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First, a few abbreviations:
C ⇔ Swinburne is a Conscious person and exists in 1984.
D ⇔ Swinburne ’ s body is (completely) Destroyed in the last instant of
1984.
S ⇔ Swinburne has a Soul in 1984.
E ⇔ Swinburne Exists in 1985.
84 ( p ) ⇔ Sentence p is about 1984.
Now, the premises are as follows:
P1. C.
P2. ∀ p[84(p) & ◊ (p & C & D) → ◊ (C & D & p & E)].
P3. ∼ ◊ (C & D & ∼ S & E).
P4. 84( ∼ S).
P5. □ ((C & D) → S) → □ (C → S).
The fi rst premise is straightforward. The second one now incorporates
the restrictions that Swinburne put on quantifi cation in metalanguage (now
we are able to substitute any proposition whatsoever for p ). (2) says that
any proposition about 1984 compatible with the claim that Swinburne is
conscious and his body is (afterwards) destroyed is compatible with his
being conscious, his body being (afterwards) destroyed, and his having a
soul in 1984. P3 says that it ’ s impossible for Swinburne to survive the
complete destruction of his body if he doesn ’ t have a soul. P4 says that the
96 Rafal Urbaniak and Agnieszka Rostalska
claim that he doesn ’ t have a soul in 1984 is a claim about year 1984. P5
says that if his being conscious and his body ’ s being destroyed entail that
he has a soul, his being conscious itself entails the same claim (thus capturing
the intuition that whether his body is destroyed has no impact on
whether he has a soul).
P6. 84( ∼ S) & ◊ ( ∼ S & C & D) → ◊ (C & D & ∼ S & E) (universal quantifi er, P2).
P7. ∼ (84( ∼ S) & ◊ ( ∼ S & C & D)) ( modus tollens , P3, P6).
P8. ∼ 84( ∼ S) ∨ ∼ ◊ ( ∼ S & C & D) (De Morgan ’ s Law, P7).
P9. ∼ ◊ ( ∼ S & C & D) (disjunctive syllogism, P8, P4).
P10. □ ∼ ( ∼ S & C & D) (defi nition of □ , P9).
P11. □ ((C & D) → S) (substitution of provable equivalents, P10).
P12. □ (C → S) ( modus ponens , P5, P11).
C1. S (schema T; i.e., □ A → A; modus ponens , P1, P12).
The argument has been attacked from various angles. Swinburne and
Shoemaker ( Personal Identity ) point out that P2 involves a de re possibility
claim that cannot be justifi ed by bare thought experiments. They complain
that no conclusion about the actual world can follow from mere possibility
claims. Swinburne (1996) insists that not all premises are merely modal (P1
isn ’ t). Swinburne also argues that the story in which he himself survives is
consistent and that this is enough to support the de re claim.
Hasker argues that Swinburne ’ s argument is epistemically circular.
Swinburne (1996) attempted to defend against this sort of insinuation that
someone may accept premise 2 without even understanding the conclusion
or without accepting premise 3. The strength of this criticism is rather
unclear because the notion of epistemic circularity is rather vague.
Reames gives a parallel argument for the opposite conclusion, switching
∼ S with S and E with ∼ E. Some space is still left for Swinburne, for he can
argue that one of the premises is false on this reading.
Nagasawa disagrees with the so - called “ quasi - Aristotelian premise, ”
which says that there is no identity through time between two objects if
they have no part in common (Swinburne used it to defend P3).
Probably the best known objection, which is most often considered to
be lethal, is the substitution objection formulated against the truth of P2
(Zimmerman, Alston, Smythe, Stump, and Kretzmann). These authors
point out that if we substitute for p a sentence that states ‘ Swinburne is
purely material in 1984 ’ (let ’ s abbreviate it by M) or ‘ Swinburne is identical
with his body or some part of it ’ , premise 2 comes out false, for (arguably)
it is not possible that Swinburne is purely material and yet he survives the
destruction of his body, even though it is possible that he is purely material
and yet conscious.
A Modern Modal Argument for the Soul 97
Dealing with the substitution objection proceeds as follows. First of all,
one cannot try to save P2 by insisting that the consequent of the problematic
substitution instance is true, for on the assumption that being material
entails not having a soul, this move would falsify P3.
Swinburne himself tried a slightly different strategy. He insisted that no
such p is compatible with C & D, for any such p amounts to the denial of
his conclusion. This defense doesn ’ t seem too convincing. To say that it is
possible that Swinburne is conscious and material (and his body is later
destroyed) is not to state a philosophical thesis about the very issue in
dispute. One can admit such a possibility without asserting that conscious
beings actually are (purely) material. Another worry is that if you reject the
compossibility of being material and conscious, you no longer even need
Swinburne ’ s argument: from the mere claim that Swinburne is conscious,
you ’ ll be able to conclude that he is not purely material.
As it turns out, a slight modifi cation to one of the premises yields a valid
argument that doesn ’ t fall prey to the substitution objection. Instead of
‘ being about 1984 ’ , let ’ s use ‘ being true about 1984 ’ in P2 and let ’ s leave
other premises intact. If we use 84(p) & p instead of 84(p) we get: P2 * . ∀
p[84(p) & p & ◊ (p & C & D) → ◊ (C & D & p & E)], which says that no true sentence
about 1984 compatible with C & D excludes C & D & E. The fi rst thing
to observe is that we still can derive S (see Urbaniak and Rostalska for more
details).
The second thing to note is that P2 * , as a case of strengthening the
antecedent, is properly weaker than P2. Last but not least, P2 * is not susceptible
to the substitution objection. For to believe that substituting M for
p will falsify P2 * , one has to believe that the antecedent of such an instance
will be true:
84(M) & M & ◊ (M & C & D).
Does this move completely immunize the argument to criticism? Alas, it
only shows that the main fault doesn ’ t lie where the substitution objection
claimed it did. Clearly, the key premises here are P2 * and P3. The former
says that no true sentence about 1984 excludes Swinburne ’ s survival in
1985, and the latter says that such a survival is impossible if one doesn ’ t
have a soul. If presented with those sentences separately, we might feel
compelled to say, Sure, there is no (logical) reason why sentences purely
about 1984 should exclude sentences about 1985! Sure, there is no way
one could survive the complete and instantaneous destruction of one ’ s body