becoming my habit, I will introduce the puzzles in an informal way and in language friendly to the standard ThreeDimensionalist, since I continue to believe that they are initially most accessible in that format. Tib/Tibbles Case: 6 Tibbles, a tail-sporting cat at T1, has a proper part at T1, namely Tib, an object which is all of Tibbles excepting her tail. Now Tibbles and Tib are not identical, for Tibbles exactly occupies a larger region of space at T1 than does Tib, and nothing exactly occupies a larger region of space than itself at a time. Tibbles, though, suffers a fortunate accident as a result of which she loses her tail. (Incidentally, I see no reason for the traditional opinion that this is an unfortunate accident; a tail is a small price to pay in order to generate so much philosophical discussion.) So, who's left in the story? Well, Tibbles is still there, for a cat can lose a tail. Moreover, Tib is still there, for a cat-part can lose a neighbor. But now we have a problem, for at post-accident times, Tibbles and Tib would appear to occupy exactly the same region of space. But, since two objects cannot be thus co-located, Tibbles and Tib are identical, after all. Contradiction! Lump/Goliath Case? At T1 a statue of the infant Goliath and the clay See Rea's 1997 "Introduction" for a clear, concise statement of these puzzles, and see his "Introduction" for an account of the historical origins and reintroductions of the puzzles into contemporary literature. 6 See Wiggins 1968. 7 See Gibbard 1975. (I pass over the negotiable details of exactly how they come into existence together.) 5

55 Persistence and the Partist View

of which it is made come into existence together. Let us name the lump of clay in question, 'Lump', and the statue, 'Goliath'. Now, Lump and Goliath are not identical, for Lump could survive squashing and being refashioned into a statue of David, whereas Goliath could not. At T3 both the clay and the statue are annihilated. But since it just so happens that at all times between T1 and T3 Lump and Goliath share all of their parts, they would appear to occupy exactly the same region of space at every time that either of them is present. And since two objects cannot be thus co-located, Lump and Goliath are identical, after all. Contradiction! Fission Case: 8 It seems to many of us (that is to those of us who tend to favor some sort of psychological criterion of personal identity over time) that Hannah would survive if the right hemisphere of her brain were transplanted into a brainless body and the rest of her (old) body were destroyed. Similarly, we believe that Hannah would survive if the left hemisphere of her brain were transplanted into a brainless body and the rest of her (old) body were destroyed. 9 So, where (if anywhere) does our protagonist end up if Hannah undergoes brain bisection, whereupon each hemisphere of her brain is transplanted into a different brainless body and the rest of her (old) body is destroyed? Given our former admissions, we seem constrained to say that each of the resulting persons would be our Hannah, a verdict which is absurd owing to the facts that the resulting persons are two, not one, and that identity is transitive. Contradiction!

§3-The Three-Dimensionalist Partist's Failure Consider the first of our three representative, mereological puzzles. We will return to the last two at the end of the present section. The most popular responses to the Tib /Tibbles Case divide into the following: (i)

8 See

Simply refuse to acknowledge any composites whatsoever (i.e., maintain that there are no such things as Tibbles or Tib, on the grounds that such things would have to have proper parts whereas only simples exist).

Parfit 1975 and Lewis 1983c. This presupposes, of course, the widely-accepted prediction that the resulting person (at post-transplant times) would exhibit the right kind of psychological connections with Hannah (at pre-transplant times).

9

56

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person

(ii)

(iii)

(iv)

(v)

(vi)

Deny the doctrine of arbitrary undetached parts (i.e., maintain that there is no such thing as the alleged undetached cat-part, Tib). Adopt mereological essentialism (i.e., maintain that Tibbles does not survive the accident, on the grounds that nothing can survive the loss of a part). Depend upon and exploit a sortal-essentialism principle (i.e., maintain that Tib does not survive the accident, on the grounds that its persistence conditions would have to undergo a mysterious and unacceptable transformation). Accept the co-location of distinct material objects (i.e., maintain that Tib and Tibbles exactly occupy the same regions of space at post-accident times and that such coincidence is unproblematic). Embrace Four-Dimensionalism and an ontology of temporal parts (i.e., maintain that Tibbles and Tib are both four-dimensional continuants that overlap by sharing temporal parts at post-accident times). 10

But before we turn to deciding between these alternatives, I want to address the very natural suggestion that the 3DPartist might be in a position to offer a novel solution not represented on the list above. And then, once it becomes clear that this natural extension of the 3DPartist's treatment of the The Problem of the Many is a failure in this further context, I will suggest that the 3DPartist's best move will be to join forces with the Four-Dimensionalist, modifying his view in favor of a resolution that bears strong resemblance to option (vi). Here's the proposed solution: Recall that in our formulation of the Tib/Tibbles Case above, we asserted that Tib and Tibbles were not identical on the grounds that they exactly occupied different regions of space at the same time. As we have seen above, however, the 3DPartist is in a position to maintain that the very same object can exactly occupy different regions of space at the same time. He doesn't share our reason for denying that Tib and Tibbles are one and the same cat. Perhaps, then, he should reject that assumption, and dissolve the contradiction Prominent representatives of these options include Unger 1979a for (i), van Inwagen 1981 for (ii), Chisholm 1976 for (iii), Burke 1994 for (iv), Wiggins 1968 for (v), and Heller 1990 for (vi).

10

57

Persistence and the Partist View

by insisting that we have the same cat all along, appropriately multiply located at pre-accident stages. Here's why the proposed solution is a failure: According to the puzzle, at T1 there is a region of space, R, and a proper subregion of R, namely R*, such that Tibbles exactly occupies R at T1 and Tib exactly occupies R* at T1. And, according to the proposed solution patterned on the 3DPartist resolution to The Problem of the Many, Tibbles is one and the same cat as Tib-that is, they are numerically identical. But given the relations between the regions of space exactly occupied at T1 by Tibbles and Tib, we should remember that there is also another prominent relation guaranteed to hold between Tibbles and Tib at R at T1-namely, Tibbles has Tib as a proper part at R at T1. That spells trouble. If Tibbles is identical to Catl and Tib is identical to Catl and Tibbles has Tib as a proper part at R at T1, then Cat1 has itself as a proper part at Rat T1. Unfortunately for the proposed solution, however, no object has itself as a proper part anywhere anywhen. In short, whereas an object may exactly occupy different overlapping regions at the same time, even the 3DPartist must admit that the irreflexivity of the proper parthood relation will prohibit simultaneous multiple locations of one and the same object at two regions of space, one which is a subset of the other. Consequently, the 3DPartist must look beyond his own treatment of The Problem of the Many for an adequate solution to the Tib/Tibbles Case. Once again, then, the 3DPartist is confronted with options (i)-(vi) above. As I indicated before, I do not wish to embark on a thorough exploration of the advantages and disadvantages of these various proposals here; indeed, doing so properly would require another booklength discussion. 11 Instead, I will simply detail the resolutions to these three puzzles offered by what I take to be the best of the six avenues of response just catalogued-namely option (vi) and Four-Dimensionalism-in order to set the stage for the revision and final version of the Partist View which I will develop and endorse in the next section. Four-Dimensionalism has been the subject of a terrific flurry of exciting contributions to the metaphysics literature. Prominent defenses of Four-Dimensionalism arise from exploiting analogies between space 11 Speaking of which, let me recommend to the reader in this regard Ted Sider's forthcoming book Four-Dimensionalism. Sider there argues persuasively and at length for the virtues of a Four-Dimensionalist resolution to the various paradoxes of coincidence.

58

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person

and time,l2 from the Theory of Special Relativity,B from a denial of Presentism and an affirmation of Eternalism, 14 from the Problem of Temporary Intrinsics,15 from considerations of Humean Supervenience,16 as an answer to puzzles of material constitution such as the Tib/Tibbles Case and the Fission Case, 17 and most recently from reflections on vagueness and composition. 18 (As a bit of biography only, I note that I find the spacetime analogies and the argument from temporary intrinsics uncompelling, that I regard the arguments from Special Relativity, from Eternalism and from Humean Supervenience as problematic, and that I regard the argument from vagueness as a failure. I present my reasons for this last judgment in section 7 of chapter 3 below. The best hope for converts to Four-Dimensionalism, I believe, lies in its treatment of various puzzles of material constitution.) Attacks on Four-Dimensionalism come on all sides, but perhaps the most influential are those that maintain that Four-Dimensionalism is unintelligible,1 9 those that maintain that Four-Dimensionalism is unmotivated/0 and those that present modal arguments designed to show that (to his discredit) the Four-Dimensionalist must consort with the counterpart theorist. 21 I will here presuppose a minimal familiarity with the debate, however, since my primary aim is not to attempt to comment on the wide variety of arguments for and against FourDimensionalism in the literature, but rather to use Four-Dimensionalism for my own purpose in refining the Partist View. At the most general level, Four-Dimensionalism is a thesis about objects and their parts. The principal idea is that necessarily, for each way of exhaustively dividing the lifetime of any object, x, into two parts, there is a corresponding way of dividing x itself into two parts, each of which is present throughout, but not outside of, the correTaylor 1992. Balashov 2000 and 1999; Quine 1960; Smart 1972. 14 Merricks 1995 contains a discussion of this argument, but Merricks is himself a ThreeDimensionalist. 15 Lewis 1986. 16 Lewis 1983c. 17 Heller 1990; Sider 2001. 18 Sider 1997. 19 This criticism, though, should be put to rest with Sider's 1997, in which FourDimensionalism is stated using only logical, temporal, and mereological vocabulary, thus raising the costs of pretending not to understand it. 20 Rea 1998b. 21 For the accusation, see van Inwagen 1990a; for replies, see Heller 1993 and Sider 2001. 12 13

59

Persistence and the Partist View

sponding part of x's lifetime. Or, if we let 'TS(x)' be the set of times at which x is present, we may say more formally: (4D)

Necessarily, for any object, x, and for any non-empty, nonoverlapping sets of times, t1 and t 2 whose union is TS(x), there are two objects, x1 and x2, such that (i) xis the fusion of x1 and x2, and (ii) TS (x1) = t1, whereas the TS(x2) = t/2

It is worth noting that the general thesis of Four-Oimensionalism is

here stated in very strong language, insofar as (i) it is formulated as a necessary truth, (ii) it allows for the existence of instantaneous objects, and (ii) it permits very odd fusions, indeed, including such items as the thing which is the fusion of two instantaneous objects which are a year apart. Although some Four-Oimensionalists would regard these items as negotiable, I shall nevertheless presuppose the strong version of the doctrine stated in (40) in the following discussion. Since those who subscribe to (40) often speak of the various parts into which x may be divided as x' s temporal parts, next we have a definition: (TP)

x is an instantaneous temporal part of y at instant t = ct/i) x is a part of y, (ii) x is present at, but only at, t, and (iii) x overlaps every part of y that is present at t.

The Four-Oimensionalist may thus speak either of the instantaneous temporal part of an object, x, or of the extended temporal parts of x, where the latter are regarded as fusions of x's instantaneous temporal parts. The application of (4D) and the notion of temporal parts to an analysis of persistence over time now may be stated as follows: (4DP) Necessarily, an object, x, persists through (is present at every member of) some temporal interval, T, if and only if for every instant t E T, x has an instantaneous temporal part at t. Such is the skeletal reconstruction of the Four-Oimensionalist's views on parthood and persistence. In the Tib /Tibbles Case, then, the FourOimensionalist will be able to resist the argument designed to show that Tibbles and Tib must be identical, after all. Recall that part of the reason for thinking that Tibbles and Tib are identical comes from the 22 In stating (4D), (TP), (4DP) and in the informal gloss on (4D), l directly borrow from Sider 1997, which (in my view) formulates these claims properly for the first time.

60

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person

judgment that they appear to occupy exactly the same region of space at post-accident times, and the thesis that such co-location of two distinct material objects is impossible. But the Four-Dimensionalist has two readings of the judgment in question: According to the first interpretation, at post-accident times it is true that both Tibbles and Tib occupy exactly the same region of spacetime. But the Four-Dimensionalist rejects that claim; on his view Tibbles and Tib occupy distinct spacetime regions, one of which is a proper subregion of the other, and neither of which is "small enough" to fit into the region where we find Tibbles and Tib at post-accident times. According to the second interpretation, the post-accident temporal part of Tibbles and the post-accident temporal part of Tib occupy exactly the same region of spacetime. But the Four-Dimensionalist has no fear that this admission will run into any problems with the ban on co-location of distinct material objects, for the simple reason that the post-accident, temporal parts in question are not distinct. One and the same object is shared as a temporal part of both Tibbles and Tib. Thus, the Four-Dimensionalist concludes, the puzzle is resolved: Tibbles and Tib are distinct, they have a common temporal part at post-accident times, and there is no co-location of distinct continuants. So, too, for the Fission Case. Our Four-Dimensionalist may appeal to overlap and temporal parts once again to conclude that there are two persons in the story about Hannah and her brain bisection. These two continuants share all their temporal parts at pre-fission times and then go their separate ways, one with a right-hemisphere-only brain and one with a left-hemisphere-only brain. Once again, there is no co-location of distinct material objects, since the objects in question do not exactly occupy the same region of spacetime. (Moreover, it is worth noting that unlike the Tib/Tibbles Case, in the Fission Case, neither of our two Hannahs is a proper part of the other.) The Lump/Goliath Case, however, presents problems for the FourDimensionalist. The details of the puzzle seem to block the standard Four-Dimensionalist resolution, since both Lump and Goliath share all their spatial parts at every moment that either of them is present. Such complete coincidence prevents the Four-Dimensionalist from resisting co-location on the grounds that our two objects share some but not all of their temporal parts. Consequently, Four-Dimensionalists have traditionally looked to counterpart theory for assistance in this regard. Without rehearsing the well-known details of this strategic alliance, the upshot is that the Four-Dimensionlist sees not two co-located objects,

61

Persistence and the Partist View but rather one object with two names, 'Lump' and 'Goliath', and he relies on a counterpart theoretic treatment of the de re modal properties of this lonely individual (i.e., properties of the form 'could have been F') in order to accommodate our intuitions that Lump could have survived certain changes that would have brought about Goliath's demise. The key to this maneuver, of course, is to regard the two names in question as merely quasi-rigid designators (i.e., as rigid only under a particular counterpart relation), and thus as evoking different counterpart relations. Hence, although they in fact co-refer in non-modal contexts, 'Lump' refers to lump-counterparts of our object in modal contexts, whereas 'Goliath' refers to its statue-counterparts in modal contexts. Accordingly, the modal judgments-that Lump could have survived squashing and reformation and that Goliath could not have survivedcome out just as our intuitions say they should. 23

§4-The Four-Dimensionalist Partist's Success So, how might we reformulate the Partist insight so as to combine it with the recently displayed advantages of Four-Dimensionalism without forfeiting its unique solution to The Problem of the Many? For starters, we could note that the 4DPartist is something of a hybrid between the standard Three-Dimensionalist and the standard FourDimensionalist. Whereas the 4DPartist resembles the latter in holding that ordinary objects can be identified with spacetime worms, he resembles the former in denying that parthood is a two-place relation and in affirming that numerically one-and-the-same object can exactly occupy different regions of spacetime. In particular, this latter move (inspired by The Problem of the Many) serves to sharply separate the 4DPartist from the non-Presentist endurantist to whom he bears a resemblance. Since I regard what we have termed the 3DPartist View as clearly inferior to its 4DPartist cousin to be explored in the present section, I will simply drop the 'Four-Dimensionalist' qualification hereafter, and speak of our 4DPartist simply as the Partist. (Whenever comparisons become necessary, however, I will revert to the terminology '3DPartist' and '4DPartist' to clarify whatever point is at issue.) Accordingly, for the Partist, parthood is a three-place relation between two objects and a region of spacetime. Consequently, the Partist (like 23

See Lewis 1983a.

62

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person the standard Three-Dimensionalist) will regard any sentence of the form "pis a part of a" either as containing an implicit index or as simply ill-formed, but the Partist (unlike the standard Three-Dimensionalist) will insist on a relation to a region of spacetime, not merely to a time. Thus, the Partist's explicit rendering yields, "p is a part of a at spacetime region, s." 24 Also, as we will see momentarily, the Partist (like the standard Four-Dimensionalist) will maintain that any object which exactly occupies some extended spacetime region has parts at that region which (in a perfectly straightforward sense) are confined to that region's subregions. A glance back at the objections and replies offered to and for the 3DPartist in section I will serve to clarify a number of positions that our new Partist may adopt. For instance, he may endorse an adverbialist theory of property-exemplification, according to which an object may bear the "having at (spacetime region) S" relation to being straight, or he may endorse an indexicalist theory according to which an object may bear the "straight at" relation to S. Furthermore, the Partist may still be called upon to address puzzles of diageometric identity of the form "Is person A who exactly occupies s1 identical to person B who exactly occupies s2 (where s1 and s2 share some but not all of their subregions)?" Moreover, he may still (if he so desires) leave room for the indeterminacy of the parthood-relation, he may still endorse Universalism as his theory of composition, and he may still back the mereological thesis that constitution is identity. In addition to adapting these replies given in section 1 on behalf of the 3DPartist, it will also prove helpful in the sequel to consider the following primitive, definitions, and principles proffered by the Partist.

Primitive "xis a part of y at s" (this is a relation between two objects and a region of spacetime) The Partist has a choice of primitives to enable him to say what he wants to say. I have selected 'part' as the primary mereological primiI know, I know-this looks like it should now be named 'The Pasist View', but that's nowhere near as cool a name as 'The Partist View'. So, even though I've rejected the formulation of the 3DPartist View which gave rise to the original moniker, I'm retaining the name. 24

63

Persistence and the Partist View

tive rather than 'proper part', 'overlap', or 'disjoint'. I will also assume the relation of'=', and then offer the following definitions on behalf of the Partist: (Note that all sorts of other definitions are easily constructable; for instance, Partist-versions of the definitions of 'material simple' and of 'material atomless gunk' will be introduced in section 5 of chapter 3 below.)

Definitions First, an account of being present: "xis present at s" =

df x

has a part at s.

As I will use the terms, 'wholly present' is less restrictive than 'exactly occupies'. Informally, when an object exactly occupies a region of spacetime, that region is just the same four-dimensional size and shape as the object itself, but an object is wholly present in any region that has as a subregion some region exactly occupied by the object in question. For example, I am wholly present at a spacetime region exactly occupied by the Milky Way Galaxy, as well as at a spacetime region shaped exactly like me. More formally, "x exactly occupies s" = df(i) x has a part at s, (ii) there is no region of spacetime, s*, such that s* has s as a subregion, while x has a part at s*, and (iii) for every subregion of s, s', x has a part at s'.

Informally, condition (i) guarantees that xis present in the region at all, condition (ii) guarantees that x doesn't "spill out" of the region, and condition (iii) guarantees that x entirely "fills up" the region. Note that we did not simply say "x is present at s and not present at any points outside of s," or that "x has a part at sand does not have a part at any points outside of s," for those characterizations of exactly occupying would obstruct the Partist's solution to The Problem of the Many. Although it is more cumbersome and although it initially sounds quite paradoxical, our definition above guarantees the features we want to capture-namely, an appropriate sense in which x is wholly within and not spilling out of regions, but which is consistent with x's exactly occupying regions that contain points outside of s, as well. This then gives us the ingredients for the less restrictive relation:

64

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person "xis wholly present at s" == df x exactly occupies some subregion of s. In order to dispel any lingering sense of incoherence here, consider two overlapping regions of spacetime which Legion allegedly exactly occupies, 51 and 52 . Now consider the union of 5 1 and 5 2 and call it U. Since Legion is wholly present at U and has parts at every point-sized subregion of U, why doesn't Legion exactly occupy U, as well? The answer from the Partist' s perspective is simple-even though Legion has parts at every point-sized subregion of U, there are also larger subregions of U where he does not have any parts (e.g., at U itself), and that disqualifies him for the honor of exactly occupying U. 25 Occasionally, we will have reason to speak of a plurality of individuals exactly collectively occupying a certain region (namely, a region where those objects have a fusion). Accordingly, let us say "the xs exactly collectively occupy s" == d/i) each of the xs exactly occupies some region (sl' s2, ..• sn), and (ii) sis the union of (s 1, s2, ... sn).

As we have seen, one or more of the xs might itself exactly occupy more than one region, and whenever this occurs, the xs will exactly collectively occupy more than one region as welU 6 In fact, the only case in which this is guaranteed not to occur is when each of the xs is a simple. Familiar mereological definitions receive a natural extension on the Partist View: "xis a proper part of y at s" == df(i) xis a part of y at s, and (ii) x # y. "x overlaps y at s" == df there is an object, z, such that (i) x has z as a parts, and (ii) y has z as a part at s.

"xis disjoint from y at s" == df it is not the case that x overlaps y at s.

the Partist rejects this principle: "If x has a part at s1 and x has a part at s2, then x has a part at the union of s 1 and 52 ." Whereas he may agree that something has those two objects as parts at the union of s1 and s2, it certainly need not be x again. (Compare objection 7 and its reply from section 1 above.) Similarly, he will clearly deny this principle: "If x exactly occupies s1 and x exactly occupies s2, then x exactly occupies the union of s 1 and 52 ." 26 Compare objection 4 and its reply from section 1 above. 25 Naturally,

65

Persistence and the Partist View "y is the fusion of the xs at s" = df(i) each of the xs is a part of y at s, (ii) every part of y at s overlaps one or more of the xs at some subregion of s, and (iii) y exactly occupies s.

And, as an analogue to the Four-Dimensionalist's definition of "instantaneous temporal part" (TP), the Partist may offer a definition of what (for lack of a better name) we may call a "spacetime part": (SP)

xis a spacetime part of y at s = d/i) xis a part of y at s, (ii) x exactly occupies s, and (iii) x overlaps at some subregion of s every part of y at s.

It is crucial to note that this is not the same notion as the standard FourDimensionalist' s 'spatia-temporal part'. The Four-Dimensionalist says that an object has its spatia-temporal parts simpliciter, whereas the Partist says than an object has its spacetime parts at the region the spacetime part exactly occupies. If we let 'ST(x)' be the set of points in some region of spacetime which x exactly occupies, we are now in a position to construct Partist-analogues for the Four-Dimensionalist' s views on parthood and persistence, represented as (4D) and C4DP) above.

(SD)

Necessarily, for any object, x, and for any non-empty, non-overlapping sets of points, s1 and s2 whose union is ST(x), there are two objects, x1 and x2 such that (i) x is the fusion of x1 and x 2 at ST(x), and (ii) ST(x1) = s1, whereas the ST(x2) = s2 •

Informally, (SO) says that necessarily, for each way of exhaustively dividing a spacetime region exactly occupied by an object, x, into two subregions, there is a corresponding way of dividing x itself into two parts (at that region exactly occupied by x), each of which in turn exactly occupies one of the two subregions in question, and thereby qualifies as a spacetime part of x under (SP) above. In other words, this captures the idea that when an object exactly occupies some region, s, for each subregion of s, s*, that object will have a part at s* that itself exactly occupies s*. Finally, since (SDP) Necessarily, an object, x, is present at every member of some spacetime region, s, if and only if for every point p E s, x has a spacetime part at p.

66 AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person

Persistence through time for the Partist simply requires a minimum of two spacetime parts indexed to different times, and thus bears strong resemblance to the Four-Dimensionalist model. Now turning briefly to other matters-as does everyone else, the Partist acknowledges that 'being a part of' corresponds to a reflexive, transitive, and non-symmetrical relation, and that 'being a proper-part of' corresponds to an irreflexive, transitive, and asymmetrical relation. Let us simply take note of some prominent amendments to classical mereology from the Partist' s point of view: First, the irreflexivity of 'proper part of' follows from our earlier definition of 'proper part': Irreflexivity of' proper part of': For any region of spacetime, s, and individual, x (xis not a proper part of x at s).

Second, we may state an asymmetry principle for 'proper part of' which together with our earlier definitions will ensure a Partist analogue of the identity axiom from the calculus of individuals: Asymmetry of 'proper part of': For any region of spacetime, s, and individuals, x andy (If x has y as a proper part at s, then y does not have x as a proper part at s).

And finally, the transitivity of 'proper part of' may be formulated initially as follows: Transitivity of 'proper part of': For any region of spacetime, s, and individuals, x, y, and z (If x has y as a proper part at s, and y has z as a proper part at s, then x has z as a proper part at s).

However, for reasons that will emerge shortly, the transitivity of 'proper-part of' will turn out to be a fairly uninteresting relation. Fortunately, there is a much stronger principle to be had than the one just identified which may serve as a rather more useful transitivity relation for the Partist. As a way of introducing this stronger principle, consider this diagram: A

B

c

D

E

67

Persistence and the Partist View Suppose that 'A' -'E' name simples, no two of which are co-temporaneous. Let 'S-AB' name the spacetime region exactly collectively occupied by simples A and B, let'S-ABC' name the spacetime region exactly collectively occupied by simples A and B and C, and so on. Accordingly, the Partist (who is also a Universalist) will maintain that there is an object composed of our five simples at S-ABCDE, hereby named 'ABCDE'. There is another object composed of Band C and D and Eat S-BCDE, hereby named 'BCDE', and so on. Here, then, is a relation the Partist endorses-ABCDE has BCDE as a part at some region of spacetime. But which one or ones? Our Partist may give an answer by disqualification. First, let us exclude any region of spacetime which is larger than S-ABCDE, for if the Partist were to hold that ABCDE has BCDE as a part at every region which contains S-ABCDE as a subregion, he would not be able to give the very natural definitions of 'exactly occupies' and 'wholly present' above. Consequently, the largest spacetime region at which x may have y as a part is a region exactly occupied by x itself. What about a smallest spacetime region? Does ABCDE have BCDE as a part at S-CDE? Well, since neither ABCDE nor BCDE is wholly present at S-CDE, it is hard to see how one could have the other as a part at that region. This is simply because we cannot determine anything with respect to parthood regarding two objects, if all we know is that they are both present at S-CDE; for the Partist that relation is consistent with a simple case of overlap at S-CDE in which neither of the overlapping continuants is a part of the other at any region whatsoever. But it is precisely for this reason that the Partist should recognize that ABCDE has BCDE as a part at the slightly larger region, S-BCDE. That is to say, overlap for the Partist suggests that an object can have a part at a region which is smaller than a region exactly occupied by that object. For example, the Partist will want to be able to say that ABC overlaps CDE at S-C, but not at any regions larger than S-C. Consequently, the smallest spacetime region at which x may have y as a part is a region exactly occupied by y itsel£.27 Accordingly, the natural thing for the Partist to say is that, for example, ABCDE has DE as a part at all the regions which both (i) are subA peculiar consequence of all of this (given the earlier and rather liberal definition of 'wholly present') is that an object can be wholly present in a region without having a part at that region. This oddity is diminished somewhat, however, when one realizes that an object cannot be wholly present in a region without having a part at (at least) one subregion of that region.

27

68

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person

regions of S-ABCDE and which (ii) have S-DE as a subregion. This yields the following transitivity principle hinted at a moment ago: Extended Transitivity of 'part of': For any regions of spacetime, s1, 5 2, and and individuals, x, y, and z (If x has y as a part at every region which both is a subregion of 51 and which has 52 as a subregion, and y has z as a part at every region which both is a subregion of 52 and which has 53 as a subregion, then x has z as a part at every region which both is a subregion of 51' and which has 5 3 as a subregion). 53,

With the preliminaries now out of the way, let us briefly review and preview the Partist' s advantages in dealing with the plurality of puzzles of material constitution. First, the review-with respect to The Problem of the Many (by affirming that numerically one-and-the-same object can exactly occupy different regions of spacetime), the Partist need not deny the existence of any persons, or reject Materialism, or appeal to brute facts or sensitive person-composing conditions, or posit a dualism of constituters and constitutees, or traffic in fuzzy sets. And, best of all, he may maintain that there is exactly one person in Legion's chair at T, counting by classical identity. Second, the preview-with respect to traditional problems of mereological change over time, the Tib/Tibbles Case, the Lump/Goliath Case, and the Fission Case, the Partist has at his disposal all the resources of orthodox, Four-Dimensionalism, which (together with his own slant on the parthood relation) will allow him to speak of different spacetime parts at different spacetime regions having different attributes at those regions, as well as of significant overlap between two distinct continuants who literally share those spacetime parts they have at regions in which they are both present. For illustration, let us see how the Partist handles the three cases presented above. Like the standard Four-Dimensionalist, the Partist will be able to resist the argument designed to show that Tibbles and Tib must be identical, after all. Even though the Partist believes that both Tibbles and Tib exactly occupy multiple regions of spacetime, he will deny that there is any region of spacetime exactly occupied by both Tibbles and Tib, and thus he will not be forced to identify them on the grounds that constitution is identity. Not forced, but permitted? Why won't the Partist claim that Tibbles and Tib are the same cat multiply located? The reason here is much the same as that given to the corresponding question for the 3DPartist: the puzzle stipulates that Tibbles and Tib occupy distinct regions, one of which is a proper subregion of the other, and

69

Persistence and the Partist View that fact alone blocks the identification of Tibbles with Tib, since otherwise the Partist would need to accept the absurdity that a cat has itself as a proper part at some region of spacetime. Instead, the Partist continues, the post-accident spacetime part of Tibbles and the post-accident spacetime part of Tib occupy exactly the same regions of spacetime. But the Partist has no fear that this admission will run into any problems with the ban on co-location of distinct material objects, for the simple reason that the post-accident, spacetime parts in question are not distinct. One and the same object is shared as a spacetime part of both Tibbles and Tib. Thus, the Partist concludes, the puzzle is resolved: Tibbles and Tib are distinct, they have a common spacetime part at post-accident regions, and there is no co-location of distinct continuants. So, too, for the Fission Case. Our Partist may appeal to overlap and spacetime parts once again to conclude that there are two persons in the story about Hannah and her brain bisection. These two continuants share all their spacetime parts that are confined to pre-fission regions, and then they go their separate ways, one with a right-hemisphereonly brain and one with a left-hemisphere-only brain. Once again, there is no co-location of distinct material objects, since the objects in question do not exactly occupy the same region of spacetime. However, since in the Fission Case (unlike the Tib/Tibbles Case) neither of our two Hannahs is a proper part of the other (at any region), we might ask why the Partist doesn't revive his solution to The Problem of the Many here and simply identify the two Hannahs? The answer depends on just which line is taken by the Partist to what I have christened the puzzle of diageometric identity. Loosely speaking, he will resist the identification, settling for mere overlap instead, on the grounds that the overlap is not substantial enough and that the two Hannahs are insufficiently psychologically similar at post-fusion regions to warrant identification. As with his Four-Dimensionalist companion, the Lump/Goliath Case, presents problems for the Partist. As before, the details of the case seem to block the resolution offered to the other puzzles, since we may craft the story so that both Lump and Goliath share all their spacetime parts at every region either of them exactly occupies. Such complete coincidence prevents the Partist from resisting co-location on the grounds that our two objects share some but not all of their spacetime parts at the regions they exactly occupy. Same problem, same solution: Partists, too, should look to counterpart theory for assistance. Accordingly, the Partist will maintain that there are not two co-located objects

70

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person in the story but rather one object with two names, 'Lump' and 'Goliath', and he too will rely on a counterpart theoretic treatment of the de re modal properties of this lonely individual in order to accommodate our intuitions that Lump could have survived certain changes that would have brought about Goliath's demise.

§S-Taking Stock On the strength of the preceding two chapters, I find the Partist View quite appealing. The primary drawbacks of the thesis seem to be first, the loss of a widely endorsed account of temporary intrinsics in favor of an adverbialist or indexicalist view (according to which, for example, x bears the 'having at S' relation to the property of being straight, or x bears the 'straight at' relation to S), and second, the thesis that numerically one and the same object can exactly occupy multiple regions of spacetime. Admittedly, these objections (variants of which have long been advanced against the standard Three-Dimensionalist), exhibit counter-intuitive features of the Partist View. But I still find those consequences far more palatable than denying the existence of persons, or rejecting Materialism, or appealing to brute facts or to sensitive person-composing conditions, or opting for a dualism of constituters and constitutees, or appealing to fuzzy sets, or abolishing the relation of classical identity, or counting continuum-many distinct persons where we seem to see but one. And as for the worry that the Partist must consort with the counterpart theorist, I rather like counterpart theory and don't regard this consequence as much worth apologizing for. In any event, I certainly prefer the combination of the Partist View with counterpart theory to denying the existence of material composites, or denying the doctrine of arbitrary undetached parts, or adopting mereological essentialism, or depending upon and exploiting a sortal-essentialism principle, or accepting the co-location of distinct material objects. In short, the advantages of the Partist View seem to me to outweigh the disadvantages. I find that at the end of the day, this theory fits best with my pre-philosophical intuitions, and I believe that (with some assistance from counterpart theory) it provides a unified and elegant solution to the various problems of material constitution. For these reasons I count myself a Partist. Those who have not been converted, however, need not part company with the present work yet. Almost without exception, the rest of

71

Persistence and the Partist View

this book is consistent with the view of a standard Four-Dimensionalist who hopes to solve The Problem of the Many with one of the more familiar strategies detailed in chapter 1. For instance, much of what I will have to say on Epistemicism as a treatment of vagueness, on arguments for and against Universalism, on the psychological criterion of personal identity, on the ethics of pre- and post-person stages, and on the doctrine of the resurrection of the body-is more or less neutral with respect to the Partist View. Therefore, in an effort to make the remainder of this work of interest to the widest possible audience, in the remaining chapters I will often simply suppress the Partist' s reference to a region of spacetime in sentences containing mereological concepts, and instead speak as a standard Four-Dimensionalist. I will, however, indulge in the occasional footnote to remind the reader of the Partist' s take on the discussions being carried out in the language of the orthodox Four-Dimensionalist.

