Let us begin by carefully considering the way in which Baker frames her argument that Christians ought not to be Dualists:
Premise 1: The Constitution View of human persons is preferable to Mind-Body Dualism unless there is some overriding reason – either philosophical or religious – to accept Mind-Body Dualism.
Premise 2: There is no overriding reason – either philosophical or religious – to accept Mind-Body Dualism.
Premise 3: Therefore the Constitution View of human persons is preferable to Mind-Body Dualism
Premise 2: There is no overriding reason – either philosophical or religious – to accept Mind-Body Dualism.
Premise 3: Therefore the Constitution View of human persons is preferable to Mind-Body Dualism
With Premise 1, Baker’s makes the implicit assumption that Constitution is an objectively better explanation of human persons than the Dualist view; she effectively claims that the burden of proof ought to be on the Dualist, and that until someone convincingly supports Dualism (with some overriding philosophical or religious reason), not only is there is no obligation to accept it, but also there is an obligation not to accept it. But what are these reasons against Dualism? What makes Constitution clearly so much better? What does better even mean in this case? Normally when talking about the criteria of a best theory, philosophers and scientists alike turn to Okham’s Razor, which states that one should accept the simplest fully comprehensive explanation of things. Is that really what Baker has done? Clearly she thinks so; but I am not yet convinced. I hesitate to admit that Constitution is better than Dualism because I am not at all convinced that, from a Christian perspective,[1] Constitution is as comprehensive an explanation, or as simple an explanation of human personhood as Mind-Body Dualism.
Baker begins her argument for the Constitution View by defining personhood as the property of having a first-person perspective. As she describes it, the first-person perspective is “the ability to think of oneself without the use of any name, description or demonstrative; it is the ability to conceive of oneself as oneself, from the inside, as it were” (3). The first-person perspective represents a primitive property and the essential feature of personhood. From this idea, Baker concludes that, “what is ontologically distinctive about being a person – namely, the capacity for a first-person perspective – does not have to be secured by a nonmaterial substance like soul” (4). Here Baker is speaking directly to Christian Dualists, as she posits that their definition of personhood as some sort of immaterial substance is simply wrong.
Having established her definition of personhood, Baker goes on to define the relationship between the first-person perspective and our physical bodies. She uses the idea of Constitution to describe this relation. A person is constituted by his or her body. The best way to clarify what she means by Constitution is to use her river example: “A river at any moment is constituted by an aggregate of water molecules. But the river is not identical to the aggregate of water molecules that constitutes it at that moment, since one and the same river… is constituted by different aggregates of molecules at different times” (4). It is a sort of basic and intuitive understanding that the water molecules make up the river, but the river itself is something distinct from the individual drops of water. [2]
Baker then extends this idea of constitution to first-person perspectives and bodies. The physical structure of a body (be it human, martian, or even synthetic) will constitute the person; but the person will still be something essential and distinct from the physical material parts of the body. To compare to the river, our human bodies are constantly undergoing physical change as we grow, yet our person remains constant. In her language, persons are not reducible to bodies. Given this conclusion, Baker formulates her definition of human persons: “An entity X is a human person at t if and only if (i) X has a capacity for a first-person perspective at t and (ii) X is constituted by a human body” (6). She reiterates the essentiality of the first-person perspective over the body when she says, “you – a person constituted by a human body – are most fundamentally a person. Person is your primary kind” (5).
The problem with Baker’s view is that she regards the body inconsistently; the body would in fact be essential to personhood according to her own definition. For how could there possibly be a first-person perspective without a body? How could there possibly exist some sort of “I” without some physical structure or brain to do the thinking? Put simply, if there were no body, then there could be no first-person perspective. How does that fall short of essentiality! We are persons only because we have bodies that work and function. This essentiality of the body undermines her claims that personhood alone is our “primary kind” (5). She claims that, “if X is a person constituted by a human body at t, then X is essentially a person. That is, there could be no time at which X existed without being a person. But X is not essentially a human person” (6). This seems wrong! X is a human person because if X’s human body were not to have existed, X would never have existed. There is no way that an identical first-person perspective (i.e. the same person X) could have come to exist in any other body, for X only came to exist with the development of its specific body. Baker even goes so far as to claim that “it is possible that X is constituted by a human body at one time but constituted by a nonhuman body (a bionic body, a resurrection body) at another time” (6). This claim seems ridiculous for any Materialist to posit for the same reasons mentioned above: each specific body is essential to its first-person perspective’s existence and duration.
