Phil

FORUM PHILOSOPHICUM Facultas Philosophica Ignatianum

Cracovia - Krakdw, U : 2006, 81-94

Janusz SALAMON*

PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS WITH DISEMBODIED EXISTENCE AND SURVIVAL OF DEATH

It may be surprising to realize that the belief in life after death, widely shared by the adherents of the majority of religions, is more commonly linked to the idea of embodied post-mortem existence, rather than to the idea of disembodied existence. Although due to the powerful influence of Plato on early Christian, as well as Jewish, writers, the belief that a person is an immaterial soul that at death leaves the body which it previously occu- pied and continues to exist in a disembodied state became popular among the theistic philosophers, it is neither an undisputed orthodoxy, nor argu- ably a majority view of the matter. It appears that both Western theistic religions (with their concept of the resurrection of the body), and at least some Eastern traditions (with their concept of reincarnation), favour the view that a person conUnues to exist after her death in a bodily state of some kind, over the view that it is a disembodied soul that survives death. This, at least at first sight, would seem to make it even more difficult to defend the raUonality of the belief in afterlife, considering that the biologi- cal death of one's body appears as well-established fact as any in science. And yet, taking into consideration the contemporary discussions in phi- losophy of mind, one has to conclude that the belief in the possibility of disembodied existence is by no means easier to be backed with a convincing philosophical argumentation. As tertium non datur, it would seem wise for a believer in afterlife to opt decisively for one of the two alternative posi- tions in the metaphysics of mind: either to go for the mind-body dualism (and to claim that personal identity consists in identity of immaterial soul

* Dr Janusz SALAMON SJ, University School of Philosophy and EducaUon Ignatianum, Krakdw e-mail: [email protected]

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which continues over time and beyond the bodily death), or to go for more monistic or holistic view of a person according to which personal identity would reside in the unity of mind and body (hence for the person to sur- vive her bodily death would require being embodied in her post-mortem state). Usually one argues for one of these positions by attacking the alter- native solution. However, after a closer look, it turns out that for a theist (certainly for a representative of the mainstream Christianity) the situa- tion is far less comfortable than that, because a theist often holds the two following beliefs: the belief in the resurrection of the body (which implies the possibility of embodied post-mortem existence), and the belief that God is a disembodied Spirit (hence disembodied existence has to be pos- sible too). So a theistic philosopher, as it were, needs to keep two balls in the air at once. In the present paper I want to explore the feasibility of the theistic position with regard to the possibility of disembodied existence and survival of death. I will argue that, after all, it can be done.

It is good to stress right at the beginning of this discussion that the two issues I will be concerned with (disembodied existence and survixal of death) are in the philosophical literature often treated quite independendy. For example, providing arguments for the possibility of disembodied existence does not in itself commit one to the belief in the possibility of personal survival of death. After all, arguing for the possibility of disembodied exist- ence may be a part of a project of idealistic metaphysics of such kind, that it has no place for God who would be a person or human persons existing post-mortem. What links the two issues is that they both can be properly addressed only after sorting out what are the necessary conditions of persis- tence of persons in time. The lack of consensus among contemporary phi- losophers of mind in these matters, I will suggest, makes it easier for a theistic philosopher to argue simultaneously for the possibility of disembodied ex- istence and bodily survival of deatli. Not least important in this context is the possibility, a theist can argue for, that personal identity of human beings may consist in something different than personal identity of God.

Mind-Body Dualism, Disembodied Existence and Survival of Death

Statistically speaking, philosophers who defend the claim that persons can exist in disembodied state, tend to be substance dualists in philosophy of mind, though some of them (John Foster is perhaps the most notable example) occupy an ultimately monistic position, holding that reality is ultimately wholly mental.^ A dualist defender of disembodied existence

' See John Foster, The Immaterial Self, London 1991.

