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Personal Identity

Corpses

(Text as at 06/07/2023 00:43:12)

Plug Note¹

• Thesis Text:
  1. The “Corpse Problem”
     • Corpses are troublesome² for animalism³, which alleges (correctly in my view) that corpses are not animals⁴.
     • The claim is that, at death⁵, something ontologically⁶ new comes on the scene – because a corpse has different persistence⁷ conditions⁸ (those of masses of matter⁹) to those of organisms¹⁰.
     • Some philosophers – eg. Fred Feldman, in "Feldman (Fred) - The Survival of Death" – disagree. Feldman claims that we survive¹¹ death¹², but – rather disappointingly – as a corpse, which solves the “corpse problem”, but at the cost – most likely – of saying that we are bodies¹³ rather than organisms¹⁴.
     • The problem if we don’t survive death as our corpses – it is said – is to answer the question where the corpse comes from, and to answer the objection that if it was there all along – as a “corpse-to-be” – then we have a situation where we have two things of different sorts¹⁵ in the same place¹⁶ at the same time.
     • If this is taken seriously, then it can be used against the form of the animalism’s “too many thinkers¹⁷” argument.
     • I’m willing to accept that this “thinking animal” argument is unsound. However, just how the analogy would work for the “corpse-to-be” needs to be spelled out. The corpse has the persistence conditions¹⁸ of a mass of matter¹⁹. What are the persistence conditions²⁰ of the “corpse-to-be”? If they are those of an organism²¹, then then the corpse-to-be cannot be the same individual²² as the corpse, though the Constitution View²³ might be happy with this situation.
  2. Resurrection
     • Corpses are probably also important for most Christian materialists²⁴ who hope for some form of resurrection²⁵.
     • If there is a corpse to be resurrected²⁶, it is easier to see how identity is preserved than if we have total destruction. This is obviously so in the case of resuscitation, but even where we have a real case of death²⁷ – not just clinical death, or brain death²⁸, but real death with a bit of mouldering – there is some physical thing that is responsible for preserving identity.

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  Further Remarks:
  1. This Note overlaps somewhat with the following:-
     • Death²⁹, and
     • Resurrection³⁰
  2. I have tried to avoid items appearing in their reading-lists from the reading lists below.

