514 C H A P T E R 1 1 : W hat I s P er s o n a l I d e n tit y ?

The Dualist Theory

from Personal Identity

T here seems no contradiction in the supposition that a person might acquire a totally
new body (including a completely new brain)—as many religious accounts of life
after death claim that men do. To say that this body, sitting at the desk in my room, is
my body is to say two things. First it is to say that I can move parts of this body (arms,
legs, etc.), just like that, without having to do any other intentional action and that I
can make a difference to other physical objects only by moving parts of this body. By
holding the door handle and turning my hand, I open the door. By bending my leg and
stretching it I kick the ball and make it move into the goal. But I do not turn my hand
or bend my leg by doing some other intentional action; I just do these things. Secondly,
it is to say that my knowledge of states of the world outside this body is derived from
their effects on this body—I learn about the positions of physical objects by seeing
them, and seeing them involves light rays reflected by them impinging on my eyes and
setting up nervous impulses in my optic nerve. My body is the vehicle of my agency
in the world and my knowledge of the world. But then is it not coherent to suppose
that I might suddenly find that my present body no longer served this function, that I
could no longer acquire information through these eyes or move these limbs, but might
discover that another body served the same function? I might find myself moving other
limbs and acquiring information through other eyes. Then I would have a totally new
body. If that body, like my last body, was an occupant of Earth, then we would have a
case of reincarnation, as Eastern religions have understood that. If that body was an
occupant of some distant planet or an environment which did not belong to the same
space as our world, then we would have a case of resurrection as on the whole Western
religions (Christianity, Judaism and Islam) have understood that.
This suggestion of a man acquiring a new body (with brain) may be more plausible,
to someone who has difficulty in grasping it, by supposing the event to occur gradually.
Suppose that one morning a man wakes up to find himself unable to control the right
side of his body, including his right arm and leg. When he tries to move the right-side
parts of his body, he finds that the corresponding left-side parts of his body move; and
when he tries to move the left-side parts, the corresponding right-side parts of his wife’s
body move. His knowledge of the world comes to depend on stimuli to his left side and
to his wife’s right side (e.g., light rays stimulating his left eye and his wife’s right eye).
The bodies fuse to some extent physiologically as with Siamese twins, while the man’s
wife loses control of her right side. The focus of the man’s control of and knowledge
of the world is shifting. One may suppose the process completed as the man’s control
is shifted to the wife’s body, while the wife loses control of it.
Equally coherent, I suggest, is the supposition that a person might become disem-
bodied. A person has a body if there is one particular chunk of matter through which
he has to operate on and learn about the world. But suppose that he finds himself
able to operate on and learn about the world within some small finite region, without
having to use one particular chunk of matter for this purpose. He might find himself
 Richard Swinburne: The Dualist Theory 515

