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Abstract
A novel argument has recently been advanced against materialism—the view that human persons are identical to composite, material objects. The argument claims that pairs of people are not conscious and that the only viable explanation for why they are not is because pairs of people are not simple. The argument concludes that only a simple thing can be the subject of conscious states. In this paper, I offer an alternative explanation for why pairs of people are not conscious: pairs of people are not substances. I provide two characterizations of substantiality. The first proposal claims that substances have irreducible causal powers, and the second claims that substances cannot have other substances as proper parts. The alternative explanation based on these characterizations of substantiality shows that being conscious is compatible with materialism.
Notes
1 For example, see Zimmerman Citation2010 and Lycan Citation2009.
2 From here on out, I will use ‘dualism’ to mean substance dualism.
3 We will leave out of consideration materialist views that claim that human persons are mereologically simple entities—such as a fundamental physical particle located somewhere in my brain (see Chisholm Citation1979).
4 For clarification, ‘materialism’ in this paper is meant as substance materialism, which is the family of views that claims that the subject of mental states is a material thing. This view is neutral over the nature of mental states and so is open to property dualism, non-reductive physicalism, or reductive physicalism.
5 For instance, Zimmerman (Citation1991) persuasively argues against the cogency of two simplicity arguments based on Cartesian considerations. Lowe (Citation2001) advances an argument to the conclusion that we are simple entities—however, his argument relies on the premise that I am not identical to my body or any of its proper parts, and so Lowe (Citation2010) concludes that it is not an adequate argument for substance dualism.
6 Barnett Citation2010.
7 Leftow Citation1999, 221.
8 Block Citation1980.
9 Barnett Citation2010, 164.
10 Ibid.
11 This is a separate consideration than Barnett's case against Relation and Structure, for I agree with Barnett that even if we were to shrink the two persons into the size of cerebral hemispheres such that each person played the relevant functional role that each hemisphere was playing, we cannot say that the pair of persons is conscious even though the being (McCartney in Barnett's example) in whose head are the two shrunken persons may be considered to be conscious. Thus, even if McCartney is conscious, I can agree with Barnett's denial that ‘the pair comprising you and me might be conscious’ (Barnett Citation2010, 163). But that is because you and I are conscious. But if we change our natures into cerebral hemispheres (not that we merely play the functional role that hemispheres do but actually become cerebral hemispheres), then I take it that you and I would no longer be individually conscious. This then seems to leave open the possibility that this new pair is conscious.
12 Of course some philosophers take it that we are events, processes, momentary bundles of mental states, etc. But [**] potentially has more wide-ranging appeal than [*], since [**] can be accepted by both materialists and dualists, whereas [*] can only be accepted by dualists.
13 Van Inwagen Citation2007, 188.
14 Plantinga Citation2007, 102.
15 For a small sample of analyses on the nature of substance, see Hoffman and Rosenkranz Citation1994, Citation1997; Gorman Citation2006; Toner Citation2008; Stump Citation2006.
16 Bailey (Citation2014) also offers alternative materialist-friendly explanations of The Datum that have not been ruled out, in particular explanations that involve either restricting composition (such that there are no pairs of persons) or adopting a maximality principle for being conscious. I reject the first approach since I take composition to be unrestricted, and there are worries concerning the maximality principle, cf. Sutton Citation2014.
17 Merricks Citation2001.
18 Toner Citation2006.
19 See Stump Citation2006; Toner Citation2008.
20 Stump Citation2006, 70.
21 I will take no position regarding the various controversies surrounding causal powers and their natures (e.g., pure powers, powerful qualities, etc.). However, silence on this should not have significant bearing for my argument in this paper.
22 An anonymous reviewer raises the concern that neither Ali nor Eli have the causal power to lift a long table, and hence the causal power to do so belongs to the pair. However, the causal power to lift a long table will be reducible to the causal powers of Ali and Eli. For example, using Merricks’ well-known example, we might claim that the baseball has the causal power to shatter the window, since (by parity of reasoning) none of its atoms have that causal power to do so. However, the causal power to shatter the window is reducible to the causal powers of the atoms acting in concert, and hence Merricks eliminates baseballs. Similarly, the causal power to lift a long table is reducible to the causal power of Ali and Eli acting in concert. However, contra Merricks, the proposal offered here permits the existence of pairs of persons and baseballs.
23 Stump Citation2006, 67. Aquinas’ reasoning here is based on his view that a substance cannot have more than one substantial form (i.e., the unity thesis). But even if one rejects substantial forms, this characterization of substances can still be adopted. For example, Toner (Citation2008) argues that NSP solves several metaphysical problems.
24 Moreland (Citation2000, 81–82), a substance dualist, also accepts NSP: ‘The substance as a whole is prior to its parts in this sense […] those parts receive their identity by virtue of their incorporation into the substance as a whole […] If the parts drop out of those relations, the parts lose their identity […] If a heart of a hand is severed from an individual human, it ceases to be a heart or a hand.’ Moreland mistakenly assumes that all materialists reject the conception of human persons as substances but instead treat them as ‘property-things’. But NSP is not only compatible with some versions of materialism but also provides a way to respond to the simplicity argument for dualism.
25 I do not take spatial parts, integral parts, and metaphysical parts to be ‘parts’ in a univocal sense. That is, I adopt a plurality of the parthood relation: see Fine Citation1994; Citation2010; also McDaniel Citation2004; Citation2009.