References

• Relevant Works cited above:
  1. "Feldman (Fred) - The Survival of Death", 1992, Read
• For a Page of Links³¹ to this Note, Click here.
• Works on this topic that I’ve actually read³², include the following:-
  • Aeon:
    1. "Kaufman (Sharon) - Neither person nor cadaver", 2020, External Link, Internal PDF Link
    2. "Press (Michael) - Mummies among us", 2020, External Link, Internal PDF Link
  • General:
    1. "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - When Do Persons Begin and End?", 2005, Annotations, External Link, Internal PDF Link
    2. "Carter (William) - Death and Bodily Transfiguration", 1984, Annotations, Internal PDF Link
    3. "Carter (William) - Will I Be a Dead Person?", 1999, Annotations, Internal PDF Link
    4. "Feldman (Fred) - A Materialist Conception of Death", 1992
    5. "Feldman (Fred) - The Survival of Death", 1992
    6. "Francescotti (Robert) - Fetuses, corpses and the psychological approach to personal identity", 2005, Annotations, Internal PDF Link
    7. "Hershenov (David) - Do Dead Bodies Pose a Problem for Biological Approaches to Personal Identity", 2005, Annotations, External Link, Internal PDF Link
    8. "Lockwood (Michael) - When Does a Life Begin?", 1987, Annotations
    9. "Mackie (David) - Personal Identity and Dead People", 1999, Annotations, Internal PDF Link
    10. "Olson (Eric) - Animalism and the Corpse Problem", 2004, Annotations, Internal PDF Link
    11. "Olson (Eric) - Immanent Causation and Life After Death", 2010, Write-Up Note³³, Annotations, External Link, Internal PDF Link
    12. "Olson (Eric) - The Person and the Corpse", 2015, Annotations, External Link, Internal PDF Link
    13. "Olson (Eric) - Thinking Animals and the Constitution View", 2001, Write-Up Note³⁴, Annotations, Internal PDF Link
    14. "Rosenberg (Jay) - Bodies, Corpses, and Chunks of Matter: A Reply to Carter", 1984, Annotations, Internal PDF Link
    15. "Shoemaker (David) - Personal Identity, Rational Anticipation, and Self-Concern", 2009
    16. "Thomas (Janice L.) - What matters for survival and the logical possibility of resurrection", 2000
    17. "Wilson (Jack) - Beyond Horses and Oak Trees: A New Theory of Individuation for Living Entities", 1999, Annotations
    18. "Yourgrau (Palle) - Can the Dead Really Be Buried?", 2000, Annotations, Internal PDF Link
    19. "Zimmerman (Dean) - Bodily Resurrection: The Falling Elevator Model Revisited", 2010, Annotations, Internal PDF Link
• A further reading list might start with:-
  • General:
    1. "Bullinger (E.W.) - The Rich Man and Lazarus - the Intermediate State", 1902/1992, Book, Read = 3%
    2. "DeGrazia (David) - Human Persons: Numerical Identity and Essence", 2005, Internal PDF Link, Read = 6%
    3. "Feldman (Fred) - Death and the Disintegration of Personality", 2015, Read = 6%
    4. "Hershenov (David) - Death, Persons, and Sparse Ontologies: The Problem of Too Many Dying Thinkers", Undated, External Link, Internal PDF Link, Read = 33%
    5. "Hershenov (David) - Organisms and their Bodies: Response to LaPorte", 2009, External Link, Internal PDF Link, Read = 17%
    6. "Hudson (Hud) - Pre-Persons, Post-Persons, Non-Persons, and Person-Parts", 2001
    7. "Johnston (Mark) - Is Heaven a Place We Can Get To? Addendum: From Corpse Snatching To Identity Voluntarism", 2010, Read = 3%
    8. "LaPorte (Joseph) - On Two Reasons for Denying That Bodies Can Outlast Life", 2009, Internal PDF Link
    9. "Sauchelli (Andrea) - The animal, the corpse, and the remnant-person", 2016, Internal PDF Link, Read = 8%
    10. "Scheick (William J.) - The Author's Corpse and the Humean Problem of Personal Identity in Hawthorne's 'The House of the Seven Gables'", 1992, Internal PDF Link

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• For a list of Works that have been considered, but have missed the cut for inclusion in this Section of my Thesis, see the following:-
  1. Read: No items to list.
  2. Further Reading: No items to list.
• This is mostly a place-holder³⁵.

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Table of the Previous 9 Versions of this Note:

Date	Length	Title
20/09/2022 11:24:00	4809	Corpses
16/05/2022 21:18:43	4362	Corpses
09/02/2021 21:59:02	3972	Corpses
18/09/2020 21:24:29	3159	Corpses
07/02/2018 19:42:14	3841	Corpses
05/04/2016 23:19:41	1523	Corpses
27/06/2011 18:57:36	526	Corpses
26/11/2007 23:25:26	505	Corpses
12/08/2007 10:17:46	80	Corpses

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Note last updated	Reading List for this Topic	Parent Topic
06/07/2023 00:43:12	Corpses	Death

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Summary of Notes Referenced by This Note

Animalism	Animalism - Objections	Animals	Awaiting Attention (Personal Identity)	Body
Brain Death	Christian Materialism	Coincidence	Constitution View	Death
Individual	Matter	Note Links Explanation	Olson - Immanent Causation and Life After Death	Olson - Persons and Bodies - Response
Ontology	Organisms	Persistence	Persistence Criteria	Plug Note Apologia
Resurrection	Sortals	Survival	Thinking Animal Argument	Works Read - Explanation

To access information, click on one of the links in the table above.

