Corruptionists hold that our souls survive death, but we are not our souls, and we do not survive death. All the corruptionists I know are Christians, and hold that eventually there comes a resurrection of the body, and then the soul regains its body, and our existence resumes.
A standard argument against Christian corruptionism is that on the view, it is our soul after death that suffers punishment or enjoys reward, while it is unjust that something that isn’t oneself should suffer punishment for one’s deeds.
A corruptionist response that I don’t ever remember seeing is this: only persons can be subject to injustice, and the soul is not a person, so no injustice happens to the disembodied soul.
While this does solve the problem of the injustice of the punishment, it does so at a cost. For if injustice cannot happen to a non-person, then by the same token, justice cannot be done to a non-person. Now it is only appropriate to punish x if the punishment is an instance of justice. If justice cannot be done to a non-person, then punishment cannot be appropriately imposed on a non-person.
This lead to a direct new version of the argument against Christian corruptionism: only persons can be appropriately punished, disembodied souls are not persons, and hence it is not appropriate to punish a disembodied soul. This version of the argument has an advantage over the standard argument, namely that it is irrelevant whether one’s sins belong to one’s soul or not.
How plausible this dialectics is depends on how plausible is the thesis that only persons can have justice or injustice done to them. I find the thesis plausible.
Remark 1: Of course, we talk of punishing and rewarding dogs and other non-human animals. But I think that is an analogical sense of the words "punish" and "reward."
Remark 2: Although noting that the soul is not a person solves the problem of injustice, it doesn't by itself resolve the problem of the imposition of suffering. Even though it is not unjust to kick one's dog when the dog did nothing wrong, it is wicked to do so.
For what it’s worth, I think the right answer on the dog question (remark 1) is that the animals clearly are persons and are being punished or rewarded authentically. Of course, the extent of their agency drastically differs from ours, but considered as binary variable, they’re definitely on the person side.
ReplyDeleteA comment that fell too far short of the standards of civil academic discourse was deleted. Too many such comments and the user will be banned.
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ReplyDeleteWe certainly *talk* of punishing animals. But a sign that this is a different kind of thing is that we do not require mens rea in these cases.
Sorry, I did not see any academic references to the subject of "eventually there comes a resurrection of the body, and then the soul regains its body, and our existence resumes".
ReplyDeleteCould you please cite some academic references, say from Oxford, Berkeley, MIT, or any major academic institution wherein such subjects are explored within the standards of academic discourse?
Is there, in general, an academic discussion going on as to whether the soul is or is not a person?
Can you please provide references wherein the theory of the soul is discussed in academia generally? Are there competing academic theories of the soul? If so, what do academics consider the soul to be made of? How is the soul structured? How does the soul retain memories? What are the mechanisms of soul thought presently being discussed in academia generally?
A person has many traits, among them thoughts of various sorts, emotions, reasoning, memories, sensory perceptions, words, communications.
Where in academia are the mechanisms of such thoughts in the soul being discussed? Can you please provide some references to the discussions of the structures of the soul that would lead one to consider the soul to be either a person or some other sort of thing?
I am not aware of any serious academic discussions coming out of our leading academic institutions as to research into the structures of the soul that would provide insight into the question of whether the soul is or is not a person.
While dualism is a minority view in contemporary philosophy, it is nonetheless seriously discussed across academic philosophy.
ReplyDeleteWhat is the majority view of the body/soul in contemporary philosophy then, if there are any?
ReplyDeleteIf my dead body is desecrated it is an injustice, and yet I am not my body. If my rightful heirs are denied my assets by a corrupt executer, I have been treated unjustly because my wishes have not been honored, but only my soul exists and my body is just a heap.
ReplyDeletePerhaps the problem is that suffering an injustice is a timeless harm that does not require present existence. Just thinking out loud.
This is a good argument, I suppose, if you think personhood is primitive and that it's a primitive fact about justice and injustice that they can only be done to persons. But that's certainly not the view of Aquinas, who has a robust explanation of what makes persons persons and of why justice and injustice can be done to persons but not to brutes, trees, or stars. And when you look at that explanation (intellect and will, living in community), you find out that separated souls check all the relevant boxes for having justice or injustice done to them, and that these are in fact the same boxes that persons check for having justice or injustice done to them. And once one sees that, there's no argument here. So is this meant to speak to a Thomistic corruptionist?
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