3 Vagueness and Composition

§ 1-The Impossibility of Ontological Vagueness The present chapter is largely devoted to motivating and defending two controversial theses that I will employ together with Partism in my attempt to paint a portrait of the human person in the remainder of this book. I begin with a reminder. Among the six theses which I took as starting points in the Introduction was the view that ontological, metaphysical, or in re vagueness is impossible. In particular, there is no such thing as non-epistemic, non-linguistic indeterminateness with respect to existence or identity. This strikes me as an obvious truth, but philosophers whom I very much respect disagree. Despite the fact that I have adopted this thesis as a starting point and have assumed only a conditional objective (i.e., if ontological vagueness is impossible, then our theory of human persons will have such and such a character), I nevertheless intend briefly to review and to offer friendly additions to a line of reasoning that I think poses a terrific problem for the proponents of ontological vagueness. Mark Heller has recently offered an argument against ontological vagueness that divides into two parts: 1 First, Heller argues against The Indeterminate Indeterminacy Theory (liT), and second, he argues that 1

Heller 1996.

72

73 Vagueness and Composirion the motivation for the belief in ontological vagueness depends on the truth of (liT); the upshot, then, is that this view of vagueness stands unmotivated. I will here comment only on the first half of the argument in an attempt to remove one potential source of criticism against it. The rest of Heller's paper I pass over in silence but happily recommend to the reader. Consider a human person, Hannah. Hannah is 7' in height. Hannah is definitely tall. Mark (Hannah's friend) has a magic wand which reduces Hannah's height by one/ one-trillionth of an inch each time it is waved, and he waves it exactly 36 trillion times before it disappears. As a result, Hannah is 4' in height. Now Hannah is definitely not tall. During the wand-waving exercises, Mark and God played "the vagueness game." After each of the first trillion waves (i.e., as Hannah's height dropped from 7' to 6' 11"), God said to Mark, "Hannah is tall." And after each of the last trillion waves (i.e., as Hannah's height dropped from 4' 1" to 4'), God said to Mark, "Hannah is not tall." This story puts us in a position to apply what Heller calls "the step argument." We have a finite number of times that God makes a pronouncement-36 trillion to be exact. Given the information in the paragraph above (which is undoubtedly correct), it certainly seems that we may conclude that there will be a first time in the series of 36 trillion steps that God says something other than "Hannah is tall." To deny this seems to lead directly to a contradiction, since the first pronouncement differs from the last, and since there are a finite number of pronouncements. Of course (as Heller points out) we may not simply assume that the first (different) pronouncement made by God will be of the form, "Hannah is not tall." Rather, for all we can tell by way of the step-argument alone, God might say "It is indeterminate whether Hannah is tall," or "Hannah is neither tall nor not tall," or "It is true to degree ·9999999999999 that Hannah is tall," and so forth. Whereas the answers given by God in the vagueness game are consistent with there being no non-epistemic indeterminacy whatsoever as well as with there being only an epistemic indeterminacy, what the step-argument does guarantee is that if there is indeterminacy, then it is determinate when it sets in. (That is, it will be determinate to within one/ one-trillionth of an inch. But the value of our incremental change in height was arbitrarily chosen. The step-argument will always yield the determinateness of the onset of indeterminacy-that is, if there is any at all-within any arbitrarily small change we choose.) So, there is a first step at which God makes a pronouncement different from "Han-

74 AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person nah is tall," and even if the pronouncement is something which secures an intermediate, indeterminate status for Hannah, still there will be a sharp cut-off between the cases in which it is definitely true that Hannah is tall and the cases in which it is not definitely true that Hannah is tall. Consequently, the step-argument effectively rules out (liT). In this context, (liT) says there is no first step at which God says something different from "Hannah is tall" and that for any level of indeterminacy you care to mention (e.g., "Ind Ind Ind that Hannah is tall") it is indeterminate when that level of indeterminacy sets in. As we have just seen, however, (liT) is mistaken, and hence, Heller may safely advance to the second stage of his argument where he maintains that this result effectively undermines the motivation for ontological vagueness. I very much like this approach. Unfortunately, the description of the vagueness game just offered (which mimics Heller's own) is likely to give rise to an objection among those who accept (liT). I will now speak as an opponent to provide that response: "You have relied on the results of the step-argument in order to argue that (liT) is false, and so it would be straightforwardly circular to then assume that (liT) is false in order to generate the results of the step-argument. But that is exactly what has happened. Recall the complex reason offered for the claim that there will be a first step in the series of 36 trillion wand-waves at which God says something other than 'Hannah is tall' (i) God says 'Hannah is tall' at step one, (ii) there is a finite number of steps, (iii) God says something at every step, and (iv) God says something different than 'Hannah is tall' at the last step. But wait! 'God says "Hannah is tall" ' is susceptible to a sorites sequence, too. At step one, we might have a definite instance of God saying that Hannah is tall, and at step 36 trillion, we might have a definite instance of God saying that Hannah is not tall. But just as with tables, ships, and persons, there may be borderline cases of a Divine utterance of 'Hannah is tall.' Accordingly, anyone who is sympathetic with ontological vagueness and (liT) is free to adopt the following account: God is quite willing to play the vagueness game, and it is true that God says something at every step. Still, it fails to be determinate when indeterminacy sets in, and the vagueness game does not incline us to think otherwise simply because there are some steps at which it is indeterminate whether God has said 'Hannah is tall' yet again. Naturally, God is aware that some of His pronouncements are indeterminate instances of saying 'Hannah is tall,' but after all, God was asked to play the game to the best of his ability. If He was always careful to make pronouncements which fell on one side or the

75 Vagueness and Composition

other of the borderline cases, he quite clearly would not have played the game to the best of his ability, for some of those pronouncements would have been inappropriate. In this way, God can obey the rules and finish the vagueness game without taking out (liT) in the process." So ends my opponent's speech. Heller does not consider the fact that "God says 'Hannah is tall' " is sorites-susceptible. I think that we tend to overlook this fact because we have invoked an omniscient teammate in the vagueness game, and once we eliminate any epistemic deficiency in our thought-experiment, we can't imagine any reason for God's utterances to be anything other than definite assertions of some proposition or other. But from the point of view of the proponent of ontological vagueness and (liT), this is an unwarranted starting assumption. Certainly, if we are allowed to pretend that our device for ruling out (liT) is not itself sorites-susceptible, we will be able to use it in ways that undermine (liT). But we are not permitted to ignore that fact in the present context. Of course, there is no need to insist at the outset that the kind of vagueness involved in borderline cases of a Divine utterance of "Hannah is tall" is ontological-rather, just that there is vagueness here too, and we may not begin by assuming that there isn't any at all. As damaging as this criticism at first appears, I believe it is not fatal. We have no need to contest the claim that Divine utterances are soritessusceptible or that some of God's utterances in the vagueness game might be such that it is indeterminate whether they are instances of "Hannah is tall." The central point of Heller's thought-experiment will emerge unscathed. Even if we imagine that at each particular step God arranges things so that His utterance stands (with respect to indeterminacy) to "Hannah is tall" in a way that perfectly mirrors the facts about Hannah and tallness, what is important is that there also will be a first step at which the pronouncement is no longer a definite instance of "Hannah is tall." In other words, no one disputes that when God says "Hannah is tall" after the first wand-wave, (i) it is definitely true that Hannah is tall, and (ii) it is definitely true that God has said so. No one disputes that there are definite truths about these issues at the beginning of the vagueness game. At the next step, though, either things are the same or not. If not, (liT) is forfeit-and we will reach some step at which "not" is the correct answer on pain of contradiction. But suppose one complains: "Why should I agree that at the second step things are either the same or not? Perhaps at the second step there is no fact of the matter about whether Hannah is tall or whether God has

76 AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person

said so. Maybe it's indeterminate whether this step is the same as the last." This complaint misses the point. If there is no fact of the matter at the next step, then things have changed-for there was a fact of the matter at the previous step. If it is now indeterminate whether Hannah is tall or whether God has said so, then things have changed-for it was determinate at the previous step. 2 The vagueness game and the step-argument are decisive. Divine utterances are sorites-susceptible, and yet (liT) is false. Once we grant that there are facts of the matter and determinate truths about the first and last pronouncements in the vagueness game, then the game is up. If there is any indeterminacy at all, it will always be determinate when that indeterminacy sets in no matter what arbitrarily-small incremental change we employ. Hence, to the extent that the ontological theory of vagueness depends on (liT), that theory should be rejected. 3

§2-Defects of the Linguistic View of Vagueness Perhaps the most popular treatment of vagueness is the Supervaluationism we have already seen at work in section 4 of chapter 1-a view which recognizes the phenomenon of vagueness as a consequence of semantic indecision. Consider the sentence, "Hannah is tall." We have never attempted to determine exactly what the term 'tall' means, but in most settings it makes no difference what we mean. Let an admissible sharpening be any precisification of the language that is subject to all the semantic restrictions in force and all the non-semantic facts. (In the present example, there are countless admissible sharpenings available.) Suppose that Hannah is in fact 7' tall. Then our utterance of "Hannah is tall" is true in all the admissible ways the indecision could get resolved, and what we have said is supertrue. If, on the contrary, Hannah had been 4' tall, then our utterance would have turned out false in all the admissible ways of making the decision, and what we said would have been superfalse. And, finally, if Hannah had been 5'7'' tall, then the admissible precisifications would not have been constant I thank Mark Heller for correspondence on the point of this paragraph. Once again, however, since I am willing to take the denial of ontological vagueness as a starting point, even if (as I very much doubt) the second stage of Heller's argument should come to nothing, I will nevertheless proceed on the assumption that ontological vagueness is impossible.

2

3

77

Vagueness and Composition in their classical assignments of truth or falsity to our utterance, and what we said would have suffered a super-truth-value gap. Supervaluationism has a decided advantage over many other treatments of vagueness, especially over the somewhat-popular many-valued logic approach (whether finitely or infinitely many values are employed). Unfortunately, though, all the deviant logics which are brought to the rescue are unequal to the task of giving a proper formal account of vagueness, since that would require what their proponents cannot supply, namely, deviant meta-logics "all the way up." 4 Moreover, they also come replete with exactly the same allegedly objectionable features ascribed to the bivalent view, the very features they were designed to eliminate. For instance, if there are exactly three values, {T, I, F) then there will be sharp cut-offs in a (question-style) sorites series between "the T answers" and "the I answers" as well as between "the I answers" and "the F answers". If there are continuum-many values, then even though there always will be further intermediate values between T and any other value you care to specify, there will also always be sharp cut-offs between "the T answers" and those answers which take whichever value puts in the next appearance in the sorites series. Also, unlike the many-valued logic approaches, Supervaluationism preserves almost all of classical logic (at the expense of classical semantics). For example, when Hannah is 5'7'' tall, "Hannah is tall" is neither true nor false, but "Either Hannah is tall or it is not the case that Hannah is tall" is true, for the disjunction does not suffer from the same super-truth-value gap as does its first disjunct. Thus excluded middle survives. Bivalence is lost, but all the logical truths of the classical predicate calculus are retained. 5 Despite its victory over many-valued logics, though, I take the method of supervaluations ultimately to be a failure. Note once again that it still leaves one with exceedingly odd consequences-true disjunctions with no true disjunct and true existential generalizations with no true instances. Inquire: "Is there ann, such that n + 1 grains of sand make a heap but n grains of sand do not make a heap?" The Supervaluationist says, "Yes" (as does the Epistemicist whose view will be the subject of the next section). Although I have little sympathy for the view that a reliable test of the correctness of a metaphysical theory is 4 For an extended discussion on the need (and dim prospects) for an adequate deviant meta-logic, see Sorensen's highly amusing article, "The Metaphysics of Words" (1996). s See Williamson 1997b.

78 AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person

that it strongly accords with common sense, since this type of criticism is so often urged against the Epistemicist, it is worth turning the tables here. Let us appeal to the man in the street and ask him the following question: "Both Alice and Hannah agree that there is some number of grains which when piled together do not make a heap but that grains totaling that very number plus one do. Now, Hannah maintains that even though there is such a special number, we don't (and can't) know what it is, whereas it is Alice's contention that even though there is such a number, there just isn't any true answer to the question 'Which number is it?' So, supposing one of them is right, who do you think it is?" Once again, I am not inclined to give much weight to the answer given by our man in the street to this question, but (for the record) it is good to know that he won't cast his vote for Alice the Supervaluationist when the options are laid out so clearly before him. Another defect is that Supervaluationism does not adequately deal with higher-order vagueness. The crucial concept of an admissible sharpening of the language is itself vague, since admissible precisifications are constrained by various semantic facts and since such constraints are themselves vague. Accordingly, for some heights which might be Hannah's, it will be indeterminate whether an utterance of "Hannah is tall" is supertrue, since (i) it will be indeterminate which precisifications of the language count as admissible, and since (ii) some of the borderline precisifications will assign (the classical-value) falsehood to "Hannah is tall." A Supervaluationist may attempt to employ various devices for ruling on which sharpenings are admissible and thus (at best) hope to respond that "Hannah is tall" can be supertrue without "It is supertrue that Hannah is tall" being supertrue as well. This resolution, however, seems not to touch the heart of the problem of higher-order vagueness and is in any event obviated by a final criticism that strikes me as absolutely fatal. In his book, Vagueness, and in a series of papers, Timothy Williamson has done an admirable job of exposing a lethal defect in Supervaluationism: A deeper problem remains. Supervaluationism does not validate the Tarskian disquotational schema' "A" is true= A' (where= is the material biconditional), otherwise it would validate bivalence. But a notion of truth, trutitr, that does validate the schema is definable within the Supervaluationist framework. Trutitr disquotes; supertruth does not. Disquotation is central to our conception of truth. Why does the Super-

79

Vagueness and Composition valuationist equate truth with supertruth rather than with truthT? The original Supervaluationist idea was that since ' "A" is trueT' is just as vague as 'A', the notion of truthT is inappropriate for theoretical purposes; one must use the precise notion of supertruth instead. But higherorder vagueness means that supertruth is vague too. Thus the appeal to precision no longer defeats the presumption that truth is truthT rather than supertruth. The Supervaluationist rejection of bivalence is an artifact of the misidentification of truth as supertruth. 6 Supervaluationism yields ungrounded existential generalizations, it fails to solve the problem of higher-order vagueness, and it misidentifies truth with supertruth. Despite its popularity, the best treatment of the phenomenon of vagueness lies elsewhere.

§3-The Virtues of Epistemicism All parties agree that vagueness is ubiquitous. Without stacking the deck against Epistemicism, we can also agree that the phenomenon of vagueness is simply the existence of a range of borderline cases (rather than the existence of a range of non-epistemic indeterminacy). The latter definition rules out Epistemicism at the outset and solves nothing; insisting on the loaded definition will simply lead us from a debate about the nature of vagueness to a debate about the application of the term 'vague' thus construed. Epistemicism may be characterized as a dual thesis: (i) A proposition expressed by a vague sentence in a borderline case is either true or false, and (ii) we are inescapably ignorant of the correct truth-value.? Accordingly, given a standard sorites series, there will be a single penny that will make the difference between being non-rich and rich, and there will be a single grain that will turn a non-heap into a heap. Better yet, some trillionth of a penny and some trillionth of a grain will do the trick equally well. This is not to say, though, that there must be a last amount which counts as non-rich, any more than there must be a This quotation is from Williamson's 1997b (to which I am also indebted for material in the preceding paragraph). Chapter 5 of his book Vagueness (1994) also contains further reflections on the unacceptability of equating truth with supertruth inspired by difficulties concerning the proper characterization of validity. 7 In addition to his 1994 book-length treatment and defense of Epistemicism, see Williamson's superb series of essays, 1997a, 1997b, 1997c, 1997d, 1996a, 1996b, and 1995. His 1997b provides a brief (but very clear) introduction to the issues. 6

80

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person last real number less than one, but any sorites series which increases in finite increments (however small) will be subject to a sharp cut-off. Accordingly, for any vague term, F, an F can be arbitrarily close to a

non-F. Admittedly, at first blush, Epistemicism seems a hopeless theory. How could a trillionth of a penny make the difference between being non-rich and rich? How could our terms acquire their razor-sharp precision, when their meanings supervene on our use and our use is as haphazard and sloppy as you please? Why should the alleged truths be unknowable-what could the barrier to such knowledge possibly be? I will make no further attempt to engage these respectable, important (and answerable) questions here, since I believe that others have done an adequate job in this respect. 8 Instead, I wish only to note that after the downfall of its principal rivals-the ontological view and Supervaluationism-the epistemic view is without question our best choice among the competing theories of vagueness. The apparent hopelessness of this theory is merely apparent. Its apparent advantages, however, are genuine. Epistemicism permits us to retain both classical logic and a disquotational principle in our theory of truth, whereas its rivals offer either manytruth-values subject to the same allegedly objectionable sharp cut-offs as before or else a theory of truth on which disquotation fails. Again, Epistemicism delivers a decisive and beautiful resolution to the problem of higher-order vagueness, whereas its rivals either wholly fail to address the problem or disguise it with empty promises of an infinite hierarchy of vague meta-logics. And finally, the costs of Epistemicism are mediated by the fact that the ignorance which is postulated by the theory is motivated also by independent epistemological reflections. Here ends my brief celebratory paragraph on the virtues of Epistemicism. In the sequel, I shall proceed on the assumption that Epistemicism is true.

§4-The Special Composition Question Once again, due largely to Peter van Inwagen's excellent book Material Beings, there has been a recent flood of interest in mereology, much 8

In particular, see chapters 7 and 8 of Williamson 1994 as well as Sorensen 1996.

81

Vagueness and Composition of it centering around what van Inwagen calls The Special Composition Question. 9 In chapter 1, we introduced one way to think about that question: What shall we put in the blank in the sentence "Necessarily, for any xs, there is an object composed of the xs if and only if _ _ __ which will yield a true and informative (i.e., non-trivial) answer to the question "When is it true that there exists a y such that the xs compose y?" Here is one true but trivial answer: "Necessarily, for any xs, there is an object composed of the xs if and only if there is an object composed of the xs." Here is another: "Necessarily, for any xs there is an object composed of the xs if and only if there is a y such that the xs are all parts of y and every part of y overlaps at least one of the xs." In the first instance triviality is guaranteed by identity, in the second by synonymy.l0 Our search for a non-trivial answer to The Special Composition Question will be informed by the following definition: A is a trivial answer to The Special Composition Question = df(i) A results from filling in the blank in the statement above, and (ii) the expression that appears after the connective 'if and only if' in A is synonymous with 'there is an object composed of the xs'. The right answer to The Special Composition Question has direct bearing on our main project. As we will see in chapter 4 and in Part II below, inquiries into whether the criterion for personal identity has a psychological component, whether human persons should be identified with human organisms, and whether the criterion for moral personhood should involve claims about potentiality, all may turn on the correct answer to The Special Composition Question. Three answers to The Special Composition Question have tended to command more attention than others, but for very different reasons. The first is Nihilism-roughly, the view that there are no material objects with proper parts. Nihilism is usually mentioned (as it will be here) only to be more or less immediately rejected. It earns a place 9 van

Inwagen 1990b. This is to be distinguished from 'The General Composition Question" which asks for a definition of "the xs compose y" in which no mereological term (such as 'part', 'compose', or 'overlap') is embedded. Once again (for ease of exposition) in this section I will purposefully omit the spacetime region index (required by the Partist View) in all claims about composition. Nothing in this section turns on the more explicit formulations. 10 Here, and in the definition of "A is a trivial answer to The Special Composition Question" I borrow directly from Markosian 1998a.

82 AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person among the popularly discussed theories primarily because it lies at one of the extremes along the continuum of answers. On this view the only material objects that exist are subatomic particles (or, assuming a FourDimensionalist viewpoint, the entities we might have been tempted to refer to as "momentary time-slices" of subatomic particles). To be sure, many philosophers have advocated the view that human persons are simples-immaterial ones-but no philosopher has seriously maintained (or should seriously maintain) that we are material subatomic particles such as bosons or classons or leptons. Even Roderick Chisholm who (under the influence of mereological essentialism-the doctrine that an object cannot survive the loss of a part) suggested that human persons were smallish incorruptible material objects located somewhere in the brain, never went so far as to insist that we were material simples.I1 Consequently, if we maintain our materialist presuppositions, Nihilism is a non-starter. At the other extreme we have another of our most discussed views, Universalism. Universalism, however, at least has the distinction of actually having some proponents (among which I count myself). An extended discussion of the objections to and defense of Universalism is reserved for sections 6-8 below. The third view which has generated a fair literature in recent years is van Inwagen's Life-roughly, the thesis that the only material objects with proper parts are organisms. Unlike both Nihilism and Universalism, Life is a moderate answer to The Special Composition Question. Its prominence among the moderate answers is largely accounted for by van Inwagen's penetrating critiques of other moderate answers together with his intriguing and painstaking attempt to show that (despite appearances) the view does not contradict our ordinary beliefs. Surprisingly, van Inwagen's view is much harder to refute than one might imagine. I myself find the arguments in favor of Universalism (to be discussed momentarily) quite compelling, and thus I will eventually give my reasons for rejecting van Inwagen's theory of composition as too restrictive. But in the interests of fairness, however, I think that something important can be said in defense of van Inwagen's theory against the most widely endorsed objections launched against it. Recently, two main attempts at refutation have been 11 See Chisholm 1989, 126. Perhaps it is less misleading to say that he was agnostic on this score.

83 Vagueness and Composition

advanced, both of them (as I intend to show) failures. The first is an argument due to Ted Sider to the effect that (i) if Life is true, then atomless gunk is impossible, and (ii) since the possibility of atomless gunk is more plausible than the theory of composition embodied in van Inwagen's Life, one should choose in favor of gunkP Now, if the possibility of atomless gunk is to carry that much argumentative weight, perhaps it is worth our time getting clear on what costs we incur by accepting the possibility of a world inhabited by atomless gunk. An inquiry into these commitments (together with reasons to think that that price is too high) will form the subject matter of section 5 below. Before we pause to consider the argument from atomless gunk, however, it is worth explaining exactly why the other (and more popular) objection to van Inwagen's Life is also a failure. Many (if not most) of the opponents of moderate answers to The Special Composition Question believe that they are in possession of a decisive objection against these theories, an objection that does not require taking any stand on controversial topics such as the possibility of atomless gunk. The objection (as directed against van Inwagen' s Life) amounts to the claims (i) that Life entails the possibility of ontological vagueness-the vagueness of composition, of identity, and of existence, and (ii) that ontological vagueness is either unintelligible or (intelligible but obviously) impossible. van Inwagen himself admits claim (i) and challenges claim (ii); indeed, a full quarter of his Material Beings is devoted to accepting this (alleged) consequence of Life and to the task of doctoring up classical logic here and there in order to accommodate its implications. 13 Unfortunately for van Inwagen, however, and despite all of his efforts on this score, ontological vagueness remains so repugnant to so many that news of the alleged entailment tends to yield only applications of modus tollens rather than conversions to Life. But if it should turn out that Epistemicism is the best treatment of vagueness on offer, as was urged above, then this objection cannot be fatal to van Inwagen. In other words, given the truth of Epistemicism, the most popular argument against moderate answers to The Special Composition Question-the argument from vagueness-must be abandoned. In sections 7 and 8 below I will develop this point in some detail in an attempt to save moderate answers to The Special Composi12 13

See Sider 1993. See van Inwagen 1990b, 213-83.

84

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person

tion Question from the spurious charge that they entail ontological vagueness (and thereby do my best to undermine the most popular defense of Universalism in print), while still advocating reasons to side with a Universalist answer to The Special Composition Question at the end of the day.

§5-Against Material Atomless Gunk So, on with our aside on the topic of atomless gunk. Once again, the possibility of atornless gunk has been center stage in many recent disputes in mereology. In addition to its alleged role in refuting van Inwagen's theory of composition, Dean Zimmerman has recently argued that the mere possibility of atomless gunk forces us to choose between denying the absoluteness of identity or accepting an ontology of temporal parts or regarding ourselves (as well as all other things that can be constituted by different masses of matter at different times) as either (i) processes, or (ii) constructions out of more basic entities. 14 Curiously, though, the topic of atomless gunk and the related topic of the nature of simples have received comparatively little attention in the rapidly expanding literature on composition. In this section, I propose two arguments to show that we have good reason to reject the possibility of atomless gunk, and that we have this reason even if we are undecided on the question of how best to construe the nature of material simples. The first argument is comparatively simple: The Partist View is the best approach to certain puzzles of material constitution, and the Partist View requires that material objects are always subject to decomposition into simples. Hence-as spoils to the victor-no gunk. I rather like this first argument, but for those who think it a bit quick, the second argument is a good deal more complex and slow-going. Moreover (so as not to beg any questions) in this argument I will agree to abandon the Partist View and its prejudice against gunk altogether, speaking instead as an ordinary, orthodox Four-Dimensionalist. Nevertheless, I believe, we will still be able to mount a substantial case against the possibility of atomless gunk. Let us begin the second argument with a definition of 'material simple': 14

See Zimmerman 1995.

85

Vagueness and Composition (MS)

x is a material simple = df x is a material object, and x has no proper parts.

In a paper entitled "Simples," Ned Markosian has posed "The Simple Question" -"What are the necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for an object's being a simple?" 15 He then considers several proposals, the most plausible of which are The Pointy View and The Maximally Continuous View (the latter being the candidate he favors). 16 In what follows, I will accept the disjunction of these two views and attempt to show (by cases) that we have good reason to reject the possibility of atomless gunk If we accept a definition of "pointy objects" (PO) which reads-"x is a pointy object= df the region occupied by x contains exactly one point in spacetime" -then The Pointy View of Simples can be stated as follows: (PV)

Necessarily, x is a material simple if and only if x is a pointy object.

Similarly, if we accept a definition of "maximally continuous object" (MCO) which reads-"x is a maximally continuous object= df xis a continuous object (neither spatially nor temporally gappy), and there is no region of spacetime, s, such that (i) the region occupied by x is a proper subset of s, and (ii) every point ins falls within some object or other" -then The Maximally Continuous View of Simples can be stated as follows: (MaxCon) Necessarily, xis a material simple if and only if xis a maximally continuous object. Finally, let us adopt the following definition of 'material atomless gunk': 15 See Markosian 1998b. Note that The Simple Question is an analogue to The Special Composition Question. 16 Other views which are there evaluated and (in my view, correctly) discounted include The Physically Indivisible View of Simples and The Metaphysically Indivisible View of Simples. Let me note that whereas Markosian himself is a Three-Dimensionalist, I have taken the liberty of modifying his definitions and theses so that they conform to our present agreement to speak as Four-Dimensionalists during the course of this argument. Unfortunately, as a result, his (MaxCon) may look less plausible than it does in its original, Three-Dimensionalist context where it is offered as a thesis about spatially continuous objects without temporal parts. The same line of reasoning, however, goes through for the Three-Dimensionalist versions.

86 AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person

(MAG)

xis material atomless gunk= df x is a material object, and all of x's parts have proper partsP

(MaxCon) has an advantage over (PV), since (MaxCon) leaves open the possibility that there exists a finite number of material objects even though some of them are extended. With (PV), an infinity of material objects follow from a single extended one. And (PV) has an advantage over (MaxCon), for (PV) leaves open the possibility that two (instantaneous) maximally continuous material objects (say, two cubes-one of which has six sides with closed surfaces and one of which has five sides with closed surfaces and the sixth with an open surface) might be in perfect contact (i.e., when the open surface butts up against one of the closed surfaces with no unoccupied space in between and with no interpenetration). With (MaxCon), no such perfect contact is possible, for that kind of proximity for two instantaneous cubes is ruled out in favor of a single simple which (MaxCon) declares would be found in the region we might have thought was jointly occupied by two adjacent cubes. (Incidentally, it is intriguing to note that the disjunction "(PV) or (MaxCon)" will yield the conclusion that perfect contact between two material objects is possible only if there is an infinity of material objects.) My first goal is to demonstrate that (MaxCon) rules out the possibility of material atomless gunk. Let us assume (toward reductio) that there is some hunk of material atomless gunk, H. Now, since any hunk of material atomless gunk exactly occupies some region or other and since any region has at least one (possibly point-sized) continuous subFor those keeping an eye on Partist reformulations of familiar definitions, I suggest the following Partist gloss on (MS) and (MAG). (MS-P) "xis a material simple"= df(i) x is a material object, and (ii) there is no region of spacetime, s, and individual, y, such that y is a proper part of x at s. (MAG-P) "xis material atomless gunk"= df xis a material object, and for any individual, y, (if y is a part of x at some region of spacetime, s, then there is an object, z, such that z is a proper part of y at some subregion of s). Sometimes material gunk is loosely characterized as a material object that does not decompose without remainder into simples, but this is insufficiently precise. I believe the following distinctions show the advantage of the characterization that appears in the text. Let those material objects that do decompose without remainder into simples be known as the clean ones. Let those material objects that do not decompose without remainder into simples be known as the messy ones. Let the messy objects that have at least one clean part be known as the partially clean ones. Let the messy objects that do not have at least one clean part be known as the gunky ones. The difficulty with the loose characterization noted above is that it fails to distinguish between the partially clean and the gunky objects.

17

87

Vagueness and Composition

region, there is some (possibly point-sized) continuous subregion of the region exactly occupied by H-hereby named 'S'. Now, S itself is either a proper subregion of some extended, continuous region, every point in which falls within some object or other-or not. If not, then (by MaxCon) it follows that there is a simple at S (which would then be a part of H), and since (by MAG) it also follows that H does not have any simple as a part, we have contradicted our assumption. Consequently, S is a proper subregion of some extended, continuous region, every point in which falls within some object or other. But every such region (i.e., every region such that every point in that region falls within some object or other) either contains a maximally continuous object or else is a subregion of a region that contains a maximally continuous object. Since we are now committed to such a region, we are therefore committed to some maximally continuous object, M. Let R name the region exactly occupied by M. Now (by MaxCon) M is a material simple, and thus (by MAG) we may derive (P )

M is neither a part of H nor identical to H.

Recall that M exactly occupies R. But this fact, together with the fact that M is a simple, guarantees that no subregion of R is a subregion of any region that is exactly occupied by a material object (unless that material object has M as a part or is identical to M). But, earlier we secured the result that S, which is a subregion of R, is a subregion of the region exactly occupied by H. So, we may derive (-P)

M is either a part of H or identical to H.

Consequently, we have arrived at (P & -P), and our reductio is complete. Accordingly, since the truth-value of (MaxCon) is not a contingent matter, it would seem that if (MaxCon) is the right view about simples, then we have a simple demonstration of the impossibility of material atomless gunk. Before we accept this conclusion, however, let us take note of the fact that the argument above presupposes that the co-location of material objects is impossible; otherwise someone may object that even though every point in R falls within M, some point in R might also fall within some object which is neither identical to M nor has M as a part, provided that the object in question is co-located with M. Disputes about the possibility of the co-location of material objects have also been cen-

88

A Materialist Metaphysic.s of the Human Person

ter stage in many recent disputes in mereology.l 8 I must admit that I am no fan of co-location, but those who are sympathetic with or neutral about co-location may wish to replace the conclusion of the above argument with the following thesis: If (MaxCon) is the right view about simples, then material atomless gunk is possible only if the co-location of material objects is possible. 19 For my part, however, I think we have good reason to reject the possibility of the co-location of material objects, and thus, I conclude that if we side with (MaxCon), we have good reason to reject the possibility of material atomless gunk. My second goal is to demonstrate that (PV) rules out the possibility of material atomless gunk, as well. Many are inclined to admit the possibility of material atomless gunk because they are attracted to a principle known as the Doctrine of Arbitrary Undetached Parts or (DAUP): Necessarily, for any material object, x, and regions, s and s*, if s is the region x exactly occupies, and if s* is any exactly occupiable subregion of s whatever, then there exists a material object, y, such that (i) y exactly occupies s*, and (ii) y is a part of x. 20 A historically popular argument to gunk from (DAUP) and a denial of point-sized objects observes that any extended thing will have a right half and a left half (given some orientation or other), and that the halves in question will each have a right half and a left half, and that the process continues without end. Gunk. But consider the following argument against gunk that also proceeds from (DAUP):

The Anti-Gunk Argument (t)DAUP

(z)Necessarily, no hunk of material atomless gunk exactly occupies a point-sized region. (})Necessarily, any hunk of material atomless gunk exactly occupies some region or other. 18 See Doepke 1982; Hudson 2oooa; Rea 1997b; Sosa 1987; Thomson 1998 and 1983; and Wiggins 1968. 19 1t is worth noting that Markosian himself endorses (MaxCon), accepts the possibility of material atomless gunk, and rejects the possibility of the co-location of material objects. At least one of these views has to go. 20 See van Inwagen 1981 and Heller 1990 for discussions of principles similar to our Four-Dimensionalist version of (DAUP).

