Title: Why the Metaphysical Possibility of Disembodiment Does not Support Cartesian Dualism and the Immortality of the Soul Abstract I offer a thought experiment to support the claim that some thoughts of deceased persons which are non-miraculously present in the minds of the living are disembodied soul parts of the deceased. I show that these soul parts are disembodied bearers of nonphysical dispositional properties but no ghosts – i.e. they are disembodied without personhood. Disembodiment without personhood shows that disembodiment is too broad a concept to underpin arguments for dualism and the immortality of the soul. Arguments from the metaphysical possibility of disembodiment in favour of Cartesian dualism are destined to fail. Keywords Ghosts, disembodiment, Cartesian dualism, non-physical dispositional properties Introduction A philosophical ghost is a bodiless person conscious of what appears to be her own nonphysical mental states. By this definition alone, it becomes clear that a philosophical ghost forms the opposite of a philosophical zombie, a body without mental states. Discussions concerning philosophical zombies have gained much attendance in the last decades. By contrast, debates on philosophical ghosts have been much less loud than debates on philosophical zombies despite their intriguing results and interesting consequences. I would like to mention what to my mind is the most important such result, being at the same time my motivation to reflect on philosophical ghosts here: the mere possibility of the existence of ghosts, i.e. of conscious disembodied persons, is supposed to back Cartesian dualism and the immortality of the soul. Richard Swinburne (1986, 154) argues that, since it is possible (i.e. not contradictory) that I become a disembodied person, then, if my being only a body makes it impossible that I am disembodied, it follows by modus tollens that I cannot be only a body. More recently, Goff (2010) argued on behalf of his claim that the bare possibility of disembodiment, which he equates with the possibility of the existence of ghosts, provides support for non-physicalist positions. Counter-arguments to thus defended Cartesian dualism usually target to parts of the dualist’s line of defence other than the logical possibility of disembodiment. Peter Geach (1957, 115-116), Douglas Long (1977, 311-316), David Wiggins (1980, 188) and Michael Tye (1983) appear to consider embodiment as metaphysically essential for attributing normal mental states to a person. This would make the existence of disembodied persons who have a mental activity metaphysically impossible, regardless of its being logically possible. A metaphysically impossible but logically possible existence of disembodied persons with mental activity must be justified in terms of a definition of metaphysical possibility on the basis of a set of acceptable criteria – NB, ones which are different from the criterion of logical possibility, i.e. not contradiction-inviting. But this task is very difficult. Since there is a general disagreement on the nature of the soul viz. on the conditions under which a soul (or a mind – I shall use the two terms interchangeably) is disembodied, the metaphysical possibility of disembodiment cannot be affirmed or negated as such. One has to affirm or negate the metaphysical possibility of disembodiment on the condition of crude reductionistic materialism, on the condition of epiphenomenalism, on the condition of functionalism and so on. Geach, op. cit., and Wiggins, op. cit., did not accomplish this task, although they argued as if they had done so. In fact, only Goff, op. cit., tried to accomplish it, to discover that the metaphysical possibility of disembodiment must be affirmed even in physicalistic terms: Goff argues that no hard-core physicalist of Dennettian taste, no epiphenomenalist and no “funny” – as he calls them – physicalist sympathetic to Chalmersian dualism, is able to consistently claim the metaphysical impossibility of ghosts. Arguments against disembodiment from the metaphysical impossibility of the existence of disembodied persons are dependent on several conditions each of which is debatable. As such, they are avoided in large parts of the discussion. Alston and Smythe (1994, 127-128) and Stump and Kretzmann (1996) do not even ask the question whether disembodied persons are metaphysically possible or not. Gillett (1986, 383-386) does ask it but remains inconclusive about the answer. In this article, I argue against the case that disembodiment supports dualism and the immortality of the soul. My argument goes without recurring to the argument from the (alleged) metaphysical impossibility of disembodied persons, i.e. ghosts. Instead, I distinguish between the disembodied parts of souls which do not present persons on one side (I do not preempt that this class is non-empty – I shall infer so) and disembodied persons on the other. In a next step, I offer a thought