Abstract
The focus of this paper is the process of perfecting agents. There are two views that attempt to explain what perfecting an agent looks like, specifically in the context of temporal requirements. One view claims that it is part of Christian orthodoxy that those destined for heaven will be instantaneously changed upon death from imperfect agents to perfect ones. The other view says that it’s impossible to perform an instantaneous change if the agent wants to maintain their personal identity; an instantaneous change from imperfection to perfection would be tantamount to creating a brand-new person, sufficiently causally disconnected from their previous imperfect self. Instead, this view claims that some form of temporal extension is necessary for the process to be successful. I end up in support of the view that says temporal extension is necessary.
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Notes
For instance, some will use Luke 23:46 as support for an immediate change. Here, while on the cusp of death, Jesus tells the thief on the cross, “Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise.” Many will put emphasis on Jesus’ reference to ‘today’ to indicate that he had in mind a very quick change from imperfect to perfect. Others might use 1 John 3:2 to support the immediate view. Here John claims that “We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is.” Some see this emergence of Jesus in his return as causative for the saints’ transformation, and if Jesus’ return is an immediate event, their change must be also. Nevertheless, the passages, along with others, are far from an explicit indication of an immediate change.
“Since in Purgatory we do not make different choices but only see and understand clearly all our past choices, the only virtue there is knowledge, and education there does cure all moral ills” (Kreeft, 1990, p. 64).
“But I will experience it also with the compassion and forgiveness of God, forgiving myself as God forgives me. If we are to believe the resuscitated, we even align ourselves with God's laughter at our repented and forgiven sins. After we remember sin, we can forget it; after we take it seriously, we can laugh at it” (Kreeft, 1990, p. 69).
It appears that Kreeft shares the view the experience of time in heaven will be comparable to that of God eternal experience of time. “Although the stages are in a sense sequential, there is not a single common time measure to date them, for the nature of time itself changes as we move from one stage to another. None of the stages is measurable in clock time” (pp. 56–7).
“One enters immediately and all at once into a state of blessedness. The only caveat is that one's final blessedness awaits full acclimatization to one's new surroundings” (Green, 2015, pp. 156–7).
He also compares purgatory to a detox center. “If this is painful, it is the pain of recovering from the trauma of living in a fallen world and not that of being punished for sins that should already have been atoned for or making the choices necessary to train into oneself dispositions to act rightly. It is over as soon as one has acclimated to one's new context” (2015, p. 151).
‘Lapsable’ refers to those with ‘saving faith’ who have not died and have not been fully sanctified yet (2007, p. 317).
Justin Barnard provides the following analogy in effort to support the intuition here: “There are cases in which medical patients with ordinary curable conditions cannot be cured. This occurs most frequently in situations where the cure requires an operation, but the patient’s general health is such that she could not survive the operation. Thus, while the condition itself is ordinarily curable by means of the operation in question, such a cure is not available to a patient who could not endure the operation. Quite simply, it would kill her…Similarly, it seems reasonable to imagine that God’s instantaneous and unilateral transmutation of a lapsable [imperfect] individual into a sanctified [perfected] one is an operation that simply could not be endured” (2007, p. 318).
Of course, Hume would say that we never have a recognition of the ‘self’, given that all we do have, when we recall experiences, are various sensations, wrapped up and bundled. “Unluckily all these positive assertions are contrary to that very experience, which is pleaded for them, nor have we any idea of self, after the manner it is here explain’d. For from what impression cou’d this idea be deriv’d? This question’tis impossible to answer without a manifest contradiction and absurdity; and yet’tis a question, which must necessarily be answer’d, if we wou’d have the idea of self pass for clear and intelligible. It must be some one impression, that gives rise to every real idea. But self or person is not any one impression, but that to which our several impressions and ideas are suppos’d to have a reference. If any impression gives rise to the idea of self, that impression must continue invariably the same, thro’ the whole course of our lives; since self is suppos’d to exist after that manner. But there is no impression constant and invariable. Pain and pleasure, grief and joy, passions and sensations succeed each other, and never all exist at the same time. It cannot, therefore, be from any of these impressions, or from any other, that the idea of self is deriv’d; and consequently there is no such idea” (1739/2007, Treatise, 1.4.6.2). Nevertheless, I tend to agree with Swinburne concerning Hume’s position; when Hume claims that what he recalls are instances of sensations or ‘impressions’, he is not recalling mere sensations, “but simultaneous coinstantiations of ‘perceptions’, or successions of overlapping ‘perceptions’ experienced by a common subject himself” (my italics, 2013, p. 161, fn. 26).
While the psychological continuity position is a popular one among philosophers, it still has many problems (the case of fission, for example), though I’m not aware of any proposed criteria of personal identity that doesn’t.
Of course, these comments appear to conflict with the example of the King of China that Leibniz made earlier in this chapter. Harold Noonan, however, believes the distinctions in the two passages are not as radically different as they appear (Noonan, 2019, p. 50).
I thank my wife for this point.
Elsewhere in the article, Chalmers provides a little more detail of this gradual process: “The computational elements are connected to input and output devices (artificial eyes and ears, limbs, and bodies), perhaps in an ordinary physical environment or perhaps in a virtual environment. On receiving a visual input, say, the upload goes through processing isomorphic to what goes on in the original brain. First artificial analogs of eyes and the optic nerve are activated, then computational analogs of lateral geniculate nucleus and the visual cortex, then analogs of later brain areas, ultimately resulting in a (physical or virtual) action analogous to one produced by the original brain” (p. 105).
The idea of gradual replacement of brain parts is not a new one. See Swinburne (2013, pp. 155–57) for an account that does not involve uploading or computational elements.
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Henderson, L. Perfecting agents. Int J Philos Relig 93, 83–105 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-022-09854-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-022-09854-x