To help clarify my qualms with her Constitution view in general, and with her notion of possible different bodies specifically, let us extend her river example. Recall, river R is constituted by a continuously changing collection of water molecules; just as human person X is constituted by its human body. Now imagine that River R were to dry up. Would it not seem that river R no longer exists? One would say, “that used to be River R,” for in no way does it continue to be a river without water. Thus if person X were to lose the body that constitutes it, X would cease to exist. Baker has basically sold the body short and has ignored its essentiality in order to force her Constitution View into alignment with our intuition that our person is greater than a mere summation of our physical parts.
Now consider the same dried up River R, and imagine that it has now filled back up not with water, but with bubbles from a series of car washes along the riverbank. Thus, it would appear to be a river of sorts, but again, it does not seem that we would have the same river R. One would say, “that used to be River R, but now it is filled only with bubbles.” It seems that the word “river” might no longer even apply; or perhaps people might use the term “river” in a loose sort of way. Still no one would deny that you do not really have River R, but some funny new river.[3] This example is analogous to Baker’s claim that a first-person perspective could be preserved in some nonhuman body (for example a robotic body[4], or her example of a resurrection body). As we can see from the river example, were X’s original body to be replaced with some other nonhuman body it would not remain as X. Maybe it could somehow resemble the original X, but there is no way that the same exact X, the same exact first-person perspective would persist. Any sort of discontinuity in X and its body will result in a termination of the original X.
Perhaps my example above was too extreme; what if the dried up river were somehow to start flowing again with water, but with the water of some source different from its original one. For example, what if some other nearby river were redirected to flow through the dried up River R. Perhaps a stranger, using an old map as reference, would conclude that they are in fact seeing River R. But would not the local explain, “That’s not really River R any more, but instead River T redirected through what used to be River R.” There would be the same physical composition, an aggregate of water molecules, but something would be somehow essentially different, and River R would not really remain. The same would happen were X to be transferred to a different human body. The scientist who performed the transfer would describe, “That’s notreally X any more, but instead some new person in the body of what used to be person T.” The unique composition and functioning of the new body would somehow fundamentally change X into some different person. To summarize my issue: the “real unity” Baker describes between person and body, is actually anessential unity; her explanation of the relationship between person and body represents an inconsistency in and highly problematic consequence of her Constitution view. We can see Baker’s efforts to elevate the status of personhood above corporeal substance as an attempt to align the consequences of her view with our own intuitions. Ultimately her argument is philosophically negligent, for the distinction cannot accurately be made under a Constitution View.
Baker’s definition of personhood also leads to a fundamental problem. She claims that the most essential property of our personhood is the first-person perspective. But when we really think about the most raw and simple aspects of a first-person perspective, all we are really left with is some voice in our heads that refers to itself as “I.” That voice saying “I” is that to which Baker boils down our essential personhood. But would not any entirely raw first-person perspective be essentially identical to any other one? How could there be any uniqueness to a mere awareness? This issue poses serious problems, for it would suggest that we have no sort of identity that is essential to our person; we would have no uniqueness in our personhood, no self. Instead, it would seem that our different memories and experiences (and bodies!) alone would comprise the uniqueness of our identity – something that Baker does not at all intend to argue.[5] The ultimate consequence of Baker’s definition of personhood, which neither she, nor any Christian, nor any human being would want to endorse, is that personhood turns out not to be a significant property at all. We would all be reducible to a universally identical first-person perspective.
In her visit to Colgate, Baker responded to this argument by explaining that in fact our first-person perspectives are unique; we all are most essentially the property of a first-person perspective, but there is no reason to think that this property is identical in all of us. She gave the example of the property of the color black. Consider an eight ball, and a chalkboard – both of which share the property of blackness. She argued that the property of black is the same in both cases, but that in reality the colors are non-identical. The same property in two different objects can be unique, and often is unique, she explained.