Problems with Disembodieti Existence and Survival of Death 83

needs to argue that what is of crucial importance for the identity of a per- son is on the side of the mental, and not the physical. It can be argued that for someone who believes in the possibility of survival of death, some sort of dualism is a natural option, as this belief usually implies that a person survives death, although her body is apparently subjected to decay. It would seem diat a believer in after-life who is not committed to the possibility of disembodied existence, has no choice but to opt for the view that a person survives her death by means of becoming embodied in a body which is somehow different from the body it had before death. And this would seem to imply at least that her mind was not identical with her body/brain, which entails mind-body dualism of some sort. This, however, does not have to be the case, because the belief in the possibility of survival of death is compat- ible with some monistic, even with certain physicalist accounts of the mind.' Granting the basic theistic belief that it is the omnipotent God who sustains the Universe in every moment of its existence (not only creates but also ,,conserves" the Universe), it would not be too extravagant to suggest that human persons survive their bodily death, just in case God keeps them in existence after death, as he always does. For a theist, the transition between the two stages of embodied existence of a human person (which must be explained because of the obvious decay of the body of the dead individual) may appear no more mysterious than e.g. conversion of matter into en- ergy, and vice versa. Thus it seems clear that if one would focus on the belief in post-mortem existence alone, it seems to be no problem for a theist to admit that the arguments against the possibility of disembodied exist- ence appear to be more convincing, than are the arguments for such possi- bility, because a theist can postulate that it is God who is responsible for the ,,re-creation" of the body of the person who survives its biological death.

Certainly Plato's arguments for the possibility of disembodied existence are far from being convincing. Plato was a model mind-body dualist. He believed that it is the immaterial soul (rational soul) that constitutes the focus of personal identity of human beings. As for Plato the rational soul is this element to which the mental life of human beings pertains, for him the term ,,rational soul" refers to the same reality as the term ,,mind", more frequendy used these days. Thus it can be said that Plato believed that at death mind and body are separated, and while the body decays, the mind continues to exist and function without interruption. Interestingly, this belief did not follow with logical necessity from Plato's substance dualism. After all, one can think of the mind as a ,,thing" ontologically different than the

' See Trenton Merricks, nThe Resurrection of the Body and the Life Everlasting," in Mur- ray, Michael J. (ed.). Reason for the Hope Within, Grand Rapids 1999, 261-286.

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body, but being in such relation with the body, that the mind ceases to exist at death, when the body ceases to function.

What makes Plato's account of survival of death crucially different from the Christian account of it, is, of course, the absence of some supernatural Being whose involvement would explain what makes the survival of death possible in the first place. True, Plato provides a number of arguments de- signed to show that the soul is immortal in virtue of its own nature, and it will continue to exist after death and forever, just because of what it is. However, it seem that even if these arguments would be convincing (and they are rarely considered to be such), they would establish at most that the mind continues to exist after death of the person, but not that it does con- tinue to exist in disembodied state. Plato's argument for the natural inde- structibility of the soul as a simple thing (it cannot disintegrate as it has no parts), or his argument from the supposed necessity of pre-existence of the soul (because human beings supposedly know things and have concepts which they have not learned or acquired on earth), may support the belief that the soul continues to exist after death, but from the supposedly natu- ral immortality of the soul it does not follow that the soul can exist in dis- embodied state.

Thus even if Plato would establish that human soul is immortal, it may still be true that human soul can exist and does exist only in connection to a body/brain, and so after death of the body to which it is connected, it does need to be embodied in another body. And perhaps it may be a body of somewhat different kind, that the ,,earthly" body (after all, why should we suppose that human soul may exist and function only in connection with body of one kind, the one known to us from experience?). As there is enough evidence that the functioning of human soul (to use Plato's termi- nology), its having mental life, depends essentially on the functioning of the brain (and so a serious damage to the brain renders a person un-con- scious), one would need to provide more positive arguments to show that the soul could function in the absence of the support of the body/brain. (By the way, the ,,empiricar' data, often referred to in the discussions of the possibility of post-morteni existence, like ,,near-death experiences", reports made by people-mediums supposedly contacting persons already dead, claims made by children supposedly able to recall events of a previotis life, have the same basic flow that they may support the general belief that life after death is perhaps possible, but not that disembodied existence is pos- sible.)