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Summary of Notes Citing This Note

Animalism	Animalism - Objections	Baker - Materialism with a Human Face, 2	Bodily Continuity	Body Criterion
Clones	Connectedness vs Continuity	Death	DeGrazia - Are We Essentially Persons?	Immortality
Matter	Metamorphosis	Olson	Olson - Immanent Causation and Life After Death	Olson - What Are We? Animals
Organisms	PID Note, Book & Paper Usage, 2, 3	Resurrection, 2	Thesis - Chapter 02 (What are We?), 2	Thesis - Chapter 04 (Basic Metaphysical Issues), 2
Thesis - Chapter 05 (Persistence and Time)	Thesis - Chapter 06 (Animalism and Arguments for It), 2, 3	Thesis - Chapter 08 (Arguments against Animalism)	Thesis - Chapter 10 (Thought Experiments)	Thesis - Chapter 11 (Resurrection), 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
Thesis - Current Stance	Thesis - Personal Identity, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22	Website Generator Documentation - Functors, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

To access information, click on one of the links in the table above.

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Authors, Books & Papers Citing this Note

Author	Title	Medium	Extra Links	Read?
Ayers (Michael R.)	Locke on Living Things	Paper		Yes
Baker (Lynne Rudder)	Materialism with a Human Face	Paper	2	Yes
Baker (Lynne Rudder)	When Do Persons Begin and End?	Paper		Yes
Blatti (Stephan)	We Are Animals	Paper	2	Yes
Bloom (Paul)	Free Will Does Not Exist. So What?	Paper
Burstein (Norman)	Strawson on the Concept of a Person	Paper
Carter (William)	Death and Bodily Transfiguration	Paper		Yes
Carter (William)	Will I Be a Dead Person?	Paper		Yes
Cooper (John)	Body, Soul and Life Everlasting: Preface to the Second Printing	Paper	2	Yes
Corcoran (Kevin)	Dualism, Materialism and the Problem of Post Mortem Survival	Paper
Corcoran (Kevin)	I Believe in the Resurrection of the Body and the Life of the World to Come	Paper
DeGrazia (David)	Are we essentially persons? Olson, Baker, and a reply	Paper		Yes
DeGrazia (David)	Human Persons: Numerical Identity and Essence	Paper
Dennett (Daniel)	Where Am I?	Paper		Yes
Donnelly (John)	Suicide and Rationality	Paper	2
Feldman (Fred)	A Materialist Conception of Death	Paper	2, 3	Yes
Feldman (Fred)	Death and the Disintegration of Personality	Paper	2, 3, 4, 5
Feldman (Fred)	Life-Functional Theories of Life	Paper		Yes
Feldman (Fred)	The Survival of Death	Paper	2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10	Yes
Feldman (Fred)	The Termination Thesis	Paper		Yes
Feldman (Fred)	Vitalist Theories of Life	Paper	2	Yes
Gasser (Georg)	Personal Identity and Resurrection: Introduction	Paper	2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7	Yes
Graziano (Michael)	Endless fun	Paper		Yes
Green (James W.)	Beyond the Good Death: The Anthropology of Modern Dying	Book	2
Guerrini (Anita)	The rights of the dead	Paper		Yes
Hanley (Richard)	The Metaphysics of Star Trek: To Beam or Not to Beam?	Paper		Yes
Hershenov (David)	Do Dead Bodies Pose a Problem for Biological Approaches to Personal Identity	Paper		Yes
Hershenov (David)	Organisms and their Bodies: Response to LaPorte	Paper	2
Hershenov (David)	Van Inwagen, Zimmerman, and the Materialist Conception of Resurrection	Paper
Hudson (Hud)	A Materialist Metaphysics of the Human Person	Book
Hudson (Hud)	Pre-Persons, Post-Persons, Non-Persons, and Person-Parts	Paper
Johnston (Mark)	Is Heaven a Place We Can Get To? Addendum: From Corpse Snatching To Identity Voluntarism	Paper
Kaufman (Sharon)	Neither person nor cadaver	Paper		Yes
Kotak (Aakash)	The Hybrid Theory of Personal Identity	Paper
LaPorte (Joseph)	On Two Reasons for Denying That Bodies Can Outlast Life	Paper