experiment for disembodiment without personhood. Then, I focus on the following question: even if we grant that disembodied entities are metaphysically possible, does this necessarily imply that disembodied entities are ghosts, i.e. self-conscious disembodied persons? I argue for a negative answer to this question. A pragmatic advantage I see in following this line of argument is that all parties of the discussion can easily agree on that consciousness necessarily implies personhood (in any sense of ‘necessarily’). But since reductionistic materialists, epiphenomenalists, functionalists or what have you, agree that consciousness necessarily implies personhood (= personhood is metaphysically essential to consciousness), the differences between them play no role vis-à-vis the question whether disembodied entities are ghosts (= disembodied conscious persons). They would all agree, for example, that if anything disembodied is not a person, then it is not conscious and eo ipso not a ghost. That is, if my argument is correct and disembodiment does not imply consciousness then all parties despite different metaphysical tastes should have to admit that Cartesian dualism and the immortality of the soul do not follow from the metaphysical possibility of disembodiment – even if the latter would be granted, that is. A Thought Experiment Supporting Disembodiment without Personhood Imagine a non-completed event; for example the decision procedure about whether a choice was successful. Decision procedures of this kind are for the most time non-completed events because the successfulness of a choice is not preempted once the choice is made. In fact, in many cases the successfulness can be decided only much later. The choice which I would like to take as an example, concerns Sally’s marriage. Sally, a passionate but also highly reasonable young woman, has been courted for some time by two unequal candidates: Wayne and Henry. Wayne is an ambitious and rich young lawyer (software engineer, architect, or you name it) who needs her as his perfect match – or what he thinks to be a perfect match – in suburbia after a long and tiresome day in his downtown-office. Henry is a young pantomime actor who is enamoured of Sally as much as of living in Venice and sailing around in his little boat in his spare time, of which he has plenty. Sally’s mother strongly advocates Wayne’s candidacy. A desperate Sally, torn between a reasonable choice and her dream of love, lets her mother make a choice for her. Sally’s mother lives enough to see her daughter marry Wayne. But since she dies a few months after the wedding, Sally’s mother does not live long enough to see Sally being disrespected, insulted, abused and unhappy only after the first year of what seemed to be a promising and prosperous marriage. Obviously, Sally’s mother died being certain about the successfulness of her choice. However, since for the successfulness of the choice to be decided, much more time is needed, she died in the middle of a non-completed event: the decision procedure about whether the choice was right. After the divorce (following Wayne’s bankruptcy) people deplore the mother’s bad choice for her daughter and feel pity for her – for the mother, not only for Sally. They say: “The poor one, she was so intrusive and certain of the rightfulness of her choice, without knowing how idiotic it was”. I.e. people call her the “poor one” because of something that happened (obviously: to Sally’s mother) only after her death. Sally’s unsuccessful marriage and divorce affect moral dispositions of Sally’s mother. What was the evidence of Sally’s mother’s being a rational, caring mother, became the evidence of her being a deplorable, irresponsible and arrogant individual who thought that she could predict the unpredictable, after the consequences of her decision came to light. Obviously, people assign “being idiotic” to the choice retroactively for the time when this choice was taken – when Sally’s mother was alive, that is. But what about deploring the “poor one’s” failure to be responsible, humble, more respectful of love than of status and so on? Do they feel pity about the “poor one’s” moral failure when she was alive or do they feel pity of what she is now, after her death? Clearly not the first. Whatever they feel about Sally’s mother for the time before her death, this is rather positive: at least she died early enough not to see the disastrous aftermath or her intrusiveness. Consequently, it must be the case that they feel pity for her moral failure as a dead woman. In the chapters 10 and 11 of the first book of his Nicomachean Ethics (1100a – 1101b), Aristotle argues that if the suffering of a beloved one can trigger the misfortune (lack of eudaimonia) of a living person who is unaware of the suffering of the beloved one, then it can also trigger the misfortune of a dead person too. The dead is, of course, unaware of her own misfortune, but, as the case with the