There is, however, one argument in favour of disembodied existence, inspired by another famons mind-body dualist, namely Descartes, which proved to be serious enough to attract attention of a number of contempo- rary critics who favour a physicalist account of mind. Descartes argues that

Problems with Disembodied Existence and Survival of Death 85

I know infallibly that I exist as a thinking thing (i.e. my belief is ,,incorri- gible", as a contemporary epistemologist would say), but I do not know infallibly that I have a body (perhaps I only dream that I am embodied). According to Descartes, it follows that my body is a separate thing from what is essential to my identity, namely from my soul (the thinking sub- stance) , in such a way that makes it imaginable for me to exist as disembod- ied.

At first sight, this argument may appear easy to dismiss. After all, from the mere fact that I do not know infallibly that my body exists, it does not follow logically that it is actually separable from me. Perhaps I simply do not know what is involved in my present existence, what it is to be me, what is essential to my personal identity. Such response to Descartes would treat his a r g u m e n t as an a r g u m e n t from knowledge a n d i g n o r a n c e . But Descartes's argument can be interpreted in such a way that the above ob- jection will be insufficient. Perhaps what Descartes has in mind is in fact an argument of a different sort: an argument from logical possibility and im- possibility. Descartes, writing in various places about what is ,,imaginable", seems to suggest an argument which could be phrased in (more or less) the following way: ( 1 ) 1 exist as a thinking thing now. (2) It is logically possible for me to continue to exist as a thinking thing without my body. (3) It is not logically possible that any thing continue to exist unless some part of it continue to exist. (4) Hence I must already have some component which is different from my body, and whose persistence is the persistence of me (and it is my s o u l / m i n d ) . (5) So I must have mind which is different from my body (which therefore can exist as disembodied). (6) So I can exist as disembodied.

Can such an argument be considered decisive? Descartes's contempo- rary objectors, like Sydney Shoemaker,'' deny the premise (2). They claim that it is not logically possible that I survive without my body. They reject the idea of disembodied existence as a living possibility by pointing to the fact that being embodied is so central to what it is to be a person that the concept ofa disembodied person is in fact unconceivable. In short, there is a disagreement here what does ,,logical possibility" amount to. But I think the defenders of the argument from logical possibility can stand their ground

•" See Sydney Shoemaker, ,Immortality and Dualism", in Shoemaker S., Identity, Cause and Mind, Oxford 2003, 139-158.

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by holding that the basis for supposing something to be logically possible is that we can simply make sense of it (i.e. we can spell out what it would be like for it to be true). Thus ,,logically possible" would mean ,,conceivable". After all, what are grounds for supposing something to be logically impos- sible? Arguably, the only grounds we can think of is that we can derive a contradiction from it. Surely, it this sense disembodied existence is con- ceivable (and so logically possible). It is not difficult to tell a coherent story of a person who continues to think, despite losing her body. And if so then the premise (2) is true, and Descartes's argument for the possibility of dis- embodied existence seems sound.

Moreover, one needs to note one crucial difference between Descartes as defender of the possibility of disembodied post-mortem existence, and Plato as defender of such possibility. Descartes is a theist who affirms the possibility of backing the existence of God with philosophical arguments. As such he can more easily than Plato explain the possible Divine involve- ment in bringing it about that what is logically possible (disembodied exist- ence) is true in the actual world.

Disembodied Existence and Personal Identity

If Descartes's argument establishes the possibility of disembodied exist- ence, it is still only prima facie possibility'. In order to show that disembod- ied existence of human persons is not just logically possible (coherent in itself), but epistemically possible (coherent with everything we know about the world and its workings), one needs to explore further the essential relations between a person and her body.