Larkin (William S.)	Persons, Animals, and Bodies	Paper	2, 3, 4
Levy (Steven)	Artificial Life: The Quest for a New Creation	Paper
Liao (S. Matthew)	The Organism View Defended	Paper		Yes
Lockwood (Michael)	When Does a Life Begin?	Paper		Yes
Mackie (David)	Personal Identity and Dead People	Paper	2, 3, 4	Yes
Markosian (Ned)	Identifying the Problem of Personal Identity	Paper
Moore (Adrian W.)	Is the quest for immortality worse than death?	Paper		Yes
Olding (A.)	Resurrection Bodies and Resurrection Worlds	Paper
Olson (Eric)	Immanent Causation and Life After Death	Paper		Yes
Olson (Eric)	Is there a Bodily Criterion of Personal Identity	Paper
Olson (Eric)	Psychology and Personal Identity	Paper	2, 3	Yes
Olson (Eric)	The Person and the Corpse	Paper	2, 3, 4, 5, 6	Yes
Olson (Eric)	Thinking Animals and the Constitution View	Paper		Yes
Olson (Eric)	What Are We? Animals	Paper		Yes
Olson (Eric)	Why We Need Not Accept the Psychological Approach	Paper		Yes
Price (Marjorie)	Identity Through Time	Paper
Puccetti (Roland)	The Conquest of Death	Paper	2, 3
Rosenberg (Jay)	Bodies, Corpses, and Chunks of Matter: A Reply to Carter	Paper	2	Yes
Rosenberg (Jay)	Death and Personhood: Conceptual Preliminaries	Paper
Shoemaker (David)	Personal Identity and Immortality	Paper		Yes
Shoemaker (David)	Personal Identity, Rational Anticipation, and Self-Concern	Paper	2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12	Yes
Shoemaker (Sydney)	Thinking Animals Without Animalism	Paper
Thomas (Janice L.)	What matters for survival and the logical possibility of resurrection	Paper	2	Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Animalism	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Animalism - Objections	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Bodily Continuity	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Body Criterion	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Chapter 02 (What Are We?)	Paper	2	Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Chapter 04 (Basic Metaphysical Issues)	Paper	2	Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Chapter 05 (Persistence and Time)	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Chapter 06 (Animalism and Arguments for It)	Paper	2, 3	Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Chapter 08 (Arguments against Animalism)	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Chapter 10 (Thought Experiments)	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Chapter 11 (Resurrection)	Paper	2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9	Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Clones	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Connectedness vs Continuity	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Current Position	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Death	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Immortality	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Matter	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Metamorphosis	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Olson	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Organisms	Paper		Yes
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Personal Identity	Paper	2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Resurrection	Paper	2	Yes
Tzinman (Rina)	Memory, Organisms and the Circle of Life	Paper	2
Wiles (Maurice)	God's Action in Christ	Paper		Yes
Wiles (Maurice)	Where Does God Act?	Paper		Yes
Williamson (Colwyn)	Attitudes towards the body: Philosophy and common sense	Paper
Wilson (Jack)	Beyond Horses and Oak Trees: A New Theory of Individuation for Living Entities	Paper		Yes
Zimmerman (Dean)	Bodily Resurrection: The Falling Elevator Model Revisited	Paper	2, 3, 4, 5	Yes