89 Vagueness and Composition

(4)Necessarily, any region has at least one point-sized subregion. (5)Necessarily, any point-sized region is exactly occupiable. From (I) through (5) we can get the conclusion that material atornless gunk is impossible. Suppose (toward reductio) that there is some hunk of material atornless gunk, H. So, by (2) and (3), H exactly occupies some non-point-sized region-hereby named 'R'. So, by (4) and (5), R has at least one exactly-occupiable, point-sized subregion-hereby named 'P'. So, by (I), H has a part-hereby named 'A'-that exactly occupies P. So, by (2), A fails to be gunk. But from (MAG) if follows that every part of gunk is itself gunk. So, H fails to be gunk, too. Reductio complete. Once again, it is hard to see how to motivate the possibility of gunk without something like (DAUP), and thus I think the gunk theorists should be inclined to leave premise (I) alone. Premise (3) strikes me as an obvious truth, and I pass over it without further remark. That leaves (2), (4), and (5). Why believe (5)? Here I think we may call upon (PV) together with the claim that material simples are possible. Hence, possibly a material object exactly occupies a point-sized region. 21 But now it seems only reasonable to endorse a metaphysical anti-discrimination policy: if it is possible that a point-sized region is exactly occupied by a material thing, then any point-sized region has the feature of being exactly occupiable. What could explain the privilege of the favored point-sized regions, otherwise? Why accept (z)? Two reasons: first, (PV) by itself entails that any object that exactly occupies a point-sized region fails to be gunk; second, were we to deny (2), we would then have to countenance the possibility of an infinity of distinct material objects all co-located at a point-sized region with no plausible way to individuate them. What of (4)? I think the most promising strategy for the gunk theorist is to take aim at premise (4) on the grounds that "gunky space" is possible (i.e., a space every proper subregion of which has proper subregions). Recent and intriguing defenses of a Whiteheadian theory of space-a view that may deserve the description "gunky space"-are available in the literature. The central idea is that one may be a realist In fact, we need only the "only if" direction of (PV)-"necessarily, an object is a material simple only if it is a pointy object" -and we may thus sidestep an objection to (PV) proper which invokes the co-location of two point-sized things and their numerically distinct, composite (but nevertheless point-sized) fusion.

21

90 A Materialist Metaphysics of the Human Person

about regions of space while taking points to be constructed out of those regions. 22 But, strictly speaking, questions about the occupiability of point-sized regions could not even arise, for there would be no point-sized regions to have questions about. Accordingly, by invoking (PV) together with (DAUP) one might reject premise (4) and mount a defense of the possibility of material atomless gunk by appealing to the possibility of an extended material object in gunky space. The problem, as I see it, is that the defense is too strong. The mathematical project of constructing points out of sets of infinitely many, converging, nested, extended regions does not guarantee the metaphysical possibility of gunky space any more than the formal consistency of geometries of arbitrarily many dimensions establishes the metaphysical possibility of four-dimensional space. At most the mathematics helps remove one kind of objection to the relevant proposals. More pressing, however, it seems to me that the claim that "space is gunky" must have its truthvalue as a matter of necessity. But then, if we ground our belief in the possibility of material atomless gunk with an appeal to gunky space, we will effectively rule out the possibility of material simples, given (PV). And that consequence, I submit, is too high a price to pay. 23 To sum up: Even if we forego the spoils-to-the-victor argument from the Partist View against gunk, and regardless of whether we accept (MaxCon) or (PV) as our answer to The Simple Question-since we have good reasons to believe that the co-location of material objects is impossible and that material simples are possible, I conclude (on the strength of the discussion in the present section) that we also have good reasons to reject the possibility of material atomless gunk.

§6-Three Objections to Universalism In our first chapter we considered a temporally relativized version of Universalism. Now let us restate our official (atemporal) Partist version: See Forrest 1996a. A quick parting shot: First, the argument shows that questions of material atomless gunk are intimately bound up with the possibility of gunky space-a partnership that is sometimes recognized as congenial but not usually recognized as indissoluble. Second, even if I am mistaken, and the claim "space is gunky" has its truth-value contingently, the argument may still be employed to show that material simples and material atomless gunk are not compossible-another underappreciated point of interest.

22 23

91

Vagueness and Composition

(Partist) Universalism Necessarily, for any collection of objects, the xs, and any region of spacetime, s, if the xs exactly collectively occupy s, then there exists an object, y, such that the xs compose y at s. However, since the motivation for (Partist) Universalism is new, the opponents of unrestricted mereological composition do not formulate their target in this manner. No harm done from our point of view in abbreviating (Partist) Universalism with its more familiar and less cumbersome, Four-Dimensionalist cousin, so long as we remember that the index to a region of spacetime is always implicit. Accordingly, let me once again speak throughout the present section as a standard Four-Dimensionalist, and let us simply focus our attention on the objections to

Universalism Necessarily, for any collection of objects, the xs, there exists an object, y, such that the xs compose y. In this section I would like to address and to defuse what I take to be the three most prominent and potentially compelling objections to Universalism thus construed. 24 The first (and most easily elicited) is the objection from counter-intuitiveness. Consider the object that is the fusion of all the extant copies of the Gutenberg Bible, the ruin at Stonehenge, and all the world's silk. Although its most salient parts have commanded considerable attention over the years, I conjecture that no one (excepting God) has ever thought about that object before. And really, why would we have? It's a spatially scattered thing and not at all like the much more compact and well-behaved scattered objects of our everyday lives, objects that at least have the decency to keep their parts in relative proximity to one another. Moreover, we have no interesting or useful functions to assign to such an awkward piece of the world's furniture that might naturally 24 The first two of my three contributions in this section are not of my own invention, but these first two responses bear repeating and are worthy of elaboration, since Universalism is so often unjustifiably dismissed on these grounds.

92

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person lead to our taking note of it or to inventing some serviceable locution for referring to things of its kind. In short, we just don't care about an object like that, even though, once again, we undeniably care about its parts. I think there is nothing surprising in the fact that we don't care about such things. The surprising bit is that (uncharacteristically) we here tend to let our interests drive our ontology. As Lewis puts it, "we are happy enough with mereological sums of things that contrast with their surroundings more than they do with one another; and that are adjacent, stick together, and act jointly. We are more reluctant to affirm the existence of mereological sums of things that are disparate and scattered and go their separate ways .... We seldom admit [such things] to our domains of restricted quantification. It is very sensible to ignore such a thing in our everyday thought and language. But ignoring it won't make it go away. And really making it go away without making too much else go away as well-that is, holding a theory according to which classes have mereological sums only when we intuitively want them to-turns out not to be feasible." 25 Although I will disagree with Lewis about just why a restricted theory of composition is infeasible in the next section, in this passage Lewis is exactly and doubly right. First, Lewis is right that our reluctance to countenance such odd sums is a result of our intuitive restrictions and that our inhlitions on these matters are a product of our (relatively narrow) interests and purposes. There is, of course, no need to revise our interests and try to identify some special function of or work up some passion for these curious fusions, but also there is no need to advance beyond simply ignoring them, no need to deny their existence. Second, Lewis is right that a well-motivated attempt to ban some fusions will have unwelcome consequences; any sensible (non-ad hoc) restriction will threaten all manner of objects to which we are committed. (In fact, this is the line I will endorse and defend in section 8 below.) Then, perhaps, we're left in a battle of intuitions over particular cases: But I, for one, have a stronger intuition in favor of the existence of chairs than I do against the existence of that thing which is the fusion of all the extant copies of The Gutenberg Bible, the ruin at Stonehenge, and all the world's silk. If momentarily recognizing and then promptly and properly ignoring that peculiar thing turns out to be the price of chairs, let's pay it. The second objection leveled against Universalism has more force 25

Lewis 1986, 211-13.

93 Vagueness and Composition

than the objection from counter-intuitiveness, and it is due to van Inwagen: 26 (A) (B) (C) (D) (E)

(F)

I exist now and I existed ten years ago. I am an organism (in the biological sense), and I have always been an organism. Every organism is composed of (some) atoms (or other) at every moment of its existence. Consider any organism that existed ten years ago; all of the atoms that composed it ten years ago still exist. Consider any organism that exists now and existed ten years ago; none of the atoms that now compose that organism is among those that composed it ten years ago. If Universalism is true, then the xs cannot ever compose two objects. That is, the xs cannot compose two objects either simultaneously or successively. More formally, if Universalism is true, then it is not possible that 3y 3z 3w 3v (the xs compose y at the moment w, and the xs compose z at the moment v, andy is not identical with z).

(A)-(F) furnish us with the resources to run a reductio on Universalism, and thus, anyone who wants to save Universalism from refutation is here presented with six very clear targets. Although (F) has been subjected to criticism/7 I will let it alone. So, too, for (A). My discussion will be directed at (B)-(E). I first wish to register a complaint against (B) but postpone providing reasons for the complaint until later. Although human persons are material objects, they are not biological organisms; instead, they overlap biological organisms (at certain regions of spacetime). I will present an extended defense of this claim in chapter 4 below, but since it makes no difference to the argument at hand, I will only mention and not pursue the matter here. The real difficulties with the argument, however, are found in (C)(E). van Inwagen's informal sketch of his objection runs as follows: "assume the truth of Universalism; consider the atoms that composed me ten years ago; if (F) is true, those atoms compose me now; but those atoms obviously do not compose me now, and Universalism is there26 27

See van Inwagen 1990b, 75· See McGrath 1998; Rea 1998a.

94 AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person

fore false." 28 Now, van Inwagen is a Three-Dirnensionalist, and he takes the parthood relation to be temporally relative. If one takes a Four-Dirnensionalist perspective, though, the statements in (C)-(E) are subject to multiple interpretations, as is the phrase from the informal sketch, "the atoms that composed me ten years ago." That latter phrase, for example may be read as: (1)

"the simples which composed my momentary, time-slice of ten years ago"

Or as: (2)

"the simples which (a temporally) compose me" 29

When van Inwagen argues that those atoms "obviously do not cornpose me now," he is clearly depending on the Three-Dirnensionalist point of view. The Four-Dirnensionalist, however, may offer one of two replies: First, if we accept reading (2) above, then the simples in question do compose me now. That is, since on the Four-Dirnensionalist's view I am a diachronic fusion of simples, the simples which (aternporally) compose me at any time are just the ones that do so at any other time at which I am present. Alternatively, if we accept reading (1) above, then admittedly those simples do not compose my current, momentary temporal-slice. But since that time-slice is distinct from my time-slice of ten years ago, this fact does not force us into any violation of principle (F). A similar point disrupts the formal presentation of the argument which appeals directly to (C)-(E). This is no news to van Inwagen who makes much the same point in a footnote where he writes that the Four-Dirnensionalist who is willing to adopt some additional theses may say, "There are certain atoms such that I am a proper part of the sum of those atoms. For any atom that I overlap, that atom and I will be related as follows: it will have a temporal extension of (say) millions of years, and I will have a temporal extension of (say) seventy years; there will be a brief interval t-a few days in length, perhaps-such that the van Inwagen 1990b, 78. A reminder: For ease of exposition, I am suppressing the Partist's gloss on these options. Whereas the Partist would express (2) as (2)* "the simples which (a temporally) compose me at spacetime region, S"-nothing in the present discussion would turn on this point. 28

29

95

Vagueness and Composition t-part of that atom, and no other part of that atom (except parts of its t-part) is a part of me." 30 Although the temporal-parts inspired reply to van Inwagen's objection is well known, I have thought it important to rehearse and to exhibit this reply in order to emphasize the crucial relation between this theory of composition and aspects of the theory of parthood and persistence which are shared by the orthodox FourDimensionalist and the Partist, a relation which will be of considerable significance when we turn to questions of the criterion of personal identity in chapter 4· The third objection is brought against Universalism by John Bigelow, who suggests that we forfeit unrestricted mereological composition in favor of a principle he christens 'Mereological Separation'. 31 Bigelow adopts as his model for such a restriction the replacement of the Unrestricted Comprehension Axiom with the Axiom of Separation in ZF set theory. Insofar as his proposal takes this model seriously, it will prove to be a failure. Here's why: Consider the Unrestricted Comprehension Axiom-[UCA] For any predicate, there is a set containing all and only the things to which that predicate applies. Now consider the Axiom of Separation-[AS] For any given predicate and any given set, there is a set which consists of all and only the things which are both members of the given set and things to which the given predicate applies. Russell's paradox has convinced us of the advantages of [AS] over [UCA]. Setting aside the question of whether there is any similar advantage to be had in mereology by way of such a restriction, let us investigate whether the analogous restriction is open to counterexample. Accordingly, consider Bigelow's formulation of Unrestricted Mereological Composition-[UMC] van Inwagen 1990b, 288; note 28. Bigelow 1996. The (informal) formulation of the next four principles that appear in the text-i.e., of [UCA], [AS], [UMC], and [BMS]-are Bigelow's. The (informal) formulation of the subsequent four principles which appear in the text-i.e., of [RMS], [NMS], [LMS], and [CP]-are mine, which (for ease of comparison) are formulated in the language and style of Bigelow.

30 31

96

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person Whenever there are some things, then there is a single thing of which all these things are parts. Now consider Bigelow's candidate for the principle of Mereological Separation-[BMS] Whenever there are some given things, and there is also a further, designated thing, then there is a unique smallest thing which is part of the designated thing and which also comprises as parts all the given things which are parts of the designated thing. Bigelow speaks with an atemporal parthood relation. In this discussion, let us follow his Four-Dimensionalist lead and show that [BMS] is false: Let all the simples which compose the gargoyle on my desk (whose name is 'Confusion') be our candidate for "some given things" and let our candidate for the "further designated thing" be my dog, Leibniz. Now, [BMS] tells us that there exists "a unique smallest thing" (hereby named 'Littlest') that satisfies a complex condition: first, Littlest must be among the parts of Leibniz, and second, Littlest must have as a part each simple which is both a part of Confusion and a part of Leibniz. Since Confusion and Leibniz do not overlap (i.e., there is no thing which is a part of them both), this second condition is satisfied trivially by any of Leibniz's parts which we might hope to identify with Littlest. Unfortunately, this also guarantees that there is nothing that answers to the description "a unique smallest thing" that satisfies the two descriptions, since every single one of Leibniz's simple parts is equally well suited for the job. Although I think that this shows [BMS] is false, I do not think that it shows that the analogue of [AS] in mereology is false, since I don't think [BMS] is a proper formulation of that analogue. For a proper analogue, consider the Revised principle of Mereological Separation-[RMS] For any given plurality and any given object, there is an object which has as parts all and only the items which are both parts of the given object and individuals in the given plurality. [RMS] is false, too; but for a different reason. Once again let our "given plurality" be all the simples which compose Confusion and let our "given object" be my dog, Leibniz. Now, [RMS] tells us that there exists an object (hereby named 'Nothing') that satisfies a complex

97

Vagueness and Composition condition: the only items which can be numbered among Nothing's parts are items that have the double distinction of being parts of both Leibniz and Confusion. But once again, since Leibniz and Confusion do not overlap, there are no items at all which are qualified to be parts of Nothing. Consequently, [RMS] yields the result that there is an object with no parts-not just with no proper parts-but with no parts, period. Whereas we may be inclined to accept the existence of a null set, a set with no members, we have no reason to accept the existence of a null individual, an individual with no parts. Thus, [RMS] is false. Perhaps it seems easy to remedy this defect. Why not just reformulate the principle so as to rule out cases that would yield the so-called null individual? To this end, consider the New principle of Mereological Separation-[NMS] For any given plurality and any given object such that at least one item in the plurality is a part of the given object, there is an object which has as parts all and only the items which are both parts of the given object and individuals in the given plurality. Note, that since [AS] does not contain a restriction analogous to the one which appears in [NMS]-according to which [AS] would partition a given set into subsets only in those cases where the given predicate and given set are such that the predicate applies to at least one element in the set-our [NMS] is not really an analogue of [AS], after all. But analogue or not, it's false, for it is inconsistent with an uncontroversial truth about the parthood relation. A simple case will reveal this: Let our "given object" be my dog, Leibniz, and let our "given plurality" be two of the many simples which are parts of Leibniz, Simp1 and Simp2. So, the antecedent of [NMR] is satisfied. Consequently, [NMR] delivers a verdict according to which there exists an object with Simp1 and Simp2 as its only parts. Let's call this object 'Trouble', for it would appear not to have itself as a part. In fact, our principle forbids it, for Trouble's parts are "all and only the items which are both parts of the given object and items in the given plurality," and Trouble was definitely not an item in the given plurality. Unfortunately, any principle which implies that parthood fails to be reflexive is false. Hence, [NMS] is false. Perhaps it seems easy to remedy this defect, too. Why not just refor-

98

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person mulate the principle so as to rule out any such threat to the reflexivity of the parthood relation? In this spirit, consider the Last principle of Mereological Separation-[LMS] For any given plurality and any given object such that at least one item in the plurality is a part of the given object, there is an object which has as parts all the items which are both parts of the given object and individuals in the given plurality. The idea this time around is to get rid of the offending "all and only" clause which led to disaster for [NMS]. Of course, with this new modification we move even further from the model provided by [UCA] and [AS] and from Bigelow's suggestion that mereology should take a lesson from set theory. 32 The problem with [LMS] is not that it is subject to counterexample; on the contrary, it is that [LMS] is utterly trivial. The object whose existence is asserted by the principle may always be identified with whichever object was selected to play the role of the "given object" in the antecedent of [LMS], for the given object will always have among its parts "all the items which are both parts of it and individuals in the given plurality." No one need reject this principle, but no one need care much about it, either. As a closing remark on this final objection to Universalism, let me mention a principle, which I think is true-it certainly escapes the series of four objections to its predecessors above-and which I think would do the work of the principle Bigelow had in mind: Consider the Carving Principle-[CP] For any given plurality and any given object such that at least one item in the plurality is a part of the given object, there is a unique smallest object which (i) is part of the given object, and which (ii) has as parts all the items which are both parts of the given object and individuals in the given plurality. Throughout his article, "God and the New Math" (1996), Bigelow seems to rely too heavily on (alleged) similarities between set theory and mereology to sustain his main theses. Nevertheless, we certainly are not forced to relinquish [UMC] (as we were forced to abandon [UCA]) on pain of paradox, and, as the present section demonstrates, the suggestion that there is a fruitful analogy between set theory and mereology to be exploited here cannot stand under scrutiny. Interestingly, as we will see in section 8 below, an (alleged) disanalogy between set theory and mereology with respect to ontological commitment has been used as an argument for Universalism. 32

99

Vagueness and Composition Bigelow introduced [BMS] in the hopes of substituting something for [UMC], a principle which he recommends that we seriously consider rejecting. For reasons we have seen, however, we shouldn't accept [BMS], [RMS], or [NMS], and we shouldn't regard [LMS] as much of a replacement for anything. One could deny [UMC] and endorse [CP], though. To be sure, [CP] carves up given composite objects into various parts, but it doesn't generate fusions "all on its own" -[CP] always requires a given composite object to go to work on. Again, one could deny [UMC] and endorse [CP], but much of the motivation behind a denial of [UMC] is centered in the counter-intuitive results of [UMC], insofar as it countenances fusions whose parts do not seem to stand in any special or natural, spatia-temporal or causal relations. But with a little care in the task of identifying the relevant given plurality, it is easy to show that [CP] implies, for example, that any thousand and thirty-one simples taken from the 1028 simples that compose my current person stage have a fusion (no matter how oddly scattered they may be). Consequently, the proposal to forfeit [UMC] in favor of [CP] begins to look rather unmotivated, after all.

§7-The Inadequacy of the Argument from Vagueness The most celebrated argument in favor of Universalism was formulated and defended by David Lewis in his book On the Plurality of Worlds. 33 The argument is surprisingly simple. Lewis invites us to pretend that Universalism is false. But then it would follow that there is some restriction on composition. But any restriction would be either grossly implausible or vague. Let us insist that we may safely ignore the grossly implausible answers. That leaves vague restrictions. But there cannot be a vague restriction on composition, for (contrary to fact) if there were, then it would be possible that it is indeterminate whether or not a certain composite object exists. And that, Lewis assures us, is unintelligible. Consequently, Universalism is true, after all. Abbreviated though it is, this argument is still intriguing. I wish to focus on only one of its aspects, however: Lewis claims that it is impossible for composition to be vague, and his extended reason involves an outright rejection of ontological vagueness, the kind of vagueness that is allegedly found in the world, and not merely in our concepts or lan33

See Lewis 1986, 212-13.

100

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person guage. That is, if composition is restricted, Lewis argues, then it would be possible for existence to be indeterminate, and this would entail the possibility of ontological vagueness. However, ontological vagueness is unintelligible, and consequently, since existence cannot be indeterminate, composition is unrestricted. I believe that Lewis has convinced many philosophers of the truth of Universalism precisely because this rejection of ontological vagueness is so widespread. The doctrine that ontological vagueness is possible is (as we have seen above) repugnant to many, and as long as Universalism is seen as the only theory of composition (excepting Nihilism) which can avoid it, views like van Inwagen's Life are in for trouble. Unfortunately, the dismissal of ontological vagueness is simply not enough to secure the argument. Suppose that we are willing to grant without a fuss that ontological vagueness is impossible. It doesn't follow that the only intelligible theory of vagueness is linguistic. As we have seen in section 3 above, there is much to be said in favor of an epistemic approach to vagueness, an approach which would threaten to undermine the Lewisian defense by blocking the inference from a vague restriction on composition to the repugnant conclusion that existence is possibly indeterminate. Lewis does not argue against Epistemicism, but still, advocates of Lewis's approach might be happy to admit that their argument for Universalism is under-defended until one gets around to refuting the epistemic theory, and then they might be happy to make a concentrated effort to get around to it! In the reminder of this section, however, I will argue that friends of Universalism should do no such thing. As attractive as it seems, Lewis's argument should be abandoned, for any attempt to strengthen it by way of an attack on the epistemic theory of vagueness will forfeit the best available strategy for resolving an otherwise insurmountable arbitrariness problem that faces proponents of Universalism. Indeed, even setting aside the independent arguments for Epistemicism from sections 1-3 above, the clean resolution which may be drawn from the resources of Epistemicism to that otherwise extremely difficult problem should give the Universalist sufficient reason to look elsewhere for support for his position. To motivate this claim, let us return briefly to the topic of our first chapter-The Problem of the Many. Since Lewis is the most visible proponent of the argument for Universalism from vagueness, permit me to make my point first (in an ad hominem fashion) against Lewis. That is, I will first argue that Lewis's many-persons solution is in need of the

101

Vagueness and Composition resources furnished by Epistemicism. Then, I will be in a position to make the same point briefly and succinctly on behalf of the Partist View. Recall that Lewis defends a many-persons solution to The Problem of the Many. Of course, the many-persons solution is even harder to resist for Universalists, for once we have admitted that there really are all of those composite objects on the scene, we are not in a position to rely on some of the other proposals we encountered (e.g., the bruteness of composition) to rule out many persons. Moreover, since Lewis is a temporal-parts theorist, he is willing to accept continuum-many, distinct (but overlapping) persons where we seem to see but one. But here's the sticking point: as we will soon see, without Epistemicism, Lewis has no acceptable way to select a genuine person from a certain range of person-candidates. Suppose we are seated across from what appears to be a single human person, and let 'Hannah' name one of the human persons in that chair from among the (allegedly) uncountably many countenanced by the many-persons solution. Let us further stipulate that "The Hannah Set" names the set of simples which compose Hannah (remembering that we are speaking here as ordinary, orthodox Four-Dimensionalists, and thus, that the simples in The Hannah Set are momentary, temporalslices of sub-atomic particles indexed to times ranging over some 70year life-span). Let "The Little Hannah Set" name one of the subsets of The Hannah Set that differs from The Hannah Set by exactly one simple. Given Universalism, there exists a fusion of the members of The Little Hannah Set. So, what is the status of that composite object? One plausible way to answer that question depends on taking seriously the observation that the term 'human person' (unlike the term 'hunk of matter' or 'table') is a maximal one. In other words-for any x, if x is a human person, then x is not a proper part of any other human person.34 Accordingly, if we rely on our stipulation that The Hannah Set has members which compose Hannah (a human person), then maintaining that the members of The Little Hannah Set also compose a human person will lead straight to a contradiction derived from the maximality of the concept 'human person'. For example, since The Little Hannah Set has one less simple than The Hannah Set, then the fusion of The Little Hannah Set is a proper part of a human person, and that feature disqualifies those simples in their bid to be as well suited to compose a person as are the members of The Hannah Set. 34

This thesis will be discussed at length in chapter 4 below.

102

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person Here, then, the difference of a single simple made the difference between personhood and its lack. Of course, an incredulous opponent might once again complain-just how could such a negligible thing as a single simple make such a profound difference as that between personhood and its lack? And, of course, we could again issue our reminder: Everyone should agree that a single simple can make the difference, if it is poorly chosen. Add, for example, some material simple to the members of The Hannah Set that exists at some time earlier than any other member of The Hannah Set. Given our suppositions thus far, if we were still to insist that a single simple never made the difference, we could derive the absurdity that a human person was once a material simple and later a material composite. Better to construct a sorites series in which we add our simples to times already represented by other members of The Hannah Set. That is, let's choose our simples more carefully and determine whether a single simple might still make the difference between personhood and its lack. To that end, consider a sorites series which begins with what certainly appears to be a respectable, momentary person-stage and which continues by increasing the size of that person-stage simple by simple. Eventually (even in choosing from the simples available at that time quite carefully), we will construct an item that is a definite case of a non-person stage. The increase, though, was by way of finite additions of simples. Hence (if we ever had a genuine person-stage at any moment in that process), the epistemic theory of vagueness entails that we somewhere crossed over a threshold, a sharp cutoff point separating a person-stage from a non-person-stage. Thus, assuming that each momentary slice of a human person is a person-stage, any composite object that has that non-person-stage as one of its momentary, temporal parts fails to be a person. The upshot of this fanciful case is relevant to our concerns; even when choosing our simples carefully, we will eventually find a set of simples whose members do not compose a person together with one of its subsets whose members do compose a person, and the two sets will differ only by a single simple. Let us take it as demonstrated, then, that even such a minor, unimportant thing as a solitary simple can make the difference between personhood and its lack. This observation should eradicate a common complaint against the claim (entailed by the maximality principle regarding human persons) that any fusion of a human person with some simple arbitrarily close to that human person will fail to be a human person, as will any proper part of that human person. Or, if it

103

Vagueness and Composition does not serve to eradicate the complaint, it should at least serve to redirect it against our preferred theory of vagueness (which is well equipped to deal with objections to sharp cutoffs and such precise threshold problems). Now return to the many. Recall that each of Lewis's alleged many persons is composed by a distinct class of simples. Sometimes, Lewis wants to count by "almost-identity" and thus count the many as one. But for reasons we have noted above, this way of counting does nothing to make the ontological commitment any more palatable. We can always ask the more pointed question-"Counting by identity simpliciter, how many human persons are in Hannah's chair?" To which Lewis admits the answer "continuum many." But sticking with that mode of counting, do we count both the fusion of the members of The Hannah Set and the fusion of the members of The Little Hannah Set among the many or not? Presumably, Lewis will want to say "not"; indeed, the context in which he offered the remark that "something which is a little less than a cat or a little more than a cat may be catlike without being a cat" indicates his sympathy with the maximality principle regarding human persons. 35 But Lewis's device for ruling out one of either the fusion of the members of The Hannah Set or the fusion of the members of The Little Hannah Set was to invoke the linguistic theory of vagueness and Supervaluationism. Given our rejection of this theory in section 2 above, however, we have to regard any such appeal to this device as a failure. Consequently, without Supervaluationism at his disposal, unless he is prepared to accept Epistemicism, Lewis must count both fusions as persons. Lewis's solution (minus Supervaluationism) now turns out to be insensitive to the maximality principle regarding human persons. Accordingly, to the extent that we still uphold that principle, we should suspect that not all of "Lewis's many" are human persons. Rather, if we accept the view that for each item which is a genuine human person, there is no other human person which has that item as a proper part or which is a proper part of that item, then we may criticize Lewis's many on the grounds that it contains an infinity of violations of this principle. In fact, we really have two problems here: first, without Supervaluationism, Lewis has no way to exclude certain nonpersons from the many, and second, even if he were to admit that (at most) one object in a series (each successive member of which has the 35

See the discussion in section 4 of chapter 1 above.

104

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person

previous members as proper parts) is a human person, he has no nonarbitrary way to say which is which. Here's the remedy: Epistemicism will provide a sharp cutoff in the application of the vague predicate 'is a human person', it will always pronounce decisively on the personhood-status of any given composite, and it will thereby yield a non-arbitrary (even if unknowable) selection of the genuine human person from each such sorites-series that contains one. Epistemicism is thus sensitive to the maximality principle regarding human persons and also cleanly solves an otherwise intractable arbitrariness problem. Of course, that doesn't soften the line on there being infinitely many human persons in that chair. But that wasn't the objective. Continuum many remain. But there are continuum many and there are continuum many! At least we haven't further cluttered things up by throwing in a bunch of non-persons too. That is, for each person in the new, "pareddown" many, the epistemic view furnishes us with a way to deny the existence of an additional infinity of distinct persons in Lewis's many in a non-arbitrary way, and that is a sizeable advantage, even if there is an infinity of distinct persons which remains. Supervaluationism can't do the trick, Epistemicism can, and something needs to. Hence, I conclude that Epistemicism plays a vital role in Lewis's confrontation with The Problem of the Many, and thus, that those who opt for the manypersons solution should not hope to settle the dispute between Universalism and more moderate theories of composition such as van Inwagen' s Life, by way of an argument which rules out Epistemicism-ad hominem complete. Now let me make the same point (briefly) on behalf of the Partist. Consider Hannah, a human person, and all the Lewis-many, overlapping, composite objects which are candidates for being Hannah's M-sisters-including candidates which are proper parts of other candidates. Begin by sectioning them off into classes where the qualification for membership in a class requires either the relation of "having as a proper part" or "being a proper part of" to each of the other members in that class. 36 As a result, we will have an infinity of such classes, each with infinite membership. Second step: order the members of each class from littlest to biggest-i.e., from the item which is a part of all the 36 Recall that these relations contain an implicit spacetime index. The fully explicit version of these informal instructions would require the treatment of 'overlap' and 'proper part' given in chapter 2.

lOS

Vagueness and Composition others to the item which has all the others as parts. 37 Third step: let Epistemicism and the relevant maximality principle single out at most one human person from each of the classes, realizing that perhaps not every class will contain a person. (Again, in order to be sensitive to the maximality principle regarding human persons, we are in need of a way to pare down the person-candidates in each of these classes to at most one-in a non-arbitrary way. Supervaluationism can't do the trick, Epistemicism can, and something needs to.) So far, so good-at this stage, Lewis and the Partist alike may appeal to Epistemicism, and in this respect they generate remarkably similar answers to The Problem of the Many-for each set of person-candidates, the maximality condition regarding human persons has solved the exclusion problem, whereas Epistemicism (and not Supervaluationism) has solved the selection problem. The advantage for the Partist over Lewis, though, comes in solving the other (and more pressing) exclusion problem, namely, at the Fourth step: as a Partist, acknowledge the relation of identity among the winning candidate(s) from each of the classes which had a genuine human person among its elements! In other words, where Lewis sees continuum-many distinct, overlapping persons each of whom is Hannah's M-sister, the Partist sees exactly one and the same Hannah, exactly occupying continuum-many distinct, overlapping regions of spacetime.

