Abstract
Sometimes in philosophy one view engenders another. If you hold the first, chances are you hold the second. But it’s not always because the first entails the second. Sometimes the tie is less clear, less clean. One such tie is between substance dualism and anti-criterialism. Substance dualism is the view that people are, at least in part, immaterial mental substances. Anti-criterialism is the view that there is no criterion of personal identity through time. Most philosophers who hold the first view also hold the second. In fact, many philosophers just assume that substance dualists ought to, or perhaps even have to, accept anti-criterialism. But I aim to show that this assumption is baseless. Substance dualism doesn’t entail, suggest, support, or in any way motivate anti-criterialism, and anti-criterialism confers no benefit on dualism. Substance dualists have no special reason—and, indeed, no good reason at all—to accept anti-criterialism. Or so I shall argue. My aim isn’t to defend substance dualism, nor is it to attack anti-criterialism. My aim is to show that, contrary to a long-standing trend, dualists needn’t be anti-criterialists. Nor, as it will turn out, should they be.
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Notes
In talking about persons and personal persistence, I, as well as all of my interlocutors, use ‘person’ to mean you (or me, or whoever’s identity we are talking about); that is, I use ‘person’ to just mean whatever we are essentially or fundamentally. So an inquiry into your personal persistence, for example, is nothing more or less than an inquiry into your persistence tout court. This is worth mentioning, because some philosophers use ‘person’ differently, and do not wish to assume that you or I are essentially persons in their sense. These philosophers may simply plug in ‘you’ wherever I refer to persons. My arguments will be unaffected. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for raising this point.
It’s worth emphasizing that I am not using ‘criteria’ in an epistemic sense. That is, I am not talking about conditions under which we could know that a person has persisted through time. Rather, I am talking about conditions under which a person persists through time, regardless of whether we can know it or not.
Merricks (1998), for example, argues that questions about criteria of personal persistence do not have the tight connection with questions about analyses of personal persistence that many have assumed exists.
It is natural to think of informativeness as epistemic in nature. However, given that criteria of personal persistence are themselves metaphysical, not epistemic—that is, they are conditions under which people persist through time, whether or not we know it (see fn. 2)—I think it’s more plausible to say that whether an alleged criterion is informative isn’t really a matter of whether it gives us any knowledge about a person’s persistence; rather, it is a metaphysical (or perhaps logical) matter having to do with whether personal persistence is given as a condition for its own obtaining. That said, none of my arguments turn on this point (just keep in mind that the criteria for personal persistence themselves are metaphysical, not epistemic).
In fact, aside from Locke (1689/1979), it may be that all dualists with a view on personal identity are anti-criterialists. I, at least, know of no other exceptions.
What Swinburne (1985) does is argue that people can possibly switch bodies. This may support dualism, but there is no obvious connection here to anti-criterialism.
Merricks (1998) does add that, “None of the prominent dualists (for instance, Swinburne or Chisholm) offers anything like a criterion of identity over time for simple, unextended, indivisible souls; since persons are, according to these philosophers, simply souls, if there is no criterion of identity over time for souls, there is none for persons” (p. 121, fn. 1). But Merricks doesn’t say why there can’t be a criterion of soul persistence.
See, for example, Parfit (1984, p. 227), Madell (1981, p. 78–106) and Gasser and Stefan (2012, p. 15–16). Some philosophers suggest that a proper criterion of personal persistence must be put in terms of “observable” features of people (e.g., Noonan, 2003, p. 16; Baker 2012, p. 179–180). This might at first seem to suggest that only physical features are fit to feature in a criterion of personal persistence. But we need to be careful. For souls are observable. Their (mental) properties are observable via introspection. And, at any rate, whether or not a feature is observable is an epistemic consideration that is irrelevant as to whether it can figure among the metaphysically necessary and sufficient conditions for personal persistence.
Some dualists appeal to non-reductionism about the mental—i.e., the view that the mental cannot be reduced to the physical—to support non-reductionism about people—i.e., the view that people are not reducible to physical stuff—which, in turn, they associate (or at least seem to associate) with anti-criterialism (e.g., Swinburne 1985; Reid 1785/2008; Butler 1736/2008; Langsam 2011; see also Zimmerman 2012). But this latter association is unjustified. Of course dualists think that people are not reducible to physical stuff—that’s just part of the view. But that only gives them reason to believe anti-criterialism if the fact that people are not (wholly) physical gives them reason to believe that there are no informative necessary and sufficient conditions for personal persistence. And, as I’ve argued, it doesn’t. Nothing precludes non-reductionists about the mental (whether they are substance dualists or just property dualists) from endorsing a criterion of personal persistence, including one specified in terms of continuity in that irreducible mentality.
At least, this is Aristotle’s view in Metaphysics Z.8. Aristotle is not a dualist in the sense that I am discussing here. And he suggests that our physical bodies are what individuate us (ibid.). But I see no reason why dualists cannot appropriate Aristotle’s general ontological picture.
Lycan (2009) recommends that dualists say that souls are located in space and are thus individuated by their spatial location (p. 562). This is a fine solution for dualists who believe (a) that souls are located in space, and (b) that souls cannot share spatial locations.
In fact, giving a criterion of soul persistence might be a good way for a dualist to minimize the spookiness of souls, since anti-criterialists are plausibly seen as, to use Zimmerman’s (1998) term, “identity mystics”.
