Abstract
Sosa has viewed personal identity as a function of the causal continuity and connectedness of person-stages. I question whether this sort of approach provides a logically sufficient condition of personal identity. Yet, I find much to recommend in Sosa’s broadly Aristotelian account of persons, an account which implies that a person is not a Cartesian soul, or a Hobbesian body, but rather is “the embodiment by a body of a personal profile.” In defense of this account, Sosa ingeniously argues against the possibility of Cartesian souls on the ground that Diversity Cannot Stand Alone and against the possibility of dualistic interaction on the ground that causal relations supervene on qualitative noncausal factors. Both of these arguments are critically assessed. Finally, Sosa puts forward an apparent dilemma for his broadly Aristotelian ontology of physical substances, including people, namely, either (i) there is an “explosion of reality” (e.g., a spherical piece of snow constitutes infinitely many colocated physical objects), (ii) only noncompound physical objects exist, or (iii) the existence of a physical object is relative to a conceptual scheme. After discussing Sosa’s response to this apparent dilemma, I discuss a fourth alternative which incorporates a form of naturalism and which has some advantages.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Sosa (1990, pp. 297–8).
- 2.
Each such scenario is “possible” in the sense of being a broadly logical or metaphysical possibility, a scientific or physical possibility, or an epistemic possibility. With respect to scenarios involving personal survival through teletransportation, Sosa writes as follows. “For simplicity we abstract from the possibility of survival through teletransportation, about which we suspend judgment; which means that we suspend judgment on how thin the physical component of a personal profile can be on any given occasion compatibly with that personal profile constituting a person on that occasion” (Sosa 1990, p. 298). Thus, Sosa does not accept that survival through teletransportation is metaphysically possible, though he seems willing to allow that such scenarios are epistemically possible. For a defense of the metaphysical possibility of a physical object’s “jumping” through space (or time), so that its object-stages form a spatiotemporally discontinuous sequence, see Hoffman and Rosenkrantz (1994, Chap. 5, Sect. ix). This defense is based on the epistemic argument that one can justify reidentification claims about physical objects other than oneself only by means of inductive or nondeductive reasoning. In particular, one’s justification of such claims is ultimately based upon one’s perceptions, at different times, of resemblances in sensory properties exemplified at those times, and which may further involve causal reasoning, inference to the best explanation, and so forth. Yet, such a nondeductive justification of a reidentification claim need not involve the premise that the stages of the physical object one seeks to reidentify form a spatiotemporally continuous sequence. If it is metaphysically possible that a physical object “jumps” through space in a discontinuous manner, then personal survival through teletransportation in a straightforward sense is metaphysically possible.
- 3.
See Shoemaker (1997).
- 4.
The schematic letters F and G may be replaced with an appropriate predicate expression.
- 5.
In Rosenkrantz (2012), I advance an account of the identity of a carbon-based living organism, O, in terms of the identity of O’s “master-part,” a proper part of O which is vital, essential, and controlling. This account includes definitions of what it is for a proper part of O to be vital, essential, and controlling (or regulatory). According to that account, necessarily, a carbon-based living organism O at time t is identical with a carbon-based living organism O* at time t* if and only if O’s master-part at t is identical with O*’s master-part at t*. Note that such an account makes no reference to the causal continuity and connectedness of organism-stages. Furthermore, it appears that if human persons are carbon-based living organisms, then (i) personhood is a possibly temporary phase of a living human organism, a phase that no human organism is in at every moment of its life, and (ii) an account of the identity of carbon-based living organisms provides an account of the identity of human persons (Cf. footnote 9).
- 6.
- 7.
For further discussion of the concept of a material object and of the broader concept of a physical object, see Hoffman and Rosenkrantz (1994, Chap. 1) and (1997, pp. 1–8). Hoffman and Rosenkrantz argue, for example, that, in principle, two material objects (“bodies,” “pieces of matter”) cannot be in the same place at the same time, whereas two physical objects can; a physical object can survive the loss of a part, whereas a material object cannot; and, necessarily, a material object is three-dimensional, whereas a physical object need not be.
- 8.
The preceding line of reasoning can be found in the very last paragraph of Sosa (1984). I quote this paragraph in its entirety: “A person passes away without the vanishing of his body, since it’s his body we bury. It follows that the person is never identical to his body. There remains then only the other possibility: that the person supervenes on a live body with certain abilities and capacities. When a body loses life, it no longer constitutes a person. Thus the person is not identical with any body, but is constituted by some body when that body has the properties required for such constitution. Supervening as a person always does on his body (or a part), the person is superveniently located where his body (or a part) is located; it is this spatial relation with his body that enables the causal interaction between them.”
- 9.
Like Eric Olson (1997), my colleague Joshua Hoffman, and I (1997) favor the “animalist” view that human persons are living organisms as well as the “essentialist” view that animate beings are necessarily animate. However, animalism entails that human persons are contingently persons. In particular, animalists maintain that human persons were not persons at the beginnings of their lives. Lynn Baker (2000) rejects the animalist view and holds that persons are necessarily persons. Fred Feldman (1992), who advocates “cheap immortality” for living things in general, including human persons, rejects the essentialist view that animate beings are necessarily animate. Philosophers like Feldman do not find it intrinsically credible that an animate being is necessarily animate and, accordingly, would reject the claim that an animate being either necessarily possesses a capacity to engage in certain basic psychological activities or necessarily possesses a capacity to engage in certain basic physical life activities.
- 10.
