Theo Todman's Web Page - Paper Abstracts

Notes

1. I was alerted to the Seminar (see Thompson - Personal Identity and Resurrection: Early Modern Philosophical Perspectives) by a friend. I didn’t actually attend the Seminar (in case I’d be asked to say who I was and what I was there for). Also, I expected it to be a plug for the author’s rather expensive book which I’m never likely to buy or read. I give an abstract of the book, together with a biography of the author, below.
2. However, the seminar is available to view on the Faraday Institute website and also on YouTube (YouTube - The Faraday Institute: Personal Identity and Resurrection: Early Modern Philosophical Perspectives). I’ve watched it and was really impressed, both by the content (most of which was familiar from my reading of the author’s work; see below) and by the author’s presentation and careful response to questions.
3. The Seminar’s Abstract
   • Serious philosophical reflection on personal identity began with John Locke’s Essay concerning Human Understanding in the early Enlightenment – in which Locke developed his famous concept of personal identity as continuity of consciousness. Or so the story is often told.
   • This seminar explores the rich and interesting array of views on personal identity in the earlier seventeenth century, arguing that reflection on bodily resurrection both gave shape to – and was shaped by – a profound transformation of self-understanding in wider Western philosophy.
4. The Plan for the Seminar
   1. Introduction: Locke and his predecessors
   2. The theological background in the late 16th and 17th centuries
   3. The main theories of personal identity in the 17th century
   4. Concluding reflections on ‘excarnation’
      
5. Notes on the Seminar₁:-
   1. First Thoughts
      • The speaker draws out the transition – as far as understanding what we are² and how we are Resurrected³ – from the Aristotelian / medieval Hylomorphic⁴ account, to the Cartesian substance-dualist account, to the Lockean⁵ purely Psychological account⁶. In this transition, the role of the earthly body – initially taken to be the ‘flesh’ – is increasingly marginalized.
      • The end of the talk is a little abrupt: he introduces Ivan Illich₇ and Charles Taylor₈ and the concept of ‘excarnation’ (introduced by the latter) without any prior motivation. I knew from his writing that he favoured a role for continuity of matter in the resurrection, but this seems on about something else (and these two aren’t mentioned in "Thompson (Jon W.) - Individuation, Identity, and Resurrection in Thomas Jackson and John Locke"). I’d hoped this would be clarified in the Q&A session, but it wasn’t.
      • In response to a question, he made the point that we are concrete particulars, and the psychological account – including Locke’s ‘Prince and the Cobbler’ Thought Experiment⁹ – leads to (what he takes to be) absurdity – based on Reduplication Objections¹⁰. Unfortunately, these objections are easily swatted aside – albeit at some metaphysical cost – by adopting a Perdurantist¹¹ account of persistence. I don’t know if he is aware of this.
      • He stressed Locke’s insistence that his Christian beliefs – and consequently his philosophy – should only be bound by the explicit words of Scripture. So, he believed in ‘the Resurrection’ but not necessarily in ‘the Resurrection of the Body’. Resurrection – he thought – could be into any body of God’s choosing.
   2. Detailed Summary₁₂
      • 00:00 – 02:29: Introduction of the speaker by Sarah Parrot. Thompson was funded by the Templeton foundation while at the Faraday Institute to research ‘Re-embodying the Soul’, leading to the publication of his book.
      • 02:30 – 11:29
        • Talk dedicated to his late doctoral supervisor.
        • Locke’s 1683 note in an unpublished journal: identity of person not in the body consisting of the same particles, nor the mind in the same ‘corporeal spirits’ but in memory and consciousness of being the same person whereby we own ourselves. Locke invented the philosophical discipline of Personal Identity (PID).
        • Two items to note:
          1. The presence of key elements of Locke’s mature thought on the topic and stresses continuity of consciousness. Incorporated in the Second edition of the Essay in 1694. His mature theory of PID is: continuity of consciousness alone, not soul, body or brain. Essay 2:27 Section 9¹³ is cited. Now widespread ‘common sense’: continuity of consciousness is all that really matters.
          2. Locke feels the need to distance himself – surprisingly – from the body and ‘corporeal spirits’ (approximating to the nervous system in contemporary language; what is responsible for sensation) as the mediators of PID. Why? Thompson thinks Locke’s thought cannot be fully understood outside the then contemporary most pressing concern for PID: how can the same person be present at the general resurrection as in this life? Essay 2:27 Section 26¹⁴ shows Locke’s concern, and belief that the identity of body doesn’t matter at all.
