Abstract
Modal Arguments in the philosophy of mind purport to show that the body is not necessary for a human person’s existence. The key premise in these arguments are generally supported with thought experiments (e.g. I could exist either in some other bodily form or in a disembodied state). I argue that Christians endorsing the Doctrine of the Resurrection have good reason to deny this key premise. Traditional Christianity affirms that eschatological human existence is an embodied existence in the very bodies we inhabited while alive. The raises the Resurrection Question: why would God go through the trouble of resurrecting those bodies? I argue that adequately answering this question requires give up on Modal Arguments within the philosophy of mind.
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Notes
I have no interest in quibbling over how to use these terms. Whether one ‘gets’ to call themselves a physicalist or dualist is not interesting. What is important is clarifying which views of the mind are under criticism in this paper.
Plantinga does not explicitly say B can exist without A.
Baker would reject 10, since the person might continue to exist as constituted by a new body after the old one is destroyed.
Since Corcoran’s version of Constitutionalism claims that human persons are not identical to their body, his account is compatible with the conclusion. However, he rejects Modal Arguments since a specific body is necessary for the person.
My aim in this section is to explicate the Christian Doctrine of the Resurrection, not to argue that it is true, or even defend it. Whether the Christian Doctrine of the Resurrection is true is a different project than I have in this paper, in which I will assume that this doctrine is true and the examine the implications of that claim for the Modal Argument.
Baker argues that her Constitutionalism fits well with the doctrine of the resurrection, but I will not discuss her views in detail here (see Mugg and Turner 2017 for criticisms). Similarly to the dualists I will consider, if she is to account for the Doctrine of the Resurrection, the intuition motivating the Modal Argument is undercut.
Baker denies Identical Embodiment, and has an argument against it, but her argument requires either 1) that it is logically impossible that the eschatological body be destroyed or 2) that something that is biological will, necessarily, cease to exist. I deny both of these claims. See (Mugg and Turner 2017, pp. 128–130 for my argument).
Since Jesus’ resurrection has already happened, but the eschatological resurrection has not, this is an instance of Christian theology’s ‘already and not yet.’ Paul implies in I Cor. 15 that the harvest has begun; its firstfruits are already presented in Jesus’ resurrection, but the full harvest (resurrection of all the dead) is not yet here.
I will not argue that the Doctrine of the Resurrection is true (that is a separate discussion). I only intend to argue that Christianity teaches that God resurrects the antemortem body.
Paul does not mean that Christ’s followers remain ‘asleep’ (i.e. dead). Rather, if there is no resurrection followers of Christ are destroyed/ruined/lost for good. In fact, the euphemism for death, ‘asleep,’ only makes sense if there will be a time at which that human person will (or may) wake up again. That is, the ‘asleep’ euphemism itself points to the resurrection (see Thiselton 2000, p. 1214; Watson 2005, p. 163; Turner 2015, p. 411, 419 notes 15 and 16).
Another text that’s gaining rapid traction in the biblical theology literature advancing this sort of view is Middleton (2014).
See also Fergusson (2000, p. 3).
Baker (2007b) argues that Jesus’ resurrection body could not have been the same as the body that was buried because of qualitative differences. Assuming that there is a solution to the philosophical problem of change over time, that Jesus’ resurrection body was qualitatively different does not bother me. Furthermore, if Jesus’ resurrection body was numerically different than the body buried, it is unclear why Jesus’ tomb was empty. I submit that the reason that Jesus’ tomb was empty was that the body that died was numerically identical to the body that was raised. (see Mugg and Turner 2017).
An anonymous reviewer worries about our ability to use passages, such as 1 Cor. 15, to make points regarding antemortem and postmortem bodies. Stump’s recent work on the importance of the interpretation of (non-philosophical) texts is instructive here. She writes: “Interpretations of texts…do not admit of rigorous argument. [However] we can definitively rule some interpretations out, but it is hard to make a compelling argument that only this interpretation is right….Interpretations present, suggest, offer, and invite; unlike philosophical arguments, they cannot attempt to compel” (2010, p. 27). At the very least, since Baker has used this passage to argue that my formulation of the Doctrine of the Resurrection is mistaken, it is incumbent upon me to find a principled reason to suggest that her interpretation is mistaken.
See Mugg and Turner (2017) for additional arguments against Baker’s understanding of the resurrection.
The point remains if, as is usually maintained by dualists, the soul is simple (i.e. not composed): Paul is not making a metaphysical point about the kind of substance in question. He is making an ethical point.
Emphasis mine.
Note that Baker does not have this ready reply, as she claims that the body is not necessary for the person’s existence.
Distinct, but closely related. The Christian Physicalist, in order to make inference to the best explanation, needs to show that there are no deductive arguments for dualism or against their own view, and the Modal Argument is always put forth as a deductive argument. Thus, my present project could be seen as one part of an overall inference to the best explanation.