§8-The Case for Universalism Quite apart from the argument from vagueness, there has been a recent flurry of defenses of Universalism in the literature. There is, of course, Quine's famous remark that physical objects comprise "simply the content, however heterogeneous, of some portion of spacetime, however disconnected and gerrymandered." 38 And (despite his unQuinean taste for Platonism) in a somewhat similar vein Michael Jubien takes up the cause of Universalism. As Ted Sider reports in his recent critical notice on this work, Jubien argues for "a world of objects that may be arbitrarily sliced or summed. Slicing yields temporal parts; summing yields aggregates, or fusions ... [However, Jubien' s] version of the docFor simplicity's sake, I'm fudging the instructions a bit here. It is, of course, almost certain that there will be no littlest or biggest member in most of the sets in question. 38 Quine 1960, 171. 37

106

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person trine that arbitrary mereological sums exist is nonstandard in that he views it as a convention (albeit a useful one) that we treat sums of objects as themselves being objects. Indeed, he views the concept of objecthood itself as being conventional. The world consists fundamentally of stuff, which we divide into things in any way that suits our purposes." 39 Moreover, in addition to his defense from vagueness, David Lewis has also maintained that (like plural quantification and unlike set theory), unrestricted composition is ontologically innocent, on the grounds that the one thing (i.e., the fusion) is not distinct from the many things (i.e., its parts). The many-one relation of composition according to Lewis is strikingly analogous to ordinary identity. Accordingly, he submits, there is a perfectly respectable [although gratingly non-grammatical] sense in which we may say of a whole and its parts, "it is them-they are it." 40 And finally, Michael Rea has put forth a defense of Universalism which emphasizes the fact that any old fusion can come to have a certain functional role and can belong to a particular kind, and thus can meet the qualifications for objecthood as well as can wine glasses and wine bottles. 41 I have a good deal of sympathy for Rea's line of argument, but I do not regard his presentation of it as conclusive, for it depends crucially on our being able to perform certain tasks (e.g., our being able to assign functions) with respect to a wide variety of fusions, tasks that I fear exceed our representational capacities in the grand majority of cases. 42 Moreover, I am not prepared to endorse Jubien's defense, for I am not willing to concede the conventionality of objecthood in favor of a basic ontology of stuff. And unfortunately, Lewis's argument from ontological innocence also appears to be unpersuasive. There is clearly a sense in which my commitment to the fusion of my dog with my cat commits me to another object (hereby named 'DogCat'), in a way in which my recognizing the existence of my dog as well as something identical to my dog does not commit me to another object. The unique item which is the something identical to my dog just is-speaking with strict identity-my dog, whereas the unique item which is the fusion of my dog See Jubien 1993; Sider 1999. See Lewis 1991,81-87. 41 See Rea 1998a. 42 I have come to learn from Mike Rea (in private correspondence) that the occurrence of 'our' here is meant to include any purposive agent, even God. As a theist, then, I find my corrected understanding of Rea's presentation much more compelling than I did originally (and than I imagine do many of his non-theist readers). 39

40

107

Vagueness and Composition with my cat is not-speaking with strict identity-my dog or my cat or any other individual in the vicinity. Even though a complete description of my dog and my cat doubles as a complete description of DogCat, DogCat is nonetheless a distinct and new thing. It's hard to see how we might decline to regard this as a genuine ontological commitment.43 Universalism, I believe, is best supported in two very different ways: First, as noted in section 6 above, by a careful attempt to investigate the source of (and to dispel) our negative intuitive reactions to its consequences, and second by an argument from scattered objects and arbitrary restrictions. As a psychological exercise, Eli Hirsch has drawn attention to several factors that admit of degrees, which tend to lead us to recognize something as a separate and distinct object: (a) boundary contrast, (b) qualitative homogeneity, (c) separate movability, (d) dynamic cohesiveness (i.e., "the object's capacity to hang together when subjected to various strains"), (e) regularity of shape, and (f) joint-formation at boundaries lacking contrast (e.g., where a tree branch joins the tree trunk). 44 Undoubtedly, the man in the street operates by way of such a list, and to his credit, many sensible things can be said to support this kind of general strategy for acknowledging some collection of particles as composing a unit-for regarding something as one of the independent objects to be reckoned with in the world. But the sensible things to be said on this matter are all rooted in facts about our ever-changing and nearly-always fuzzy and indeterminate interests and purposes. Our problem is that we simply mistake a strategy for identifying objects which are likely to concern us in some way or other for a guide to which composite objects exist. Furthermore, the mistake is so deeply ingrained in our casual inventory of the world's furniture (in which we never face any pressing need for completeness) that it illegitimately becomes the source of powerful intuitions that speak against Universalism when we find ourselves in the much more rigorous context of doing ontology. Once we fully recognize the source of these intuitions, however, they seem to lose much of their force. At this stage of the discussion, though, I can hear my opponents protest: "We have duly considered your amateurish attempt at psychology, and we are unconvinced. Our intuitions are decisive on this matter. It's just obvious that there aren't objects such as the fusion of 43 44

For further criticism of Lewis' claim of ontological innocence, see Yi 1999· See Hirsch 1982, 107--g.

108

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person your dog with your cat. So much the worse for Universalism, if it suggests otherwise." It is in response to this sort of sentiment that we need the argument from scattered objects and arbitrary restrictions. Some time ago, James van Cleve published a paper that seems to me to point in the direction of the most promising route to a defense of Universalism against the complaint noted above. His primary strategy was first to demonstrate (contrary to Nihilism) that there are at least some scattered objects and then to argue that "once some scattered wholes have been admitted, there is no principled way of excluding the rest." 45 Scattered wholes are easy to come by: my dog and my cat are each of them swarms of particles, and it is a rare theorist who is willing to deny their existence. So much for the antecedent. Now, how shall we support the contention that given these scattered objects, we have no principled way of excluding the rest? Well, we could look for principles. Consider principles (which in fact are often operative in common-sense judgments about composition) that emphasize perceptible continuity, or independent movability, or environmental contrast. These principles do not stand under even moderate scrutiny, however. Perceptible continuity as a necessary condition on objecthood would rule out the state of Hawaii, lower-case tokens of the letter 'i', and an hourglass with its grains of sand falling one by one. Or, if these cases fail to convince, it would rule out composite items too large or to small to be visible, such as atoms (which in addition to being discontinuous are not perceivable at all). Independent movability as a necessary condition on objecthood would rule out stars with planetary systems, since movement of the former will guarantee movement of the latter. Environmental contrast as a necessary condition on objecthood would rule out individual (yet composite) grains of salt in a shaker. We have seen other principles, too: van Inwagen, for instance, backs a principle that permits only scattered organisms. But the costs are too high. Once again, I possess a much stronger intuition in favor of the existence of chairs that I do against the existence of that thing which is the fusion of all the extant copies of The Gutenberg Bible, the ruin at Stonehenge, and all the world's silk. If momentarily recognizing and then promptly and properly ignoring that peculiar thing turns out to be the price of chairs, then once again I say-let's pay it! In the interests of fairness, however, let us pause momentarily to note one response to The Special Composition Question that can claim 45

See van Cleve 1986.

109

Vagueness and Composition a distinct advantage here. The proponent of the Brutal Composition thesis that we encountered in chapter 1 may argue as follows: "We are not in need of any principled way of excluding some scattered objects while recognizing others-not if that is a disguised call for an account of that in virtue of which composition takes place. In my view, composition is both restricted and brute. And the beauty of it all is that the restrictions fall perfectly in line with my intuitions. No other theorist can claim as much." Here-after honestly agreeing that no other theorist can claim as much-I can only reaffirm my earlier remarks: admittedly, the in-virtue-of-relation terminates somewhere-but not in rock-bottom facts about mereological sums. Conceding the existence of some brute facts is inevitable, but surely the bruteness lies elsewhere. In the war of intuitions, my intuition that there is a true and non-trivial answer to The Special Composition Question overwhelmingly trumps my intuition that there is no such thing as the fusion of my dog with my cat. Whereas I hope these opinions strike the reader as an expression of his or her own, I certainly don't expect that little bit of biography to convince my opponent of anything. Accordingly, I will simply side-step this debate by way of an appeal to my remarks in the Introduction. At the outset, I promised to make my case in this book subject to six restraints. The sixth-which I introduced as a regulative principle for doing philosophy, a bit of advice underwritten by one of the strongest intuitions I have on any topic whatsoever-was to minimize bruteness. I will assume, then, that those who are willing to follow this advice at least as far as a rejection of the Brutal Composition thesis are still my companions in the hunt for a non-arbitrary principle of exclusion that will block the inference to Universalism without also banning many of the scattered objects to which we are deeply committed. This hunt, I predict, will come to nothing. Perhaps we can gather some evidence for that prediction by considering the following story: Our hero takes a pocketful of change and melts it down into a hard, solid lump which he throws in a large bowl. Next he pours some liquid metal on top of it. Then he grabs a few handfuls of dirt and rocks and grass from the bucket recently brought in from the garden and spreads it out in uneven clumps on top of the liquid metal. Finally, he splashes a gallon or so of water over the mix, which settles into little pools here and there in the mud. Proudly, he displays his new object to his friends. Common-sense complains: That's no object. But why not? It's very much like something that nearly everyone regards as a composite object without ever giving it a second thought. That is, it's very much

110

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person like our planet. It is curious that this rather prominent, naturally-occurring, non-living, composite object has been somewhat neglected in these discussions, for it is a remarkably good bit of ammunition for the Universalist camp. What principle will rule out DogCat and not threaten the Earth? Neither is alive. Neither is an artifact. Both exhibit a very high degree of boundary contrast; both are separately moveable; both have parts that are separately moveable; both exhibit dynamic cohesiveness; both are scattered objects; both are perceptibly discontinuous. And finally, DogCat even manages to score somewhat better than the Earth in the area of qualitative homogeneity. Consider what a frightfully muddy, molten, and waterlogged hunk of radically heterogeneous rock, soil, and decomposing bodies the Earth is. So, why the tendency to recognize the Earth but make fun of the suggestion that DogCat exists? Well, it is partly because we have a familiar sortal ready at hand to classify the Earth, whereas we are wholly unused to thinking about dog-and-cat fusions. (The force of this consideration shouldn't be underestimated. Taking note of objects that weren't interesting enough to have been noticed and named already by our ancestors is a rare accomplishment outside of the laboratory, and there is nothing like the absence of sortal-terms to help solidify our compositional prejudices.) And it is partly because we can't imagine any reason we might care about DogCat (i.e., in addition to caring about its parts). It certainly can't be because the Earth is more or less alone in its own little region of space. Those who doubt the existence of DogCat won't think that there will suddenly come to be a fusion of my dog and my cat, if we can just sufficiently isolate them from other objects. Nor is it that one of them has living things as parts, for my dog has living things as parts (i.e., his cells) and that doesn't rob him of existence. Nor is it that there exist certain physical bonds that unify the various parts only in the case of the Earth, for we can also make that claim on behalf of DogCat by appealing to the constant gravitational attraction between my pets. Nor should we appeal to historical properties, for there could be momentary planets (or barring that, very short-lived planets with a wholly different origin than ours). But what, then, is the telling difference? I very strongly suspect that there is no principled division here. The case only becomes stronger when we move from non-living, naturally-occurring composites to artifacts. We initially shy away from recognizing an object that is composed of a number of human persons lashed together with some wood and wire on springs and platforms. That is, until we learn that the result is a perfect replica of a wristwatch,

Ill

Vagueness and Composition

and that it counts the seconds away with the best of timepieces. In fact, we are willing to suspend our usual incredulity and to recognize some very odd objects so long as they possess a certain kind of utility for usincluding 12-stringed guitars, decks of cards, fences (built by balancing boards on rocks), cup-and-ball children's toys, Swiss-army knives, and snowmen. If we had no taste for music, or no leisure for games, or no need to partition land, many of the items on this list would sound as odd as that so-called object which is composed of seven foot-long forks balanced on a thick jelly-like tube which spins on the end of a fan. This object, though, would be a delightful addition to the home of some alien whose enjoyment of textures (like those on the jelly-tube) rivaled our enjoyment of music, and who liked a good game of bobbing for forkfulls of food with his seven mouths at a moving target. Such an alien would undoubtedly countenance this object in his ontology and might (in a narrowly-focused way) simply balk upon hearing a description of that hodge-podge of wiry string and metal and cork and plastic that we call a fishing pole, an object for which he can find no use whatsoever. Reflect also on the other oddities on our list: A Swiss-army knife, for instance, is partially valued precisely because it has detachable parts, and a snowman is a marvel-here is a composite object made up of some frozen water, some buttons, some twigs, some coal, and a carrot. The fact that we (or our alien friends) happen to take an interest in such objects cannot be relevant to whether or not the relevant arrangements of particles compose something. Of course, ordinary uses of quantifers are domain restricted, and in this way our interests can be said to make a difference to whether some objects manage to compose something. But remember that our current investigation is underway in a rather unusual context, a context in which our quantifiers are uncontroversially wide open, a context in which this response has no force. There would have been planets even if there hadn't been people, and there would have been a perfectly good artifact, even if none of the individuals who were lashing together those human persons with some wood and wire on springs and platforms had any idea that the punishment they had administered also brought into existence a perfectly good watch. Nor is intention and agency required. We would all recognize as a perfectly good object any statue or snowman which was carved out of a block of marble by lightning or whirled together by the blind forces of nature. We wouldn't describe it as an art-object or as an artifact, perhaps-but we would certainly classify it as composite. On the strength of the above discussions, then, I conclude that com-

112

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person mon sense has been severely (but not irreparably) led astray in its judgments of composition. As we saw in section 6 above, the Universalist has good responses to the most compelling objections that can be leveled against his theory, and even foregoing the argument from vagueness, I submit that the best reason to accept the existence of planets, 12-stringed guitars, decks of cards, fences (built by balancing boards on rocks), cup-and-ball children's toys, Swiss-army knives, snowmen, jelly-fork-fans, and fishing poles-doubles as a compelling reason to believe that Universalism is true. In this chapter I have attempted to furnish myself with the tools I will need to paint a portrait of the human person in chapters 4 and 5· To this end, I have offered a defense of Epistemicism (as our preferred theory of vagueness) and of Universalism (as our preferred theory of composition). For those who might want a synopsis of chapter 3, I offer the following concluding remarks: That vagueness exists is granted, of course; The dispute is solely concerned with its source. Is it rooted in objects with boundaries blurred? In semantic decisions unmade for some words? Yet our terms are precise--as are all things that be. Only knowledge can yield indeterminacy.

* * * Is this thing that thing? Or is it other? Are there just these things? Or is there another? The former thing-is it the same as the latter? For such queries, there's always some fact of the matter. Some would claim this commits us to that scattered thing That's the fusion of all of her Majesty's rings. And also trout-turkeys, as well as the sum Of any old xs across which we come. But banning vague being or identity Gives no reason to grant such queer objects as these. Still, on balance, it's best to endorse this position: Restrict quantifiers and not composition.

4 The Criterion of Personal Identity

§1-0n the Referent of the Term 'Human Person' On the (Four-Dimensionalist) Partist, Epistemicist, Universalist, Eternalist view we have crafted over the last three chapters, we have a block universe of spacetime points (some but not all of which are occupied by material simples), there is arbitrary summing and slicing of material objects (each of which has precise borders), and many of these composite material objects exactly occupy more than one region of spacetime. What, then, serves as the criterion of personal identity? To which of these many (always overlapping) spacetime worms does our term 'human person' refer? Some have argued that once we have adopted an ontology of temporal parts and the mereological thesis of Universalism, we trade off all metaphysical problems about personal identity for a handful of linguistic problems. 1 To illustrate this point, think once again about a classic case of identity across time-the Ship of Theseus. The Universalist, Four-Dimensionalist will say that there are various spacetime worms in the story. Many of these spacetime worms overlap with a series of ship-stages (that everyone agrees are stages of the Ship of Theseus) and then go their separate ways, one of which terminates in a series of ship1

Olson 1997.

Ill

114

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person

stages that are continuous with (although constituted by a different kind of material than) the earlier ship-stages, and another of which is non-continuous with (although constituted by later stages of the same parts in the same arrangements as those which constituted) the earlier ship-stages. What, then, is the criterion of ship identity? To which of these overlapping spacetime worms does our term 'ship' refer? One might think that we simply have a semantic problem here. Perhaps our concept of a ship rules out one of the candidates in favor of the other. That is, when reidentifying ships, perhaps a certain continuity in plank-replacement is more significant than is the sameness of the type of material composing later ship-stages. The point, though, is that there will always be a spacetime worm corresponding to each candidate answer. The problem, then, is only the semantic one of discovering the referent of our terms. The Partist Universalist is in the same boat as the Four-Dimensionalist Universalist (so to speak). Whereas the Partist and the standard Four-Dimensionalist disagree on how many distinct regions of spacetime may be exactly occupied by a material object, they agree that there are sufficiently many arbitrary sums of stages to guarantee the existence of an object for each of the candidate answers to the question, "Which is the Ship of Theseus?" Thus the problem for the Partist also consists only in identifying which spacetime worms are the referents of our terms. So, back to persons. To which of these many (always overlapping) spacetime worms does our term 'human person' refer? Whatever our final answer to this question, we should be able to explain why the adjective 'human' is an appropriate one. I think it best to momentarily postpone that task and to proceed in stages. Let us first concentrate on the referent of the term 'person', and then turn our attention to the more complicated 'human person'.

§2-Maximal Persons, Temporary Persons, and Person-Parts Consider the following story: Immediately following a particular event of conception at T1, there exists a zygote. Let us name this material object Hopeful. Hopeful ages, and somewhat later at T2, there exists what appears to be a living human organism whom we will name Vital. Vital ages, and somewhat later at T3, there exists what appears to

115

The Criterion of Personal Identity

be a sentient being whom we will name Feeler. Feeler ages, and somewhat later at T4, there exists what appears to be a rational being whom we will name Thinker. Thinker ages, and somewhat later at T5, there exists what appears to be a pleasant fellow whom we will name Cheerful. Now, a series of dramatic, abrupt, and rather lamentable events happen which involve our protagonist(s). Cheerful permanently loses his cheer at T6 upon witnessing some horrific evil. Thinker loses all ability to operate as a rational being when he suddenly becomes profoundly senile at TT Feeler, who suffers a terrible accident, instantly loses all sentience at T8. Vital immediately stops living after life support is removed at T9 . And finally, Hopeful ceases to exist at T10 when the decomposing corpse that Hopeful had become had decomposed so thoroughly that no corpse was left at all. I have deliberately left open the question of whether these are five distinct individuals or whether these are ten stages in the career of a single individual. Whereas the standard Three-Dimensionalist (who restricts composition) may have to choose between these alternatives, the standard Four-Dimensionalist and the Partist may embrace both. From either the Four-Dimensionalist's or the Partist's perspective we may say that (i) Hopeful persists from T1-T 10 and contains (at least) the eight intermediate stages highlighted above, and also that (ii) there are at least five distinct individuals in the story (a) Hopeful, who persists from T1-T 10 (b) Vital, who persists from T2-Ty, (c) Feeler, who persists from T3-T8, (d) Thinker, who persists from T4-T7, and (e) Cheerful, who persists from T5-T6 . Furthermore, from the Four-Dimensionalist's perspective, since Hopeful persists from T1-Tw (4D) tells us that Hopeful has an instantaneous temporal part at every instant from T1-T10 . It then trivially follows that Hopeful has an instantaneous temporal part at every instant from T2-T9 . Moreover, if we consider the fusion of those instantaneous temporal parts from T2-T9, it follows that Hopeful has an extended temporal part which itself exactly occupies the interval T2- T9 (i.e., an extended temporal part which itself persists through the interval in the sense offered in (4DP) and which does not exist at times outside the interval in question). Of course, those very features were present in the temporal description of Vital, the second continuant in our story. Nothing in the story prohibits us from identifying Vital with a proper temporal part of Hopeful. Thus, the Four-Dimensionalists may add that detail to the story without fear of incoherence. (Incidentally, we could doctor up

116

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person the story so that we also specified some of the spacetime regions our characters exactly occupy, and then the Partist could use (SP), (SO), and (SOP) to make the similar point that nothing in the story prohibits him from identifying Vital with a proper spacetime part of Hopeful.) Similar reasoning by the Four-Dimensionalist would then enable us to generate the following interpretation of the story: (a) (b) (c) (d)

Vital, Feeler, Thinker, and Cheerful are proper, temporal parts of Hopeful. Feeler, Thinker, and Cheerful are proper, temporal parts of Vital. Thinker and Cheerful are proper, temporal parts of Feeler. Cheerful is a proper, temporal part of Thinker. 2

So, on the Four-Dimensionalist and Partist views, we have five distinct continuants here. Each is a genuine object, and there is no co-location of continuants since no two of the five characters exactly occupy the same region of spacetime. (It should by now be clear how various Partist-qualifications may be filled in. For ease of exposition, then, I will continue the discussion primarily from the perspective of the FourDimensionalist.) But even though we have no co-location, there most certainly is some serious stage-sharing going on. Consider the stage we find at T5, namely, 55. 5 5 is shared by all five of our characters (as well as by a truly astonishingly large number of unnamed characters in our story)! We shall address the five only. If they all stage-share at 5 5, how many of the five are, for example, living human organisms? It is not simply obvious how to go about answering such a question, but I would think that the following observations on the story are relevant to formulating a plausible reply: Notice that only one of the five characters has stages during which it is uncontroversially not alive, namely, Hopeful, for shortly before T10' Hopeful is a decomposing corpse. Also notice that exactly one of the characters can claim to be both alive at every moment it is present and not also a proper part of another character which is alive at every moment it is present, namely, Vital. Despite these two uniquely possessed attributes, though, perhaps we should acknowledge that all of the characters at least seem to have the distinction of The Partist may substitute 'spacetime part' for 'temporal part' and may add an appropriate spacetime index.

2

117

The Criterion of Personal Identity

being living human organisms at the particular time in question, namely, at T5. Nevertheless, as we have just noted, there are significant differences between the characters which are deserving of careful attention, differences which may lead us to believe that things are not as they seem and which may lead us to be suspicious of straightforwardly inferring something of the form "xis an F" from the truth that "xis an Fat T." The following three definitions should help to narrow our focus in the attempt to count the living human organisms in our story: (MF) (TF) (FP)

x is a maximal F = df x is an F, and xis not a proper, temporal part of any F. xis a temporary F =df x has some maximal F as a proper, temporal part. xis an F-part = df xis a proper, temporal part of some maximal F. 3

Notice that for any object, x, and value, F, x can satisfy (at most) one of the three definitions above. Proof [-suppose that x is both a temporary F and a maximal F: but then by (TF), there is some y which is also a maximal F (and thus an F), and which is a proper, temporal part of x, but that is ruled out by our hypothesis and (MF), since insofar as xis a maximal F (and thus an F), y, a maximal F, cannot be a proper, temporal part of x. Proof II-suppose that x is both a temporary F and an Fpart: but then by (TF) there is some y which is maximal F (and thus an F), and which is a proper, temporal part of x, and by (FP), there is some z which is also a maximal F (and thus an F), and which has x as a proper, temporal part, but then (since parthood is transitive), y, a maximal F, would be a proper, temporal part of z, an F, which is ruled out by (MF). Proof III-suppose that xis both a maximal F and an F-part: but then by (FP), there is some y which is a maximal F (and thus an F), and which has x as a proper, temporal part, but this is ruled out by our hypothesis and (MF), since insofar as xis a maximal F, xis an F and not also a proper, temporal part of anything else which is an F such as y. Now we can resume our project. Let F be 'living human organism': in that case, given our definitions above together with some very plausible intuitions about the nature of living human organisms, it would seem that Hopeful is a temporary living human organism, Vital is a Partist versions can be had by substituting 'spacetime part' and an appropriate spacetime index for 'temporal part' in the three definitions.

3

118

A Materialist Metaphysics of the Human Person

maximal living human organism, and Feeler, Thinker, and Cheerful are each living-human-organism-parts. On that classification, I am tempted to respond to the question "how many of the five characters in our story are living human organisms?" with the answer "one." Feeler, Thinker, and Cheerful are ruled out, for although they seem to be living human organisms at T5, this can be chalked up to the fact that they are simply living-human-organism-parts (i.e., that they stage-share all of their stages with a living human organism). But whereas living human organisms may have living things as proper parts (e.g., cells), they do not have living human organisms as proper, temporal parts, even if they do have things according to Four-Dimensionalism and our three definitions which we may call living-human-organism-parts. Hopeful is likewise ruled out, for although it seems to be a living human organism at T5, this can be chalked up to the fact that it is a temporary living human organism. In other words, its stage-sharing with a maximal living human organism at T5 presents us with the appearance of its being a living human organism, as well. However, a thing's having a living human organism as a proper, temporal part is simply not enough to make the thing in question a living human organism itself. (Perhaps it is worth pausing over that last point. Suppose that x's having a living human organism as a proper, temporal part were a sufficient condition for x' s being a living human organism itself. Then, given arbitrary diachronic sums, we would have an infinite array of living human organisms each of which would be a fusion of some instantaneous temporal part of the Parthenon from 2000 years ago and some currently-existing, living human organism. Alternatively, think of the hordes of living human organisms who would all overlap with that fat man on the trolley tracks, generated by the abundant fusions of that living human organism in harm's way and various items confined to times in the seventeenth century.) But perhaps not everything may be settled so quickly. After all, someone might refuse my suggestion that Hopeful is a temporary living human organism on the three-fold classification above, since that definition guarantees that whatever satisfies it will also fail to be a living human organism at all. The critic speaks: "Suppose that x is a temporary living human organism: but then by (TF), there is some y which is a maximal living human organism (and thus a living human organism), and which is a proper, temporal part of x, and by (MF), we then know that anything which has y as a proper, temporal part is not itself

119

The Criterion of Personal Identity

a living human organism; consequently, xis not a living human organism. But if one were sympathetic with the view that Hopeful is a living human organism (on the grounds that it certainly seems to be one at T5), then one would have reason not to follow you in classifying it among the temporary living human organisms." Were we carrying out this investigation under the supposition of Three-Dimensionalism, I think we would have good reason to side with the objection here. On the Three-Dimensionalist view, that very same organized, material body which spends part of its career as a living human organism and part of its career as a corpse is the only candidate object in the story to win the title of 'living human organism', and we would thus be far more inclined to describe its being alive as a mere stage of the object's history, rather than as bearing the whole/part relation to a numerically distinct object. 4 In this discussion, however, we have assumed the Four-Dimensionalist position. On the Four-Dimensionalist view we have several distinct objects to consider, and all of our inclinations to number Hopeful among the ranks of the living human organisms should be fully satisfied by assigning that status to a distinct continuant who happens to bear a pair of intimate relationships to Hopeful, parthood and stage-sharing (i.e., overlap). In other words, the fact that a living human organism exists at T5 and thus puts in a stage then, namely, 55, together with the fact that that very stage is a stage of more than one distinct continuant, should not incline the Four-Dimensionalist to say that each thing that has 55 as one of its stages is a living human organism, even if there is some sense to be made of the locution 'each such thing is a living human organism at T5 ' (where the latter phrase does not imply that each such thing is a living human organism simpliciter, but rather is just a way of saying that there is some living human organism or other who stage-shares at T5). Admittedly, that bit of clarification does not explain why I favor Vital over Hopeful as the living human organism in our story; at most, it explains why I think we have exactly one character in our story with that feature. The reason that I cast my vote for Vital is simply that Hopeful does have times at which it is uncontroversially I say this with one reservation. Any Three-Dimensionalist who accepts co-location of distinct objects may claim to identify multiple objects in the story as well. As I have indicated before, I do not find co-location theories at all attractive, and consequently (from what I take to be a charitable interpretation) I am tempted to characterize the Three-Dimensionalist opponent as one who rejects co-location.

4

120

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person

not alive (e.g., T10), and Vital doesn't; that seems to me to make Vital the better candidate for the position. 5 These reflections on living human organisms may serve as a model for a similar investigation into the more interesting and morally significant topic of persons. Before conducting that investigation, though, we should note that not all substitutions for 'F' in our three definitions above will yield the same sort of results just generated for living human organisms. Suppose we let F be 'hunk of matter': There are hunk-of-matter-parts (e.g., any proper temporal part of any hunk of matter), there are maximal hunks of matter (e.g., any hunk of matter which is not a proper, temporal part of another hunk of matter-incidentally, one rather prominent hunk of matter which meets this description is the magnificently large, scattered, and ancient hunk which is composed by all the material particles that exist at any time). 6 And finally, if there is such a thing as the fusion (hereby named 'Dual') of an immaterial object which exactly occupies some temporal interval T1-T2 (hereby named 'Incorporeal') and a maximal hunk of matter which exactly occupies some temporal interval from T2-T3 (hereby named 'Hunky'), then there are temporary hunks of matter, as well (e.g., Dual would not itself be a Hunk of matter, but would have a maximal hunk of matter as a proper, temporal part). How would we count the hunks of matter simpliciter? As in the case of living human organisms, the temporary hunks of matter do not get a place on our list, since even though we would have some inclination to say that Dual was a hunk of matter at T3, that inclination can be accounted for by Dual stage-sharing at T3 with a maximal hunk of matter, namely, with Hunky. We would, of course, count each maximal hunk of matter as a hunk of matter. But, unlike the case involving living human organisms, hunk-of-matter parts would qualify as hunks of matter as well. Recall the justification for maintaining that livingA referee asks after Neglected-a neglected character in our story who happens to be composed of Vital and the T1-T2 part of Hopeful (roughly, the individual present shortly after conception through the end of Vital's life). Why isn't he the living human organism? I have neglected Neglected only because my biology colleagues assure me that at very early stages after conception, there is just not yet the right kind of cell specialization among the multi-celled zygote to qualify as a living human organism. (Rather surprising estimates-at least to my mind-put the time that a human organism appears on the scene to be weeks after conception.) 6 Still, there are others, including that hunk of matter which is all of the ancient hunk just identified minus you. This latter object is both a hunk of matter and not a proper, temporal part of the former hunk of matter.

5

121

The Criterion of Personal Identity

human-organism-parts fail to be living human organisms; the reason was simply the intuition that living human organisms do not have living human organisms as proper, temporal parts. Significantly, there seems to be no corresponding intuition in the case of hunks of matter. That is, we seem to believe that hunks of matter can have hunks of matter as proper, temporal parts. The tendency to adopt mereological essentialism for hunks of matter but not for artifacts or living things sets a precedent for treating hunks of matter and living human organisms in such dissimilar ways. Consequently, we would have as many hunks of matter as we have maximal hunks of matter and hunk-ofmatter parts. So, taking these observations on living human organisms and on hunks of matter as a guide, let us focus on our main problem. Is the case of persons like the case involving living human organisms or like the case involving hunks of matter? 7 Given the preceding discussion, we should begin to answer this question by posing the preliminary question, "can a person have a person as a proper, temporal part?" 8 The intuition here in favor of a negative answer is at least as strong as it was in our original case, and consequently our answer here goes the way of our answer in the first case under investigation-like living human organisms (and unlike hunks of matter), a person cannot have a person as a proper, temporal part. But then it immediately follows (i.e., from the intuition regarding persons, and not merely from the definitions alone) that any temporary person is a non-person and that any person-part is a non-person, for reasons exactly parallel to those given for denying that temporary living human organisms and livinghuman-organism parts are living human organisms. Accordingly, let us adopt as the first observation in our attempt to solve the semantic puzzle that faces the Four-Dimensionalist and the One might think that there is a third type of case as well. Let F be 'part': Then even though any particular thing would satisfy exactly one of the definitions of 'maximal part', 'temporary part', and 'part-part'(!), anything that satisfied any of the three definitions would count as a part simpliciter (leaving open, of course, whether it was a proper, temporal part of another part or an improper, temporal part of itself). This case does not really diverge from the case involving hunks of matter, though, since even though anything which managed to be a temporary part would be a part, nothing can satisfy the definition of 'temporary part'. 8 Note that I am here using 'person' (rather nonstandardly) as an object-kind. My justification for doing so is the by now familiar appeal to the much richer ontology of the Universalist, Four-Dimensionalist or Partist. For the Partist the question is 'can a person have a person as a proper, spacetime part?', and (fortunately) his solution to The Problem of the Many permits him to answer in the negative, as well. 7

122

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person

Partist alike the result that only maximal human persons are human persons.