with knowledge of the position of objects in a room (perhaps by having visual sensa-
tions, perhaps not), and able to move such objects just like that, in the ways in which
we know about the positions of our limbs and can move them. But the room would
not be, as it were, the person’s body; for we may suppose that simply by choosing to
do so he can gradually shift the focus of his knowledge and control, e.g., to the next
room. The person would be in no way limited to operating and learning through one
particular chunk of matter. Hence we may term him disembodied. The supposition
that a person might become disembodied also seems coherent.
I have been arguing so far that it is coherent to suppose that a person could continue
to exist with an entirely new body or with no body at all. . . . Could a person continue
to exist without any apparent memory of his previous doings? Quite clearly, we do
allow not merely the logical possibility, but the frequent actuality of amnesia—a person
forgetting all or certain stretches of his past life. Despite Locke, many a person does
forget much of what he has done. But, of course, we normally only suppose this to
happen in cases where there is the normal bodily and brain continuity. Our grounds
for supposing that a person forgets what he has done are that the evidence of bodily
and brain continuity suggests that he was the previous person who did certain things,
which he now cannot remember having done. And in the absence of both of the main
kinds of evidence for personal identity, we would not be justified in supposing that
personal identity held. . . . For that reason I cannot describe a case where we would
have good reason to suppose that P2 was identical with P1, even though there was
neither brain continuity nor memory continuity between them. However, only given
verificationist dogma1 is there any reason to suppose that the only things which are
true are those of whose truth we can have evidence. . . . We can make sense of states
of affairs being true, of which we can have no evidence that they are true. And among
them surely is the supposition that the person who acquires another body loses not
merely control of the old one, but memories of what he did with its aid. . . .
Those who hope to survive their death, despite the destruction of their body, will
not necessarily be disturbed if they come to believe that they will then have no mem-
ory of their past life on Earth; they may just want to survive and have no interest in
continuing to recall life on Earth. Again, apparently, there seems to be no contradiction
involved in their belief. . . .
Not merely is it not logically necessary that a person have a body made of certain
matter, or have certain apparent memories, if he is to be the person which he is; it is
not even necessitated by laws of nature. For let us assume that natural laws dictated
the course of evolution and the emergence of consciousness. In 4000 million BC the
Earth was a cooling globe of inanimate atoms. Natural laws then, we assume, dictated
how this globe would evolve, and so which arrangements of matter will be the bodies
of conscious men, and just how apparent memories of conscious men depend on their
brain states. My point now is that what natural laws in no way determine is which
animate body is yours and which is mine. Just the same arrangement of matter and

1. Verificationism is the view that a statement is meaningful—and therefore capable of being true—only if
it can in principle be supported by evidence. Swinburne argues against verificationism in Sydney Shoemaker
and Richard Swinburne, Personal Identity (Blackwell, 1984), chapter 3.
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just the same laws could have given to me the body (and so the apparent memories)
which are now yours, and to you the body (and so, the apparent memories) which are
now mine. It needs either God or chance to allocate bodies to persons; the most that
natural laws determine is that bodies of a certain construction are the bodies of some
person or other, who in consequence of this construction have certain apparent mem-
ories. Since the body which is presently yours (together with the associated apparent
memories) could have been mine (logic and even natural laws allow), that shows that
none of the matter of which my body is presently made (nor the apparent memories) is
essential to my being the person I am. That must be determined by something else. . . .
I could just leave my positive theory at that—that personal identity is unanalyzable.2
But it will, I hope, be useful to express it in another way, to bring out more clearly what
it involves and to connect it with another whole tradition of philosophical thought.
[According to] Aristotle’s account of the identity of substances: . . . a substance
at one time is the same substance as a substance at an earlier time if and only if the
later substance has the same form as, and continuity of matter . . . with, the earlier
substance.3 On this view a person is the same person as an earlier person if he has the
same form as the earlier person (i.e., both are persons) and has continuity of matter
with him (i.e., has the same body).
Certainly, to be the same person as an earlier person, a later person has to have
the same form—i.e., has to be a person. If my arguments for the logical possibility
of there being disembodied persons are correct, then the essential characteristics of
a person constitute a narrower set than those which Aristotle would have included.
My arguments suggest that all that a person needs to be a person are certain mental
capacities—for having conscious experiences (e.g., thoughts or sensations) and per-
forming intentional actions. Thought-experiments of the kind described earlier allow
that a person might lose his body, but they describe his continuing to have conscious
experiences and his performing or being able to perform intentional actions, i.e., to
do actions which he means to do, bring about effects for some purpose.
Yet if my arguments are correct, showing that two persons can be the same, even
if there is no continuity between their bodily matter, we must say that in the form
stated the Aristotelian account of identity applies only to inanimate objects and
plants and has no application to personal identity. We are then faced with a choice
either of saying that the criteria of personal identity are different from those for other
substances, or of trying to give a more general account than Aristotle’s of the identity
of substances which would cover both persons and other substances. It is possible to
widen the ­Aristotelian account so that we can do the latter. We have only to say that
two substances are the same if and only if they have the same form and there is con-
tinuity of the stuff of which they are made, and allow that there may be kinds of stuff