A good way to start such exploration may be by asking, in virtue of what a human person refers to a particular body as her body? What are the rela- tions which justify this reference? Only taking into account an answer to tliese questions, one can properly address further question, namely whether this person can continue to exist as a human person when these essential relations between that person and her body cease to hold. In other words, we need to specify whether there are any essential elements of personal identity which pertain to the person's body. If the answer will be yes, then the defender of disembodied existence will need to explain how is it pos- sible for a person to exist as person after losing some essential elements of personal identity. Cartesian metaphysics denies that personal identity is essentially linked to embodiment, but it is plausible to suggest that Descartes did not go into detail of the matter (enough to say that he himself admit- ted that his own account ofthe mind-body interaction did not strike him as satisfactory).

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It seems that we can uncontroversially point to two sets of attributes which characterize a human person's relation to her body. One set has to do with intentional action. Another set has to do with perception. As to the first set, there is just one body which the person is able to control directly, that is without performing any additional intentional action, and it is this person's own body. This power of voluntary agency relates a human person to her body in a unique way. As to the second set of characteristics of the relationship between a person and her body, a person's perceptions ofthe world clearly depends on the position and condition of her body. Thus, arguably, to say that this particular body is the body of this particular per- son is (at the very least) to assert that this particular person has a direct voluntary control of this particular body and that her perceptions of the world depend on the position and condition of this particular body.

Having established as much, can we still plausibly claim that after hav- ing lost her body at death, a human person can continue to exist as per- son? An answer to this question will depend crucially on whether we agree that by continuing to exist as a person we mean to continue to exist in a way which is similar enough to the existence of a human person in an ordinary (i.e. embodied) state, which is the only state of personal existence known to us from experience. It does not call for too much imagination to conclude that the idea of perceiving material objects in the external world (the world external to human person's mind) by a disembodied person is very hard to grasp. Take, for example, the sense of sight: it is the position of a person's eyes (relative to the position of her entire body) that determines what she sees (she always looks in a specific direction, under a specific angle, from a specific distance, and so on). It is just hard to grasp what would a disembodied person see when located e.g. on the top ofthe Empire State Building (would she see in all directions at once, for example?). Of course, analogical problems will emerge when we consider other senses. But what about the location itself? Presumably a disembodied person is an immate- rial person. Can an immaterial person have a specific location which would define the point in space from which she would ,,perceive" her environ- ment (whatever the nature of her perception)?

Similar problems come into focus when we address the question of in- tentional action. Could a disembodied person operate on her environment? Of course, it would need to be able to perceive it appropriately, in the first place, in order to be able to operate on it. But leaving the problem of perception behind, there is an equally puzzling question of the possibility of having direct voluntary control of something different than one's own body. How could this be done? True, a well read child can tell us a story involving telekinetic phenomena, but how could one plausibly account for such modus operandi of a disembodied person? Should such a person be

Janusz Salomon

ascribed the ability of moving telekinetically any object, or perhaps only not too heavy ones, or placed only few meters away? And do we mean by ,,operating on the person's environment" also communicating one's thought? Should a disembodied person be able to have a conversation with another disembodied person?

These are all very puzzling questions, and I think many people who be- lieve in life after death and understand such a life in dualist terms don't find such questions too puzzling, only because speaking about disembod- ied persons they in fact think about such persons as possessing bodies, ex- cept that they are very different from our ordinary bodies, being invisible for us, and so on.

I, for once, am inclined to think that this would be the right direction in which the believer in survival of death should look for philosophical solu- tions. It is worth noting that the whole analysis of a human person's rela- tion to her body, presented above, can be effectively employed in construct- ing an argument for the possibility of the relation between a person and her body being transferred from one particular body to another particular body (perhaps this time to a body of somewhat different kind). In this way we would at least get rid of the difficulties mentioned above.