§3-The Criterion of Personhood It will prove helpful in our attempt to identify which spacetime

worms are persons, if we can establish some connection between being a person and possessing (in some sense) a certain collection of cognitive abilities. The exemplification of such a collection of cognitive abilities (including the capacities for self-consciousness and first-person intentional states) is almost universally recognized as relevant to personhood (usually as a sufficient condition). The details need not detain us now. However this list of cognitive abilities gets refined, it will involve some sort of cognitive element or other which appears only after the first several months of life. Let us simply call the relevant list of cognitive abilities-characteristics C.9 Unfortunately, it appears that it is very difficult to establish such a connection in a non-tendentious manner. Note that we cannot simply begin with the presupposition that persons possess characteristics C at every moment that they are present. Nor can we simply begin with the presupposition that persons possess characteristics C at some moment or other that they are present. (In each case, we would automatically rule out human fetuses and newborns who do not live beyond a year after conception, and that's a controversy that would be best not to take sides on at the very outset of the discussion.) 10 Still, I think we can make some headway here. Let us simply start with the claim that anything that is a person has the de re modal property 'could have possessed characteristics C'. This proposal should be accepted all around; it is weak enough not to rule out a human embryo at the start, yet consistent with a hard-line conclusion according to which no fetus is a person. Keeping this modest connecA (somewhat redundant) representative list of these capacities, together with the idea of putting them all together under the handy label 'characteristics Cis found in Feinberg and Levenbook 1993· Note that I do not say, "let us simply call whatever abilities are relevant to personhood--characteristics C," for that would make the relation between C and personhood analytic. Rather, I am asserting that there are some such cognitive abilities and stipulating a way to refer to them. 10 In fact, I think that taking sides on this issue at the very outset is exactly what frustrates Feinberg and Levenbook's attempts to argue successfully for something they call "The Actual Possession Criterion of Moral Personhood." See my criticism of their discussion in Hudson 1996. 9

123

The Criterion of Personal Identity tion between being a person and possessing characteristics C in mind, we may now turn to an initial consideration of what I believe are the two most popular accounts of the criterion of personhood. Here's a first attempt to state them: Personhood-Theory I-all and only those objects that actually possess characteristics Cat tare persons at t. Personhood-Theory II-all and only those objects that either actually or potentially possess characteristics Cat tare persons at t. (Note that proponents of either theory may accept our modest modal claim about the relation between being a person and possessing characteristics C as a necessary condition of personhood, but only a proponent of Personhood Theory II will also be inclined to regard it as a sufficient condition as well.) 11 As they are here, these two standard theories are often stated in language which is a bit more revealing on the Three-Dimensionalist's view than it would be on the Four-Dimensionalist's view (i.e., both theories assign some feature to a continuant at a time). Although we are speaking as Four-Dimensionalists, I begin with the common formulation above in order to make a point. Note that a proposition of the form "x is an Fat t" leaves open important questions for the Four-Dimensionalist. In particular, it leaves open the question of whether or not xis an Fat all. Let me explain this point in terms which by now should be somewhat familiar: First, a Four-Dimensionalist is willing to say of some x which is a maximal F that "xis an Fat t," and mean by that phrase that the temporally extended thing which is x has a part that is present at t that is an F. Of course, he will not restrict such parts to instantaneous, temporal parts. In cases where F is something such as 'eighty-year continuant', it may very well be the improper part of x which is present at t that has the feature in question. As we have already seen, though, the Four-Dimensionalist is equally willing to say of some x which is a temporary F that "x is an F at t," so long as we interpret this phrase as attributing F to some four-dimensional being other than x who happens to stage-share with x at t. Consequently, since "xis an Fat t" is There are, of course, importantly different disambiguations of the term 'potentially', a term that plays a rather significant role in Personhood-Theory II. For example, the sense of 'potentially' which amounts roughly to an assertion of metaphysical possibility generates a much less promising reading of that theory than does the sense of 'potentially' which is at issue in ordinary uses of sentences such as "I have the potential to play soccer" or "I have the potential to speak French." Fortunately, however, we will be able to sidestep the surprisingly complex problem of sorting out different readings of 'potentiality', since the critical evaluation of those views related to PersonhoodTheory II will not turn on any restricted feature of some specific disambiguation. 11

124

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person neutral with respect to x' s being either a maximal F or a temporary F or an F-part, and since the first of these options entails that "xis an F" and since the second is inconsistent with x's being an F, the phrase "x is an F at t" is neutral with respect to whether or not x is an F simpliciter. So, when we consider the two claims "x potentially possesses characteristics Cat t" and "x actually possesses characteristics Cat t" from the Four-Dimensionalist's point of view, nothing decisive can be derived concerning whether or not x is a person, since the phrases in question are consistent with x' s being such as to neither potentially possess characteristics C nor actually possess characteristics C. In other words, even if characteristics C were constitutive of personhood, one may not infer anything about x's moral status from those two temporally relativized claims, since the truth of the two claims in question does not guarantee that x itself either actually possesses or even potentially possesses characteristics C; at best, it guarantees that x will stage-share with a thing that possesses characteristics C. We might recall, however, that the theories under question would manage to provide us with information about a perfectly respectable property, namely, 'being a person at t'. In other words, given facts about possessing characteristics C at times, we can derive consequences about being a person at a time. Nevertheless, the problem would remain that x's being a person at a time simply does not imply anything about whether or not xis a person. Moreover, the rather desperate suggestion that it is really x's being a person at a time (rather than x's being a person simpliciter) which matters from a moral point of view and which confers moral status upon x may be successfully forestalled by observing that this would generate moral status for absolutely any cross-time fusion of me and instantaneous temporal parts of the grains of sand on the shores of ancient North America. 12 But those objects, albeit interesting in their own right, are not the bearers of the same moral status as you or I. Hence, the Four-Dimensionalist should reject the temporally-relative Personhood Theories I and II as entirely unsuitable. A brief interlude on behalf of the Partist: The Partist has his own reading of the claims that appear in the temporally-relative Person12 I here assume the thesis that necessarily, persons have a certain kind of moral status merely in virtue of being persons, but I do not presuppose any normative content in the meaning of the term 'person' as it appears in our present discussion. As we are using it here, 'person' has purely descriptive content.

125

The Criterion of Personal Identity

hood Theories I and II. For instance, the Partist is likely to take "xis an Fat t" as an abbreviated way of saying that x has a spacetime part, y, at some region, s, and that (i) there is at least one spacetime point indexed tot which falls within s, and (ii) y bears the relation "having at s" to F. Let us consider an example to clarify the Partist' s version of our point. The Partist will cash out the claim that Hopeful is a living human organism at T5 (without being a living human organism itself) as follows: Hopeful has Vital as a spacetime part (at some region of spacetime exactly occupied by Vital, namely, S), and (i) there is at least one spacetime point indexed to T5 which falls within S, and (ii) Vital bears the relation "having at S" to being a living human organism. Thus, the Partist (like the Four-Dimensionalist) will class Hopeful among the temporary living human organisms only. Even though the reading is more complicated (especially owing to the adverbialist account at work in clause [ii]), the point is essentially the same. The Partist is not in any better position than the Four-Dimensionalist to say whether an object is a living human organism (i.e., bears "having at [some region] s" to being a living human organism) from the information that it is a living human organism at a time. Hence, the Partist (like the Four-Dimensionalist) should also be inclined to reject the temporallyrelative Personhood Theories I and II as entirely unsuitable. Interlude over. The Four-Dimensionalist may easily replace these two theories, however, with what appears to be their following atemporal counterparts: Personhood Theory !*-all and only maximal C-possessors are persons. Personhood Theory II*-all and only temporal and maximal C-possessors are persons. One might worry that we have shifted ground, since in its temporally relativized form, Personhood Theory II was the claim that things which potentially possess C are persons, whereas Personhood Theory II* is the claim that things which at some time or other possess Care persons. Note, however, that anything which will someday possess C is also such that it has the potential to possess C (i.e., any temporary C-possessor is also something with the potential to possess C). Thus, any demonstration that yields the result that some temporary C-possessor is not a person will thereby automatically show that there is some object which has the potential to possess C that fails to be a person, too. Accordingly, any such a refutation of Personhood Theory II* will serve to undermine the potentiality approach, as well. Now perhaps the Three-Dimensionalist has a genuinely difficult

126

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person choice to make between Personhood Theories I and II. Each has some genuine plausibility on that metaphysics. But the decision is comparatively quite simple for the Four-Dimensionalist. Once again, notice the exorbitant price one would pay for the Four-Dimensionalist view for accepting Personhood Theory II*. According to Personhood Theory II*, the fusion of some instantaneous temporal part of the sun from a billion years ago and some currently existing maximal C-possessor would count as a person. But this result is wildly implausible. Or, if one thinks that some clause about spatiotemporal continuity will alleviate the problem, consider instead the fusion of a maximal C-possessor (who comes into existence at T) with a temporal part of a chair (confined to times before T), on the assumption that they were in contact at T. Nor will restricting Personhood Theory II* to organisms be an adequate solution, for apart from some independent reason to think that organisms qua organisms have a special status in this context, such a restriction will be wholly unmotivated. 13 Accordingly, suppose the FourDimensionalist rejects Personhood Theory II* and instead accepts Personhood Theory I*. This, then, suggests a clear-cut answer to our earlier question. Among our characters, it would then appear that Hopeful, Vital, and Feeler are all temporary persons, Thinker is a maximal person, and Cheerful is a mere person-part. Consequently (for reasons exactly parallel to those given in favor of Vital in the case of living human organisms), Thinker emerges as the one and only person in our story. 14 It is significant that Vital (our only living human organism in the story) does not also turn out to be our only person. As before, however, given the resources of Four-Dimensionalism, all of our inclinations to include Vital in the class of persons should be fully satisfied by assigning that status to a distinct continuant who happens to bear a pair of intimate relationships to Vital, parthood and stage-sharing. In other words, the fact that a person is present at T4 and thus puts in a stage then, namely, 54, together with the fact that that very stage is a stage of more than one distinct continuant, should not incline the Four13 For an extended discussion of the status of an organism qua organism, see chapter 6 below. 14 The Partist may accept the wording in Personhood Theories I* and II* as they stand (even though he has something to add to the definitions of "maximal F" and "temporary F"-see note 3 above), and (once the relevant spacetime indices are in place), it is clear that he shares the Four-Dimensionalist's reason to reject outright Personhood Theory II*.

127

The Criterion of

Pe~;onal

Identity

Dimensionalist to say that each thing that has 54 as one of its stages is a person, even if there is some sense to be made of the locution 'each such thing is a person at T4' (where the latter phrase does not imply that each such thing is a person simpliciter, but rather is just a way of saying that there is some person or other who stage-shares at T4 ). Also as before, I admit that that bit of clarification does not explain why I favor Thinker over all of the other characters as the person in our story; at most, it helps to explain why I think we have exactly one person in our story. The reason that I cast my vote for Thinker is simply that Vital, for example, does have times at which he is uncontroversially not exemplifying characteristics C (e.g., T2, T3' T8, and T9), and Thinker doesn't; given the advantages of Personhood Theory I* over its rival for the Four-Dimensionalist, that seems to me to make Thinker the better candidate for the position. We have made some progress. At the end of section 2 we concluded that only maximal human persons are human persons simpliciter. Given our recent discussion, let us adopt as the second observation in our attempt to solve the semantic puzzle that faces the Four-Dimensionalist and the Partist alike the result that only maximal C-possessors are human persons. 15 Roughly, then, our first two results amount to the claim that the spacetime worms which are human persons are also C-possessors who are neither proper, temporal parts of other human persons, nor proper, temporal parts of other C-possessors. Time to cash in a promissory note. I mentioned earlier that whatever answer we gave to the question, "to which of these many (always overlapping) spacetime worms does our term 'human person' refer?", we should be able to explain why the adjective 'human' is an appropriate one. But given our admissions that Vital is the only living human organism in our story and that Thinker is our only person and that Vital is distinct from Thinker, it would appear that human persons are not living human organisms at all. So why the qualification 'human'? We should note that this result should not be confused with the following claim which might be offered by a Three-Dimensionalist: "Living human organisms are not persons at every moment they are present; they are persons at only some of the moments that they are present." For in that view, the thing which is the person at one time is identical to the thing which is both a living human organism and a non-person at earlier 15 To the extent that we also have the intuition that a C-possessor cannot have another C-possessor as a proper, temporal part, we should grant that (like the case of human persons) C-possessor-parts do not count as C-possessors simpliciter.

128

A Materialist Metaphysics of the Human Person

times. In the Four-Dimensionalist view, the identity drops out: the human person is one thing, the living human organism another. A Four-Dimensionalist could attempt to avoid this consequence by relinquishing the intuition that persons cannot have persons as proper, temporal parts. But that intuition is a powerful one. A Four-Dimensionalist could also attempt to avoid this consequence by adopting Personhood Theory II*, but the attempt will prove abysmally unsuccessful for the reasons noted above. Alternatively, the Four-Dimensionalist may simply accept this consequence of the view and then explain the presence of the adjective 'human' in 'human person' by pointing out that the person in question may be regarded as human insofar as it stage-shares all of its stages with a living human organism. Per this explanation (which seems the best of the alternatives), human persons are proper parts of living human organisms and thus earn the qualification 'human' only by way of the overlap relation. 16

§4-The 1-Relation and the R-Relation We are well on our way to providing an answer to the semantic problem: "To which spacetime worms does our term 'human person' refer?" Thus far we reply: "Only to those spacetime worms which count both as maximal human persons and maximal C-possessors." Let us continue to refine our answer. Recall that we selected Thinker as our one and only person partly on the grounds that he was the only character in the story (i) who possessed characteristics C at every moment he was present, and (ii) who was not also a proper part of another character who possessed characteristics C at every moment it was present. Anything short of (i) and (ii) would have led us to suspect his claim to the title of person, for given all the other candidates in the vicinity (at least one of which would have satisfied conditions [i] and [ii], and given our commitment to the view that only maximal human persons are human persons simpliciter (which functions as a kind of exclusion principle within a certain class of candidates), someone else would definitely have been a better candidate for the posi16 The Partist may also give this response in terms of some living human organism having a human person as a spacetime part at a region exactly occupied by the human person in question. In chapter 7 below, we will once again take up the question of whether we should regard this relation as mere overlap (rather than proper parthood) when we examine the doctrine of the resurrection of the body.

129

The Criterion of Personal Identity tion. 17 Accordingly, we should expect that any human person will possess characteristics C at every moment it is present, else someone else in his vicinity would be a better candidate for the role of person than he. Another way of putting this point is that (given Universalism) we have all these numerically distinct objects around, and exactly one of them will possess characteristics C at every moment it is present and not also be a proper, temporal part of another such item. Whichever object boasts that feature, then, clearly seems to be the only non-arbitrary choice we might make when our maximality result requires that we award the title of person to exactly one of them. Still, our answer may be improved and clarified. Let us grant that human persons are spacetime worms that are maximal C-possessors and thus sums of person-stages (each of which stage-shares with a maximal C-possessor). That won't lead us to rule out any genuine human persons by mistake (e.g., intuitively, that characterization includes both you and me, just as it should)-but we still may have questions about just which spacetime worms qualify. Consider the spacetime worm which consists of all of your person-stages confined to times prior to the moment at which you finish reading the present sentence and which consists of all of my person-stages confined to times at or posterior to that moment. Since it has been cobbled out of two persons, that's an object that is a sum of person-stages (each of which stage-shares with a maximal C-possessor). Supposing we name it 'Cobbler', why doesn't Cobbler count as a person? It won't do merely to assert that he fails the test of being a maximal C-possessor. That test only has two components (i) being a C-possessor, and (ii) not being a proper, temporal part of any C-possessor. We will all agree that component (ii) is satisfied by Cobbler, but then our complaint would have to be that he fails with respect to component (i), which (given the relation between persons and maximal C-possessors) just turns out to be the very point currently in question. Accordingly, we need to do more than just assert that Cobbler fails to be a maximal C-possessor. Instead, we need to explain why he fails, a task we shall attempt by singling out yet another significant feature of maximal C-possessors which will show how we may exclude Cobbler without endangering either you or me in the process. The natural move in such an attempt is to try to impose either a 17 I am here presupposing that possessing characteristics Cis subject to a sharp cut-off in a sorites series. Given my discussion and endorsement of Epistemicism, however, I think that this need not trouble us.

130

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person

physical or a psychological restriction on the relation between those collections of person-stages whose sums are persons, and that kind of effort will put us in familiar territory. This means that we are now on a hunt for the conditions under which a person-stage, P1, is a stage of one and the same person as a person-stage, P2-conditions that will manage to exclude Cobbler from the class of persons. Let us follow Lewis in naming this relation "the !-relation" as shorthand for that relation induced among person-stages in virtue of the existence of a persisting person. 18 Much of the literature devoted to the !-relation concerns whether or not it should be construed as a psychological relation between personstages, as a physical relation between person-stages, or as some of each. Either construal would stand a good chance of ruling out Cobbler, since his earlier stages are both physically and psychologically discontinuous with his later ones. As is by now clear, I regard some version of the psychological account as correct, but I must admit that this is largely due to my Four-Dimensionalist and Partist sympathies. Indeed, without the metaphysics of parthood and persistence presented above, the psychological approach appears hopeless. Let me pause to acknowledge Eric Olson in this regard, who has recently presented a terrifically compelling case for the thesis that if one is a standard Three-Dimensionalist, one should not tolerate any version of a psychological criterion of personal identity, not even one of the innocent-looking hybrid versions. Instead, given such a theory of parthood and persistence, a strict biological criterion is clearly superior. I, however, endorse only the conditional without accepting its antecedent: "If Three-Dimensionalism is true, a psychological criterion of personal identity is false." 19 Interestingly, though, given our recent investigations into some of the necessary conditions for being a human person that should be acknowledged and endorsed by Four-Dimensionalist-Universalists and Partist-Universalists alike, it seems that an equally compelling case can be made for these theorists to favor some theory of the !-relation that makes it out to be a relation of psychological continuity and conSee Lewis 1983c. This is also known in the literature as "a unity relation on person stages" or as "a gen-identity relation." To this extent, then, it is somewhat misleading to engage in the practice of referring to analyses of this relation as discussions of the relation of identity. Nevertheless (with this warning) I'll follow the loose and convenient standard of doing just that. 19 Olson 1997. See also van Inwagen 1997. 18

Ill

The Criterion of Personal Identity nectedness between person-stages. If we follow Lewis in naming such an appropriate relation of psychological continuity and connectedness "the R-relation," then (on the strength of our discussion above) we may say that the Four-Dimensionalist-Universalist and the PartistUniversalist should hold that the !-relation is necessarily co-extensive with the R-relation. What are the fine details of the R-relation? I don't want to take much of a stand on this perplexing question, but allow me some very broad strokes. What we might call a purely psychological reading will altogether ignore biological facts such as facts about metabolism or circulation or organic unity. In general, such a view will be thoroughly indifferent to various facts about bodily continuity insofar as they are not entailed by certain facts about psychological continuity. (For the record, I see no reason to suppose that such entailments would lead to the conclusion that one's psychology must always be housed in an organism. Someone attracted to a purely psychological reading of the R-relation should be willing to entertain the hypothesis that an inorganic object with the right kind of complexity would also suffice; moreover, those who are not committed Materialists might also consider the hypothesis that a physical substance is the subject of one's psychology at one time and a mental substance at another-i.e., that one of the changes persons can survive is the change from a material to a nonmaterial thing.) The purely psychological reading would instead focus entirely on certain facts about similarity of mental content including facts about memories, beliefs, desires, intentions, and goals; or perhaps it would also invoke certain facts about basic mental capacities, dispositions, and character. 20 Before we launch into a more exhaustive description of the type of relation between the mental contents and capacities which we might hope to identify with the !-relation, let us consider (in order to set aside at the outset) one apparently persuasive reason for thinking that a purely psychological reading of the R-relation is doomed to failure. The opponent of such a position speaks: 21 "You grant that you are a material object, and you have suggested that you go wherever a certain psychology goes, whether or not there are certain causal relations between 20 Representative variations on this theme may be found in Parfit 1984, Noonan 1989, and Unger 1990. 21 This opponent is patterned on an argument presented in a paper by Peter van Inwagen at the University of Rochester in 1998 entitled, "What Do We Refer to When We Say 'I'?"

132

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person the two objects housing that psychology at different times. But you also grant that your psychology could be transferred (instantaneously, let's say) from your current body to some other body at some great distance from here, but nevertheless in such a way as to preserve whatever psychological relation of continuity and connectedness you think makes for the R-relation between that thing's person-stages and yours. But then you're caught: we have no reason to think that you would persist and undergo a change of location. You are a material object, and there just isn't any material object to identify you with which happens to have the peculiar spatia-temporal properties of being right here at one time and then at some great distance from here at times arbitrarily close to that one." The appropriate response to this worry simply requires the Four-Dimensionalist or the Partist to rely on his Universalism. In other words, given arbitrary diachronic fusions, there will always be some material, spacetime worm with which to identify myself in psychology-transfer cases, even if that object is radically discontinuous. In the above scenario, for example, we could loosely refer to the relevant material object as the fusion of the least-inclusive object which housed that psychology up until the transfer of those mental states and capacities with the least-inclusive object (miles away) which housed that psychology after the transfer of those mental states and capacities (i.e., to what would most probably be the fusion of an earlier proper, temporal part of one living human organism with a later proper, temporal part of another). Even if there is no shortage of spacetime worms for purposes of identification, however, there may yet be good reasons to avoid a purely psychological reading of the R-relation. Let us consider some cases designed to show this. Doppelganger Case 1: Imagine that you witness (what you take to be) your friend Hannah's death. Hannah, you believe, has gone before her time in an unfortunate accident. Subsequently, you learn that at about the same time and by pure chance a perfect duplicate of Hannah's person-stage (at the time you supposed was her last) came into existence on the other side of the world, and now a person who claims to be Hannah is trying desperately to get back (to what she takes to be her) home on your side of the world. Let us grant that psychological continuity has been preserved in this sense: the relevant stages of the person whom we may now call NewHannah have mental contents and capacities qualitatively identical to the pre-accident stages of your friend whom we may now call OldHannah, but this similarity is not even

133

The Criterion of Personal Identity partly due to any causal influence running from the person-stages of OldHannah to those of NewHannah. A purely psychological reading of the R-relation says that Hannah goes wherever a certain psychology goes and thus tells us that New Hannah = OldHannah. She's just had quite an experience! Our intuitions, however, tell us that OldHannah is no longer present in the world, and that NewHannah is a remarkably similar but numerically distinct person (albeit a person with an unusual history insofar as she begins her career with the appearance of, say, a 35-year-old woman). Unfortunately, it seems that a purely psychological reading of the R-relation would rule out the possibility of such a doppelganger appearing out of the blue at some remote location and instead would yield the verdict that a single person merely changed locations rather dramatically. I find this case a compelling reason to resist a purely psychological reading of the R-relation. But for those still in doubt, let's consider something even worse: Doppelganger Case 2: Hannah, your friend, has a duplicate in another (very remote) corner of the Universe (or better yet in some region of spacetime causally isolated from our own). LocalHannah (as we may call your friend) has mental contents and capacities that are qualitatively identical to those of DistantHannah (as we may call her duplicate) at every time that either of them is present. Now, the purely psychological reading of the R-relation doesn't make us say something silly like LocalHannah = DistantHannah. But it does encourage us say a number of other silly things. Here are a few: The fusion of LocalHannah's first 1o-second temporal part with the complement of DistantHannah's first 10-second temporal part is yet a third person in the story who is psychologically indistinguishable from our first two. A fourth person is that fusion of LocalHannah's temporally-scattered, first-and-last-year temporal part with DistantHannah's temporal part which falls exactly between her first and last year. In fact, we can easily identify continuum-many, distinct persons, each of which is psychologically indistinguishable from all the rest at every time any of them is present. Again, though, our intuitions tell us that these are simply two distinct persons remarkably alike, not a plurality of stage-sharing, faster-than-light travelers! (Note that the Partist's solution to The Problem of the Many won't do double-duty here. There just isn't the right kind of overlap. The fourth person identified above, for example, overlaps LocalHannah by 2 [scattered] years of a So-year lifespan and overlaps DistantHannah by 7S years of an So-year lifespan, but that overlap is nowhere near substantial enough to warrant the Partist

134

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person move of identifying HybridHannah with either of our other main characters. Rather, it is much more akin to standard fission and fusion cases, which, as we have seen, receive a very different kind of treatment at the hands of the Partist.) Consequently, I find this case another compelling reason to resist a purely psychological reading of the Rrelation. But we must be careful. Four-Dimensionalists and Partists do not want to rule out all such cases of transferring psychology from one organism to another, for as just intimated it is exactly this sort of maneuverability that is cited as a primary selling point for their view in handling The Fission Case discussed in chapter 2 above. Accordingly, we need to impose some sort of restriction above and beyond qualitative similarity of mental contents and capacities that will yield the correct results in the Doppelganger Cases but which will also leave the Four-Dimensionalist and the Partist with their unique solution to certain puzzles of material constitution by way of overlap and temporalpart stage-sharing. How shall we manage this? Well, we could attempt to specify a bodily-continuity requirement. This, however, is trickier than it sounds. Suppose we simply say that in addition to a mere psychological relation between two material person-stages (in order for them to be stages of one and the same human person) there must also exist some underlying material body of which they are also stages. That's no help. Given the consequences of Four-Dimensionalism and Universalism, there is always some material body that has those very two material personstages as parts-always. Alternatively, then, we might say that there must exist some underlying organism of which they are also stages. This proposal at least has the advantage of identifying a condition that is not universally satisfied, but it is much too restrictive; it is exactly the sort of move the Four-Dimensionalist wants to avoid, since it will clearly forfeit his solution to The Fission Case. What is the happy medium? I think it best to give up on appealing to types of underlying material objects in order to achieve the right result in the Doppelganger Cases. 22 Instead, a straightforward causal-dependence requirement should suffice. That is to say, not only will there be the right sort of psychological relation between the mental contents and capacities of two person-stages when Again, an independent reason to avoid a material-substratum condition is just the possibility (live for the Four-Dimensionalist and Partist-Universalists) of one's psychology being appropriately carried forward in an immaterial substance.

22

135

The Criterion of Personal Identity they are stages of one and the same person, but also there will be a line of causal dependence of the later stages on the earlier stages for their mental characteristics. There are advantages and disadvantages of this proposal. The advantages are that we block the inference to the conclusion that NewHannah = OldHannah, for in the first Doppelganger Case we stipulated that there was no causal dependence of NewHannah's states on OldHannah's. Similarly, in the second Doppelganger Case we will be under no pressure to recognize HybridHannah or any of the other cross-overs, for we there stipulated that there was no causal interaction of any kind between LocalHannah and DistantHannah. Moreover, since The Fission Case unproblematically preserves the right sort of causal dependence between the mental characteristics found in two sets of later person-stages and those of a shared set of earlier personstages (recall that our version in chapter 2 was just a case of brain bisection), we may submit the standard Four-Dimensionalist's or Partist's solution to that puzzle which appeals to overlapping continuants. The advantages, then, are that (from the Four-Dimensionalist and PartistUniversalist's point of view) we exclude and include exactly the right cases of persistence. The disadvantages are that it is notoriously difficult to specify what is meant by "the right kind of causal dependence" between two items, when that phrase appears (as it often does) in some philosophical thesis. Despite the presence of those deviant causal chains which always seem to be lurking about ready to muck up this or that analysis of the causal-dependence relation, it is worth remembering that one may have a justified belief that some causal-dependence relation is the solution to our present difficulty without having yet concocted an analysis of the relevant relation. Still, the task of analysis may not be as daunting as is suggested by the previous sentence. Recently Dean Zimmerman has revived, clarified, and expanded the literature on what may be called "the relation of immanent-causation," a relation which is far more essential to persistence than is that of spatiotemporal continuity, and which is of equal importance to Four-Dimensionalists and ThreeDimensionalists alike, since it may take as relata either the temporal parts of a perduring object or the temporal event-stages of an enduring object. 23 Zimmerman's efforts on this score are somewhat technical, but the 23

Zimmerman 1997·

136

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person core idea is rather straightforward: Suppose that we have a perfectly seamless spatiotemporal continuity between a series of successive personstages throughout some interval of time; but if it should just so happen that the person-stage at the T-moment of that interval (say, the one currently in my chair typing away) is wholly causally unrelated to the relevant person-stages immediately before T (i.e., the ones in my chair before but arbitrarily close to T), then the stages in question are not stages of one and the same person-even if they are physical and psychological duplicates of one another. Persistence of a person requires that the earlier stages of an object be among the causes of the psychological characteristics of the later stages. A principled way of putting the matter is as follows: (ICP)

Necessarily, if a person, S, persists throughout an open temporal interval, T, then for every instant, t, in T, there is an open interval of time, T*, with t as its point-limit such that the sum of S's temporal parts that exist during T* is a partial cause of S's temporal part at t. 24

Proper adherence to (ICP) will yield all the right results in the Doppelganger Cases. Moreover, as will become significant in Part II, it is possible to preserve immanent-causal relations across temporal gaps as well, whether the interval in question is open at both ends, or open at one and closed at the other. Accordingly, despite the fact that immanentcausal relations between person-stages are essential to persistence, there may nevertheless be temporally gappy persons. For example (in the simplest case), an appropriate principle for a person who is temporally gappy across a doubly-open interval may be stated as follows: (ICPO)

Necessarily, if a person, S, persists across an open temporal gap limited by T and T*, then (i) S's temporal part at Tis a

This principle of immanent-causation for persons, (ICP), is a modified version of a more general principle, (IC), put forth in Zimmerman 1999 in which 'person' is replaced with 'material object'. As is clear from chapters 2-3, I reject (IC) on the grounds that an object can persist (i.e., can have non-simultaneous temporal parts) even when there is no causal connection between the parts in question. I am happy to grant, for example, that what we called HybridHannah in the second Doppelganger Case is a persisting material object; I just deny that it is a person. Note that (ICP) states only a necessary condition and is incomplete. A full-dress version of the causal requirement would specify the nature and extent of the causal dependence of the psychological features of S's temporal part at I upon its predecessors. 24

137

The Criterion of Personal Identity partial cause of S's temporal part at T*, and (ii) there is no set of conditions present at some time between T and T* causally sufficient by itself for the presence of S's temporal part at T*. 25 Perhaps a comment is in order: the first condition in (ICPO) guarantees the presence of the immanent-causal relations required for the persistence of a person, whereas the second condition guarantees that the relation between stages will be "sufficiently immanent" to preserve identity by way of ruling out familiar (and controversial) stories of alleged temporal gappiness. One such story, for example, involves a team of scientists who scan a body, destroy it, and then create a particlefor-particle duplicate at some other location out of local materials. In the scanning-annihilation-duplication scenario, the information recorded on the scanning machine together with a duplication-generator would be present in the interval separating the similar person-stages and would be causally sufficient (all by itself) to produce the person-stage which appears on "the other side of the gap." According to (ICPO), such a device would produce only a doppelganger; it would not be responsible for a temporal interruption in the lifespan of a single individual. Once again, however, in chapter 7 we will consider an account of temporally gappy persistence which conforms to the restrictions of (ICPO) when we turn our attention to topics in the philosophy of religion and the doctrine of the resurrection of the body.

§5-The Puzzle of Diageometric Identity Time for yet another brief Partist interlude: We have acknowledged that the Partist (unlike the standard Four-Dimensionalist) must face open questions of the form "Is person A who exactly occupies s1 identical with person B who exactly occupies s2 (where s1 and s2 share some but not all of their subregions)?" We have termed the puzzle associated with questions of this form the puzzle of diageometric identity (as opposed to the puzzle of diachronic identity). And we have noted that (ICPO) is also a modified version of a principle suggested by remarks in Zimmerman 1999, which contains an intriguing defense of the claims that there are no good a priori reasons to think that causal processes cannot be temporally gappy while there are good a posteriori reasons to think that they can be. As with its predecessor, (ICPO) can be refined to address the nature and extent of the causal dependence of the psychological features of S's temporal part at T* upon S's temporal part at T.

25

138

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person this sort of puzzle arises exclusively for the Partist as an artifact of his solution to The Problem of the Many, a solution according to which a single object may exactly occupy a plurality of distinct spacetime regions. In our most recent discussion, however, we saw that the Partist will not take all cases of persons who overlap (at some region) to be cases of identity, since the Partist (like the standard FourDimensionalist) recognizes fission and fusion cases with multiple persons involved. Thus the question naturally arises, "just how much and what kind of overlap makes for identity?" Extremes are unproblematic: If there are any spacetime regions, s and s*, such that person A exactly occupies sand person B exactly occupies s*, and sands* have no spacetime point in common, then A* B. 26 At the other extreme, if there is any spacetime region, s', such that A and Beach exactly occupy s', then A= B. How, though, shall we offer an answer of the form, "A= B," in some (but not all) cases in which A exactly occupies a region that shares some but not all of its points with a region exactly occupied by B-without the dividing line between identity cases and fission/ fusion cases being drawn in an intolerably arbitrary way? Perhaps we should try to isolate what is unique about fission and fusion cases. For example, they always have this peculiar feature: the persons in question each have person-stages outside the period of overlap. Consider first a standard Four-Dimensionalist fission case (e.g., where Hannah's psychology is transferred instantaneously to two otherwise psychologically-vacant bodies), and let it be abnormal only in this respect-there is only one post-fission instant. Even in this limit case, the simultaneous person-stages, P1 and P 2 (which mark the end of two distinct continuants who have stage-shared throughout all but an instant of their life spans), seem to enjoy a crucial sort of independence from one another. We might think that the observation that in this case the material object P1 does not overlap the material object P2 A rather exotic worry: Suppose that time-travel is possible and Hannah travels back to her kindergarten playroom to observe her younger self. Does this principle threaten the clearly correct judgment that the little girl at the fingerpaints is identical to our time-travelling Hannah? After all, it would certainly appear that at the time of the observation, the little girl and the time travelling visitor exactly occupy nonoverlapping spacetime regions. I think not. Let the little girl be named 'Artist'. Artist and Hannah (by hypothesis) are one and the same individual. Even though there are two parts of that individual exactly occupying nonoverlapping regions at the time of observation, those items are (temporally) too little to be the referents of the names 'Artist' or 'Hannah'.

26

139

The Criterion of Personal Identity

will put us on the track of a significant, non-arbitrary dividing line. It will help clarify matters to first put that point in Partist-talk: Let us characterize "an 5-stage" as a special kind of spacetime part as follows: According to the Partist-if an object, x, exactly occupies some region, s, which contains some instant, t/ 7 then x will have one or more spacetime parts at various subregions of s that also contain t. However, there will always be a unique such spacetime part that has the following dual feature: (i) it is not present at any spacetime region that contains times other than t, and (ii) it overlaps (at some subregion of s) every spacetime part had by x (at any region that contains t). An "5n-stage at t," then, is just "the whole object at t-where that phrase is restricted, Partist-style, to one of the spacetime regions exactly occupied by the object in question, namely, to sn." An 5-stage is the Partist's twist on an instantaneous, person-stage. Now we can reformulate our earlier observation in the Partist's language. It would seem that any fission or fusion case for the Partist will contain two persons who overlap (at some region), but who also have 5-stages that do not overlap (at any region). In short, then, we might venture this proposal: person A who exactly occupies s1 is distinct from person B who exactly occupies s2 (s 1 of- s2) iff A has some 5 1stage at a time that does not overlap (at any region) any 52-stages of B. Our proposal is a failure. To see why it fails as a necessary condition, note that there is no real restriction on the relation between those two otherwise psychologically-vacant bodies into which we instantaneously transferred Hannah's mental contents and capacities in our fission case. The two bodies might even be related as those of conjoined twins with identical life spans. Consequently, even though neither resulting person would ever have an 5-stage that did not overlap (at any region) some 5-stage of the other, we would nevertheless have two distinct persons, not one. Let us try some other route. Consider again the case of conjoined twins with identical life spans. Each 5-stage of the one overlaps (at some region) some 5-stage of the other, and yet the twins are two, not one (and all this even though each is multiply located himself!). A messy affair. Why do we nevertheless pass the intuitive judgment that there are two overlapping persons here? Presumably for the obvious reason that they have different mental contents and capacities at the same time. This consideration, though, may also appear to be the key to A spacetime region, s, contains an instant, I, iff there is a spacetime point, p, such that pis an element of s, and pis indexed tot.