             
        • So, before Locke, there was no independent question of PID, only that of resurrection. Thompson thinks there are 3 ways Locke frames the question:-
          1. Locke’s theory of continuity of consciousness aims to provide a minimalist account of PID that’s not subject to the objections made to traditional views.
          2. While Locke’s theory starts by defending resurrection, it ends up creating debates about PID independent of resurrection.
          3. Thompson’s main topic today: Locke discloses a theological transformation that has occurred in the early modern period tied to transformations in the Western notions of selfhood or personhood driven by debates on resurrection.
             
      • 11:30 – 14:14: We now move on to Section 2 of the talk (we’re referred to his book for more detail). Near consensus about the resurrection of the same body in the 16th & early 17th centuries. It was taken that a person’s body is an essential metaphysical part of the person. Not just a philosophical view but seen as core to Christian identity and the Creeds: the person is a composite of mind and body, a unity of body and soul. ‘If John Calvin and Thomas Aquinas agree on something, sit up and pay attention!’. The consensus was that God will raise each person on the Last Day with numerically the same body.
        1. Lateran Council₁₅ (1215): ‘all shall rise with their own bodies which they have now’.
        2. Belgic Confession₁₆ (Reformed; 1561 / 1619): ‘All the dead shall rise out of the earth, and their soul joined and united with their proper bodies in which they formerly lived’.
        3. Similarly in Westminster Confession₁₇, 39 Articles₁₈, and Luther’s Book of Concord₁₉.
           
      • 14:15 – 17:19:
        • Why this consensus? Two (of many) reasons:-
          1. Theological: Christ’s resurrection is a type of ours. His soul ‘resumed’ the same body from the tomb.
          2. Ethical: Many of these thinkers held to a version of virtue ethics, in which the body is being habituated and disciplined, along with the mind, into virtuous dispositions. Thereafter, all these dispositions that have accrued are taken up into the resurrection life; transformed, but the resurrection is a culmination rather than a replacement of the life of virtue.
             
        • But another group – the Socinians₂₀ – were the first to openly reject this idea. Valentine Smalcius₂₁: ‘We believe not that these bodies – which we now carry about with us – shall rise again’. So, replacement of the body. This view came to be more and more mainstream as the 17th century progressed and was taken up by the debates between Descartes²², Locke²³ and the Cambridge Platonists₂₄.
      • 17:20 – 17:30: We now move on to Section 3 of the talk: The main theories of personal identity in the 17th century. He must be brief.
      • 17:30 – 26:29: 3.1 Hylomorphism²⁵:
        • This goes back to Aristotle; matter & form. While the human soul is immaterial, it is united to the matter of the body to form an individual substance. Trying to hold together aspects of human nature that point in different directions. The mind is not the brain – a fully material entity – but is in some sense separable from the body despite being closely tied to it. The mind, or soul, is the substantial form of the body, giving the unity and completeness of a distinct human substance to what would otherwise be undifferentiated matter. More simply, embodiment is essential to human nature. Not even God could create a human souls other than in a body because – by definition – human souls are created in matter.
        • Hylomorphisms articulated by Thomas Aquinas. Thompson wants to talk about Francisco Suarez₂₆, but first a quotation from Richard Gardiner₂₇, Oxford 1638, to the effect that if our particular bodies are not resurrected, then our own selves will not be revived, for our individuation – what makes a man numerically one and the same – depends as much on identity of body as of soul; not just any body will do.
        • Moving on, Suarez is one of the most important thinkers of the early 17th century and wrote on personal identity, though his discussion is hidden in his Mystery of the Life of Christ where he talks about bodily resurrection. Rather traditionally, he affirms that the mind or soul is individual and that God’s power can keep the soul in existence between death and resurrection, that the matter of the body has some level of individuality and at resurrection we have the reunification of soul and body giving a full human being. The surprising claim is that there’s material continuity between death and resurrection. Suarez gives two reasons:-
          1. Without material continuity there’s no conceptual distinction between reincarnation²⁸ and resurrection²⁹. Analogy with Christ’s resurrection. Mysterious, but affirmed.
          2. Suarez affirmed that a human person is a rational animal (a human animal³⁰); we’re living, organic, biological beings₃₁. Even in this life we are characterized by material continuity – a view going back to Aristotle. Hence, true resurrection of a human being should involve material continuity. In support of this, Suarez supplies a Thought Experiment³²: if a man’s whole body was swapped out in a moment, while we might not notice, we would not be correct to judge it the same man. So, imagine – rather than gradual metabolic change over time – all my particles being imperceptibly replaced at once. Then – while we might be fooled – if we knew we’d deny that identity had been preserved. Given that we’re embodied creatures, material continuity matters for personal identity. The same goes for resurrection.