Would such a possibility amount simply to a ,,change of bodies"? In other words, would it entail substance dualism, which allows one to think in terms of mind being only ,,attached" to a particular body, because body and mind are two fully distinct and separable substances? Not necessarily. I would think, it is possible to give a more subtle account of this ,,transition" (se- cured by God) from the state SI (in which a human person is embodied and remains in relation to a particular body which she loses at death) to the state S2 (in which the same human person is embodied in a body which is not identical with the ,,lost" body). It would probably need to be some sort of variation on Aquinas's view of these matters: a half way house of some kind between the fully fledged mind-body dualism and monism (be it materialist or idealist).

However, before I will address the issue of embodied post-mortem exist- ence of human persons in some detail, it is important to notice that one can take seriously the strength of the conclusions drawn from the analysis ofthe elements of personal identity pertaining to the body, and still be able to defend the possibility of disembodied post-mortem existence. One could do it by accepting that the person who survives her death while losing her body, does indeed lose her ability of perceiving the external world and operating on her environment. No doubt she pays a heavy price for her survival, but still it is not an incoherent idea that she exists after her bodily death. Now, this would be in full harmony with Descartes's argument for the possibility of disembodiment, as the only thing he managed to show is

Problems with Disembodied Existence and Survival of Death 89

that the soul, as the ,,thinking thing", can exist without a body. He did not show that when existing without a body, this ,,thinking thing" retains the ability of perceiving the external world and operating on her environment. What could such a disembodied person busy herself with? With thinking, obviously. A person without a possibility of perception and intentional ac- tion, but able to think (having all the old memories, ability to imagine, dream, plan, compose music, etc.) - it may strike one as somewhat weird or unattractive vision, but it is not an obviously incoherent one. But could a disembodied person retain after her death the memories, or even the very ability to think? Perhaps they depend totally on the fact that the mind supervenes on the body/brain, and once the body is dead, all the mental processes come to halt?

T h e very fact that these issues can be raised makes it perfectly clear, that in the context of the debate about personal survival of death one cannot escape the question, what are we actually concerned with hoping for sur- vival of death? If it would appear that we are prepared to give u p these elements of the way we operate as embodied persons which perhaps are so essentially linked to our embodiment that they cannot be retained in the disembodied state, it would be worth asking, which of the elements that define our identity as h u m a n persons are the elements that are the objects of our hope for survival? Which are the elements that the person in ques- tion would not to give up, otherwise she would have to conclude that she should have no concern for survival of this sort, simply because it would make no sense to say that it is really she who survives?

Here the split brain experiments, the famous thought experiments in- spired by an Oxford philosopher, Derek Parfit,' can be of help. O n e of them seems especially useful in our context. Let's imagine that my brain is divided, and each half is housed in a new body. It turned out that both semi-encephalic persons who resulted from this iexperiment have apparent memories of my life and traces of my character. How should we interpret the outcome of the experiment? Which of the three interpretations is cor- rect: ( 1 ) 1 didn't survive the experiment (none o f t h e two semi-encephalic persons is really me); (2) I survived as one o f t h e two persons; (3) I survived as two persons? It seems that we would have n o reason to claim that I didn't survive at all (after all, there would be someone who feels to be m e ) . We would also have no reasdn to decide which of the two semi-encephalic per- sons is me (considering they both feel to be m e ) . Hence, we would need to conclude that I survived as two persons. It the light of this conclusion, it is hard to deny the force of Parfit's suggestion, that if we don't assume that it

Derek Parfit, .Personal IdenUty", Philosophical Review 80(1971), 3-27.

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is exactly the connection of a person to a single body that constitutes the basis for individuation of persons (i.e. also the basis for deciding which person is me), then (granting the possibility of survival of death) it would be by no means obvious that after losing her body at death, the person under consideration would continue to exist as one, rather then more than one.

