International Phenomenological Society

Will I Be a Dead Person?

Author(s): W. R. Carter
Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 59, No. 1 (Mar., 1999), pp. 167-171
Published by: International Phenomenological Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2653464 .
Accessed: 01/06/2014 12:21
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

International Phenomenological Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 128.118.88.48 on Sun, 1 Jun 2014 12:21:08 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

Vol. LIX, No. 1, March 1999

Will I Be a Dead Person?

W. R. CARTER

North Carolina State University

Eric Olsen argues from the fact that we once existed as fetal individuals to the conclusion that the StandardView of personal identity is mistaken.I shall establish that a similar argument focusing upon dead people opposes Olson's favored Biological View of
personalidentity.
It is a paradoxcharacteristicof Wright that even as a corpse
he has been able to stir up a considerable measure of excitement among the living. (Many Masks: A Life of Frank Lloyd
Wright,BrendanGill)
To some, Communismis just slumbering,and Lenin, lying in
his glass coffin like Sleeping Beauty, is keeping the movement
alive. ("Czar and Lenin Share Fate: Neither Can Rest in
Peace", by Alessandra Stanley, The New York Times,
Wednesday April 9, 1997)

In a recent paper "Was I Ever a Fetus?",Eric T. Olson argues convincingly

that the StandardView of personalidentitycannotresolve the 'fetus problem'
and so should be rejected.I shall show that Olson's favored Biological View
of personal identity is in much the same boat with respect to what I'll call
the dead person problem. Friendsof the Biological View (BV hereafter)hold
that we continue for so long, but only so long, as our lives continue. The
dead person who lay in state afterJohn Kennedy's assassinationwas not JFK,
by the lights of BV theorists, since JFK no longer existed after he died. That
leaves us with the question:how was it with this dead person(the dead person
who was ceremonially buried in Arlington National Cemetery shortly after
JFK's death) prior to JFK's assassination?I do not believe that fans of BV
can plausibly respond to the question. As we shall see, the brief for this is
much the same as the case Olson makes for judging that friends of SV (the
StandardView) cannotplausiblyrespondto questionsconcerningthe futureof
fetal individuals.
Let Flam be an ordinary(midlife) person,Flem be the fetal individualthat
emerges from (as we normallywould say) Flam's conception,and Flan be the
dead person who is buriedwhen (as many would say) Flam is buried.Identity
questions present themselves. Is Flem Flam? And is Flan Flam? SV
WILL I BE A DEAD PERSON?

This content downloaded from 128.118.88.48 on Sun, 1 Jun 2014 12:21:08 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

167

commits us to a negative reply to the first question, whereas BV entails a

negative answer to the second question. That is because SV and BV have
essentialist corollaries,namely:
SE: For any x, if x is a person then x is essentially a psychological
being.
BE: For any x, if x is a person then x is essentially alive.
Flem is not a psychological being, Flan is not alive; so SV has it that
F(Flam = Flem) and BV that F(Flam = Flan). The rejection of the first identity claim raises the fetal problem, whereas the rejection of the second identity claim leaves us with the dead personproblem.Olson:
Suppose, as the StandardView would have it, that I came into being six or seventh months
after I was conceived, when the normal course of fetal development producedthe first mental
capacities worthy of the name... Suppose that the fetus.. .is numerically different from me.
What became of that fetus...? (p. 100)

Similarly, it might be observed that we perish when we die accordingto BV;