140

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person a principled distinction for the Partist. Recall for a moment that in the case of the many-persons solution to The Problem of the Many, any two of the Lewis-many persons had qualitatively identical mental contents and capacities at any moment both were present. So, too, the Partist might propose that person A who exactly occupies s1 is distinct from person B who exactly occupies s2 (s 1 s2 ), iff there is some time, t, such that A's 5 1-stage at t has mental contents and capacities that are qualitatively distinct from those of B's 5 2-stage at t. Moreover, this move should make one aspect of the Partist's commitment to exactly occupying multiple regions a bit more palatable. Exactly occupying two different spacetime regions doesn't ever make it any more likely that you can be of two minds about some topic at a time. Where there are two 5-stages at a time with different psychological profiles, there you will find two persons, as well. This proposal is also a failure. To see why it fails as a necessary condition, note that it implies that any two persons who never have 5-stages at same time are identical. Also, recall the second Doppelganger Case: LocalHannah and DistantHannah are distinct, yet for every time at which either has an 5-stage, their 5-stages at that time have mental contents and capacities that are qualitatively identical. This series of observations suggests a rather more complicated proposal, which leaves the Partist with a way to say each of the things he would like to say:

*

A Principle of Diageometric Identity Person A who exactly occupies s1 is distinct from person B who exactly occupies s2, (s 1 -F s2) iff either (i) there is no time at which both A and B have some 5-stage, or (ii) there is some time, t, such that A's 51-stage at t has mental contents and capacities that are qualitatively distinct from those of B's 52-Stage at, t, or (iii) if for every time, t, A's 51-stage at t has mental contents and capacities that are qualitatively identical to those of B' s 52-stage at t, then for at least one simultaneous pair of such stages, A1 and B1, there is no object, x, such that xis a part of A 1 (at some subregion of s1) and x is a part of B1 (at some subregion of s2) and the mental contents and capacities of A 1 and B1 each supervene on properties exemplified by x. This rather inelegant proposal at least seems to get the right results (from the Partist's point of view) in a non-arbitrary way. Any of the

141

The Criterion of Personal Identity

three disjuncts on the right-hand side of the 'iff' would suffice for distinctness. The first covers cases involving persons such as you and Socrates, the second covers fission and fusion cases in which the two continuants have different psychological profiles at some time or other, and the third covers those odd cases involving persons such as LocalHannah and DistantHannah who are always psychological duplicates, but whose psychological states supervene on very different material objects (with respect to which they do not overlap at any region). Moreover, each of the candidates from some episode of The Problem of the Many that the Partist would wish to identify will fail to satisfy all of the three disjuncts, and in particular they will fail to satisfy the consequent in condition (iii), since the substantial overlap in question will always guarantee the existence of something to play the role of x. Subject to refinements (that will almost certainly be required upon considering further test-cases), I tentatively submit our principle above as the beginnings of a Partist response to the puzzle of diageometric identity. 28 Interlude over.

§6-Solving the Semantic Puzzle Despite occasionally pausing for an aside from the Partist, we have made good headway on the semantic puzzle identified in section r: "To which spacetime worms does the term 'human persons' refer?" We now answer: "To those spacetime worms (i) that are not proper, temporal parts of other human persons, (ii) that are maximal C-possessors, (iii) whose person-stages are united by a certain relation of psychological continuity and connectedness, and (iv) whose later person-stages bear an appropriate causal-dependence relation to their earlier person-stages." That seems almost right. Before closing this chapter, though, I would like to make one final point about which material objects are to be identified with human persons. Throughout much of this discussion we have been articulating and fleshing out a certain Four-DimensionalistUniversalist and Partist-Universalist insight. The primary idea has At least with respect to human persons. For all I've said, the puzzle of diageometric identity for nonperson objects remains a mystery.

28

142

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person been that there are just so many material objects to choose from in that metaphysics, that we can find a much better individual to identify with a human person than, say, a living human organism. Indeed, for standard cases (e.g., those not involving brain bisection and multiple organisms), we were willing to settle for what appeared to be a proper, temporal part of a living human organism-something which probably is first present only several months after the living human organism it stage-shares with is already on the scene, and something which oftentimes ceases to be present before (sometimes even years before) that living human organism dies. Why not go with the whole organism? One reason is given by The Fission Case and its lesson for the FourDimensionalists and Partists that the persistence of a human person is not tied to organism-continuity. But barring that, another independent reason is that given the wealth of material objects available, the organism appears to be a wholly arbitrary and unmotivated choice. Everyone grants that the organism has stages when it doesn't appear to have any of the features relevant to personhood at all. The best we can claim for it is that it will develop into an item that has all the features relevant to personhood. But the best isn't good enough. It has that latter feature, only because it has a maximal C-possessor as a proper, temporal part, and (as we have seen on our preferred metaphysics) that simply doesn't count for much. (It is a feature also had by the fusion of you with the first wheel.) Rather, the only non-arbitrary choice is that object each of whose stages is relevant to its personhood. Anything smaller violates the maximality requirement. Anything larger is indefensible. Well, that's the way we have been talking up until now. But now it's time to take something back. 29 Our definition of an instantaneous temporal part was as follows: (TP)

x is an instantaneous temporal part of y at instant t = df(i) x is a part of y, (ii) x is present at, but only at, t, and (iii) x overlaps every part of y that is present at t.

This permitted the Four-Dimensionalist to speak either of the instantaneous temporal part of an object, x, or of the extended temporal parts of 29 I have been asked: "Why put it in in the first place only to take it back in the end?" The answer: "Putting it in in the first place is the best method I know for helping others to see why it can't stay in the end. Besides, no harm done thus far in using it as a simplifying device. All the arguments in the chapter go through just as well as before once we abandon the pretense about to be exposed in the text."

143

The Criterion of Personal Identity

x, where the latter are regarded as fusions of x's instantaneous temporal parts. Note, however, that on this definition the temporal part of an object at a time is "just as big" as that object at that time. For example, my body's current temporal part is 6' 4" tall, 240 lbs., seated, typing, and so forth. Whereas my body's current temporal part has the current temporal part of its left hand as a part, the current temporal part of its left hand is most certainly not a temporal part of my body-it's much too small for that job. It is simply a part of my body. Why does this matter? I've been speaking rather loosely when I have suggested that the Four-Dimensionalist would do best to regard a human person as a proper, (extended) temporal part of a human organism. That's what I wish to take back. Here's why. Just as an ordinary human person will be located somewhere within the life span of a living human organism, so too, it will be located "under the skin," as it were. That is, there is exactly the same kind of reason to resist identifying the human person with a proper, temporal part of a living human organism (bones, flesh, skin, and all) as there was to resist identifying the human person with the whole temporallyextended, living organism (prenatal stages, irreversibly-comatose stages, and all). A proper, temporal part of a living human organism at a time is just as big as that organism at that time. But given the wealth of material objects available on the Four-Dimensionalist Universalist's metaphysics, any temporal part of a living human organism appears to be a wholly arbitrary and unmotivated choice. Everyone should grant that temporal parts of living human organism have parts which are not in any way relevant to any object's being a person (e.g., certain cells on the surface of a hand or even a full head of hair). The best we can claim for such an object is that it has some further object, x, as a proper part, and that each of x's parts plays some sort of role in furnishing x with the full range of features relevant to personhood. 30 But, once again, the best isn't good enough. A temporal part of a living human organism has that latter feature only because it has a maximal C-possessor as a proper part, and as before, that simply doesn't count for much. Rather, the only non-arbitrary choice is that object all of whose parts play a role in its exemplifying whatever features are necessary and sufficient for One may worry about overdetermination "under the skin," if we have what appears to be a plurality of internal overlapping material objects, each of which is sufficient and none of which is necessary to guarantee the presence of a person. Here, however, we should simply refer back to our first two chapters, for this puzzle is essentially that of The Problem of the Many. 30

144

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person its personhood. (Incidentally, I have nothing like a comprehensive account of just which parts go in which class. All I need for my present point, however, is that some parts of a temporal part of a living human organism appear in the irrelevant class, including for example [the associated temporal part of] some hair, fingernails, or bone-marrow.) Anything smaller leaves us without any person at all. Anything larger is indefensible. 31 Human persons thus turn out to be very queer material objects, indeed. To which spacetime worms does the term 'human person' refer? Given our preferred metaphysics of Four-Dimensionalist- or Partist-Universalism, our answer has become the following: "Human persons are those (spatially and temporally gappy) spacetime worms 32 (i) that are not proper parts of other human persons, (ii) that are maximal C-possessors, (iii) whose person-stages are united by a certain relation of psychological continuity and connectedness, (iv) whose later person-stages bear an appropriate causal-dependence relation to their earlier person-stages, and (v) which are most often found somewhen within the lifespan and somewhere beneath the skin of a living human organism. Still, we may take the words 'my body' to refer sometimes to the material object with which I am identical and sometimes to the living human organism with which I stageshare. Context will nearly always determine which, and there is no more impropriety in this useful ambiguity than there is in the clear but rather loose remark, "I am parked in the 15-minutc loading zone." " 2 We will explore the topic of temporal gappincss in chapters 6 and 7· 31

5 A Portrait of the Human Person

§1-A Review In the Introduction I laid down six constraints on our theorizing: (i) a materialist theory of human persons is true, (ii) human persons persist over time, (iii) ontological vagueness is impossible, (iv) we have no good reason to revise classical logic or to give up on classical identity, (v) Necessitarianism is false, and (vi) (an invitation to adopt the methodological advice) minimize bruteness! After our first chapter's exploration into that perplexing puzzle of material constitution known as The Problem of the Many, we were faced with a number of highly unattractive alternatives. Our only choices seemed to be between (i) coming to the realization that there are no such things as persons at all, or (ii) abandoning our materialistic theory of human persons in favor of dualism or idealism, or (iii) accepting a thesis of brute facts about the conditions under which some objects have a mereological sum, or (iv) blindly appealing to some mysterious and exceedingly-sensitive, person-composing conditions, or (v) becoming constitutionalists and embracing a dualism of constituters and constitutees, or (vi) going the way of fuzzy sets and jealous lives, or (vii) getting by without classical identity, or (viii) acknowledging many more persons than we would like to but then finding a way to talk which makes it sound as if we haven't. After discussing criticisms 145

146

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person

of each of the alternatives, I then tentatively spoke in favor of choice (viii) as the best of the alternatives, while making some fuss over the (curiously neglected) worry that choice (viii) may come at the expense of our freedom. In the second chapter I introduced and elaborated on the Partist View as a new alternative to weigh against the members of the rather unattractive list above. I straightforwardly acknowledged that the Partists have their share of embarrassing consequences, too, including, (i) the loss of a widely-endorsed account of temporary intrinsics in favor of an adverbialist or indexicalist view (according to which, for example, x bears the 'having at S' relation to the property of being straight, or x bears the 'straight at' relation to S), and (ii) the thesis that numerically one and the same object can exactly occupy multiple regions of spacetime. But after sketching the relevant amendments to classical mereology that render this latter claim free from contradiction, I found accepting these counter-intuitive consequences to be less offensive than those of any of the options explored in our first chapter. While detailing the Partist' s position, I discussed also how the Partist could join forces with the counterpart theorist in order to offer solutions to other traditional problems of material constitution that resembled those of his Four-Dimensionalist cousin. In particular, I found reasons to prefer the combination of the (Four-Dimensionalist version of the) Partist View with counterpart theory to (i) denying the existence of material composites, or (ii) denying the doctrine of arbitrary undetached parts, or (iii) adopting mereological essentialism, or (iv) depending upon and exploiting a sortal-essentialism principle, or (v) accepting the co-location of distinct material objects. In the end, the advantages of the Partist View seemed to me to outweigh the disadvantages. I found that the theory provides the best overall fit with my pre-philosophical intuitions, and (with some assistance from counterpart theory) provides a unified and elegant solution to the various problems of material constitution. For these reasons, I counted myself among the Partists on questions of parthood and persistence and puzzles of constitution. In the third chapter, I attempted to set the stage for identifying which spacetime worms would count as human persons by arguing in favor of two primary additional theses, namely, that Epistemicism is the best theory of vagueness, and Universalism the best theory of composition. Along the way, I also (i) provided further support for a terrific argument against the possibility of ontological vagueness, (ii) elaborated on criticisms (that deserve to be better-known) against linguistic treat-

147

APortrait of the Human Person ments of vagueness, (iii) presented reasons to deny the possibility of material atomless gunk, (iv) exposed (what I take to be) a fatal flaw in the most popular defenses of Universalism and Four-Dimensionalism, and (v) responded on behalf of the Universalist to three popular and persuasive attacks on his position while constructing a positive case for that theory of composition. In the fourth chapter, I appealed to the theses defended above in the attempt to answer the semantic puzzle posed by the question: "To which spacetime worms does our term 'human person' refer?" With help from the intuition that human persons do not have human persons as proper parts, I argued for a series of constraints on the correct answer to that question which led to formulating and endorsing a particular theory of personhood, a theory which yields the surprising result that human persons are not living human organisms. Then, after some reflections on a Partist response to a new puzzle which arises solely for those who adopt the Partist' s solution to The Problem of the Many, I put forth an answer to the semantic puzzle which maintains that given our preferred metaphysics of Four-Dimensionalist or Partist Universalism-human persons are those (spatially and temporally gappy) spacetime worms (i) that are not proper parts of other human persons, (ii) that are maximal C-possessors, (iii) whose person-stages are united by a certain relation of psychological continuity and connectedness, (iv) whose later person-stages bear an appropriate causal-dependence relation to their earlier person-stages, and (v) which are most often found somewhen within the lifespan and somewhere beneath the skin of a living human organism. Presumably, then, they are those (spatially and temporally gappy) spacetime worms that are certain proper, temporal parts of the brain and central nervous system of living human organisms.

§2-A Preview In Part II we will consider the implications of this account of human persons on a number of different issues in two subfields of philosophical investigation. First, we will examine moral questions concerning the treatment of what are commonly regarded as pre-and-post-person-stages. Much of the discussion will be driven by the fact that in our preferred metaphysics the subjects of such treatment are not at all what they are often taken to be. For example, we often say things of the form "I was once a

148

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person human fetus." But this will have to be given a very permissive reading: That human fetus, in our preferred metaphysics, is a (multiply located) material object which bears the parthood relation (at some region) to a particular living human organism. I am another (multiply located) material object which bears the parthood relation (at some region) to that same living human organism. One significant relation between us (that might make some sense out of the claim reported above) is that we each stage-share (at various regions) with one and the same living human organism. But that's not such an impressive feature to cite on behalf of the fetus when it comes time to assign moral status to individuals and when we are asking whether there are any restrictions on how we might behave towards the fetus from the moral point of view. Still, we have very strong intuitions about the ethics of pre and post person-stages. Much of chapter 6 will be devoted to finding a theoretical base for these intuitions which is informed by our materialist metaphysics of the human person. Next, we will turn our attention to a pair of topics in the philosophy of religion. Whether a materialist theory of human persons is consistent with Christian theism is an issue of long-standing dispute. One centerpiece of this dispute is the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body, a doctrine that seems to force a dualistic metaphysics upon Christians. In chapter 7, I defend the consistency and to some extent the superiority of a Christian materialism over a Christian dualism by way of a discussion of the early Church Fathers, its influential philosophers and theologians, the Creeds, and Holy Scripture. Then, after critically evaluating and finding unsatisfactory the several proposals on offer for squaring a materialist theory of human persons with the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, I offer an explication of that doctrine (read against the backdrop of our preferred metaphysics) that offers the Christian materialist who looks for the life of the world to come a choice between two perfectly coherent and far more philosophically satisfying accounts than are any of those available on the interpretation proffered by its leading, materialist rival.

PART II APPLICATIONS: ETHICS AND PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

6 Pre-Persons, Post-Persons, Non-Persons, and Person-Parts

§l-Our Preferred Metaphysics and Moral Theory Ethical implications of metaphysical theses are often underexplored. In many cases, this is no great loss. I believe, for instance, that the debates we have been investigating (such as that between the ThreeDimensionalist who restricts composition and the Four-Dimensionalist Universalist) will not offer much of a contribution to our thinking about a number of traditional moral questions. 1 For example, neither the endurantist nor the perdurantist is subject to any particular pressure to adopt this or that moral theory of act- or agent-evaluation. Theories of moral permissibility and impermissibility, of moral praiseworthiness and blameworthiness, and of moral virtues and vices are (as far as I can tell) rather unaffected by the metaphysical disagreements we have examined above. 2 There is, however, another area of inquiry which is significantly interconnected with our moral beliefs, attitudes, and practices, and which is directly affected by the position introduced and defended in Part I. It is to this area and its ramifications in applied ethics that we will turn our attention in this chapter. Throughout the present chapter, for ease of exposition, I will speak as the orthodox Four-Dimensionalist. If desired, the reader may refer to chapters 2-4 above to supply the Partist' s gloss on the Four-Dimensionalist' s position. 2 For more on this line of thought, see Conee 1999. 1

149

ISO

Applications: Ethics and Philosophy of Religion As an opening move, let us recall two of the most striking differences we have exposed between our Four-Dimensionalist Universalist and his Three-Dimensionalist opponents who restrict composition-one ontological and one semantic. In particular, let us recall that they disagree about whether there are such material objects as momentary person-stages as well as longer-lived temporal parts of persisting persons, and they disagree (or at least they should disagree, as I have argued in chapter 4) about just which regions of spacetime contain the referents of the term 'human person'. One task ethicists must address is determining just which properties make those objects that exemplify them worthy of direct moral concern. Representative suggestions on this topic have included, 'being a person', 'being a sentient being', 'being a living being', 'having interests', 'having rights', and so forth. Of course, one cannot generate a comprehensive moral theory simply out of information of this kind, since there may be all sorts of other moral reasons to refrain from treating an object in a certain manner quite apart from considerations that focus only on the object in question. (For example, it may be morally wrong for me to pick up some insignificant pebble in the garden this afternoon, if I have promised you not to do so this morning and if no other moral consideration overrides the moral presumption in favor of this instance of promise keeping. But this is not to say that the pebble in question has any moral status of its own.) Nevertheless, information of this kind can be crucial, since occasionally the only operative moral reason not to treat an object in a certain manner is that it possesses features which make it an object of direct moral concern. (For example, it is possible that one's only moral reason for throwing a log on the fire rather than some newborn calf is that unlike the log, the animal can experience pain and the capacity to experience pain matters from a moral point of view.) Interestingly enough, this task, too, might be carried out in very similar ways by the Four-Dimensionalist Universalist and his ThreeDimensionalist opponent who restricts composition. That is, adherents of either metaphysics might end up agreeing, for example, that "having rights" is what it takes to be an object of direct moral concern, and they might divide the class of such objects into persons (whose catalogue of rights provide them with one kind of moral status) and nonperson sentients (whose catalogue of rights provide them with another, less significant kind of moral status), and then maintain that everything else is (at best) an object of indirect moral concern. But when it comes time to apply this view-to identify just which

151

Pre-Persons, Post-Persons, Non-Persons, and Person-Parts

objects have what it takes-the ontological and semantic disputes that divide the adherents of our two metaphysical pictures are likely to stir up trouble. Whereas adherents of either metaphysics agree that there exist such things as human organisms, human persons, human fetuses, human infants, and human corpses, they may not agree about just which material objects are (and just which regions of spacetime contain) the referents of these terms. As we have seen, the Four-Dimensionalist Universalist's choice on this matter is complicated by the fact that he has so many more material objects to select from than does his adversary. In investigating these issues in the following chapter, I will be working under some assumptions. First, I will presuppose (without argument) that 'being a person' and 'being a sentient being' are sufficient conditions for being an object of direct moral concern. Second, I will presuppose the details from the portrait of the human person sketched in chapter 5 in accordance with our preferred metaphysics. Then, in section 2, I will discuss the impact of these assumptions on questions dealing with human contraception, abortion, and infanticide; in section J, I will discuss their impact on questions dealing with irreversibly comatose human organisms and human corpses; and in section 4, I will discuss their impact on questions dealing with those human and nonhuman animals that never manage to exemplify the feature of being a person at any time. Finally, in section 5, I will inquire into the moral status of certain objects that are recognized by the Four-Dimensionalist but not by his opponent, namely, proper, temporal parts of human persons.

§2-Pre-Persons: Contraception, Abortion, and Infanticide In this section we will have occasion to refer to four cases: Contraception Case: The intentional use of a contraceptive device prevents a particular sperm-egg pair from uniting. Let the fusion of the ununited sperm-egg pair be named 'Scattered'. Now, if Scattered's parts had not been prevented from uniting, they would have generated a normally-developing human zygote a short time later, but as it so happens, no such zygote ever comes into being. 3 I ask the reader to put up with some idealization in the text. For any of the many relevant sperm-egg pairs in standard cases of contraception, one could reasonably chal-

3

152

Applications: Ethics and Philosophy of Religion

Early Abortion Case: An abortion is performed during an early stage of the pre-natal development of a human organism at which the normally developing human fetus is not sentient. Let the organism that is aborted be named 'Embryo'. Late Abortion Case: An abortion is performed during a late stage of the pre-natal development of a human organism at which the normally developing human fetus is sentient. Let the organism that is aborted be named 'Fetus'. Infanticide Case: A normally developing human infant is intentionally killed during the first week after birth. Let the organism that is killed be named 'Infant' .4 As an initial observation let us note that (given Universalism) Scattered, Embryo, Fetus, and Infant are all perfectly respectable material objects. As such we may ask whether they are objects of direct moral concern. That is, we may ask whether any of our characters has some feature or other that confers upon its bearer a particular kind of moral status. More specifically, since we have adopted as a starting point that 'being a person' and 'being a sentient being' are features that confer moral status upon those objects that exemplify them, we may begin our task with the narrower question-"Is any of our four characters a person or a sentient being?" First on the question of persons: We have no need of new argument here, just of an application. The lesson of Part I is quite clear-none of our objects is a person. None of our objects has the requisite cognitive abilities or first-person intentional states necessary for personhood. Of course, one might attempt to revive the defense that each of these objects has a certain potentiality feature, and that potentially possessing the requisite cognitive abilities and first-person intentional states is itself a sufficient condition for personhood. Unfortunately, as we saw in chapter 4, that initially promising strategy (Three- and Four-Dimensionalist variants of which we considered under the names Personhood Theory II and Personhood Theory II*) quickly comes to grief for the proponent of lenge the claim that that pair would have combined to form a zygote had contraception not occurred. A needlessly complicated case could remedy this minor problem, though. 4 Let me note that the phrase 'normally developing' which appears in each of the cases is simply meant to rule out certain problematic kinds of human fetuses (for example, those which are anencephalic). Also, the use of 'kill' and its cognates in this chapter is to be understood in its morally neutral sense (as opposed, for example, to the morally loaded term 'murder' which is often simply taken to mean morally wrong killing).

153

Pre-Persons, Post-Persons, Non-Persons, and Person-Parts our preferred metaphysics. Rather, on the strength of our earlier arguments, the Four-Dimensionalist Universalist will see Scattered as a material object that is present for a few hours, Embryo for a few days, and Fetus and Infant for a few months, but he will maintain that none of them can be credited with the distinction of being-to use our earlier terminology-a maximal person, a temporary person, or a person-part. That is, none of them is a person, or has a person as a proper part, or is a proper part of a person. Worse yet, none of them even so much as overlaps with a person (i.e., has some item as a part which is also part of a person). The best that can be said for our characters in this regard is that they are parts of objects that have persons as parts, but since (given Universalism) absolutely every object enjoys this distinction, that's hardly a feature suited to ground any interesting theory of moral status. These observations, I believe, yield an interesting consequence. Even if we are willing to grant without argument that necessarily, if something is a person then it is an object of direct moral concern (perhaps with a full schedule of moral rights), our metaphysical picture should incline us to think that that principle is simply not operative in any of our four cases above. Consequently, if there is anything morally impermissible in the treatment of Scattered or in the killing of Embryo, Fetus, or Infant-or more generally, if there is anything morally impermissible in contraception, abortion, or infanticide-it cannot be identified by way of claims that appeal to principles ascribing moral status to persons. 5 But persons aren't the only things that matter from a moral point of view. What about the question of sentients? 6 At first it looks as if the cases might be split on this one. Scattered is a clear case of a non-sentient being. Also, by stipulation, Embryo was introduced as a human organism that never advanced beyond a pre-sentience stage. Thus, they seem to be out of the running. But what of Fetus and Infant? Fetus was introduced as a human organism at a post-sentience stage of pre-natal development, and Infant seems to be a clear case of a sentient being. Still, appearances can be deceiving, and here I think we need to be careful. s This I take to be a very significant result. An overwhelming amount of the literature on abortion and infanticide (as well as much of the public debate on these topics) seems to turn on the question of whether or not the human fetus is a person. For one classic discussion that does not turn on this question, however, see Thomson 1971. 6 For convenience, I will use 'sentient' as both an adjective and noun. Context will always permit disambiguation.

154

Applications: Ethics and Philosophy of Religion

Perhaps it is worthwhile to begin by blocking a certain kind of objection that may worry some readers. Citing the lack of a sufficiently rich descriptive context in the Late Abortion Case and in the Infanticide Case, one might complain that it is not at all clear which particular objects are the referents of the names 'Fetus' and 'Infant' according to a proponent of our preferred metaphysics. For example, in some contexts 'Infant' might be taken to name the whole of the organism from pre-natal development to its early death, whereas in other contexts it might be taken to name just the temporal part of that organism which extends from birth to death and which excludes that organism's prenatal stages. Let us side-step this difficulty and simply stipulate that in our discussion 'Infant' names the former and not the latter object, and likewise, stipulate that 'Fetus' names the whole of the human organism which is killed in the Late Abortion Case. Now, a little reflection makes it evident that the very same considerations which led us to the conclusion that human persons are not identical to human organisms in Part I will lead us to the double conclusion that human persons are not identical to human sentients and that human sentients are not identical to human organisms. Remember, there really are frightfully many different objects to choose from for the Four-Dimensionalist Universalist for these offices, and no object emerges as the best candidate for any two of those three titles. Thus, for exactly the same kinds of reasons that a human person turns out to be only a proper part of a human organism, so too, a human sentient turns out to be only a proper part of a human organism. Moreover, in the vast majority of cases a human sentient has a human person as a proper part, as well. But once this similarity is duly noted, the lesson of Part I is once again quite clear. None of our characters can be credited with the distinction of being a maximal sentient or a sentient-part. That is, given the criteria for being a human sentient that are modeled on the criteria for being a human person, it falls out immediately that none of them qualifies as a sentient being simpliciter or as a proper part of a sentient being. However, we do have one intriguing difference this time around. Both Fetus and Infant appear to be temporary sentients; that is, both Fetus and Infant seem to have a (rather short-lived) human sentient as a proper part. Well, just how important is that characteristic from a moral point of view? Even if we are willing to grant without argument that necessarily, if something is a sentient being then it is an object of direct moral

155

Pre-Persons, Post-Persons, Non-Persons, and Person-Parts

concern (perhaps with an abbreviated schedule of moral rights), we should not be inclined to extend this principle to the temporary sentients. The point here is essentially the same as the point at stake in deciding between Personhood Theory I* and Personhood Theory II* in chapter 4· For the Four-Dimensionalist, Personhood Theory II* is unbelievably permissive in awarding personhood (and thereby moral status) to any cross-time fusion of some past unimpressive item and some current maximal C-possessor. Similarly, the analogue of Personhood Theory II* that would ensure the relevant moral status for temporary sentients, something we could name Sentient Being Theory II*, would be equally permissive and would lead to equally outrageous results. For example, any cross-time fusion of some past item (say, a remote temporal slice of the Rosetta Stone) and some current maximal conscious-state-possessor would qualify as a sentient and as a bearer of moral status itself. Consequently, if there is anything morally impermissible in the treatment of Scattered or in the killing of Embryo, Fetus, or Infant-or more generally, if there is anything morally impermissible in contraception, abortion, or infanticide-it cannot be discovered on the grounds that one or more of these objects is a sentient being together with some principle ascribing moral status to sentients. Before proceeding any further, I would like to clarify a point I think it might be easy to misunderstand. I have not attempted to argue that the four cases under consideration do involve morally permissible actions, and I have not attempted to argue that they do not involve morally permissible actions. Thus far, I have not taken any stand whatsoever on that issue. Rather, I have attempted to undermine what I take to be a very prominent pair of reasons for concluding that they do not. To this extent, the discussion above is aimed only at eliminating certain widely-accepted reasons for defending the verdict that those cases do in fact involve moral wrongs. Accordingly, the ethicist who wishes to endorse those prominent moral arguments must face a new adversary in the metaphysician who accepts the portrait of the human person offered in Part I. Nevertheless, in the remainder of this section, I wish to sketch an argument for the conclusion that there are plausible (but defeasible) reasons to suspect that moral wrongs in fact have been committed in the Late Abortion Case and in the Infanticide Case. Once again, I will not here take a stand on the moral permissibility or impermissibility of the Contraception Case and the Early Abortion Case (with the indirect

156

Applications: Ethics and Philosophy of Religion exception of noting that the reasons I shall put forth to call into question the Late Abortion Case and the Infanticide Case do not carry over to these earlier cases, as well). The morally relevant difference that I would like to explore is related to the fact that Fetus and Infant are temporary sentients. Recall that the actions which bring about the respective deaths of Fetus and Infant in the Late Abortion Case and in the Infanticide Case are intentional killings, and it is those actions that are the current subjects of moral evaluation. Our line of thought thus far has suggested that if those killings are impermissible, their impermissibility has nothing to do with the moral status of Fetus and Infant. Still, it may have everything to do with the status of certain proper parts of Fetus and Infant, namely, with the (short-lived) human sentients that are among the parts of our two characters. For illustration, let us concentrate on Infant (but it will turn out that what goes for Infant goes for Fetus, as well). Consider Infant and the human sentient it has as a proper part-those two objects stage-share at every time that that human sentient is present. The intentional killing that brings an end to Infant, then, also brings an end to the human sentient that stage-shares with Infant at that time. Accordingly, without any change in the specific action under evaluation, we may refocus our attention on another individual of direct moral concern, namely, Infant's human-sentient part, an item which is a sentient being and which thereby falls squarely under moral principles restricting actions toward sentients. At this juncture there are many routes one might explore in the attempt to provide reason to believe that a moral wrong has been committed in the killing of Infant, even if Infant is not itself a direct object of moral concern. Providing a full-scale defense for some one of those routes over another, though, will require a more comprehensive discussion of moral theory than I am willing to enter into in a brief application chapter. Permit me, then, simply to fill in some of the details of one such attempt under the guidance of an approach to morality that seems to be particularly popular in the literature on contraception, abortion, and infanticide. Hopefully, then, the reader will be able to see how the discussion could go in another moral theory of his own choosing. Moral rights theorists often claim that persons have a (presumptive) right to life? Sometimes this right is extended to other living things that 7 By 'presumptive right' I mean a right which has moral force but which is capable of being overridden by other moral considerations. In other words, a presumptive right is

157

Pre-Persons, Post-Persons, Non-Persons, and Person-Parts

fail to be persons but that are the subjects of conscious experiences that have intrinsic value-our non-person, human sentients, for example. Alternatively, some moral rights theorists maintain that non-person, human sentients lack the right to life (say, on the grounds that they lack a certain degree of self-awareness and reflective judgment that are necessary conditions for possession of that right), but nevertheless possess a (presumptive) right not to be harmed. 8 Let's take cases. Case 1-If a non-person sentient has a right to life, then we have some reason to believe that the killing of Infant involved a violation of that right, even though Infant was not the object that possessed the right in question. Instead, the right (if possessed at all) was had by the human sentient who stage-shared with Infant at the time of the killing. So was a moral wrong committed on this view? Unfortunately, we don't yet have enough information to tell. The right to life is a presumptive right, but it may be overridden by other moral considerations in particular cases. If however (as may often be the case) this right is not overridden by other moral factors in some particular case, then it will be operative (i.e., it will stand as a moral right all things considered) and that particular instance of the Infanticide Case will involve a morally impermissible action, after all. Case 2-If a non-person sentient has only the right not to be harmed, then once again we have further work to do in order to reach a verdict on the case. First we will want to determine whether death is a harm. If it is, then we have the same sorts of consideration as before. That is, we would need to determine whether the presumptive right not to be harmed had been overridden by any more stringent moral consideration in some particular case. If not, then that particular instance of the Infanticide Case will involve a morally impermissible action, after all. Alternatively, suppose that we find reasons to believe that mere death is not a harm to a sentient being. Still, there are undoubtedly a great variety of ways to harm a sentient being in the process of killing it, and accordingly, we would need to direct our attention to whether there were any harms in the manner of bringing about the death (even if we concede that the killing itself does not figure among the harms). If there are, then we have the same sorts of consideration as before. That is, we would need to determine whether the presumptive right not to be not a kind of moral trump card, always defeating every other moral consideration in every context. 8 For a comprehensive discussion of many of these options see Tooley 1983.