        • Thompson claims that this account sounds bizarre to modern ears₃₃, but that it’s more plausible than it sounds. Thompson thinks that material continuity matters, but hasn’t the time to take it further … maybe in the Q&A.
      • 26:30 – 32:29: 3.2 Cartesian Substance Dualism³⁴,³⁵:
        • Descartes trained in philosophy in a Suarez-influenced school.
        • All substances are either res cogitans (thinking things, which are simple and immaterial) or res extensa (extended things, material substances). Descartes famously argues that thought – the defining attribute of souls or minds – is incompatible with the defining attribute of extended substance. So a human being cannot have both the attributes of embodiment and thought. Contra Suarez, Descartes argues that embodiment cannot be an essential part of the thinking substance that I am. The soul and the body are each complete substances. Descartes’ motivation for this view is that he believes it’ll secure the immortality of the soul and a personal afterlife from the challenge of materialism. If the soul or mind relates to the body merely as an instrument, speculatively via the pineal gland in the brain, then it can survive the death of the body. Hence, I am in the strict sense only a thing that thinks₃₆ – the immaterial part of us. Personal identity is no longer a matter of a body-soul composite. I am my soul, which thinks.
        • It’s often thought that Cartesian strong substance dualism is the traditional view of the theologically-oriented pre-modern philosopher; the last gasp of the ‘ghost in the machine’. But this view is mistaken. While Descartes never wrote anything about the resurrection of the body per se and his reflections on personal identity were cursory and unsystematic₃₇, but several contemporary ‘traditionally-oriented’ philosophers were seriously worried about the implications of Descartes’ views on the human person. An early criticism was that he undermined hylomorphism and therefore a traditional view of the resurrection.
        • Utrecht Disputations₃₈ about philosophical anthropology and resurrection. In 1643, Lambertus vanden Waterlaet argued that Descartes’ view of the soul as a separate and complete substance is unsuitable for refuting the Socinians, who deny that the body is an essential part of the human being, that body plus souls constitutes a substance – the underlying human being – and consequently – according to Descartes – the same body need not be raised. The issue is that the traditional view of resurrection is tied to hylomorphism and is undermined by strong substance dualism. This criticism is also mentioned by Antoine Arnauld₃₉, a colleague of Descartes’, who thought his ideas led back to Platonism which holds that the soul doesn’t have an essential relation to the body.
      • 32:30 – 34:19: 3.3 The Cambridge Platonists₄₀:
        • An under-appreciated mid-17th century group of philosophers that contributed greatly to the topic of personal identity. Henry More₄₁ and Ralph Cudworth₄₂ were the major figures, George Rust₄₃ is less well known. They mediated Cartesian thought to English theology. Like Descartes they contrasted person⁴⁴ and body⁴⁵ in a new way and – unlike him – wrote systematically on resurrection. More writes that it’s certain that man’s personality₄₆ resides in his soul; same soul, same person; changing bodies is like changing clothes. These views were not traditional, but controversial because they made personhood reside in the soul alone.
      • 34:20:00 – 38:59: 3.4 Locke⁴⁷, Consciousness⁴⁸ and Personal Identity:
        • This brings us back to John Locke, possibly the most influential thinker in the metaphysics of personal identity and resurrection in this period₄₉. In the last 10 years of his life, Locke spent a lot of time writing theological tracts, engaging in theological controversies and writing commentaries on parts of the Bible.
        • He wanted to develop a reasonable account of personal identity at resurrection. He read the Cambridge Platonists and had a huge number of Socinian texts in his library and knew Descartes’ works well but felt all these thinkers didn’t go far enough in revising the account of personal identity.
        • He thought that while the ‘soul’ view was an advance on Hylomorphism, it was still too tied to traditional metaphysics. Locke thought you could have identity of soul without identity of Consciousness⁵⁰ or Memory⁵¹ and therefore without identity of Person⁵².
        • He gets the idea from the Platonists that we might have the same soul in Socrates and in Henry More₅₃; but – in that case – in the absence of memory – we don’t have personal identity. Sameness of soul cannot be sufficient for the moral accountability₅₄ that matters for personal resurrection. Quotation from Locke Essay IV.iii.6 to this effect.
        • For Locke, consciousness always accompanies thinking and is that which makes everyone to be what he calls Self⁵⁵. Consciousness⁵⁶ alone is responsible for personal identity. Locke - Essay, Book 2, Chapter 27, Section 9⁵⁷ is cited.