the dead people who remain after we die are numericallydifferent from ourselves. How were these dead people situatedbefore we died? One answer is
that they did not exist prior to our deaths. Flan first exists only after Flami
dies. SV theorists may similarly respond to a 'What became of (the fetus)
Flem?' question by asserting that Flem simply perishes when Flam makes
his entrance onto the cosmic stage. Olson considers and rightly rejects this,
maintaining that it is absurd to suppose that a being necessarily perishes
when it acquires the ability to think (p. 101). However SV theorists presumably will deny that Flem (nonsentient fetal individuals generally) ever
acquires such an ability, since (i) such acquisition plainly conflicts with the
thesis that thoughtfulbeings are essentially thoughtful,and (ii) the prospects
for SV seem ratherdim in the event that such essentialism is rejected. What
might be allowed is that it is absurdto suppose that a being that develops
physiologically necessarily perishes when (at some point of such development) thoughtemerges. That is certainlyplausible.
But consider the following: someone films Flam's death in a certain hospital room. The film continues without interruptionuntil we are confronted
by an image of Flan located in the hospital's morgue. We then view the film
in reverse, startingwith the morgue images and proceeding(frameby frame)
to images of the death scene in the room. In this (extraordinary)context we
might ask: what becomes of Flan? Suppose that our BV theorist replies that
Flan 'perishes' when life emerges (on the backtrackingfilm we are viewing).
Isn't this as implausible as supposing that (the fetus) Flem perishes when
thought emerges? I believe that it is. But suppose that Flan doesn't 'perish'
when life emerges on the reversed film. If BE is tenable and life is essential
168

W. R. CARTER

This content downloaded from 128.118.88.48 on Sun, 1 Jun 2014 12:21:08 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

to living things, that means that Flan exists as a non-living thing prior to
Flam's death. It seems that at this time Flan coexists with the living Flam.
Since Flan and Flam are composed of the same matter,that can be true only
if life does not supervene on the activity of various microscopic entities that
are constituents of both Flan and Flan. This supervenience claim is very
plausible. (See van Inwagen 1990, p. 138; for a different supervenience
argument against a 'coincident entities' assessment of ourselves and our
bodies, see Carter1988.)
Olson argues persuasively against the idea that there are times at which
Flem and Flain are coexisting entities. Presumablyit never happensthat two
humananimals are located where Flamiis located; if Flem and Flam coincide
at time t, it seems that Flam is not (since Flem is) a human animal. Olson
chargesthat this underminesSV:
...by making it uncertain whether you and I are people at all. If you could be biologically
indistinguishable from an organism without being an organism yourself, perhaps something
could be psychologically just like a person without really being a person. If there are pseudoorganisms, indistinguishablefrom real organisms, there might also be pseudo-people indistinguishable from real people (p. 101).

Flem appears to be a pseudo-person in the event that Flem coincides with

Flam. If Flam thinks that he is a (genuine) person, similarly for Flem. But
how (Olson asks) can Flamithen know that he is not a pseudo-person? A
good question. Obviously a similar question arises for BV proponentsof the
view that Flan exists prior to Flam's death. Olson's arguments against the
SV coincidence gambit clearly carryover in opposition to a BV coincidence
gambit.
Accordingly, BV stands or falls with the thesis that Flan 'perishes' when
life emerges on the reversed film. I submit that this is as preposterous as
supposing thatFlem perishes when thoughtemerges (in the normalcourse of
embryological development). Suppose that Flan is the subject of an autopsy
and that it is concluded that the cause of (Flam's) death was a massive head
injury.How can this assessment of the situationbe reasonablybased upon an
examination of Flan in the event that Flan did not exist prior to Flam's
death?To allow that the autopsyreveals the cause of Flam's death is to presuppose that the dead person who is examined existed prior to the death
whose cause is under investigation. Since Flam/Flan coincidence is a nonstarter,as Olson's argumentssuggest, we have reason to conclude that Flami
and Flan are one; and since Flan is not essentially alive, Flam is then not
essentially alive. I conclude thatwe shouldrejectBE and so BV.W
One interestingreply to this asserts that the term "Flan"lacks a referent.2
In reality, a corpse is a merely virtual (nominal) and not a genuine object.
1
2

Fred Feldman (1992) gets this right;Rosenberg(1983) does not.

This was suggested by a reviewer to whom I am grateful for this, and other, comments.
WILL I BE A DEAD PERSON?

