Corruptionism and time travel

Corruptionism is the Christian view that at death we cease to exist, and only return to existence at the resurrection of the dead. There are two kinds of corruptionism. On materialist corruptionism, the body is destroyed, and we are all gone until the resurrection. On Thomistic corruptionism, although the body is destroyed, the soul continues to exist until the resurrection, but the person cannot exist reduced to a soul, so the person ceases to exist, just as on materialist corruptionism.

Here’s an argument against corruptionism:

1. Death is a serious non-instrumental harm.

2. Forward time travel is not a non-instrumental harm.

3. If corruptionism is true, there is no significant non-instrumental value difference between death and forward time travel.

4. There is a significant non-instrumental value difference beween a serious non-instrumental harm and something that is not a non-instrumental harm.

5. So, corruptionism is not true.

Premise 3 is probably the most controversial one. The idea is this. On both corruptionism and forward time travel at some moment the person ceases to be and at a later moment the person comes back into existence. On materialist corruptionism, it is difficult, if not impossible, to find a metaphysical difference between corruptionism and forward time travel. On Thomistic corruptionism, there is a difference: the soul continues to exist in the interim between death and resurrection, but not during the skipped period of time in forward time travel. But it is not clear how the soul’s continued existence is a harm to one.

One may ask: But how does the non-corruptionist, or survivalist, Christian escape the argument? Isn’t death less bad on survivalism? Well, here I think is the difference: on survivalism during the interim period from death to resurrection, one exists in a very unfortunate state: the state of being deprived of all of one’s body. To exist without even one arm is unfortunate. But on survivalism one exists without one’s arms, legs, eyes, etc.

There is a forward time travel analogy for survivalism. While corruptionism is like standard forward time travel, survivalism is an extreme version of the following story: Due to a malfunction in the forward time machine, you got left behind, but your arms got sent to the future, so aimed that they will rejoin you when you get to the future the usual slow way. This is clearly a serious harm. Existing armlessly is a serious harm.

Corruptionism and justice

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.

Corruptionism and care about the soul

According to Catholic corruptionists, when I die, my soul will continue to exist, but I won’t; then at the Resurrection, I will come back into existence, receiving my soul back. In the interim, however, it is my soul, not I, who will enjoy heaven, struggle in purgatory or suffer in hell.

Of course, for any thing that enjoys heaven, strugges in purgatory or suffers in hell, I should care that it does so. But should I have that kind of special care that we have about things that happen to ourselves for what happens to the soul? I say not, or at most slightly. For suppose that it turned out on the correct metaphysics that my matter continues to exist after death. Should I care whether it burns, decays, or is dissected, with that special care with which we care about what happens to ourselves? Surely not, or at most slightly. Why not? Because the matter won’t be a part of me when this happens. (The “at most slightly” flags the fact that we can care about “dignitary harms”, such as nobody showing up at our funeral, or us being defamed, etc.)

But clearly heaven, purgatory and hell in the interim state is something we should care about.