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References & Reading List

Author	Title	Medium	Source	Read?
Baker (Lynne Rudder)	When Do Persons Begin and End?	Paper - Cited	Distinguished Faculty Lecture, December 5, 2005	Yes
Bradley (Ben), Feldman (Fred) & Johansson (Jens)	The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Death	Book - By Subtopic (via Paper By Subtopic)	Bradley (Ben), Feldman (Fred) & Johansson (Jens) - The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Death	7%
Bullinger (E.W.)	The Rich Man and Lazarus - the Intermediate State	Book - Cited	Bullinger (E.W.) - The Rich Man and Lazarus - the Intermediate State	3%
Bullinger (E.W.)	The Rich Man and Lazarus - the Intermediate State	Paper - By Subtopic	Bullinger - The Rich Man and Lazarus - the Intermediate State	12%
Carter (William)	Death and Bodily Transfiguration	Paper - Cited	Mind, 1984, 412-418	Yes
Carter (William)	Will I Be a Dead Person?	Paper - Cited	Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Mar99, Vol. 59 Issue 1, p167, 5p;	Yes
DeGrazia (David)	Human Identity and Bioethics	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	7%
DeGrazia (David)	Human Persons: Numerical Identity and Essence	Paper - Cited	DeGrazia - Human Identity and Bioethics, 2005, Chapter 2	6%
Feldman (Fred)	A Materialist Conception of Death	Paper - Cited	Feldman - Confrontations with the Reaper, Chapter 7	Yes
Feldman (Fred)	Confrontations with the Reaper: A Philosophical Study of the Nature and Value of Death	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	Yes
Feldman (Fred)	The Survival of Death	Paper - Cited	Feldman - Confrontations with the Reaper, Chapter 6	Yes
Francescotti (Robert)	Fetuses, corpses and the psychological approach to personal identity	Paper - Cited	Philosophical Explorations, Mar2005, Vol. 8 Issue 1, p69-81, 13p	Yes
Hains (Brigid) & Hains (Paul)	Aeon: G-K	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	30%
Hershenov (David)	Death, Persons, and Sparse Ontologies: The Problem of Too Many Dying Thinkers	Paper - By Subtopic	American Philosophical Association Newsletter on Philosophy and Medicine. Forthcoming.	33%
Hershenov (David)	Do Dead Bodies Pose a Problem for Biological Approaches to Personal Identity	Paper - Cited	Mind, 114, Number 453, 1 January 2005, pp. 31-59(29).	Yes
Hershenov (David)	Organisms and their Bodies: Response to LaPorte	Paper - By Subtopic	Mind, Vol. 118, No. 471 (Jul., 2009), pp. 803-809	17%
Kaufman (Sharon)	Neither person nor cadaver	Paper - Cited	Aeon, 06 February, 2020	Yes
LaPorte (Joseph)	On Two Reasons for Denying That Bodies Can Outlast Life	Paper - By Subtopic	Mind, Vol. 118, No. 471 (Jul., 2009), pp. 795-801	No
Lockwood (Michael)	When Does a Life Begin?	Paper - Cited	Lockwood - Moral Dilemmas in Modern Medicine, 1987	Yes
Lockwood (Michael), Ed.	Moral Dilemmas in Modern Medicine	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	29%
Luper (Steven)	Mortal Harm	Paper - By Subtopic	Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 57, No. 227 (Apr., 2007), pp. 239-251	17%
Luper (Steven)	Past Desires and the Dead	Paper - By Subtopic	Philosophical Studies; Dec. 2005, Vol. 126 Issue 3, p331-345, 15p	17%
Mackie (David)	Personal Identity and Dead People	Paper - Cited	Philosophical Studies 95, Number 3, September 1999, pp. 219-242(24).	Yes
Martin (Michael G.F.), Ed.	Mind - 114/453 (January 2005)	Book - Cited (via Paper Cited)	Bibliographical details to be supplied	11%
Olson (Eric)	The Person and the Corpse	Paper - By Subtopic	Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Death; ed. Ben Bradley, Fred Feldman, and Jens Johansson (OUP, 2015), pp. 80-96	Yes
Press (Michael)	Mummies among us	Paper - Cited	Aeon, 2020	Yes
Quinn (Philip L.)	Review of Antony Flew's 'The Logic of Mortality'	Paper - By Subtopic	Nous, Vol. 26, No. 1, Mar., 1992, pp. 102-104	Yes
Rosenberg (Jay)	Bodies, Corpses, and Chunks of Matter: A Reply to Carter	Paper - By Subtopic	Mind, 1984, 419-422	Yes
Sauchelli (Andrea)	The animal, the corpse, and the remnant-person	Paper - By Subtopic	Philosophical Studies: Published online on 20 April 2016	8%
Todman (Theo)	Thesis - Corpses	Paper - By Subtopic		Yes
Vorobej (Mark)	Past Desires	Paper - By Subtopic	Philosophical Studies; Vol. 90, No. 3 (Jun., 1998) (pp. 305-318)	No

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1. Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2025

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