I do not think that this defense works as simply as she believed it to. Baker is simply using a linguistic (and heuristic) shortcut to defend her most important argument. In reality, the properties are different because they are not actually the same property. We simply are incapable of coming up with enough unique words in a language to cover every single shade of black. Were we able to do that, then we would not claim that they share the same color property, but instead instantiate properties Black1 and Black2. Were you to boil the eight ball and chalkboard down to a more essential property like matter, then you would find that, in fact, the property they share is identical.
To extend this analogy back to humans, consider the property of funny. Of course two people can be funny while at the same time having very unique senses of humor. We simply use the word funny to describe broadly anything that makes us laugh. But it seems that if you were to boil down these two people into their most essential property, their first-person perspective according to Baker, then they will be identical. If all we are at our most basic level is a simple awareness, the mere sensing of a voice in our minds capable of saying “I,” and if all memories and other thoughts and feelings were to be blocked out, then it is impossible to see how that most basic and simple feeling of “I” would be any different in one person than in another. Again, we can see Baker trying to force her Constitution View into the framework of our intuitions that our personhood comprises our essential identity. But her definition of personhood cannot accurately incorporate this intuition. To boil persons down to essential identicalness, as it appears Baker’s likely does, is a highly unfavorable consequence of the Constitution View.
To this point I have argued that (1) Baker’s Constitution View inconsistently describes our human personhood by denying the essentiality of our human body, and (2) that Baker’s definition of personhood as a mere first-person perspective seems to deny us any inherent individual identity. These two arguments represent philosophical reasons for us not to support her Constitution View. Given these issues, we find Baker’s argument for the Constitution View over the Dualist view unsatisfactory:
Premise 1: The Constitution View of human persons is preferable to Mind-Body Dualism unless there is some overriding reason – either philosophical or religious – to accept Mind-Body Dualism.
Premise 2: There is no overriding reason – either philosophical or religious – to accept Mind-Body Dualism.
Premise 3: Therefore the Constitution View of human persons is preferable to Mind-Body Dualism.
Premise 2: There is no overriding reason – either philosophical or religious – to accept Mind-Body Dualism.
Premise 3: Therefore the Constitution View of human persons is preferable to Mind-Body Dualism.
What I have offered may not be overriding reasons to accept Mind-Body Dualism; but my arguments do suggest that there are in fact philosophical reasons not to accept the Constitution View. Baker never contends that reasons against her Constitution View exist but it ought to be preferred anyway; instead she presents the Constitution View as if there were no philosophical problems with it. Thus Baker hastily concludes that the Constitution View ought to be taken as more immediately preferable than Dualism. She seems to think that the Constitution View offers very few or no problems, while the Dualist View results in many, and thus she requires of Christians a justification for adopting Dualism, but requires no justification from people who adopt her own Constitution View. How convenient a result for her own philosophy. Insofar as serious philosophical reasons do exist for not accepting the Constitution View, Baker’s conclusion that it ought to be adopted as the primary understanding of human personhood over Dualism represents an ill-founded bias.
At this point we now ought to step back and consider the audience whom Baker seeks to address. It seems to me that were she talking to a group of Materialists, they would agree with her whole heartedly that the Constitution View is immediately preferable and requires no justification when compared to Dualism. But when we look to the title of her essay we find that her audience is not Materialists at all: “Should Christians Be Mind-Body Dualists?” Given her audience of Christians, I find it very surprising that Baker requires a Constitution View. She herself admits that “Christianity has almost no specifically philosophical commitments” (2), and so why need she restrict the way an entire religious population’s views humanity? Would not the fact that Christians have few philosophical commitments leave the door completely open for Christians to find the explanation that they think works best given their own theological commitments?
Baker’s Constitution View results in some very complicated explanations for Christian beliefs. First of all, as implied by the above investigations, there seems to be no way for Resurrection to be possible on the Constitution View. Any discontinuity between a person and its human body will result in the destruction of that person. But how could we then have an eternal self that persists in an after life? Baker explains that the way God accomplishes this is through a miracle – as it would have to be for the same person X to persist in a different body. But would not the idea of an immaterial self persisting through eternity and through different types of bodies be an equally comprehensive and possibly more simple explanation of Resurrection than that of a miracle upon each and every individuals’ death? If we are to posit miracles, its seems that Okham’s Razor might in fact lead us to conclude that the miracle of God putting an eternally permanent immaterial self into every human body might be simpler than the miracle of God somehow transferring a first-person perspective from one type of body to another completely different and potentially incompatible type of body.