Some dualists suggest that we could survive complete amnesia or other disruptions in our mental lives (e.g., Swinburne 1985, p. 24). But they do not say that we could survive the complete loss of all of our mental properties, including our mental capacities. In fact, just the opposite (see, e.g., Swinburne 1985, p. 33).
An example may help. Suppose that there is an extended simple that can change in various ways—e.g., color, location.—but is essentially spherical. Indeed, suppose that the simple sphere has this criterion of persistence: Simple Sphere S at time t is identical to Simple Sphere S* at time t* if and only if S and S* are composed of the same matter, and that matter remains spherical from t to t*. There is nothing incoherent here. Which shows that something’s being simple is no barrier to its having a criterion of persistence.
See, for example, Merricks (1998), Parfit (1984), and Shoemaker (2012). These authors’ aims in discussing cases like these are different from the point under consideration here. Nonetheless, I think cases like these often lurk in the background of discussions about the connection between dualism and anti-criterialism. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for raising this point.
Dependence of this sort is standardly held to be a condition on persistence. See, for example, Lewis (1976, p. 17), Shoemaker (1985), and Rey (1976, p. 48). If the above cases were reimagined such that this dependence is present in the duplicate cases, then it may be that the two cases, whether concerning simples or complexes, really aren’t different with respect to the identity facts. In other words, it may be that the simple (or complex) persists.
Notice that this difference between mental states is (arguably) a difference in the identity of the mental states. So it is an identity difference. But the same is true of the tree’s parts—the only difference is in the parts’ identities. The important point in each case is that it’s not a mere difference in the identity of the soul (or tree).
Now, one might think that mental states are individuated by their subject—i.e., by the person who has them. So one might think that the mental differences I’ve mentioned smuggle in soul-identity differences. For what it’s worth, I think mental states can be individuated without reference to their subjects. But regardless, notice that the worry here is a potential problem for any psychological criterion of personal persistence (see Shoemaker 1985, 2012, for potential solutions), not just a dualist one. So it doesn’t give dualists in particular a reason to favor anti-criterialism. Also, if one takes this line with respect to mental states, then perhaps one should also take it with respect to the individuation of tree parts, in which case, again, the story with simples is the same as the story with complexes. Or even if one wants to individuate tree parts differently, in a way that mental states cannot be individuated—e.g., in terms of spatial location—that still won’t help. For, in the case of the duplicate tree, the spatial location (and other qualitative features) of the parts is the same throughout the replacement. So one would have to say that the trees have the same parts, and that the only difference between the two cases is with the identity of the tree. And then, again, the cases of simples and complexes are parallel. So the simplicity of souls does not yield a special reason to accept anti-criterialism. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for raising these issues.
Think of the dialectic this way. Dualist: I accept anti-criterialism. Me: Why? Dualist: Because souls are fundamental. Me: What does that mean? Dualist: It means that there is no criterion of soul persistence. Me: Um….
One might deny that any of these features are more basic than people or souls. But if this line is taken then I don’t see any good reason to accept that a criterion of something’s persistence has to be specified in terms of a more basic kind of entity.
After all, fundamental entities can have essential qualitative features. Thus, it does seem that their persistence conditions could, at least in principle, be specified in terms of another kind of entity—namely, those essential qualitative features.
Merricks (2001), for example, explicitly appeals to this benefit. For general surveys of these issues having to do with the relationship between criteria of personal persistence, dualism, and theistic views about the survival of bodily death, see Corcoran (2001) and van Inwagen and Zimmerman (2007).
Nothing precludes anti-criterialists from saying that the impossibility of fission has an explanation. After all, they could borrow the dualist explanation for why fission is impossible; that is, they could say that fission is impossible because souls are simple. But the point here is that anti-criterialism itself offers no explanation for why fission is impossible (nor does it help with such an explanation). And insofar as anti-criterialism is offered as a solution to the puzzle of fission—that is, insofar as survival of apparent-fission is said to be brute or mysterious, as per Swinburne (1985)—anti-criterialism gets in the way of an explanation for why fission is impossible. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pressing me on this point.
Here I do not mean to suggest that giving necessary and sufficient conditions for x always yields an explanation for x. There are plenty of counterexamples to that general claim. For example, 2 + 2 equaling 4 is necessary and sufficient for all bachelors being unmarried, but the former does not explain the latter. Nonetheless, in this case—as with survival and fission—it seems clear that a criterion of personal persistence does provide an explanation for how we persist through time (see, e.g., Shoemaker 1985, p. 127; Perry 1976, p. 69–73; Noonan 2003; Olson 2012, p. 61). Merricks (1998, 2001) argues that anti-criterialists can still explain some aspects or instances of personal persistence, but he also acknowledges that they cannot fully explain personal persistence. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for raising this point.
This potential criterion is similar in many respects to criteria of personal persistence proposed by Dainton and Bayne (2009) and Dainton (2008). These authors do not offer their criteria specifically as dualist criteria of personal persistence, but it would be easy enough for a dualist to adapt one of them for her purposes. So a dualist might consider these proposals in further fleshing out her criterion.
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Acknowledgments
Thanks to Ross Cameron, Nina Emery, Brie Gertler, Chris Hill, Harold Langsam, Trenton Merricks, Paul Nedelisky, Nick Rimmel, Dean Zimmerman, and two anonymous referees for very helpful conversations about and/or comments on this paper.
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An erratum to this article is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0751-y.
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Duncan, M. Dualists needn’t be anti-criterialists (nor should they be). Philos Stud 174, 945–963 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0715-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0715-2