Personal identity and Purgatory

Religious Studies

Volumn 42, Issue 4, 2006, Pages 439-451

  Hershenov, David B ^a   Koch Hershenov, Rose ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO   (United States)

^b NIAGARA UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 64949196637     PISSN: 00344125     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S003441250600847X     Document Type: Review

References (39)

1. Sydney Shoemaker 'Self, body and coincidence', Aristotelian Society Supplement, (1999), 287-306, at 291
2. The Catechism tells us that 'the union of body and soul is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the 'form' of the body: i.e. it is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living, human body. Spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united but rather their union forms a single nature'; Catechism of the Catholic Church (New York NY: Random House, 1993), 365
3. See Thomas Aquinas Being and Essence, ch. 2
4. Summa Theologica [hereafter ST], I q. 75, q. 76
5. Perhaps people are misled by the materialist phenomena where people become smaller and composed of the same objects that earlier composed a part of them. But this should probably be interpreted as the person became spatially coincident with what was before a proper part. This is by no means the only description of the phenomena, but it is the most common and the one we endorse
6. Thomas Aquinas Commentary on St Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians, 15.17-19, found in Timothy McDermott (ed.) Aquinas: Selected Philosophical Writings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 192-193
7. Pope John Paul II, in a General Audience of 1999, described Purgatory as a 'state and not a place', and so applies to the souls of the living as well as the dead
8. This idea was suggested to us by Todd Bindig
9. The conceptual ties between memory and identity was the basis of Butler's critique of Locke's memory criterion for identity. However, it has been claimed that philosophers wrongly resort to a 'conventionalist sulk' rather that admit that some recollections are not trustworthy. This charge has been levelled by Peter Geach God and the Soul (South Bend IN: Saint Augustine Press, 1969), 11
10. Derek Parfit Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 220
11. Aquinas ST, XP q. 71 a.6
12. This concern can be described as 'quasi-prudential concern' for the same reason earlier gave for quasi-memories
13. See Parfit Reasons and Persons, 282-306
14. For a more extensive and recent account of the thesis that it is not identity that matters to us, see Jeff McMahan The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)
15. One might manipulate the classical logic of identity and argue that the two post-transplant persons were once identical to each other, but are no longer. See Andre Gallois Occasions of Identity: The Metaphysics of Persistence, Change and Sameness (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998)
16. Or one might adopt a Lewisian account of two four-dimensional worms sharing a person stage prior to fissioning. A related and perhaps even more counter-intuitive approach is to speak of a single short-lived person stage that is not part of a person worm but instead has two temporal counterparts. This approach can be found in Ted Sider Four-Dimensionalism: The Ontology of Persistence and Time (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 188-208
17. Resurrection is not exactly analogous to Parfitian fusion. Resurrection doesn't involve the soul ceasing to exist but becoming once again a part of a human being as that is a composite of soul and matter. Psychological fusion, on the other hands, involves two thinking beings going out of existence and a third emerging with the mental life produced by elements of both its precursors. Parfit conjectures that the combination of different desires, characteristics, and different intentions might result in 'Some of these being compatible. These can coexist in the one resulting person. Some will be incompatible. These, if of equal strength, can cancel out, and if of different strengths, the stronger can be made weaker'; Derek Parfit 'Personal identity', Philosophical Review, 80 (1971), 3-27, at 18
18. For doubts about the Parfitian claim see Peter Unger Identity, Consciousness and Value (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 211-254
19. Idem 'The mental problems of the many', Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, 2004
20. Aquinas, ST, 1 q. 75 a.3
21. The materialist might even deny that the whole brain (cerebrum, lower brain and brainstem) could ever think, i.e. be a subject of thought. Perhaps the materialist would argue that even if the rest of the body was cut away from the brain, it doesn't think. Instead it constitutes a person who thinks. For such an account, see Lynne Rudder Baker Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). The Thomist doesn't have that luxury, denying thought to the soul as the materialist denies it to the brain, since he is committed to the disembodied soul thinking in the afterlife
22. See nn. 27 and 28
23. These examples are respectively from McMahan The Ethics of Killing
24. and Ingmar Persson 'Our identity and the separability of persons and organisms', Dialogue, 38 (1999), 519-533
25. For a critique of McMahan and Persson, see David B. Hershenov 'Persons as proper parts of organisms', Theoria, 71 (2005), 29-37
26. For an account of what mereological axioms must be given up see Judith Thomson 'The statue and the clay', Nous, 32 (1998), 149-173
27. and Baker Persons and Bodies, 179-185
28. We are ignoring the roots being part of the tree but not the trunk. If the reader is bothered by that, he can always use an example of the car losing a bumper and coming to be spatially coincident with an object that was before but a proper part
29. The replacement of the trunk has been defended by Michael Burke 'Preserving the principle of one object to a place: a novel account of the relationship among objects, sorts, sortals and persistence conditions', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 54 (1994), 591-624
30. Burke even labels the positing of spatially coincident entities the 'standard account' given the popularity amongst philosophers; Michael Burke 'Copper statues and pieces of copper: a challenge to the standard account', Analysis, 52 (1992), 12-17, at 12-13
31. Thomas Aquinas Faith, Reason, and Theology, questions I-IV of the Commentary on Boethius' De Trinitate, Armand Maurer (tr.) (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1986), q. 4 a. 3. Aquinas has in mind the biblical account of the resurrected Jesus passing through the wall of the upper room to greet the Apostles
32. Eric Olson 'A composite of two substances', in K. Corcoran (ed.) Soul, Body, and Survival, (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), 73-88
33. One reason for this claim is that the object of thought is immaterial, and so there must be an immaterial part to which the power of thought can be attributed. Aquinas writes: 'If the intellect were corporeal, its activities would not reach beyond the order of bodies. So it would understand only bodies. But this is patently false. For we understand many things that are not bodies. Therefore the intellect is not corporeal'; Thomas Aquinas Summa Contra Gentiles, II, 49. Because the intellect is incorporeal, the rational soul, of which the intellect is a power, is also said to be immaterial. So that means that the powers of the soul and the human being aren't all a result of matter being configured
34. Aquinas ST, I, q. 77 a.5
35. E. J. Lowe A Survey of Metaphysics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 70
36. For a related discussion of brute natures and persistence conditions see Baker Persons and Bodies, 187
37. and E. J. Lowe The Possibility of Metaphysics: Substance, Identity and Change (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 174-189
38. There is some evidence that Descartes' official line is that the human being is identical to the soul and doesn't possess a body as a part but stands in an intimate relationship with the soul. But for reasons to interpret the human being as a composite see Olson 'A composite of two substances', 73-74
39. Our materialist Christian is not denying the existence of immaterial beings, just denying that we are such creatures. For an example of a Christian materialist, see Peter van Inwagen 'Dualism and materialism: Athens and Jerusalem?', Faith and Philosophy, 12 (1995), 475-488