158

Applications: Ethics and Philosophy of Religion

harmed had been overridden by any more stringent moral consideration in the particular case. If not, then that particular instance of the Infanticide Case will involve a morally impermissible action, after all. The upshot of this brief sketch, then, is this. Even if the FourDimensionalist Universalist has good reasons to believe that Scattered, Embryo, Fetus, and Infant are neither persons nor sentient beings, and even if he has good reasons to believe that these characters enjoy neither a right to life nor a right not to be harmed, he may nevertheless have very good reasons to believe (in a wide variety of cases) that the aborting of a normally developing human organism and the intentional killing of a normally developing human infant are morally wrong-and even wrong on grounds that appeal to the moral status of sentient beings. Significantly, though, the line of thought emphasizing the moral status and moral rights of persons and sentients that leads to this result does not provide any reason whatsoever to think that the use of contraception or the aborting of a normally developing human organism at a pre-sentience stage is morally objectionable.

§3-Post-Persons: Irreversibly Comatose Humans and Human Corpses In this section we will have occasion to refer to two cases: Irreversible Coma Case: A human organism in an irreversible coma, once a person but no longer even sentient, is intentionally injected with a lethal substance. Let the organism that is so killed be named 'Irreversible.' 9 Corpse Case: A human corpse is unceremoniously left out on the hillside to decompose or to be consumed by animals. Let the corpse that is thus abandoned be named 'Corpse'. First, since once again someone may complain that the casedescriptions may not be sufficiently rich to fix the referent of the names 'Irreversible' and 'Corpse' in all the relevant contexts, let us simply stipulate that in our discussion 'Irreversible' refers to the whole of a human organism that was once a person (i.e., stage-shared with a person) and that was once sentient (i.e., stage-shared with a sentient), but Note that we need not answer the question "How do we know that the coma is irreversible?" How we come to know (if at all) isn't the issue. Rather, our question is about the moral status of a killing given the assumption of the irreversibility of the coma.

9

159

Pre-Persons, Post-Persons, Non-Persons, and Person-Parts that is now wholly unresponsive. Let us also simply stipulate that 'Corpse' names a material object that comes into being at the death of a particular human organism and that persists (to speak loosely) until a certain level of disorganization arises among its parts. With that out of the way, it is a simple matter to locate our new cases among our previous ones. Let us begin with Corpse. For familiar reasons, Corpse is neither a person nor a sentient, it has neither a person nor a sentient as a proper part, and it is not itself a proper part of either a person or a sentient. Worse yet, Corpse does not even so much as overlap with either a person or a sentient. (Corpse does have the following feature, though: some of Corpse's parts are temporal parts of atoms, and some of those very same atoms have earlier temporal parts that are parts of a person. Unfortunately, given the great piles of morally indifferent objects with that feature, it is hard to see how such a meager mereological connection to persons could possibly matter from a moral point of view.) Corpse, I submit, inherits no moral status whatsoever from principles about the moral status of persons and of sentients. Of course, that pronouncement is not tantamount to the claim that abandoning Corpse on the hillside is a morally permissible action. For all I've said, that action could be morally wrong on other grounds. Time for a brief aside: Perhaps the claim that Corpse is not itself an object of direct moral concern (or at least not so in virtue of the moral status of persons or sentients) doesn't seem at all surprising. In fact, perhaps it seems perfectly in line with our intuitions on the matter. Still, I think that for some it should come as a bit of a surprise. The Four-Dimensionalist-Universalist is in a position to say what seems right to me about the moral status of human corpses because of his unique ontology. By contrast, I think that the Three-Dimensionalist who is not willing to go so far as to embrace van Inwagen's theory of composition (discussed at length in chapter 3) is not in a position to say something as congenial to common sense here. I should think that a very natural view for the Three-Dimensionalist who rejects van Inwagen' s Life and whose theory of composition recognizes corpses as perfectly good composite objects-i.e., for most Three-Dimensionalists-is to maintain that a single material object is wholly present at a number of distinct times, and that that very object is the subject of a number of successive phase sortals (including say, a fetus, an infant, a person, a youth, a man, and a corpse). 10 That is, I think, the natural view for such

°For an intriguing discussion of this kind of approach see Feldman 1992.

1

160

Applications: Ethics and Philosophy of Religion a Three-Dimensionalist is that the numerically same object (which for some period of time is a human person) spends part of its career as a living human organism and part of its career as a corpse. Of course, aside from joining van Inwagen and denying the existence of corpses altogether, there are other Three-Dimensionalist alternatives to this rather unattractive position which include (i) defending some restricted account of composition that manages to be more liberal than van Inwagen's while still excluding corpses, (ii) reviving and invoking claims about the co-location of distinct objects, and (iii) maintaining that one composite object goes out of existence at the death of an organism and that a numerically distinct one seamlessly takes its place. None of these options seem particularly appealing to me. In any event, I think the strong intuition in favor of the claim that corpses are not themselves objects of direct moral concern is accounted for better by the Four-Dimensionalist-Universalist than by his opponents. Aside over. Now, what of Irreversible? Given the model of our earlier discussions, we can now move fairly quickly in categorizing Irreversible. For familiar reasons, Irreversible is neither a person nor a sentient, and it is not itself a proper part of either a person or a sentient. Irreversible does, however, have both a human person and a human sentient as a proper part (after all, we stipulated that 'Irreversible' names the whole of a human organism who once was a sentient person). In our previous terminology, this makes Irreversible both a temporary person and a temporary sentient. Initially, this may incline one to think that claims about his moral status should be determined in a manner similar to that of our other temporary sentients, Fetus and Infant. But there is a crucial difference that separates the cases despite this superficial similarity. The killings of Fetus and Infant occurred at times during which they were stage-sharing with their respective human-sentient parts, whereas the killing of Irreversible occurred at a time posterior to all stagesharing between Irreversible and its human-person part and posterior to all stage-sharing between Irreversible and its human-sentient part. Consequently, we are not in a position to locate the moral wrong of killing Irreversible in the moral status of a distinct object with which he stage-shares. Hence, the strategy which helped us come to a verdict in the Late Abortion Case and the Infanticide Case is simply blocked in the Irreversible Coma Case. This strikes me as a very significant observation. Despite its status as a temporary person and as a temporary sentient, Irreversible seems as unlikely a recipient of moral status from his relation to human persons

161

Pre-Persons, Post-Persons, Non-Persons, and Person-Parts

and human sentients as were Scattered, Zygote, and Corpse. One final time, in recommending this view according to which Irreversible is not an object of direct moral concern (or at least not so in virtue of the moral status of persons or sentients), I do not thereby take a stand on whether the lethal injection administered to Irreversible was a morally permissible action. For all I've said, that action could be morally wrong on other grounds. The upshot of this section, then, is this: The Four-DimensionalistUniversalist has reasons to believe that there is in fact a morally relevant difference between sentient human fetuses and human infants on the one hand and non-sentient fetuses, irreversibly comatose humans, and human corpses on the other. Perhaps most importantly, this morally relevant difference provides us with reason to believe that our behavior regarding sentient human fetuses is dramatically more morally significant than is our behavior regarding irreversibly comatose human organisms.

§4-Non-Persons: Human and Non-Human Animals In this brief section, I wish primarily to consider the moral status of a human organism that fails to have a person as a part. I here have in mind, for example, anencephalic human organisms or profoundly retarded human organisms-human organisms who are never regarded (except in the ever-misleading, genetic sense of that term) to have attained the status of being a person. Earlier I said that I would presuppose (without argument) that 'being a person' and 'being a sentient being' are sufficient conditions for being an object of direct moral concern. Now one point that seems to have emerged in our discussion of the six cases in sections 2-3 is that merely being a human organism does not guarantee an object a moral status derived from either of these two sources. Is there, however, a third sufficient condition for being an object of direct moral concern in the form of 'being a human organism'? At first glance it may seem that the answer is positive, but defending a positive answer is a troubling affair.U Here is one attempt with some appeal: Let us pretend that we are Three-Dimensionalists who hold to Several attempted defenses (together with their refutations) can be found in Singer 1993·

11

162

Applications: Ethics and Philosophy of Religion a materialistic theory of human persons. Then, as noted before, numerically the same object which is for some period of time a human person is also at other times a fetus, an infant, and perhaps even a nonsentient, irreversibly comatose organism. Now even if the object in question fails to display the range of cognitive features that are directly relevant to personhood or the range of conscious states that are directly relevant to sentience throughout the whole of its lifespan, such a theorist is still free to entertain the following two moral principles: (P )

If an object is a person at some time it is present, it has moral sta-

(S)

If an object is a sentient at some time it is present, it has moral sta-

tus at every time it is present. tus at every time it is present. Perhaps, we now should also add that the Three-Dimensionalist in question is not an eternalist who countenances cross-time fusions, otherwise he will face the same sorts of objections that undermined Personhood Theory II*. But that minor addition still leaves virtually all Three-Dimensionalists on board. Thus, our Three-Dimensionalist might declare of some human fetus that it has a moral status now in virtue of features it will exemplify later and of some irreversibly comatose human organism that it has a moral status now in virtue of features it exemplified in the past. 12 I think (P) and (S) are somewhat plausible, but only from the perspective of the Three-Dimensionalist just characterized. As we have repeatedly seen, our Four-Dimensionalist-Universalist commits himself to far far more than does his Three-Dimensionalist counterpart with such liberal principles as (P) and (5). Instead, for a proponent of our preferred metaphysics, merely being a human organism seems to be a category without any particular ties to moral status. Indeed (regardless of whatever status it might have in virtue of bearing certain relations to human persons) the mere fact that an item happens to be a member of the species Homo Sapiens does not seem to secure for that item the property of being an object of direct moral concern. So, if the category of human organism is itself without moral significance, just what moral restrictions are there on our behavior regarding sentient human organisms that fail to have a person as a part? First, we 12 It is important that the fetus in fact exemplifies the relevant features at later times. Significantly, (P) and (S) say nothing about any human organism killed prior to such exemplification.

163

Pre-Persons, Post-Persons, Non-Persons, and Person-Parts should remind ourselves that in describing the human organism as sentient, we are acknowledging that it stage-shares some but not all of its stages with a human sentient. Then, on the strength of the immediately preceding discussion, it appears that how we are permitted to treat that human organism may depend entirely on whether we are acting upon it at a time at which it stage-shares with its sentient part or at a time at which it doesn't. If we are acting upon it at a time at which it does, then our discussion may go the way of our discussion of Fetus and Infant-i.e., our treatment of that human organism will be restricted by the moral status of sentient beings on the grounds that whatever we do to the organism at that time we also do to the sentient with which it stage-shares. Alternatively, if we are acting upon it at a time at which it does not, then our discussion may go the way of our discussion of Zygote and Irreversible-i.e., our treatment will not be shown to be morally wrong (if wrong at all) by appeal to principles that assign moral status to persons or sentients. In this respect, sentient human organisms that never have a person as a part strike me as being on a moral par with sentient non-human organisms that never have a person as a part (at least with reference to being objects of direct moral concern). Neither object qua organism can lay claim to any significant moral status. Each, however, can claim a sentient as a part, each can be thereby indirectly protected under the scope of a moral rule against harming sentients for whatever period of time it stage-shares with a sentient, and it would seem that there is very little else (apart from crude speciesist considerations or accidental and extrinsic relations to persons) to justify dissimilar moral treatment. The upshot of this section, then, is this: The Three-Dimensionalist who restricts composition has at his disposal: (i) a way to draw a morally relevant difference between those actions directed at (most) human organisms at times at which they are not sentient and those actions directed at (most) non-human organisms at times at which they are sentient-by way of principle (P); as well as (ii) a way to draw a morally relevant difference between those actions directed at (most) human organisms at times at which they are not sentient and those actions directed at (most) non-human things that are never sentient at all-by way of principle (S). For example-speaking as the ThreeDimensionalist-(P) suggests that those actions directed towards a non-sentient human fetus (which will become a person) or an irreversibly comatose human (which once was a person) may be subject to moral restrictions that those actions directed towards a non-person yet

164

Applications: Ethics and Philosophy of Religion sentient dog are not, whereas (S) suggests that those actions directed towards a non-sentient human fetus (which will become sentient but never a person) or an irreversibly comatose human (which once was sentient but never a person) may be subject to moral restrictions that those actions directed towards a permanently non-sentient thing are not. But the relevant principles are simply unavailable for the FourDimensionalist-Universalist. Apart from brute appeal to species membership, the proponent of our preferred metaphysics seems constrained to say something like the following: Even if we grant without argument all sorts of claims about the moral status of persons and sentients, we are thus far (i) without any reason whatsoever to regard our behavior towards a non-sentient human organism (that will become a person or that was a person only in the past) as more morally significant than our behavior towards a non-person yet sentient dog (in fact, the very opposite is suggested by our discussion), and (ii) without any reason whatsoever to regard our behavior towards a non-sentient human organism (that will become sentient or that was sentient only in the past but that never was or will be a person) as more morally significant than our behavior towards a permanently non-sentient thing. One final qualification of these rather surprising results may be in order. Even if it is a fact that the non-sentient human organism (that will become a person) does not itself thereby possess any moral status that makes it an object of direct moral concern, it doesn't follow that anything we might do to it would be morally permissible. If, for example, we intentionally damage that organism with the aim of harming a person who will come to stage-share with it at a later time and then permit such a person to come into existence (who in fact is subsequently damaged as a causal consequence of our damaging the organism at the earlier time), then our action may very well be morally impermissible owing to its consequences for a person. But this fact shouldn't incline us to change our views about the status of the organism that we have thus used as a kind of instrument in the harming of that numerically distinct person.

§5-Person-Parts: Proper Temporal Parts of Human Persons In this final section, I would like to examine an intriguing set of problems that face the Four-Dimensionalist (but not his Three-Dimensionalist

165

Pre-Persons, Post-Persons, Non-Persons, and Person-Parts opponent), namely, problems regarding the moral status of proper temporal parts of human persons. Are proper temporal parts of persons (when long-lived enough) sufficiently similar to persons to themselves be candidates for moral rights? Are proper, temporal parts of persons (when long-lived enough) objects of direct moral concern? When we punish a man with life in prison for a crime he commits at 25, do we thereby unjustly treat his post-25-year temporal part, a material object guilty of nothing but inheriting many of its traits from a numerically distinct felon? I think it is reasonable to claim that we have stronger intuitions about moral restrictions regarding the treatment of person-parts than we do of our treatment of temporary persons, and any adequate answer to the questions just posed should provide something of an explanation of that difference. Another thing we should honestly acknowledge at the outset is that for any proper temporal part of a human person, it is possible that a perfectly good intrinsic duplicate of that material object exists without having the feature of being a proper temporal part of any person. Indeed, I think that we have compelling reasons to believe that such an object (whether it be momentary or long-lived) would be a human person in that world. But does this admission force our hand on the present question? I see no good reason to think that it does. As became evident in Part I, the proponent of our preferred metaphysics is already prepared to classify 'being a person' among the extrinsic properties, owing to the maximality of personhood. Even though mere proper, temporal parts of human persons are neither the kinds of things one can treat unjustly nor the kinds of things that are the bearers of moral rights, our treatment of proper, temporal parts of persons may nevertheless be restricted by moral rights and principles of justice-for the straightforward reason that every proper, temporal part of a human person stage-shares all of its stages with a person. In absolutely every case, what we do to the part, we do to the person. Accordingly, whereas our moral behavior towards a person is restricted directly insofar as the person is an object of direct moral concern, our moral behavior towards person-parts is restricted indirectly insofar as any consequence of an action on a person-part is always a consequence of an action for a person. Upon reflection, there is really nothing very surprising here at all. Everything in this proposal could be borrowed by the Three-Dimensionalist who accepts the Doctrine of Arbitrary Undetached Parts or the

166

Applications: Ethics and Philosophy of Religion Three-Dimensionalist-Universalist, since either combination of views will countenance rather sizeable proper parts of persons at times, and thus we would once again be faced with things that are non-persons at the actual world but which have intrinsic duplicates at possible worlds who are persons at those worlds. For such theorists, any claim about the moral status of my hand-complement at T should be read as derivative from the moral status of the person who has that hand-complement as a part at T. Our Four-Dimensionalism does not make this problem any worse, it only offers someone unsympathetic with the metaphysics an opportunity to put an old objection in a new form. The upshot of this final section, then, is this: Insofar as the proponent of our preferred metaphysics has a much richer ontology than does his more conservative opponent, he must face questions regarding the moral status of individuals that his adversary does not recognize and need not address. Still, in denying moral status or moral rights to person-parts he merely pays a price he is already willing to pay (namely, maintaining that personhood is extrinsic), and he offers the same response which could be put forth by one with a less liberal ontology. In the end, the difference is not so much in the nature of the response as it is in the number and kinds of parts to which the response is seen as relevant. Finally, even though he regards person-parts as numerically distinct from the objects which possess moral status, he is able to account fully for our intuitions regarding the moral significance of our actions towards person-parts, on the grounds that they always stageshare with objects of direct moral concern. Consequently, despite his arbitrary slicing and summing, the FourDimensionalist-Universalist need not recognize the presence of significantly more objects with moral status than does his Three-Dirnensionalist opponent who restricts composition.

7 Nothing But Dust and Ashes

§ 1-An Inconsistent Triad Consider the following inconsistent triad: (C) (M) (I)

Christianity is true. A materialist theory of human persons is true. Christianity is incompatible with a materialist theory of human persons.

As in any inconsistent triad, we may easily show that at most two of the propositions above are true, for any pair selected from this trio of claims will yield the negation of the remaining thesis. Of course, we have no similar guarantee (from the content and structure of the triad itself) that at least one of the propositions is true, for we may not appeal to any features of the triad itself in order to rule out the complex view that Christianity is false while dualism is true, and yet that nothing in Christianity prevents the Christian theist from consistently endorsing a materialist view of human persons. Accordingly, we will begin our inquiry only under the modest supposition that at least one of the propositions above is false. 1 There are of course problems with regarding Christianity as the kind of thing that may be either true or false, since it is far from clear that 'Christianity' simply refers to a

1

167

168

Applications: Ethics and Philosophy of Religion

First, a bit of stage setting: Among philosophers, the first member of our triad is the most frequent target of attack; far and away the most popular strategy for consistency in belief comes by way of a rejection of (C). By contrast, the second member of the triad holds the proud position of being the dominant view among our philosophical contemporaries; comparatively few philosophers offer to solve the puzzle by rejecting (M). And finally, the third member of the triad has the significant advantage of being backed by a very impressive and long-standing tradition. I suspect it is no exaggeration to maintain that the vast majority of Christians who have ever lived have been devout dualists/ and this despite the fact that their Jewish predecessors were committed to a kind of materialism in which death marked not the separation of the body from the soul, but rather a bodily descent into She'ol, the earthly grave in which human persons eke out the rest of their existence as shadowy (yet material) remnants of their former selves.3 Partly by way of speculation and partly by way of empirical study, however, I submit that there are a number of dualist-minded Christians who, upon immersing themselves in some public social institution or other (often university), encounter something like our inconsistent triad. They then become acutely aware of (what they take to be) the great flood of widely-received philosophical and scientific evidence for (M) and consequently find themselves in a rather anxious and uncomfortable position. In light of the overwhelming support for (M)-a thesis they come to regard as exceedingly plausible, together with their continuing commitment to (I)-a thesis too familiar to be a serious candidate for reexamination, they regard themselves as forced to choose between their Christian beliefs and what appears to be something of a rare consensus among many of the most prominent scientists and philosophers of our age. As a result, many fall away from their religious beliefs under the spell of the argument from (M) and (I) to the negation of (C). Subsequently, the move towards (M) is seen simultaneously as a departure from an outmoded and soundly-refuted theory of human persons as well as from Christianity. One of the catalysts for the great dualistic turn among the early

conjunction of propositions. As will become clear, however, we will be able to accommodate this point in our discussion below. 2 Or if not dualists, whatever it is that Aquinas is. 3 Kee 1997, 544·

169

Nothing But Dust and Ashes Christians was found in the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, a doctrine which was beginning to make an appearance as early as the second century B.C.E. in an otherwise largely materialist, Jewish tradition.4 Thus we have Daniel12:2, a passage that is frequently taken to be the first clear reference to the resurrection in the Old Testament: Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt. 5 And if it is not simply read as a promise of the Divine restoration of the nation Israel, perhaps the resurrection theme may be anticipated even earlier in Isaiah 26:19. But your dead will live; their bodies will rise. You who dwell in the dust, wake up and shout for joy. Your dew is like the dew of the morning; the earth will give birth to her dead. Finally, we may join one more passage to these two-Ezekiel's vision of The Valley of Dry Bones in Ezekiel 37:1-14. Despite the stunning imagery of this allegorical vision in which a vast number of bones (a clear symbol of death and decay) are clothed anew with flesh and reanimated by the Spirit, biblical scholars have not been as quick to see any intimation of the Christian doctrine of the resurrection here as they have in Isaiah and Daniel. With the usual l-am-no-biblical-scholar caveat, I suspect that this tendency to downplay what on the surface seems a rather striking similarity in language and theme is partly due to the fact that Ezekiel offers his own interpretation of the allegory in verses 11-14-an interpretation according to which the vision represents the common feeling among the exiles of having been cut off from God and of their hope for restoration being as dry and barren as the bones of the desert. Why not one vision two functions? The fact that the vision foretells the restoration of the exiles does not count against its also hinting at the later Christian resurrection doctrine, and the fact that the vision shares imagery and content with the Pauline account in 1 Corinthians 15 seems to count in favor of that dual feature. I am inclined, then, to see as many as three Old Testament references to the resurrection. 6 Kee 1997, 279. (Some material in the next paragraph in the text is also taken directly from Kee 1997, 279.) 5 All biblical translations in the text are taken from The New International Version of the Holy Bible. 6 For a discussion of this dual reading of Ezekiel3T 1-14, see Mays 1988. Also, if there is not a suggestion of the later resurrection doctrine to be unearthed here, I find it rather 4

170

Applications: Ethics and Philosophy of Religion

Despite what was undoubtedly a lukewarm reception, by the first century c.E. the doctrine of the resurrection of the body was a very prominent bone of contention between the Sadducees (who were apparently wholly intolerant of the view, as they saw it as bereft of appropriate scriptural support) and the Pharisees (who wouldn't have been Pharisees without it, as they viewed it as a cornerstone of their movement). Presently, however, there is rather less dispute to be had within the Christian community on whether or not the doctrine of the resurrection of the body is true than on whether only the righteous or (as in Daniel) all the dead will arise. Currently, the doctrine of the resurrection of the body is about as firmly entrenched in the Christian world view as a doctrine could be-receiving universal, unambiguous, and authoritative recognition in the Apostles', Nicene, (and even the Athanasian) Creeds. But here's the rub. As we will see, it is hard to square a materialist account of human persons with a doctrine of the resurrection of the body. Indeed, the apparent impossibility of doing so (together with the very significant imprint Greek philosophy left on a somewhat impressionable early Church) is largely responsible for the uneasy marriage of Christianity and dualism which is so prevalent today? These historical remarks strongly suggest an argument for (I) in our inconsistent triad: Christianity is true only if the doctrine of the resurrection of the body is true, and materialism rules out the doctrine of the resurrection of the body; hence, materialism is incompatible with Christianity. That is, (I) seems plausible because materialism appears to be inconsistent with a necessary condition for Christianity. In the present chapter, I would like to make a contribution to this discussion. My efforts are not intended to provide a solution to our inconsistent triad, because I intend to presuppose rather than to argue for (C) in my discussion. That is, I will work under the dual supposition that Christianity is true and that Christianity requires the doctrine of the

curious that verses 12-13 say, "Therefore prophesy and say to them: 'This is what the Sovereign Lord says: 0 my people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them: I will bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them.' " I find this curious for two reasons: (i) the bones of the vision were on the valley floor exposed to the elements, not in graves out of which they might be brought up, and (ii) the bones of the vision receive this prophecy after they have taken on new t1esh and stand once again as a restored army of the house of Israel. 7 For an interesting discussion that credits the Judaism of Christ's own day with a fair share of the responsibility for the dualism of the early Church, see Cooper 2000.

171

Nothing But Dust and Ashes resurrection of the body. I make this supposition not because I think it is obvious that Christianity is true, but because doing so leads to an interesting philosophical debate in which I wish to participate. Those who regard themselves as Christians may, of course, be caught up in the debate in a rather immediate way; those who do not regard themselves as Christians need not regard themselves as only spectators, however, for I will aim my discussion at a rejection of (I), and that is a thesis on which non-Christians may have substantively different views. In section 2, I will consider the prospects for a Christian materialism apart from worries about the doctrine of the resurrection of the body. First (on the defensive) I will explain why I think Christians need not be swayed by certain appeals to the views of early and influential Christian Fathers, philosophers, and theologians on this topic. Second (on the offensive) I will briefly discuss the Creeds and the Scriptures in the hopes of building a prima facie case for the consistency of Christian materialism, a case which should stand unless something as entrenched in the Christian worldview as the doctrine of the resurrection of the body can be brought in to override the presumption I hope to establish in favor of the compatibility of materialism with Christianity. In section J, I will develop the challenge for Christian materialists posed by the doctrine of the resurrection of the body in some detail. In section 4, I will survey some of the current (yet in my view ultimately unsatisfactory) attempts to reconcile the resurrection-thesis with materialism, and I will expose some commonly held (but mistaken) views that have thus far effectively blocked a wholly adequate resolution of the problems that arise for those materialists who would like to leave room for the resurrection thesis. Finally, in section 5, I will return to certain theses concerning parthood, persistence, composition, and personal identity (that were our focus in chapters 2-4) which undermine these commonly held views, and I will show how our preferred metaphysics can offer the Christian a perfectly coherent account of bodily resurrection entirely within the confines of a thesis of materialism for human persons. Accordingly, I will conclude that we have sufficient support from the Creeds and the Scriptures to resist (I) in our inconsistent triad, and that the views of early and influential figures in the Church together with an adherence to the doctrine of the resurrection of the body give us no good reason to revise this judgment.R Of course, there are other ways to mount a defense of (1), such as the argument designed to show that none of the materialist theories currently on offer is able to

8

172

AMaterialist Metaphysics of the Human Person

§2-Christian Materialism Historically, the Church has been unwaveringly dualist. Undoubtedly, this is largely due to the substantial influence of Greek philosophy on certain Christian philosophers and theologians such as Augustine and Aquinas and, in turn, to their profound influence (reinforced by later dualists such as Calvin and Luther) on the general metaphysics which have come to be adopted as the Church's own. But how much of this metaphysics is required of a Christian qua Christian, and how much is negotiable? An example may make this clearer: I take it that a belief in the geocentric view of the heavens is not and was never required of Christians qua Christians (despite its similar Greek-pedigree and popularity in the early Church), whereas a belief in monotheism is essential. 9 Where along this spectrum does dualism lie? Let us begin with the appeal to the authority of the early Church Fathers, philosophers, and theologians. 10 A common question put to historians of philosophy asks 'what is so special in finding out what this or that influential individual thought about some philosophical topic (say, whether human persons have an immaterial soul), if your main objective is to discover the truth about that topic?' One (perhaps the only) really satisfactory answer to this question may be that you have some reason to think that this or that influential individual was right about the topic (even before you are entirely clear on what his or her view happens to be). But what would such a reason look like? One answer to this second question may be given by someone who believe that certain philosophers and theologians who played various influential roles in the Church may have been Divinely guided in their writings. Accordingly, such a one might say, for example, that getting clear on Aquinas' views on the soul or Augustine's views on moral psychology is a terrific way to get at the truth on those philosophical topics. On

account for the compossibility of material and immaterial minds. See Vallicella 1998. Our task in the text is taxing enough, though, and I will not attempt to address these further considerations here. 9 Although some recent discussions of social trinitarianism are alleged to threaten even this view. For more on this point see Leftow 1999 and Forrest 1996b. 10 It is perhaps an exaggeration to say that the Church Fathers were uniformly and unambiguously dualist, given problematic claims made by no less a figure than the stoicized Tertullian to the effect that everything is corporeal, even God. See Bynum 1995, 34-43·

173

Nothing But Dust and Ashes the other hand, even if we were to accept this as a somewhat plausible strategy for reply, we should certainly be suspicious of the claim that every view expressed by a Divinely inspired writer on some philosophical topic helps us get at the truth with respect to that philosophical topic. If God uses certain figures in human history as a kind of tool to inspire and direct his people in various (and sometimes philosophical) ways, we should expect that the tool should be fit to its purpose. And if the purpose is to provide instruction and guidance for a people that find themselves in a tumultuous and often hostile environment, a people working within the confines of very specific political, social, economic, and philosophical traditions (not all of which can claim sound theoretical underpinnings), one good way to guarantee that the instrument will be unsuccessful in that community is simply to ensure that he is right about all matters philosophica1. 11 Suppose, though, that we give some ground for the sake of argument. Let us simply grant that the early Christian Fathers, philosophers, and theologians were Divinely inspired in many of their words and deeds that so greatly influenced the historical position of the Church on this or that philosophical topic. When we turn to the question of whether dualism is true, we may ask whether their widespread commitment to dualism is one of the truths that is thus revealed by God or whether it is rather simply a common feature of His instruments, like the pattern of grain that appears when a carpenter selects one type of wood over another for the purpose of providing a supporting beam in the construction of his house. The house metaphor is instructive. In one environment a house of wood and stone may be required to hold off the elements whereas a house of bamboo and leaves will suffice in another. Clearly, supporting beams for the two structures need not (and in some cases could not) be the same. Now suppose you find yourself in the former environment assigned to construct a house. Your supporting beams will not fulfill their purpose if you select a certain kind of wood that might be valuable for some of its features that are quite unrelated to the role you intend it to serve (not unless you compensate by using a beam of such girth that it interferes with the purposes of the structure in some other fashion). So, too, in the environment of the early Church, if the early 11 Compare van lnwagen's excellent article "Genesis and Evolution" (1993), where he makes a similar case for God's not producing a pure or abstract version of Genesis, free from any scientific or historical errors.

174

Applications: Ethics and Philosophy of Religion Church Fathers, philosophers, and theologians had all spoken with the voice of the supervenience physicalist, they may not have been terribly well equipped to fulfill their purpose in the larger social setting in which the Church was struggling to find its place, a social setting in which commitment to (even a primitive and unsophisticated) materialism may well have severely impeded the rise and development of such a social institution. I certainly do not want to claim much for this metaphor apart from the mere observation that it does invite another (plausible) explanation of why God might have permitted the propagation of a dualistic theory among the early leaders in the Church. And in the face of two competing explanations-one of which gives us no reason to regard dualism as true even despite our willingness to countenance the suggestion that some philosophical truths may be revealed in the writings of Divinely inspired authors-! see no compelling reason to lean toward the dualistic thesis on the authority of the early Church Fathers, philosophers, and theologians alone. If there were strong creedal or scriptural support, however, or even if there were reasons to think that Scripture is seriously and deeply divided on the materialist/ dualist debate, I think that appealing to the special authority of these figures might function as a kind of tie-breaker. In the absence of such background support, however, I think the historical stance of the Church on dualism may be regarded as similar in relevant respects to its earlier stance on the geocentric model of the heavens-as a less attractive grain in the wood required to support a house first constructed in a tumultuous and often hostile environment. But what of the creedal and scriptural support? 12 First, a comment on the Nicene Creed. It is hard to imagine a more effective way of ensuring that a particular philosophical doctrine would emerge as Christian orthodoxy than to have set behind it the authority of the first ecumenical council convened at the church of Nicaea by Constantine in 325. This conference generated the Nicene Creed, a document designed to clarify theological disputes and to establish guidelines for Christian belief. Where better to embed a dualist commitment than in what would become one of the Church's most 12 In the ensuing discussion I am indebted to (and follow the lead of) van Inwagen's article, "Dualism and Materialism" (1995b), which seems to me to draw very sensible conclusions from the remarkable lack of evidence for dualism in the Creeds and Scripture. My only real complaint against this insightful piece is that van Inwagen seems too brief and tentative in his reaction to the import of the common dualism of the Church Fathers.