This thought experiments is valuable, because it points to the possibil- ity, that it may well turn out that the unique relation between a particular person and a particular body is, after all, so crucial to the person's identity, that losing this relation equals losing personal identity. I think this possibil- ity is yet another reason for a theist to favour the view that the post-mortem existence of human persons takes an embodied form.

Elmbodied Post-Mortem Existence of Human Persons and Disembodied Existence of God

I hope that from the preceding discussion it is clear that the outcome of the debate about the possibility of disembodied post-mortem existence of human persons does not depend on the outcome of the debate about the mode of God's existence. All the problems with disembodied existence of human persons discussed so far are rooted in our experiential knowledge of what it means to be an embodied human persons (we don't know any other kinds of human persons, after all). True enough, from the fact that we usually affirm about God that God is a person by way of analogy that is referring ultimately to our understanding of what it means to be a human person, it follows that we have to attach to the notion of person which we apply to God enough meaning as not render the belief that God is a person completely vacuous. For this reason, the conclusions about the identity of persons in general will have some bearing on the discussion of what can be the mode of existence of God if God is a person. However, this bearing is actually rather limited, as the list of person-making conditions may turn out to be different (shorter) when we consider the identity of persons in general, and different when we focus on the identity of human persons. For example, it may turn out that for a human person to be a person at all, it is necessaiy to be embodied (because it can be argued that one of the general conditions for being a person at all is to be able to think, and per- haps God as Greator so designed human beings that they can only think when they are embodied). But this second-level condition of personal iden- tity (being embodied) may not apply to God, because perhaps God can think (thus satisfying the first-level condition for being a person) while ex- isting as essentially disembodied.

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There seem to be no danger here that we will run too easily into apophaticism of some problematic kind, when we assert that when affirm- ing that God is a person we use the term person in a very different sense, than when we apply it to human beings. There seem to be no problem with affirming that God can think and learn about the world external to God while being essentially disembodied. And I suppose, there is no need to argue why from the point of view ofa theist it is very desirable to affirm that God has no body (even in an analogical sense of the word).

Unlike in God's case, when we speak about human persons, the danger of rendering vacuous the belief in embodied post-mortem personal exist- ence is a serious danger. It is for this reason, I think, that it is not the best way to argue for the possibility of survival of death, by asserting that the nature of the post-mortem existence of human persons is a complete mys- tery. Thus, while it seems a reasonable move on the part ofa theist to claim that a human person having survived her death is a transformed person (by which I mean that her way of existence is to some extent different than her ante-mortem existence), it is undesirable to affirm that this transfor- mation is so radical, that the two ways of personal existence of a human being (ante-mortem and post-mortem) have no common characteristics whatsoever. This, arguably, would be unacceptable because we would have no basis at all to affirm that the human person under consideration actu- ally survived her death. Perhaps the being which exists post-mortem (sup- posing that it does) is simply not the survivor of the human person in ques- tion at all. To affirm that it is, we need to be able to refer to the elements of personal identity which are present in both the ante-mortem and post- mortem state of the particular person. If by definition (i.e. by defining the two states of existence as totally different) we leave no room for this com- mon ground between the identity of ante-mortem and the identity of post- mortem person, we may be totally unable to affirm that she survived (and then the belief in the survival has no content and makes no sense).

These considerations make me think that in order to defend the ratio- nality of the two important theistic beliefs, which I considered in this paper (the belief in disembodied existence of God and the belief in survival of death by human persons), it is better to argue for the possibility of embod- ied rather than disembodied post-mortem existence of human persons.

Janusz SALAMON

HLOZOnCZNE PROBLEMY EGZYSTENCJI BEZCIELESNEJ A ZYCIE PO SMIERCI

Streszczenie

Zagadnienie racjonalnoSci wiary w zycie po Imierci spotyka si? na plasz- czyznie filozoficznej z kluczowymi problemami wspdlczesnej filozofii umy- slu, zwlaszcza z kwestiq tozsamosci osobowej, okreslonej relacjq umyslu i ciala czlowieka.