        • Thompson hasn’t time to expatiate further on, or to evaluate, Locke’s account of personal identity at resurrection, but what’s important in this context is that the 17th century began by emphasizing body and soul together at resurrection, but by Locke’s day we have a fully psychologized paradigm. Personal identity consists in the immanent relationships of states of consciousness between death and resurrection.
        • The irony – or even the paradox – is this: all the figures we have discussed are keenly theological, and want to shore up the possibility of an afterlife through some sort of resurrection, but their efforts result in a de-emphasis on the place of a recognizable human body in the metaphysics of resurrection.
      • 39:00:00 – 42:29: 4 Concluding Reflections:
        • The Croatian philosopher Ivan Illich₅₈ spoke about the phenomenon of disembodiment: the increasing western impulse to extricate our sense of Self or personal identity from our bodies.
        • This influenced the ‘great’ Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor₅₉, a recipient of the Templeton Prize, to talk of the ‘buffered self’ or ‘excarnation’, which is the process of an increasing problematization of our bodies in relation to our personhood or selfhood.
        • Taylor and Illich had in mind something like a corporation’s algorithm knows and predicts your behaviour better than you can yourself. So, the social imaginary is that what I really am is the collocation or cloud of data points₆₀ about my decisions and that’s most powerful at predicting my behaviour as a person: a fully disembodied notion of what it is that I am.
        • The term ‘excarnation’ is paradoxical as it arose in the West which has been shaped by the doctrine of incarnation. This requires an explanation. Discussion of whether this turn is a virtue or vice is the topic for another day.
      • 42:30 – 59:11 Q & A’s:
        1. 42:50: ‘Could you speak to the historical development of the doctrines about the resurrection of the dead or indeed of the flesh to the resurrection of the body or indeed a resurrection of bodies?’
           • Apostles Creed₆₁: recited in English as the ‘Resurrection of the Body and the Life Everlasting’. In the original Latin there are two words – body (corpus) and flesh (carnis) – and the latter is used. Strong insistence in the early church of the language of ‘flesh’ rather than ‘body’. Reasons – John 1 – ‘the Word became flesh’. Same body / flesh difference in Greek. Made apologetics and theology a lot harder in the ancient world. ‘Flesh’ emphasizes the very stuff we’re constituted by, not just our shape. The reason is that certain authors in the early Church wanted to say that the Word took on a body – and that bodies (rather than ‘flesh’) will be raised – because it was difficult to explain to Greek culture that Christ came out of the tomb with a recognizably human body: surely he came out with a body that was totally different – not just in quality but in substance. But the early Church Fathers felt that the Scriptures were clear that it was a fleshly body from first to last.
           • This approach continued (almost) without exception until the early modern period when ‘body’ begins to replace ‘flesh’.
        2. 46:19: ‘Is there a clear distinction between Hylomorphism and Hebraic Holism and can the former be traced from the latter?’
           • Great question! The book of Job is a key data point for early Christians trying to theologise the resurrection.
           • Job says₆₂ ‘in my flesh I will stand on earth and see my redeemer’. Flesh – ‘with my own eyes’ – is the emphasis. So, resurrection is a very fleshly one in Hebraic thought.
           • Is there a rupture between Hylomorphism Hebraic Holism and Hylomorphism? The latter has dualistic aspects: most hylomorphists would say that the soul survives the body. The souls absent the body is not who I am – it’s just a part of me awaiting re-embodiment.
           • The answer to the question depends on what is meant by ‘Hebraic Holism’. There are versions which are essentially physicalist – there’s no part of us that survives between death and resurrection. Others – a minority interpretation of the Hebrew Bible – would say there’s an undertone of soft dualism even in the Hebrew scriptures. So, when God breathes into Adam he becomes a living being / soul some have argued that there’s an immaterial part of the human person even though this is not what we are in the strong Greek way. This is taken up by the majority of Church Fathers – that Hylomorphism and Hebraic Holism are compatible.
        3. 49:10: ‘To what extent do Locke’s views on human freedom affect his views on the resurrection, especially in the light of the view that₆₃ the soul is a free gift from God and not tied to the inherited body?’
           • Another great question – that Thompson hasn’t thought about before.
           • Locke doesn’t say anything in particular on the relationship between free will and resurrection, but his general theological outlook is Biblicist – that believers are totally free to hold any range of views theologically as long as it’s explicitly taught – word for word – in Scripture. So, he’s uncomfortable with even Trinitarian theology: ‘three persons in one substance’ is not in the NT, so how can belief in it be required.
           • There’s a famous controversy between Locke and a bishop₆₄ where the latter queries Locke’s approach saying ‘even the resurrection of the body is not there’. Locke agrees, and thereafter refers to the ‘resurrection of the dead’ as that’s the formulation given in Scripture.
