Theo Todman's Web Page - Paper Abstracts

Author's Introduction

• Suppose that a person P₁ dies some time during I978. Many years later, the resurrection world, a perennial object of Christian concern, begins on the morning of the day of judgment. On its first morning there are in that world distinct persons, P₂ and P₃, each of whom is related in remarkably intimate ways to P₁. You are to imagine that each of them satisfies each of the criteria or conditions necessary for identity with P₁ to some extent, that both of them satisfy these conditions to exactly the same extent, and that every other denizen of the resurrection world satisfies each of these conditions to a lesser extent than P₂ and P₃ do. Thus, for example, philosophers often claim that bodily continuity is a necessary condition for personal identity. If it is, you might assume that the body P₂ has on the morning of the day of judgment contains some of the same atoms the body of P₁ contained when P₁ died, and that P₂'s body on that day contains exactly n atoms from P₁'s body at the time of death just in case P₃'s body on that day contains exactly n atoms from P 's body at the time of death. Or, again, some philosophers hold that connectedness of memory is necessary for personal identity. If so, you are to suppose that on the morning of the day of judgment P₃ seems to remember some of the events in the life of P₁ having happened to him, and that P₃ seems to remember a certain event in the life of P₁ having happened to him just in case P₂ seems to remember that very event in the life of P₁ having happened to him. You are to fill in the details by adding complete parity between P₂ and P₃ with respect to similarity of DNA molecules, character traits and whatever else you deem relevant to personal identity. And, finally, you are to complete the story by imagining that P₂ and P₃ live very different sorts of lives in the resurrection world. To heighten the poignancy of the story, you might imagine that P₂ enjoys forever after the beatitude promised to the blessed while P₃ suffers the everlasting torments reserved for the damned.
• Your finished story will bear certain obvious resemblances to the fascinating cases of fission much discussed in the recent philosophical literature about personal identity. In one respect, it is enigmatic. It contains no account of how the resurrection world comes to be. But presumably Christians will hold that an almighty God has the power to bring about the existence of such a world if he chooses. In another respect, it is a very simple story. It depends upon no special assumptions about the mechanics of cloning, commissurotomy or other marvels of biomedical technology. Its main purpose is to provide a vivid backdrop for some philosophical puzzles about personal identity and the possibility of resurrection. Does P₁ inhabit the resurrection world? Is he P₂? Is he P₃? Both? Neither? If you knew in advance that you were in P₁'s shoes, what should your attitude be? Hope for heavenly bliss? Fear of hellish misery? Both? Neither? Do questions like these have answers? If they do, can we find out what the answers are?
• A picture of the story you have been engaged in building up is provided by the figure above₁. The shaded areas represent the temporally extended histories, lives or careers of P₁, P₂ and P₃. The lines connecting the lives of both P₁ and P₂ and P₁ and P₃ indicate that P₂ and P₃ satisfy to an equal extent all the usual criteria or necessary conditions for identity with P₁. The question, roughly put, is whether one of the two later lives is a resumption of the life which was interrupted by P₁'s death.
• At the outset, two things appear to be obvious. The first is this. P₁ is a single person, and so he could not be both P₂ and P₃. What is at stake is personal identity between inhabitants of this world and of the resurrection world. Identity is, strictly speaking, the relation each thing bears to itself and to nothing else, and so it must be symmetric and transitive. Since P₂ and P₃ are not identical, a single person like P₁ cannot be identical to them both. Since P₁ is just one person, he need not anticipate bliss of heaven and the tortures of hell. He will be identical with at most one of the two people in the resurrection world who most resemble him. He might be more interested in the separate destinies of both these people than in what happens to any other inhabitants of the resurrection world. After all, among inhabitants of the resurrection world, both are maximally like him. But, for better or worse, he will be at most one of the two, and so his proper self-interest is tied to the fate of at most one of them. The second obvious thing is this. The story does not entail that P₁ will live in the resurrection world at all. It says that P₂ and P₃ satisfy equally to some extent each condition necessary for identity with P₁; it does not say that either satisfies any condition sufficient for identity with P₁. Maybe P₁ will never exist again after his death. Perhaps the intimate relation P₂ and P₃ bear to him is only a strong resemblance.
• But, then again, perhaps not. For the story does not entail that P₁ will not live in the resurrection world. Maybe exactly one of P₂ and P₃ is identical with P₁ after all. If so, which one? As the story has been told, this is an especially perplexing question. The story yields no clue about P₂ rather than P₃ is identical with P₁ or whether, instead, P₃ rather than P₂ is identical with P₁. It has been rigged so that the epistemic grounds for our identifications of persons could not settle this issue. Our criteria for identifying and reidentifying persons would be equally well satisfied in either case. Still, epistemic identification is one thing, and metaphysical identity is quite another. So the question may yet have a definite answer. Philosophers have propounded various theories about personal identity which suggest alternative strategies for clearing up this source of perplexity. I intend to discuss three such theories of some interest. Then I shall set forth what I take to be a correct approach to the puzzle. Finally, I shall comment briefly on how it bears on the Christian hope for resurrection.