unaware living person shows, unawareness does not prevent one’s misfortune to be triggered. An analogous point holds of the moral failure of Sally’s mother. Something from her that remained after her death failed morally, is a bearer of misfortune and, indeed, is being held worthy of being deplored. Moral failing, being the bearer of misfortune, being worthy to be deplored are dispositional properties. If Sally’s mother can have dispositional properties as a disembodied entity, these dispositional properties must be taken to be nonphysical properties. Therefore, her moral failure, her being worthy to be deplored and her misfortune are nonphysical properties. I call the kind of disembodiment which is specified by Sally’s mother as the bearer of nonphysical dispositional properties, disembodiment trivialiter in order to insinuate that this disembodiment is an everyday thing which involves no miracles. Sally’s mother remains dead and is not self-conscious despite being a bearer of nonphysical dispositional properties. One could counter-argue, however, that the disembodiment which is exemplified by Sally’s mother as a bearer of nonphysical dispositional properties is not what is usually meant by the standard use of the term ‘disembodiment’ in contemporary philosophy of mind, since there is after all some brain, the brains of the relatives and friends of Sally’s mother, which “host” her thoughts. In standard disembodiment no brain is needed for the thoughts of the disembodied to be thought. There is a serious objection to this counter-argument. I am presenting it in the next section. Where Are the Thoughts of the Disembodied “Hosted”? In a famous thought experiment, Daniel Dennett (1978) showed that our representational content may have the same structure (and may remain ours), although it is “hosted” in different devices. Dennett concludes from this that the representational content of a person exists whenever there is a mental activity which is connected causally with the original mind of the person. Originally, the representational content of Daniel’s original mind is perceived in Daniel’s brain. But after Daniel’s brain (‘Yorick’) is replaced or paired by some other device (‘Hubert’), Daniel’s representational content can skip to the other device or even move forward and backwards between devices. Richard Swinburne (1986, 145-154) understands Dennett’s thought experiment as providing a backing for disembodiment. What Swinburne calls “disembodiment” is the existence of representational content in some device. By this criterion, Sally’s mother is disembodied. Like ‘Hubert’ in Dennett’s thought experiment, the brain of a relative who makes thoughts on the moral dispositions of Sally’s mother and “hosts” these dispositions is not the origin of the representational content of Sally’s mother, but it is causally connected with it. What relatives and friends produce and “host” in their brains, are post-mortem pieces of the representational content of Sally’s mother’s dispositional properties – her dispositional properties, not theirs! Perhaps they would not feel themselves the same if they were in the same position. E.g. the set of beliefs: ‘Sally’s choice on behalf of Wayne was a disastrous mistake and it was morally a highly faulty and deplorable thing for me as a mother to do to affect this choice’. Since having exactly the same belief as someone else is implied by the argument against private language (cf. the setting of this problem by Kripke 1984, 60 and (lengthy! macaronic!) footnote 47, as well as the subsequent solution, op. cit., 89-102), there seems to be no impediment in having exactly the same belief which someone else, a dead or a living one, would have. There is, however, one major difference between Daniel from Dennett’s thought experiment and Sally’s mother: unlike Daniel who can monitor thoughts “hosted” in several devices, Sally’s mother cannot monitor her thoughts – at least there is no evidence for this. Therefore she cannot be considered to be a person. No one will seriously consider her now responsible or liable for what she did when she was alive. Let me resume my argument until now: Sally’s mother is post-mortem the bearer of misfortune as a result of personal moral failure. The misfortune of Sally’s mother “survives” in the mind of other (living) people who, in a way, “lend” Sally’s mother their brains. The post mortem representational content of Sally’s mother’s nonphysical dispositional properties are disembodied parts of Sally’s mother’s soul. However, after her death Sally’s mother is not a person any more – not even as a bearer of nonphysical dispositional properties. She cannot make herself recognizable as having intentionality, a personal stance, a certain kind of self-consciousness, rationality or verbal communication – only to mention Dennett’s (1978) conditions of personhood. Ghosts as Persons Ghosts are by definition disembodied. Therefore they cannot be in stupor – unconscious of processes in a body which they would own, that is. They cannot be unconscious of their own disembodied mental activities either, because this would presuppose that ghosts would have some disembodied mental activities which would be their own although they would be unconscious of them. But identifying these disembodied mental activities as the ghosts’ own, contradicts that ghosts would be unconscious of them because ghosts have only a consciousness for mental activities to be projected upon – they do not have a body, for example, on which first-order mental activities would emerge to be ignored on a higher level. Therefore, ghosts have always a vigilant self-consciousness. Since ghosts are always self-conscious, being a ghost implies being a person. Consequently, recognizing someone as a ghost is recognizing her as a person capable of a certain kind of self-consciousness. The kind of disembodiment which is characteristic of a ghost, i.e. disembodiment with personhood and self-consciousness, I would like to call “scary disembodiment” (for obvious reasons). But not every disembodiment is a scary disembodiment. Disembodiment without personhood or self-consciousness, which I call disembodiment trivialiter, is radically distinct from scary disembodiment. Parts of the soul of Sally’s mother are disembodied after her death, and they have nonphysical dispositional properties of which she is unconscious since she cannot monitor them. But if Sally’s mother is neither self-conscious nor a person, then she is certainly not a ghost. The parts of her soul in the minds of living people are disembodied trivialiter. Conclusion The thought experiment concerning Sally’s choice shows that there are disembodied bearers of nonphysical dispositional properties (e.g. parts of the soul of Sally’s mother after her death) which are not persons, i.e. they are not ghosts. They are disembodied trivialiter. Disembodiment trivialiter does not support Cartesian dualism since it does not imply that there is a thinking substance separated from matter. For the same reason, disembodiment trivialiter does not support the immortality of the soul. The metaphysical possibility of disembodiment continues to support Swinburne’s (1986, 154) conclusion that I am not only a body. But if without my body I am disembodied only trivialiter, then Swinburne’s conclusion may not be understood as saying that my soul survives the death of my body. Generally, as long as we do not know whether a possible disembodiment is trivialiter or a scary one, we cannot use the metaphysical possibility of disembodiment to underpin arguments for Cartesian dualism – and this even if the metaphysical possibility of disembodiment is granted. Because, in order to provide a backing for a dualistic argument we need to discard disembodiment trivialiter and to know that a scary disembodiment is the case. But in order to know this, much more than the simple assumption of the metaphysical possibility of disembodiment is needed. What is needed, then, is an acquaintance with a real ghost, not the assumption of metaphysically possible disembodiment. Consequently, the metaphysical possibility of disembodiment fails to support Cartesian dualism and the immortality of the soul. References Alston, William P. / Smythe, Thomas W. (1994), “Swinburne’s Argument for Dualism”, Faith and Philosophy 11/1, 127-133. Aristotle (1912), Ethica Nicomachea, rec. Susemihl, Franz/Apelt, Otto (Leipzig: Teubner). Dennett, Daniel (1978), “Where am I?”, in: Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology (Montgomery, Vt: Bradford Books), 310-323. Dennett, Daniel (1978*), “Conditions of Personhood”, in: Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology (Montgomery, Vt: Bradford Books), 267-285. Everitt, Nicholas (2000), “Substance Dualism and Disembodied Existence”, Faith and Philosophy 17 (3), 333-347. Geach, Peter T. (1957), Mental Acts (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul). Gillett, G.R. (1986), “Disembodied Persons”, Philosophy 61, 377-386. Goff, Philip (2010), “Ghosts and Sparse Properties. Why Physicalists Have More to Fear from Ghosts than Zombies”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 81 (1), 119-139. Long, Douglas, C. (1977), “Disembodied Existence, Physicalism and the Mind-Body Problem”, Philosophical Studies 31, 307-316. Kripke, Saul (1984), Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press). Stump, Eleonore / Kretzmann, Norman (1996), “An Objection to Swinburne’s Argument for Dualism”, Faith and Philosophy 13/3, 405-412. Suárez, Francisco (1856), De anima, ed. André, Ad. M., in: Opera Omnia, vol. 3 (Paris: Vivès). Swinburne, Richard (1986), The Evolution of the Soul (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Michael Tye (1983), “On the Possibility of Disembodied Existence”, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 61/3, 275-282. Wiggins, David (1980), Sameness and Substance (Oxford: Blackwell). 15