           • Locke was aiming at tolerance and theological minimalism – no Creed but the Bible. So, that’s one connection between his views on freedom and toleration for the individual and what he says on resurrection.
           • Thompson doesn’t know of any connection between libertarian freedom and resurrection in Locke’s thought.
        4. 52:15: ‘Could those philosophers who believed in an immaterial soul define what one is, or was it thought to be shorthand for a non-understandable dimension?’
           • Another great question!
           • Descartes is very explicit about what he means by ‘soul / mind / thinking thing’ and gives arguments that it has to be separate from the body. His conception is that it’s a simple thing, not constituted of extended parts. It’s much clearer in Leibnitz₆₅ but in Descartes one of the reasons for holding this view is that the soul unifies in a simple way₆₆ a whole ‘manifold’ of perceptions, thoughts and experiences. The soul is not a physical thing; the point is that we cannot otherwise understand our own cognitive life.
           • Another argument – the most common for early Modern thinkers with regard to the resurrection – we saw earlier in More: we can’t account for identity across time at all if we don’t have a stable seat of personality or personhood, namely the soul. Everyone has known since Aristotle that our bodies turn over matter all the time, so they thought that there must be something that underlies our unity. We persist through time as individuals distinguishable from the matter that surrounds us. The soul provides unity across time.
           • So, that’s his ‘charitable’ response to substance dualism.
        5. 55:40: ‘Sci-Fi idea where you take the memories and consciousness of one person and put it in the body of another, then from a philosophical or theological point of view, which person still exists?’
           • Locke has exactly this TE: the Prince and the Cobbler. They swap personalities and concerns. Locke claims that we’d lean towards the conclusion that the two have ‘swapped bodies’.
           • On Thompson’s own – philosophical and theological – view, Locke’s view that consciousness alone constitutes PID runs into philosophical problems because – whatever we are – we are individuals, and individuals cannot be multiply realized at one time. A problem with the ‘Prince and the Cobbler’ view is that it could be extended to the ‘Prince and the two Cobblers’ so it’d look like one person has turned into two (qualitatively) identical people (since there’s the same evidence for PID in each Cobbler-body). This violates a basic criterion of personhood. So, in the end, Locke’s account needs some kind of substance metaphysics to underlie his account of resurrection.
           • There are several views: ‘soul alone’, hylomorphism, or – today – Animalism⁶⁷ or physicalism whereby I’m identical to this particular organism (this leads to problems for the resurrection, but it’s a view that’s ‘out there’).
           • Either way, you have to appeal to substances to rule out the multiplication of people which is an absurd consequence (of Locke’s view).
6. I’ve spent a fair amount of time reading and commenting on the author’s paper "Thompson (Jon W.) - Individuation, Identity, and Resurrection in Thomas Jackson and John Locke". This has some interesting thoughts on the possibility of resurrection that reject the Lockean psychological view in favour of a materialist account.
7. This has led me to read, re-read or review the following papers:-
   • "Atkinson (Thomas) - Human organisms and the survival of death: a systematic evaluation of the possibility of life after death given animalism",
   • "Ayers (Michael R.) - Locke's Theory of Personal Identity",
   • "Ayers (Michael R.) - Personal Identity Before the Essay",
   • "Gasser (Georg), Ed. - Personal Identity and Resurrection: How Do We Survive Our Death?",
   • "O'Connor (Timothy) & Jacobs (Jonathan D.) - Emergent individuals and the resurrection",
   • "Locke (John) - Of Identity and Diversity",
   • "Loose (Jonathan) - Constitution and the Falling Elevator: The Continuing Incompatibility of Materialism and Resurrection Belief",
   • "Loose (Jonathan) - Materialism Most Miserable The Prospects for Dualist and Physicalist Accounts of Resurrection",
   • "Olson (Eric) - Immanent Causation and Life After Death",
   • "Olson (Eric) - Life After Death and the Devastation of the Grave",
   • "Van Inwagen (Peter) - The Possibility of Resurrection",
   • "Zimmerman (Dean) - The Compatibility of Materialism and Survival: The “Falling Elevator” Model",
   • "Zimmerman (Dean) - Bodily Resurrection: The Falling Elevator Model Revisited"
8. Both of the above bullets are to some degree promissory notes – the tasks are yet to be completed. I think this will be enough. I have no great interest in the minutiae of Locke’s antecedents and motivation beyond what is revealed in the author’s paper, and Ayers’ Chapter above.
9. I further note here that there are parallels between the difficulties of accounting for resurrection and those involved in the TE of Teletransportation⁶⁸, which I’m also working on at the moment.