An argument lending credence to that essentialist claim can be found in Rosenkrantz (2012).
In that paper, I put forward and defend the metaphysical claim that carbon-based living organisms are necessarily alive. My defense of this claim is based upon the following three theses: (i) carbon-based living organism is a natural kind of compound physical object, (ii) this natural kind is the summum genus of biology, and (iii) the summum genus of a science is a necessary property of what instantiates that summum genus. With respect to (iii), for example, the summum genera of the sciences of arithmetic, geometry, physics, and chemistry are number, geometrical object, physical object, and chemical, respectively; each of them is a necessary property of what instantiates it. It appears that if every carbon-based living organism is necessarily alive, then each of us is necessarily alive. In that case, (A1) is true.
- 11.
According to “Leibniz’s law,” necessarily, for any x and y, x = y if and only if for any property, P, x has P just when y has P. P ranges over qualitative attributes, that is, qualitative intrinsic properties and relations.
- 12.
Sosa (1987, pp. 155–87)
- 13.
Campbell (1970, pp. 44–5)
- 14.
Sosa (1987, pp. 161–2)
- 15.
- 16.
Sosa (1987, esp. pp. 160–4)
- 17.
That is, a relation that absolutely nothing can bear to itself
- 18.
Sosa (1987, p. 162)
- 19.
Sosa (1987, p. 163)
- 20.
It might be replied that a proper accompaniment of diversity need not explain diversity so long as it analyzes it. But in my view, an analysis must be explanatory.
- 21.
Furthermore, it appears that there could be a curved universe, for example, a three-dimensional spherical universe having a finite radius. In a spherical universe of this kind, a body is at a finite nonzero distance from itself along every geodesic intersecting it; each of which is a great circle.
- 22.
If an object x being at a zero distance from an object y is understood in terms of there being a point on the surface of x which is identical with a point on the surface of y, then it follows that an object can be at a zero distance from itself. Given that between any two points there is a third point, x being at a zero distance from y cannot be understood in terms of there being a point on the surface of x that is adjacent to a point on the surface of y.
As some of the earlier examples show, an object x can be at a nonzero distance from an object y only relative to a direction along some line that intersects x and y. Needless to say, if x is at a zero distance from y, then this distance is not relative to such a direction. Thus, there is no inconsistency in an object’s both being at many nonzero distances from itself (relative to different directed lines) and being at a zero distance from itself.
- 23.
I have used “distance” in its usual metrical meaning. In the light of earlier discussions, it is interesting to note that an archaic sense of “distance” was diversity.
- 24.
Sosa (1987, pp. 166–7)
- 25.
Sosa (1987, pp. 166)
- 26.
- 27.
For a more detailed defense of this naturalistic alternative, and its application to living organisms, see Hoffman and Rosenkrantz (1997).
Bibliography
Baker, Lynne Rudder. 2000. Persons and bodies: A constitution view. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Campbell, Keith. 1970. Body and mind. Garden City: Anchor Books.
Feldman, Fred. 1992. Confrontations with the Reaper. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Greco, John (ed.). 2004. Sosa and his critics. Oxford: Blackwell.
Hoffman, Joshua, and Gary S. Rosenkrantz. 1991. Are souls unintelligible? In Philosophical perspectives, Philosophy of religion, vol. 5, 183–212. Atascadero: Ridgeview.
Hoffman, Joshua, and Gary S. Rosenkrantz. 1994. Substance among other categories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hoffman, Joshua, and Gary Rosenkrantz. 1997. Substance: Its nature and existence. London: Routledge.
Hoffman, Joshua, and Gary S. Rosenkrantz. 2002. The divine attributes. Oxford: Blackwell.
Olson, Eric. 1997. The human animal: Identity without psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Parfit, Derek. 1976. Lewis, Perry, and what matters. In The identities of persons, ed. Amelie Rorty, 91–107. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Parfit, Derek. 1984. Reasons and persons. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rosenkrantz, Gary. 2012. Animate beings: Their nature and identity. Ratio 25 (4): 442–462.
Shoemaker, Sydney. 1997. Self and substance. In Philosophical perspectives, Mind, causation, and world, vol. 11, ed. Tomberlin James, 283–304. Oxford: Blackwell.
Sosa, Ernest. 1984. Mind-body interaction and supervenient causation. Midwest Studies in Philosophy 9: 271–281.
Sosa, Ernest. 1987. Subjects among other things. In Philosophical perspectives, Metaphysics, vol. 1, ed. J.E. Tomberlin, 155–187. Atascadero: Ridgeview.
Sosa, Ernest. 1990. Surviving matters. Noûs 24(2): 297–322.
Sosa, Ernest. 1993. Davidson’s thinking causes. In Mental causation, ed. Heil John and Mele Alfred, 41–50. New York: Oxford University Press.
Sosa, Ernest. 1995. The problems of metaphysics. In The oxford companion to philosophy, ed. Honderich Ted. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sosa, Ernest. 1999. Existential relativity. Midwest Studies in Philosophy 23: 132–143.
Sosa, Ernest. 2003. Ontological and conceptual relativity and the self. In The oxford handbook of metaphysics, ed. Loux Michael and Zimmerman Dean, 665–689. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Rosenkrantz, G.S. (2013). The Metaphysics of Persons. In: Turri, J. (eds) Virtuous Thoughts: The Philosophy of Ernest Sosa. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 119. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5934-3_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5934-3_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-5933-6
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-5934-3
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)