175

Nothing But Dust and Ashes

treasured and often deferred-to documents on the question of basic Christian tenets? Moreover, by the time the council had convened, the Church was well along its journey from an upstart, haphazardlyorganized community under unsympathetic scrutiny by the state to the official religion of the emperor.l 3 Thus, there was less of a need to protect the burgeoning Church's interests by conforming to this or that philosophical fashion and ample room to state the truth bare and simple. If one were asked to name the most likely place (outside of Holy Scripture) for a philosophical truth to be revealed by Divine inspiration, this would certainly be a defensible candidate. Yet we do not find anything (as far as I can tell, even remotely) dualist in the Nicene Creed. Nor do we find any dualist strain in what is sometimes called the Revised Nicene Creed produced by the second ecumenical council in 381, even in those passages where it explicitly mentions the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. And this omission is all the more surprising on the assumption that its authors were very likely dualists through and through. Similar observations can be made with respect to other prominent and historically significant documents which make explicit mention of the resurrection such as the Apostles' Creed and even the Athanasian Creed (which despite lacking the authority accorded decrees of an ecumenical council, nevertheless has been an occasional if controversial source for determining core Christian doctrine). I do not mean to insist that the absence of a dualist strain in the Creeds is somehow roundabout positive evidence for materialism (although for those who are inclined to see God's hand in the formulation of such documents I should think that the relevant omissions must be somewhat suggestive). I wish only to note that there is nothing in the Creeds that should incline a materialist believer towards dualism or in which a dualist believer might hope to take refuge. 14 Second, a comment on the Old Testament. Apart from a few controversial exceptions, the Hebrew Bible is almost wholly silent on the topic of the resurrection of the dead and paints a rather unattractive picture of the afterlife-an affair consisting not in the persistence of a disembodied soul (a notion wholly unfamilKee 1997, 455· After this chapter was completed, Dean Zimmerman suggested to me in correspondence that one might think the Apostles' creed (with its description of Christ's descent into hell after his death but before his resurrection) reveals a dualist commitment. However, the descent may well have been an embodied one and perfectly consistent with our preferred metaphysics in which even non-Divine persons need not be permanently 13

14

176

Applications: Ethics and Philosophy of Religion iar in the Israelite tradition), but rather of "an enervated existence in the grave," a destiny regarded with dread and despair in the Jewish wisdom literature. 15 In Genesis 27 (exactly where one might expect to find some clue or other into the nature of human persons as an accompaniment to the story of their creation) we read the following passage: The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

This passage inaugurates a series of dust-and-ashes verses which are scattered throughout the Old Testament and which have a very strong materialist flavor, indeed. Among the more striking images are those found in Genesis 3:19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.

And Genesis 18:27 Then Abraham spoke up again: "Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes."

and continuing throughout the Old Testament, often echoing Ecclesiastes y2o All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return.

Consequently, in its preoccupation with one's inevitable descent into She'ol, its apparent unwillingness or inability to entertain the notion of a disembodied existence for a human person, and its vivid and constant imagery of man as nothing but dust and ashes, the Hebrew Bible is hardly a rich source of dualistic texts. Third, a comment on the New Testament. The two most remarkable bits of evidence for dualism in the New bound up with a particular organism (see chapter 4 above). Alternatively, even if Christ enjoyed a disembodied existence between death and resurrection, this need not make us revise our materialist account of human persons (see section 5 and note 34 below). 15 Kee 1997, 279, 544· (See Job 17:1, Ecclesiastes 9:10, and Proverbs 30: 16).

177

Nothing But Dust and Ashes Testament (excepting those passages that directly bear on the resurrection which we will consider momentarily) appear in the parable of Dives and Lazarus at Luke 16:19-31 and in the report of the conversation between Christ and the thief as they suffered crucifixion together at Luke 23:42-43. Although they are genuinely troublesome obstacles for the materialist, Peter van Inwagen has done a superb job of mitigating the force of these passages as biblical support for dualism, and I thoroughly recommend to the reader his deflationary discussion of these so-called "proof texts," as well as his notable reminder that if our task was simply to marshal proof texts against one another, those of the materialist "would be much more numerous, uniform, and straightforward" than those of the dualist. 16 Once again, then, what appears to be the most significant feature of the New Testament with respect to dualism is in what it does not have to say. But this absence is not due to a new and mysterious silence on the topic of the nature of human persons, for the Genesaic dust prominently reappears in 1 Corinthians 15:47-49: The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the man from heaven, so are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven. Here Paul offers a twist on the observation by the first-century Jewish author, Philo, that the first Adam (i.e., of Genesis 1:27) was made in the image of God, whereas the second Adam (i.e., of Genesis 27) was made of dust. Instead, Paul classes human persons (prior to the resurrection) with the Adam of Genesis who is but dust of the Earth, and then holds out the promise that human persons may come to "share in the nature and image of the [second] Adam," the spiritual Adam, the Christ, at the resurrectionY The dualist may respond, however, that by invoking a passage from a context in which the resurrection is clearly center stage, I have just opened the flood gates for New Testament dualistic support. We will turn to the fine details of a materialistic reading of the resurrection of the body in sections 3-5 below, but at the moment let us make some brief observations on this alleged fountain of evidence. 16

17

van Inwagen 1995b. Mays 1988, 1188.

178

Applications: Ethics and Philosophy of Religion

In her work on the support for mind/body dualism in the Scriptures, Lynne Rudder Baker reminds us both that the descriptions of the resurrection of Christ are uniformly bodily descriptions (with an account of bodily transformation and renewal) and also that it is quite natural to take the descriptions of the resurrection of Christ as a pattern for the resurrection of human persons in generaLl 8 More recently, Trenton Merricks (in a popular article intended for a general audience) has done an admirable job not just of explaining away dualistic strains in resurrection passages but rather in actually transforming New Testament texts on the resurrection into a positive case for materialism, on the grounds that they support the thesis "that life after death and resurrection are ... one and the same thing." 19 The significance of this thesis lies in the dualist's rejection of this identification in favor of the thesis that dead bodies (as opposed to dead people) are raised to be reunited with individuals already enjoying some form of afterlife as (perhaps) disembodied souls. Once again, the point is not that it is impossible to produce a dualistic gloss on these passages, but only that there is no need to read the passages in this way, and indeed some pressure to take them at face value-as straightforward materialistic descriptions. On the strength of our brief tour through the Creeds and the Scriptures, together with our remarks on appeals to the authority of the Christian Fathers, philosophers, and theologians, I submit that we have (at least) established a respectable case for the compatibility of materialism and Christianity, and that we have (at most) established a respectable case for the view that if forced to take a stand on just which metaphysics of the human person is best supported by these combined sources, we would do well to cast our vote for the materialist one.

§3-The Challenge of the Resurrection Can this prima facie case for the compatibility of materialism and Christianity be overridden? Hear the speech of the unconvinced Christian dualist:

Baker 1995, 501-2. Baker also reminds us that Paul's frequent spirit/flesh distinction "is decidedly not a mind /body distinction." 19 Merricks 1999· 18

179

Nothing But Dust and Ashes I must admit some surprise that the textual case for dualism is so weak and that it can even be manipulated (a la Merricks) into something that resembles an argument for materialism. But that's all for nothing. Materialism obviously cannot be squared with the details of the resurrection. The argument is really quite simple. If materialism is true, then I am identical to a living human organism, a human animal. But, then, I perish when that animal perishes (after all, I am it). And oh, how it can perish! It can decay, its rotting into nothingness interrupted only by worms that feed on the putrid and decomposing flesh. Or it can burn to a cinder, its ashes being carried on the winds to places unknown. Or it can be torn limb from limb, the lifeless muscle and tissue finding its way into the belly of a cannibal where (subject to an undignified decomposition) it comes to partially compose the body of the man who has consumed it. How, then, shall this body be raised? The cannibal case is a clincher. There is no reason to think it impossible that a man (at his death) be composed of smallish parts each of which has the historical property of being among the smallish parts that composed another man at his death. But then if their bodies are restored by way of reassembly, his cannot be. Such danger in cannibalism! Of course, cannibalism isn't required. Our man could come to have his feature quite innocently, should unknown and long-dead corpses furnish nutrients to the soil in which he cultivates his crops. In short, the bodies of many of our ancestors have ceased to be present altogether and (unless the resurrection is very near at hand) a similar fate awaits our own bodies. God could, of course, take the particles that composed Abraham at his death (if they are still present on Resurrection Day) and reconfigure them in precisely the same pattern in which they were arranged shortly before Abraham's demise, endowing them with the same causal properties and intrinsic states they possessed on that day. But then an omnipotent God could do the same for the particles that composed Abraham at some moment when he was a child of ten. Each of the resulting arrangements would have equal claim to be Abraham's body-equally bad claims; not even omnipotence can bring back the dead by reassembly. Don't get me wrong; I don't mean to impugn God's omnipotence, but God can perform only miracles not impossibilities. God can generate a particle-for-particle duplicate if He wishes, and (as just noted) God can even reconfigure some set of particles that once composed Abraham; but this is not to bring back Abraham. If Abraham was really identical to a living human organism, a mere human animal, nothing but dust and ashes-then he is forever gone. To be sure, we might hope that there will be someone, a replica perhaps, who someday will be composed of Abraham's former parts, and who will carry on in Abraham's stead with similar memories, desires, intentions, and character-Abraham's representative in the

ISO

Applications: Ethics and Philosophy of Religion world to come. But this hope is not what Scripture teaches. Abraham will be raised-not his replica. As I see it, Abraham will be raised only if Abraham is not identical to a human animal, and if Abraham is not identical to a human animal, then Abraham is not merely a material object. Hence, materialism fails to conform to the teachings of Scripture. So much the worse for it. 20

§4-Five Attempts at Reconciliation and a Common Presumption The Christian dualist's speech is a popular and powerful one. What exactly is the materialist believer to say against the reasonable claim that Abraham-the-human-animal perishes with the destruction of a certain human organism, and that raising him is no more possible (even for a willing and omnipotent benefactor) than is granting the request of the poet in Goethe's Faust who laments, "Gib meine Jugend mir zuriick!"? 21 I will first briefly characterize five materialist responses to this speech, and then I will uncover a common presumption that may help us to construct a much more satisfactory materialist reply.

Replicas 22 Abraham is gone. But he will be nevertheless resurrected in this sense: Another Abraham (numerically distinct but more or less physically and psychologically indistinguishable from the first) will rise on the appointed day and will carry on as Abraham's successor in the world to come. If this is put forth as an interpretation of Scripture, it is a disaster, for it flies in the face of almost everything addressed to the topic in the New Testament and in the history of interpretation and commentary on resurrection texts. 23 Alternatively, if it is put forth as a best-we-can-hope-for corrective to that history of interpretation and commentary, it strikes me as equivalent to giving up on the doctrine of the resurrection of the body altogether. Setting aside intriguing quesCompare van Tnwagen 1995b and 1978, 485-86; Merricks 1999. "Give back my youth!" 22 The following a·ccount bears a resemblance to a widely criticized argument put forth by John Hick, but I am unsure I have sufficiently understood that argument and thus hesitate simply to report this as his view. See Hick 1983. 23 See Bynum 1995 for a historical overview of the common conviction that the same individual (and indeed, the same body) is resurrected. 211

21

181

Nothing But Dust and Ashes tions about why God would be willing to participate in this manner of resurrection, let us simply adopt as an adequacy condition of any reading of the resurrection that Christianity requires the numerical identity of the pre-resurrected and post-resurrected Abraham. The ReplicaView does not satisfy this desideratum. The Replica-View, then, fails (and fails miserably) as a materialist response to the Christian dualist's speech.

Simulacra24 Abraham, that very human animal who long-ago presented God with the first sorites argument (Genesis 18:16-33), will rise again on the appointed day. But there will be no need to track down and call together all those parts that went their separate ways throughout the biosphere after the body that was buried in the cave of Machpelah near Mamre decayed and was reabsorbed into the environment, for despite the casual language of Genesis 25=9, Abraham's body was not buried there. Instead God saw to it that a simulacrum was smuggled in to be buried and decompose in place of Abraham's corpse. Abraham's genuine body was spirited away for safekeeping, to sleep-parts intactuntil it shall be reawakened and reanimated (but not reassembled) on the Resurrection Day. This story has the advantage of avoiding the pitfalls of resurrection by reassembly; no decomposing, no recomposing (cannibal-style) now stands in the way of resurrecting Abraham. Moreover, this view guarantees that it is the same man and even the same animal body that rises again. These are advantages. However, a significant disadvantage looms large. On this view God is engaged in deception on a monumental scale. Most certainly it appeared for all the world to Isaac and Ishmael that the body they placed in that cave was none other than their father's. No slight difference would have been permitted in the coloring of the skin or the lines of the face or the turn of the figure, else the game would have been up and the imposter exposed. If convinced that this story tells of the only way to reconcile the resurrection with the Abraham-as-animal thesis, perhaps we could manufacture some explanation or other for God's adopting such a policy of systematic decep-

24

See van lnwagen 1978 for the origins of the following (condensed) view.

182

Applications: Ethics and Philosophy of Religion tion. It seems clear, however, that if we discover a materialist account with the same advantages and without the deception of the simulacra, that account is to be preferred. 25

Constitutionalism 26 Abraham-that is, the same person but not the same body-will rise again on the appointed day. But how can the same person arise and not the same body, if the person was a material object and thus identical to the body? The mistake lies in the move from "was a material object" to "is identical to the body." Abraham was a human person, but the relation between that human person and the human body that was buried in the cave of Machpelah near Mamre was constitution not identity. Abraham is credited with being a material object in virtue of being constituted by a material object. No need for body-snatching and simulacra here. Let the corpse of Abraham decay; Abraham has need of it no more, for when he is resurrected he will be constituted by a new and imperishable body. That is, one and the same person will be constituted by two very different bodies at two very different times, and there is no threat from the transitivity of identity, for constitution is not identity. 27 Why should we believe that this isn't just the Replica-View in disguise? Why should we concede that Abraham will someday be constituted by a new body rather than believe that some new person (albeit one with Abraham's mental contents and capacities and character) will be created on that day? These are, I think, difficult questions, and we will take them up momentarily. We need not, however, take them up in response to this proposal, for recall that in Part I of this book, we laid out compelling reasons against a constitutionalist view. No need to repeat those arguments here. Let me simply note that on what I have argued is the best metaphysics of the human person in chapters 1-5 Although I find myself convinced by this complaint, I have come to learn that this "deception-objection" is less compelling to others than I originally thought it would be. The reader is thus encouraged to be on his or her guard and to weigh the merits of the Simulacra-View against the account to be defended below. 26 See Baker 1995 and Corcoran 1998 for discussion of the following (condensed) view. 27 As I read them, Baker and Corcoran disagree here, Baker permitting a wholly different body at the resurrection and Corcoran denying this. Each can claim an associated advantage: whereas Baker has a strong reading of the new and imperishable body of 1 Corinthians 15, Corcoran may claim the considerable historical support of the sameyet-somehow-changed-body tradition. 25

183

Nothing But Dust and Ashes above, constitution is identity, and thus any resurrection account which earns its advantages by denying this view about composition is one I believe we have good reasons to reject. Of course, one might attempt to turn the tables and count this observation as a strike against the metaphysics developed earlier-but only if the constitutionalist can lay claim to some advantage that we are not able to match. Fortunately, as we will see below, this will not prove to be a way to rescue a constitutionalist metaphysics.

Anti-Criterialism28 Abraham-the same man and the same body-will rise again on the appointed day, and as a result he will be among the fortunate, the temporally gappy. We need not fear that some criterion of personal identity may be brought in to show that temporal gaps are impossible (they surely are not), or that this very person and this very body might not be found on either side of that temporal gap for the surprising reason that there are no criteria of personal identity. Abraham will be raised, and there need be no explanation of that. Well, this view has its list of advantages, too. If there really are no criteria of personal identity, then they are hardly a threat to anyone's thesis about gappiness, and no one can be properly faulted for not providing an explanation that appeals to them. Moreover, the anti-criterialist can claim to know that Abraham will be resurrected (on the basis of revelation) while conceding that there is no hope for (and no need of) an explanation regarding lzow this miracle will occur. As in the case of constitutionalism, however, I have a previous commitment; on what I have argued is the best metaphysics of the human person in chapters 1-5 above, we should adopt a psychological criterion of personal identity across time, and thus any resurrection account which boasts advantages by being anti-criterialist is one I believe we have good reasons to reject. As before, one might attempt to turn the tables and count this observation as a strike against the metaphysics developed earlier-but only if the anti-criterialist's reasons to reject the psychological criterion are sufficiently compelling ones, a topic to which we will return in section 5 below. 28 See Merricks (Forthcoming) for an elaboration of the following (condensed) view, and see Zimmerman 1998, for a further critique.

184

Applications: Ethics and Philosophy of Religion

Jumping Animals 29 Abraham will rise again on the appointed day embarking on his new life with a body-stage that bears immanent-causal relations to his body-stages at some moments immediately prior to his death. Moreover, those very pre-resurrection body-stages were likewise immanent-causally related to a corpse that suffered decay and decomposition in the cave of Machpelah near Mamre. That is, Abraham (and the body he is identical to) underwent a kind of fission made possible by God's endowing a certain body with certain causal powers. Admittedly, Abraham suffered a temporal gap and (contra the anti-criterialist) there are criteria for identity across time. Fortunately, however, the immanent-causal relations between the relevant stages of the body found on either side of the gap were sufficient to preserve Abraham's identity. Nor need we worry that the corpse which also followed-and followed immediately-upon the fission competes with or is in any way an impediment to Abraham's jump to heaven, for a corpse isn't a thing at all; despite appearances, 'corpse' is a plural referring expression which picks out suitably arranged particles at a time at which they do not compose anything at all, but which are nevertheless immanent-causally connected to a collection of particles which do compose (at an earlier time) an organism at its death. So, everything is as it should be: Abraham's "corpse" was buried and reassimilated into the environment (in the same way anyone's remains remain, whether the individual whose remains they are is resurrected or not); Abraham survives across a temporal gap on account of the fission which guarantees him a body in the world to come immanent-causally related to the body in the world left behind; and Abraham's post-resurrection body is numerically identical to his pre-resurrection body-its stages related causally just as were the stages immediately before and immediately after the moment he turned ten years old. This explanation (offered as a friendly gesture to the materialist by the dualist Dean Zimmerman) strikes me as the best of the lot, and this despite Zimmerman's working under a self-imposed handicap of invoking no thesis in his explanation that would be objectionable to a proponent of the rather restrictive claims endorsed by van Inwagen on 29 See Zimmerman's excellent 1999 discussion for an intriguing elaboration of the following (condensed) view.

185

Nothing But Dust and Ashes

materialism and composition. 30 These Divinely-grounded fissions by which human persons can jump with the numerically same animalbody across temporal gaps into Paradise (while leaving their remains behind!) seem to provide a better story for the materialist to tell than any story which is marred by replicas at the end, or simulacra at the beginning, or co-location throughout, or no criterion of identity at all. Still, this dazzling story is subject to its own share of grave defects, as well. Zimmerman circumvents objections arising from the thoughtexperiment of a fissioning ten-year-old Abraham, one of whose streams is found at times after but arbitrarily close to the time of the fission and one of whose streams appears only much later in the course of history. He also provides compelling responses to the complaint that God cannot endow particles with causal powers that they do not already possess essentially, and to the worry that the first event that awaits the resurrected person is death, given that he arrives in the company of the saved in the same condition he was in when he jumped-namely, at death's door. The genuinely troublesome feature of the account, however, is found elsewhere; Zimmerman acknowledges that his proposal on behalf of the materialist has a price: a "closest continuer" theory of personal identity. Whether or not the man who appears in the world to come is Abraham depends on what happens in the other half of the fission. In the ideal case discussed above, there is no competition from a corpse, a heaped up pile of particles jointly resembling a recently-but-no-longerpresent composite object. But what of the fission of the ten-year-old Abraham? The first stream is found at times after but arbitrarily close to the time of the fission, and given the perfectly normal (then-perceptible) course of events, nobody has the slightest idea fission has occurred. The later stream, let us imagine, instantaneously begins much later with a bewildered young boy on the Day of Resurrection. Now we have some competition! Clearly, "the younger-Abraham" and "the elder-Abraham" cannot truthfully say to one another, "We two are one"; even in Paradise there are rules against that. Zimmerman's out (or better-the out he selects for his imaginary materialist) is a closest continuer theory of personal identity. The boy is a new creation, not a resurrected individual, whereas the man is our Abraham. But if the fission of the ten-year-old That is, the claims detailed in van Inwagen 1990b and discussed at length in Part I of this book.

30

186

Applications: Ethics and Philosophy of Religion

Abraham had left a corpse in the field instead of (a slightly older) human animal, then the boy would have been the resurrected Abraham, after all, and not a new creation. In other words, the identity of the boy in Paradise depends entirely on what happens in the other stream of the fission. Consider the (gappy) spatiotemporal region which is the union of the region swept out for ten years in the old world by a youthful Abraham with the region swept out forevermore in the world to come by that individual we have identified as "the younger-Abraham." Whether or not we find one person or two in that region depends entirely on features of the world outside of that region, most notably, on what's happening in the region swept out by the other stream of the fission. I should imagine that it is disheartening to the Christian materialist that what appears to be the best materialist account of the resurrection on offer entails a theory of identity across time that very few theorists would like to endorse.31 And, given my recent remarks regarding widely accepted opinions on adequacy conditions for resurrection explanations and personal identity in general, I should imagine that opting instead for replicas, simulacra, co-location, or anti-criterialism does not offer much comfort. Fortunately, I think we can do better. There is a common presumption underlying the proposals we have canvassed thus far, namely, that Three-Dimensionalism is true. 32 Accordingly, in our recent discussions we have talked of resurrection by reassembly, composition at a time, the nature of the causal connections between stages (but not temporal parts) of a human person, and whether there are any criteria at all for the identity of a person at T with a person at T* (as opposed to whether there is some non-trivial physical or psychological relation which holds between momentary person-stages at T and T*, when they are stages of one and the same person). Moreover, we have left unchallenged the assertion, present in all of our proposals save that of the constitutionalists, that material human persons are identical to human animals. In the remaining section of this chapter, I will apply our preferred metaphysics from Part I of this book to the problem at hand. In particular, in the sequel I will call upon (i) our constitution-as-identity thesis In his 1999 article, Zimmerman takes pains to show that this consequence is not somehow tied to hopes of resurrection, but that any theorist (whether theist or atheist) who maintains a van Inwagenian materialism will be committed to the closest continuer account of personal identity. 32 An unsurprising consequence, since van Inwagen, Baker, Corcoran, Merricks, Zimmerman, and Zimmerman's imaginary materialist are all Three-Dimensionalists. 31

187

Nothing But Dust and Ashes (from chapters 1-2), (ii) our Four-Dimensionalist [or Partist] view of persistence and parthood (from chapter 2), (iii) Universalism (from chapter 3), (iv) our argument for the conclusion that material human persons are not identical to living human organisms (from chapter 4), (v) our answer to the question "to which spacetime worms does the term 'human person' refer?" (from chapter 4), and (vi) our theory of immanent-causal relations between the temporal parts [or spacetimestages] of a persisting human person (from chapter 4). Equipped with these resources, I believe we will be able to construct a superior materialist response to the unconvinced Christian dualist's speech.

§5-The Resurrection of the Body and the Life Everlasting So, let us take our preferred metaphysics as read and display the advantages of the present application. 33 The first observation that we might make is that all talk of resurrection by reassembly can be dispensed with rather quickly and for reasons having nothing to do with cannibalism and the like. On the FourDimensionalist view, the simples that composed Abraham's personstage shortly before his death cannot be reassembled, for they were instantaneous objects nevermore to be seen anywhere or anywhen. That kind of bodily continuity-same parts same arrangements-simply doesn't arise as a possibility on the Four-Dimensionalist's metaphysics. Rather, our Four-Dimensionalist will maintain that Abraham's first temporal part (a material object reportedly persisting for a whopping 175 years) had parts which were more or less spatiotemporal neighbors, and that despite a considerable temporal gap it will be succeeded by Abraham's second temporal part (a material object which will be eternal). This first temporal part (which we may name 'Perishable') stageshares all of its momentary temporal parts with a living human organism, but for the reasons we detailed in chapter 4, Perishable is identical to a mere proper part of that human organism, not to the organism itself. In fact, it was this very feature that earned Abraham the distinc33 As before, for ease of exposition, I will speak as the orthodox Four-Dimensionalist. If desired, the reader may refer to chapters 2-4 above to supply the Partist's gloss on the Four-Dimensionalist's explanation.

188

Applications: Ethics and Philosophy of Religion

tion of being a human person. The second temporal part (which we may name 'Imperishable') presumably does not stage-share any of its momentary temporal parts with a living human organism, but is rather what Paul calls a spiritual body (italics mine) in 1 Corinthians 1s:44-34 Accordingly, unlike the Replica-View, the person who rises will be Abraham, not his duplicate, and thus this view satisfies the desideratum noted earlier requiring the numerical identity of the pre-resurrected and post-resurrected Abraham (i.e., one and the same person is present on either side of the gap in virtue of having temporal parts which exactly occupy regions on either side of the gap). Better yet, this will not require the simulacrum-deception, for the body that decomposes and rots is the living human organism with which Abraham's first temporal part stage-shared; it is not Abraham himself. Perhaps Isaac and Ishmael might still have mistakenly believed that they placed their father in the cave for burial, but this then would have been due to a false metaphysics (for which they could hardly have been criticized) and not due to a deceptive God creating and substituting look-alikes. Moreover, the Four-Dimensionalist can avoid any problems allegedly arising from the decay and the reabsorption into the environment of what we can call"Abraham's corpse" without denying that constitution is identity, and thus he secures the same explanatory benefits at a less expensive price than did the constitutionalist. In other words, the constitutionalist cannot lay claim to some advantage that the FourDimensionalist is unable to match. Consequently, we need not worry about a revival of constitutionalism from arguments grounded in an explanatory advantage regarding the resurrection. Nor need he relinquish his commitment to a psychological criterion of identity through time and adopt an anti-criterialist stance. The primary objections to a psychological criterion of identity through time by the anti-criterialist presuppose the dual view that human persons are human animals and that Three-Dimensionalism is true. 35 As we have seen in chapter 4, however, once we have abandoned Three-Dimensionalism-and only This forces upon us a choice: Shall we count Abraham in the world to come as a human person in virtue of his historical features (i.e., in virtue of having Perishable as a part), or shall we say that for the resurrected, being a human person is a mere phase sortal? Although I can't see how it will make much real difference how we answer, I favor the second reply. Here's a qualification we'll be required to make in either case, however: Resurrected human persons will not simply turn out to be proper parts of living human organisms; instead, they will be cross-time fusions of proper parts of living human organisms with certain spiritual bodies in the world to come. 35 See Merricks Forthcoming. 34

189

Nothing But Dust and Ashes after we have done so-the psychological criterion is unsurpassed. Furthermore, far from being a criterion with which to challenge the possibility of temporal gaps, the psychological criterion seems tailor made for gappy persistence. Finally, our Four-Dimensionalist may also help himself to the best feature of Zimmerman's metaphysics of jumping animals without being at all subject to its associated cost. That is, he can accept a story of fissioning material objects and human persons who jump temporal gaps while preserving appropriate immanentcausal relations between their temporal parts, without thereby inheriting a commitment to the closest-continuer theory of personal identity. Instead, the Four-Dimensionalist simply applies his solution to standard fission cases by recognizing overlapping (but not co-located) continuants. This brief catalogue of advantages (together with the independent support we have provided for our preferred metaphysics in Part I) should already put our Four-Dimensionalist's account of the resurrection of the body head and shoulders above that of his ThreeDimensionalist rival. We are not yet finished, however. It is hard to imagine a happier reconciliation of the pressures to explain how the numerically same body might be raised while still accommodating the Pauline teachings of the differences between the natural and the spiritual bodies in 1 Corinthians 35-44: But someone may ask, "How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?'' How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. All flesh is not the same: Men have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another. There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another. The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor. So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. This longish passage explicitly addressed to the relation between the remarkably-different pre- and post-resurrection bodies strikes me as a serious obstacle for the Three-Dimensionalist who accepts constitution

190

Applications: Ethics and Philosophy of Religion as identity and who identifies the human person with the human organism. The same verses fit extremely well within the context of our preferred metaphysics, however. How? First, let us note that owing to his very liberal account of composition, our Four-Dimensionalist Universalist is in a unique position to claim that no matter how profound are the differences between two temporally-nonoverlapping items, we will always be correct in our supposition that there is some persisting object that has them each as temporal parts, for even when those items are wholly unlike one another and separated by a significant temporal gap, some continuant or other is trivially guaranteed by the Universalist consequence that any two temporally discontinuous things have a mereological sum. Moreover, once we have undermined the reason to identify a human person with the living human organism with which it stage-shares, talk of raising the same body need not be interpreted as talk of raising the same organism. In this same vein, we may take references to the life everlasting and the new life to come as signifying not the possession of biological properties by the resurrected, but rather as the continuation of certain conscious experiences after their temporary interruption following upon the death of some organism. 36 Second, this seems to permit us to take Paul at his word when he says the new body may be as unlike the old as is the wheat from its seed. As with the causal sequence by which the wheat develops from the seed in this oldest of Christian resurrection metaphors, so too we may expect a causal story which links the person-stages of the postresurrected Abraham with the person-stages of the pre-resurrected Abraham-but this is all quite consistent with the spiritual body being quite different from the natural body (and even radically different from what we ordinarily and mistakenly tend to identify with the natural body, namely, the living human organism). The causal story which links the relevant person-stages is just the account of immanent-causal relations that was our focus in chapter 4 above, together with the observation (made forcefully by Zimmerman in his discussion of the metaphysics of jumping animals) that these causal connections can hold between pairs of momentary person-stages even when they are separated by a temporal gap (i.e., by some time or times at which the person in question is not present at all). 37 36 37

Compare Baker 1995, 498. Zimmerman 1999 contains a sustained discussion and defense of this point.

191

Nothing But Dust and Ashes Of course, one might challenge the assertion that immanent-causal connections can hold across a several-thousand-year gap, since one might concentrate exclusively on scenarios of resurrection in which the relevant causal chains pass through a causal intermediary such as God. In one such scenario, God (prior to the demise of the pre-resurrection body) secures an information-laden snapshot-of-sorts of that body (somehow causally derived from its subject), and then (at the appointed hour) invokes the relevant mental state as a blueprint (with causal efficacy) in the configuration of a post-resurrection body which will house the psychology of the relevant individual at the reawakening. Such a circuitous route threatens the claim that the causal connections are sufficiently immanent, however, and thereby recalls the Replica-View with its prospect of creating a mere doppelganger rather than raising Abraham on the Last Day. Fissioning, though, once again sidesteps these difficulties in a particularly satisfying way. To be sure, God would play a miraculous role in enabling (by bestowing causal powers upon) a material body to undergo fission at the last moment of stage-sharing between a human person and its companion living human organism, but this sort of Divine intervention in no way jeopardizes the immanent-causal connections between that last pre-fission person-stage and the first postfission person-stage of the resurrection. There is no objectionable causal intermediary present in the fission story to interfere with the immanent-causal connections. Consequently, I find the fissioning story a perfectly reasonable one for the Christian materialist to endorse. Perhaps I should note, however, that even though I do not find worrisome the objections against God's bestowing the relevant causal powers on the material objects in question, I do find it a bit curious that if this is how the resurrection is effected, then either each person receives judgment at the last moment of this life or Daniel is correct and all are resurrected. That is, on the assumption that the causal connections between the person-stages on either side of the temporal gap will have the right character only if God endows a certain material body with the causal capacities to fission at an earlier time, it is hard to see how whether a particular individual shall be resurrected might be decided on the Last Day. Interestingly, God might implement yet another mechanism for resurrection that also avoids inserting an objectionable causal intermediary into the gap between the pre and post-resurrected person-stages, a mechanism that would permit both Last Day determinations together

192

Applications: Ethics and Philosophy of Religion with selective resurrection. In this model, 38 God could simply issue a decree of the form "Let there be a glorious and imperishable spiritual body which will be as was the natural body of Abraham at his death." Clearly, the content of this decree is bound up in an intimate way with the character of Abraham's very last pre-resurrected person-stage (or stages, if there was an open interval prior to the temporal gap). Note that the decree itself is rather limited in content, and when we consider it apart from that earlier object and its properties, it has no causal efficacy "all on its own." Accordingly, it cannot function as a kind of causal intermediary (itself sufficient to bring into existence the first personstage of Abraham's post-resurrection body) that would disrupt the immanent-causal connections which permit Abraham to jump across the temporal gap spanning the period of time from the demise of his natural body to the Last Day. Consequently, as with the fissioning story, I find this backtracking-decree mechanism a perfectly reasonable account for any Christian materialist who adopts our preferred metaphysics to endorse. In conclusion, then, Christian materialism seems not only consistent but perhaps even better supported than Christian dualism on balance of evidence gathered from the early Church Fathers, its influential philosophers and theologians, the Creeds, and Holy Scripture. Moreover, with the fissioning-body and backtracking-decree models, our explication of the doctrine of the resurrection of the body (read against the backdrop of our preferred metaphysics) offers the Christian materialist who looks for the life of the world to come a choice between two perfectly coherent and far more philosophically satisfying accounts than are any of those available on the interpretation proffered by its leading, materialist rival. Zimmerman introduces this suggestion in his 1999 article as a response to the complaint that foisting causal powers on material objects "from the outside" is inconsistent with the essential features of those objects. I have taken liberties with the proposal to adapt it to the present discussion. 38

Bibliography

Armstrong, David. 1980. "Identity Through Time." In Time and Cause: Essays Presented to Richard Taylor, edited by P. van Inwagen and J. E. Tomberlin, 67-70. Dordrecht: Reidel. Baker, Lynn Rudder. 1995. "Need a Christian Be a Mind/Body Dualist?" Faith and Philosophy 12:{89-504. Balashov, Yuri. 2000. "Enduring and Perduring Objects in Minkowski SpaceTime." Philosophical Studies 99:12