Wplyw Platona na mySl wczesnochrze&ijarisk^ oraz na wspdlczesn^ jej filozofi? zydowskq, a nieco pozniej takie na filozofi? islamu, sprawil, ze powszechny wSrdd wyznawc<5w religii teistycznych wiar? w zycie po Smierci wî ze si? cz?sto z dualistyczn^ koncepcjq osoby. W mySl tej koncepcji, bro- nionej na gruncie filozoficznym juz przez Platona, a rozpowszechnionej i wczelniej na Bliskim Wschodzie, w szczegdlny zai sposdb w starozytnym Egipcie, czlowiek sklada si? z dwdch calkowicie odmiennych i odr?bnych ontologicznie pierwiastkdw, polqczonych ze sobq jedynie incydentalnie: niematerialnej duszy i materialnego ciala. Wedlug dualistycznego scenariu- sza, w momencie Smierci ciala, dusza, ktdra jest noSnikiem wszystkich istot- nych cech czlowieka, kontynuuje swq egzystencj?, tym razem jako istota bezcielesna. Dualizmu substancjalnego, ktdry by! zasadniczo podobny do platonskiego, bronil pdzniej Kartezjusz, chod czynil to w sposdb odmienny od Platona.

Z niejakim zatem zaskoczeniem mdglby kto§ skonstatowad, ze nie tylko w chrzeScijaristwie, ale rdwniez w innych religiach teist)'cznych, a czasem i nieteistycznych, poglqdem na poSmiertnq egzystencj? czlowieka uwazanym za ortodoksyjnyjest pogl^d Platonowi przeciwny. Takie religijne idee, jak zmartwychwstanie cial czy reinkarnacja, zakladajq, ze po przetrwaniu swej Smierci biologicznej czlowiek b?dzie istnial jako istota ucieleSniona, a nie bezcielesna.

W niniejszym artykule argumentuj?, ze z punktu widzenia filozofa te- istycznego, opowiedzenie si? za t^ drugq opcj^ jest bardziej pozqdane. Nie

Problemy egzystencji bezcielesnej a iycie po Smierci 9 3

napotyka ona bowiem na te trudne do przezwyci?zenia (jak pokazuj?) teo- retyczne tnidnosci, ktdre pociqga za sobq dualistyczna wizja poSmiertnego istnienia osdb ludzkich pozbawionych ciala. Do gldwnych problemdw nale- zy tutaj na przyklad niemoznoSd wskazania elementdw fundamentalnych dla tozsamoSci osobowej, ktdre mialyby charakteryzowad osob? ludzkq za- rdwno w stanie egzystencji przedSmiertnej, jak i poSmiertnej. Identyfikacja takich elementdw wydaje si? nieodzowna, jesli przekonanie o mo:zliwoSci przetrwania Smierci przez osob? ludzkq ma byd sensowne, to znaczy posia- dajqcejakieS uchwytne znaczenie. Brak takich elementdw rdwnalby si? przy- znaniu, ze afirmujqc mozliwoSd egzystencji poSmiertnej istot ludzkich nie potrafimy powiedzied, jak mialaby si? dokonywad weryfikacja takiego prze- konania, to znaczy skqd b?dzie wiadomo, ze ten byt, ktdry rzekomo b?dzie istnial po Smierci, istotnie jest tq samq osobq ludzkq, ktdrej cialo uleglo rozkladowi. Go wazniejsze, jeSli prz)jmiemy, ze nieposiadanie ciala (md- zgu), a nawet jego uszkodzenie czy degeneracja (jak pokazuje choroba Alzheimera) oznacza dla osoby ludzkiej niemoznoSd poznawania otoczenia i oddziaiywania na otoczenie, a nawet niemoznoSd samoSwiadomoSci, pa- mi?ci i innych dzialari umyslowych, wdwczas pojawia si? klopotliwe pytanie, czy istota, ktdra przetrwalaby Smierd w stanie bezcielesnym, bylaby w dal- szym ciqgu osobq ludzkq.