Other reasons why an immaterial self might be a favorable view for Chrisitians regard our relationships with God and with each other. For many a Christian it might reassuring to know that we are made of the same immaterial substance as God; the Bible in fact says that we are created in the likeness of God, and how more intimate a connection to God could we have than to be made from the same stuff as Him! Furthermore, this idea of all human beings being made of the same stuff suggests a fundamental unity between all of humanity; this idea of a human community is one that many Christians find very appealing. Interestingly, Baker almost seems to make this very point: “To be a spiritual being does not require having any nonmaterial soul. One and the same thing – a human person – is both a material being and a spiritual being” (2). Perhaps the idea of human spirituality does not in fact require the existence of a nonmaterial soul, but why prohibit Christians from such a view? Especially when that view represents a coherent and simple explanation of their own beliefs?
Baker’s materialist requirement imposes far too restrictive a mandate upon Christians, for it turns out that there are in fact philosophical reasons not to maintain the Constitution View, and there are in fact religious reasons for adopting a Dualist View. There are ultimately no “overriding reasons – philosophical or religious” for endorsing either view over the other. Given the fact that Christians already believe in God and believe in immaterial substance, and given further that some of their already possessed theological commitments (like the persistence of an eternal self beyond death) can be more simply explained by Dualism, it turns out that there is in fact no reason for the burden of proof to be placed on the Dualist. If anything, Christians need not be concerned with proof, for they already have the belief. Dualism is, if not the best, then at least a suitable explanation of human persons that at the same time maintains all of the Christians’ other ideals and beliefs, given their philosophical and religious requirements. If Baker’s audience were Naturalists alone, she would perhaps be right to leave the burden of proof on the Dualist Christians; but given that her audience is specifically Christians, then there is no reason prohibit a Dualist account of personhood.
10/29/09
[1] Interestingly, David Hume offers a nearly identical example in his discussions on Personal Identity, and explains that, strictly speaking, the river is not really the same. Any change in physical composition leads to a fundamental change in identity. We merely attribute the same identity out of habitual cognitive patterns of thought, and not out of any actual identity persistence.
[2] This will turn out to be an important distinction to make. Baker explicitly singles out Christians as her target audience; but some of the commitments that Christians maintain turn out to be more simply explained by a Dualist approach than by LRB’s Constitution.
[3] One might accuse my use of bubbles as overly exaggerative, but I think that the possibility of a river filled with bubbles is far less extreme than the description of some noncorporeal resurrection body. Furthermore, even if I were to use some hypothetical near-water substance like H3O, then the same results would occur: it would not be River R. It would look even more like R, and feel and taste and smell like the original… but it simply would not be.
[4] She gives the example of a person who endures a series of accidents and is slowly replaced by synthetic bionic parts until finally his entire body is new and inorganic. She posits that the same person would persist throughout this transformation. I posit that on her explanation of personhood and the body, there would be some point at which the person would become fundamentally or essentially nonidentical to his original self - perhaps at the moment when the brain is replaced. One can even imagine that the nature of the first-person perspective could begin to change gradually with continually added robotic parts, until finally, in the end, there would be no recognizable person remaining but some strange sort of robotic self-consciousness. I am not exactly sure how this could happen or how to explain it, but neither is she able to offer any sort of explanation other than a similar sort of intuition that the person would remain. (Plus: Dualism would perhaps have an even simpler explanation of this possibility… the immaterial self would remain, while the material self would change.)
[5] This would also pose problems for the ideas discussed above regarding persistence of the self through different bodies. Basically, if our selves were made up entirely of our memories, which are stored in our brains, then to transfer a “person” (i.e. a first-person perspective) to another body would result in no noticeable change at all in either person. There would be no discontinuity for the new first-person perspective would take up precisely where the old one left off in the memories of the new host’s brain. In fact, on this view, it could be that first-person perspectives are continuously moving around between our bodies but we do not notice it, for our memories and our identities are continuous.
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