Taliaferro claims that embodiment does not require the exercise of all these virtues at once.
There are good reasons to doubt that this response works. First, if one affirms (as most Christians dualists do) an intermediate state as a disembodied state, then that state is not paradisiacal. Second, for those opposing universalism (all enter heaven) or annihilationism (those not entering heaven simply cease to exist), and who think that God resurrects all human persons’ bodies—either to eternal life or eternal judgment—espousing the virtues or goods of embodiment fails to explain why God would resurrect those destined for eternal judgment. Indeed, if embodiment is a great good, it would make more sense if God did not resurrect their bodies as a form of punishment, leaving them damned to be mere souls. (See Turner 2015).
An additional problem with perfect happiness and human flourishing is that, plausibly, God could make the disembodied human person happy and flourish all on his own (without the addition of a body). Interestingly, Adams claims that Bonaventure, who advocated a version of the perfect happiness argument, “admits that even separate from the body, the soul could be (indeed before the resurrection, the souls of the elect are)…happy” (Adams 2012, p. 269). If Adams’ Bonaventure is right, then perfect happiness and human flourishing would not even explain Embodiment, let alone answer the Resurrection Question.
Historically arguments for the resurrection from proper function and metaphysical completeness were advanced by Bonaventure and Aquinas (see Adams 2012 for an introduction and discussion). Although I focus on Swinburne’s treatment of proper function, everything I say applies equally to Bonaventure and Aquinas, mutatis mutandis.
Notice also that claiming that the Intermediate State is undesirable is to deny the Doctrine of the Intermediate State. While I am happy with this implication, Swinburne seems motivated to maintain it. Thanks to J.T. Turner for pointing this out to me.
The same holds for Constitutionalists like Baker, who thinks that the person can be constituted by any number of bodies.
Conn goes on to say that it is possible that we can exist as souls for a time without thereby coming to be souls.
My characterization of Aquinas is controversial. This is not the place determine whether Aquinas’s hylomorphic union account is physicalist or dualist. What is important is that Aquinas’s account, like any Christian account of the human person, will need to pick a horn. If hylomorphic union does allow for the body-swapping, disembodied human persons existing, or Kafka-life metamorphoses, then hylomorphic union falls prey to the first horn of the dilemma.
Mutandis mantis for accounts according to which the individual emerges from the body or organism. These accounts will be able to answer the Resurrection Question, but must let go of the Modal Argument. (See esp. O’Connor and Jacobs 2003, 2010). However, I suspect most emergentists will happily welcome undercutting the Modal Argument.
I do not mean to suggest that dividing nomological, metaphysical, and logical modalities this way is uncontroversial. I am merely trying to read Hasker as charitably as possible. If necessarianism about the laws of nature is true, then Hasker’s move does not work. On his account it would not be logically possible for the self to exist without the nervous system.
I take the word ‘product’ in this word to be mereological rather than generative.
Some dualists, such as Goetz and Taliaferro (2011, p. 214) explicitly claim, contra Descartes, that it is possible for the soul to exist without being conscious. For the sake of argument, I will assume that existence does not imply function.
I have in mind what Armstrong (1981) called ‘minimal consciousness,’ according to which if there are thoughts occurring in the mind, the subject is minimally conscious.
Swinburne (in conversation) resolves the tension by denying Identical Embodiment, claiming that no particular body is metaphysically necessary for the existence or functioning of the soul. I have argued that he is wrong in doing so in the above section.
Turner’s argument hinges on a certain reading of Paul’s claim that if Christ is not raised then Christ’s followers are to be pitied makes no sense if the souls of Christ’s followers are enjoying bliss without their bodies, and that would be true even if resurrection added goods to those human persons in paradise.
Interestingly, both Baker and Corcoran both endorse the Doctrine of the Intermediate State as well, though only Baker uses it to argue for her position (Corcoran merely argues that his view is compatible with it).
Turner is clear that this understanding of the Doctrine of the Intermediate State is compatible with the Catholic (and growing Protestant) Doctrine of Purgatory, according to which some souls are moved to paradise immediately while others endure Purgatory before entering a paradisiacal state prior to the resurrection.
See Turner (2015) for the full argument and extended discussion with Cooper and Harris’s arguments.
One might worry that denying D commits me to ‘soul sleep’ theory, according to which human persons are not conscious between death and resurrection. I do not think that it does, and a re-evaluation of time and eternity is, I suspect, the way to both deny D and ‘soul sleep’ theory. See Turner, under review for a solution to this effect.
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Mugg, J. Can I survive without my body? Undercutting the Modal Argument. Int J Philos Relig 84, 71–92 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-017-9639-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-017-9639-9