Kluczowq sugestiq poczynionq w niniejszym artykule jest ta, ze opowie- dzenie si? za ucieleSnionq, raczej niz bezcielesnq egzystencjq poSmiertnq osdb ludzkich, w zadnej mierze nie utrudnia filozofowi teistycznemu argu- mentacji za tym, ze Bdg (a takie byd moze inne byty duchowe, nie b?dqce osobami ludzkimi) istnieje w postaci bezcielesnej. Zatem teista mozejed- noczeSnie bronid racjonalnoSci obydwu tych poglqddw, ktdre w kr?gu reli- gii teistycznych uchodzq zazwyczaj za ortodoksyjne: Bdg nie ma ciala, a eg- zystencja poSmiertna czlowieka jest egzystencjq istoty ucieleSnionej, a nie bezcielesnej.

Argumentacja, ktdrq proponuj?, odwoluje si? do mozliwoSci zrdznico- wania poj?cia tozsamoSci osobowej, gdyjest ona odniesiona do osoby ludz- kiej zjednej strony, a do Boga z drugiej strony. Spdjnajawi si? bowiem su- gestia, ze tozsamoSd osoby ludzkiej wiqze si? z cielesnoSciq w sposdb tak nie- rozerwalny, ze istnienie bezcielesne osoby ludzkiej jest niemozliwie. Jedno- czeSnie tozsamoSd osobowa w odniesieniu do Boga moze nie byd oparta w zadnej mierze na zwiqzku z wymiarem cielesnym. Zwazywszy, ze najbar- dziej fundamentalna dla osoby jako takiej wydaje si? byd moiliwoSd samo- SwiadomoSci, mySlenia, poznawania Swiata zewn?trznego wzgl?dem wlasne- go umyslu i oddziaiywania na swoje otoczenie, to wydaje si? zasadnym, ze Bdg ze swej natury moze mySled, poznawad i dzialad, b?dqc istotq bezciele- snq, a osoba ludzka jest byd moze tak stworzona (zaprojektowana) przez Boga, ze te kluczowe dla tozsamoSci osobowej czynnoSci sq dla niej dost?p)-

94 Janitsz Salomon

ne jedynie w stanie cielesnym. Takie rozumienie ,,osobowoSci" Boga byloby zreszt^ w pelni zgodne z klasycznq teoriq analogicznego rozumienia termi- ndw orzekanych o Bogu.

Zatem z teistycznego punktu widzenia, biorqc pod uwag? zardwno argu- menty wspdlczesnej filozofii umyslu,jak i sugestie wspdlczesnej neurofizjo- logii, bardziej zasadne wydaje si? postulowanie pogmiertnej egzystencji osdb ludzkich jako posiadajqcych cialo, nawet jesli wjakiejs mierze jest to cialo odmienne od tego, ktdre znamy z egzystencji ziemskiej (byd moze ,,cialo przemienione" lub ,,cialo duchowe", jak sugeruj^ autorzy biblijni). Musia- loby to byd jednak cialo wystarczajqco podobne do naszego obecnego ciala, w przeciwnym bowiem razie teista musialby si? opowiedzied za calkowitym agnostycyzmem w sprawie sposobu egzystencji posmiertnej. Jesli jednak fi- lozof teistyczny decyduje si? na powiedzenie czego^ sensownego o istnie- niu poSmiertnym osdb ludzkich, musi wypowiedzied si? spdjnie w kwestiach zwî zanych z tozsamosciq osoby, relacji umyslu i ciala, a ponadto jeszcze musi uzgodnid to ze swoimi wierzeniami o sposobie istnienia Boga. W tym kontekscie stanowisko sci§le dualistyczne, bronione przez Platona czy Kar- tezjusza, wydaje si? byd trudne do utrzymania.