This content downloaded from 128.118.88.48 on Sun, 1 Jun 2014 12:21:08 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

169

There are to be sure variousmicroscopicentities (mereologicalsimples if you

will) that are at certaintimes configuredin a corpse-like manner;the activity
of such entities obviously does not constitute a biological life, from which it
follows (the reply goes) that there is no composite being that is composed of
such entities.3In brief, there is no Flan; accordinglyFlan does not pose problems for BV enthusiasts.Since the reversedfilm does not at the outset picture
any complex being, BV theorists are not committedto the implausible claim
that our film portraysa being that perishes when Flam dies.
This reply will have little attractionfor those of us who believe (as Olson
himself seems to believe4)that there are non-living compoundthings. At any
rate, it doesn't appearto be necessarily true that every rationaland self-conscious complex being is biologically alive. Supposing that the activity of
certain microscopic entities constitutes psychological (thoughtful) activity
but not biological activity, many of us would judge that such entities compose a composite psychological (though not biological) being. Of course it
might be held that the xs compose a composite being if and only if the activity of the xs constitutes either a life or a psychology. Since corpses are
neitherpsychologically nor biologically engaged, that speaks for an eliminativist position vis-a-vis corpses.
Eliminativism is opposed by the intuition that "if an object is important
enough to swerve your car around it is importantenough to put into your
ontology" (Parsons 1987, 275). But intuitions can and do play us false on
occasion, so it would be nice to have an argumentfor the existence of things
that are neither alive nor psychologically engaged. Consider this case of a
man afflictedwith a potentiallyfatal disease:
There is currentlyno cure. Unless some way can be found to stop the disease, he will die in a
few days. there is good reason to believe that a cure will be found in a dozen years or so.
Cyrogenics, Inc., offers to inject some specially formulated glycerol and to freeze the man
solid. Then, when the cure has been perfected, they will thaw him out, reanimatehim, and see
to it that he is cured of the disease (Feldman 1992, 62).

The subject who is cured at the story's conclusion is identical with the subject who consents to cyropreservationat the outset. Since it is implausible to
judge that he is subject to intermittentor gappy existence, it seems this individual exists at a time when he is neitheralive nor psychologically engaged.
Although the activity of the microscopic entities that compose the frozen
subject constitute neithera biological nor a psychological life, they nonetheless compose a whole (being). Given the possibility of persistence through
cyropreservation,it is hard to see any principled defense of the disjunctive
This accords with van Inwagen's position in (1990).
Olson (1997) apparentlyallows that a detached cerebrumor a severed arm is a genuine
object, although neither is a living organism. Flam's left arm would still exist for a time
were it to be detached from Flam. I can see no basis for then denying Flan's existence.

170

W. R. CARTER

This content downloaded from 128.118.88.48 on Sun, 1 Jun 2014 12:21:08 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

'Either a life or a psychology is required' account of when microscopic

entities compose a macroscopicentity. Accordingly, we may doubt that there
is much to be said for corpse eliminativism.5
References
Carter,W. R.: "OurBodies, Our Selves," AustralasianJournal of Philosophy
Vol. 66 (September1988).
Feldman,Fred: ConfrontationsWiththe Reaper (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1992).
Olson, Eric T.: "Was I Ever a Fetus?,"Philosophy and Phenornenological
ResearchLXII (March1997).
Parsons, Terence: "EntitiesWithout Identity",Philosophical Perspectives I,
ed. by James E. Tomberlin(Atascadero,California:Ridgeview Publishing Company, 1987).
Rosenberg, Jay: ThinkingClearlyAbout Death (Englewood Cliffs: PrenticeHall, 1983).
Van Inwagen, Peter:Material Beings (Ithaca,New York: Cornell University
Press, 1990).

It is true that there may be importantdifferences between the frozen man case and the
corpse case. Fred Feldman argues that our frozen subject is neither alive nor dead, but in
a state of "suspendedanimation"(62). We can grant this and still judge that there is no
principledbasis for the view that the frozen subject is, though a corpse is not, a genuine
entity.
WILL I BE A DEAD PERSON?

This content downloaded from 128.118.88.48 on Sun, 1 Jun 2014 12:21:08 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

171