2. To “analyze” personal identity would be to provide a general account of the following form:
P1 is the same person as P2 if and only if P1 stands in relation R to P2 ,
where the relation R is specified without using the word “person” or any synonym thereof. Swinburne
maintains that no such account is possible.
3. According to Aristotle’s theory as Swinburne understands it, each thing belongs to a specific kind—person,
dog, oak—and the form of a thing is the set of properties and capacities that make it a thing of that kind.
 Richard Swinburne: The Dualist Theory 517

other than matter. I will call this account of substance identity the wider Aristotelian
account. We may say that there is a stuff of another kind, immaterial stuff, and that
persons are made of both normal bodily matter and this immaterial stuff but that it is
the continuity of the latter which provides that continuity of stuff which is necessary
for the identity of the person over time.
This is in essence the way of expressing the simple theory which is adopted by those
who say that a person living on Earth consists of two parts—a material part, the body;
and an immaterial part, the soul. The soul is the essential part of a person, and it is its
continuing which constitutes the continuing of the person. While on Earth, the soul is
linked to a body (by the body being the vehicle of the person’s knowledge of and action
upon the physical world). But, it is logically possible, the soul can be separated from
the body and exist in a disembodied state (in the way described earlier) or linked to
a new body. This way of expressing things has been used in many religious traditions
down the centuries, for it is a very natural way of expressing what is involved in being
a person once you allow that a person can survive the death of his body. Classical
philosophical statements of it are to be found in Plato and, above all, in Descartes. I
shall call this view classical dualism. . . .
The arguments which Descartes gave in support of his account of persons are
among the arguments which I have given in favour of the simple theory and since
they take for granted the wider Aristotelian framework, they yield classical dualism
as a consequence. Thus Descartes argues:

Just because I know certainly that I exist, and that meanwhile I do not remark
that any other thing necessarily pertains to my nature or essence, excepting that I
am a thinking thing, I rightly conclude that my essence consists solely in the fact
that I am a thinking thing. And although possibly . . . I possess a body with which
I am very intimately conjoined, yet because, on the one side, I have a clear and
distinct idea of myself inasmuch as I am only a thinking and unextended thing,
and as, on the other, I possess a distinct idea of body, inasmuch as it is only an
extended and unthinking thing, it is certain that this I [that is to say, my soul by
which I am what I am], is entirely and absolutely distinct from my body, and can
exist without it. [Descartes, Sixth Meditation]

Descartes is here saying that he can describe a thought-experiment in which he continues

to exist although his body does not. I have also described such a thought-experiment
and have argued, as Descartes in effect does, that it follows that his body is not logically
necessary for his existence, that it is not an essential part of himself. Descartes can
go on “thinking” (i.e., being conscious) and so existing without it. Now if we take the
wider Aristotelian framework for granted that the continuing of a substance involves
the continuing of some of the stuff of which it is made, and since the continuing ex-
istence of Descartes does not involve the continuing of bodily matter, it follows that
there must now be as part of Descartes some other stuff, which he calls his soul, which
forms the essential part of Descartes. . . .
So Descartes argues, and his argument seems to me correct—given the wider
Aristotelian framework. If we are prepared to say that substances can be the same,
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even though none of the stuff (in a wide sense) of which they are made is the same,
the conclusion does not follow. The wider Aristotelian framework provides a partial
definition of “stuff ” rather than a factual truth.
To say that a person has an immaterial soul is not to say that if you examine him
closely enough under an acute enough microscope you will find some very rarefied
constituent which has eluded the power of ordinary microscopes. It is just a way of
expressing the point within a traditional framework of thought that persons can—it
is logically possible—continue, when their bodies do not. It does, however, seem a
very natural way of expressing the point—especially once we allow that persons can
become disembodied. . . .
It does not follow from all this that a person’s body is no part of him. Given that
what we are trying to do is to elucidate the nature of those entities which we normally
call “persons,” we must say that arms and legs and all other parts of the living body are
parts of the person. My arms and legs are parts of me. The crucial point that Descartes
was making is that the body is only, contingently and possibly temporarily, part of the
person; it is not an essential part. . . .
The other arguments which I have given for the “simple theory,” e.g., that two
embodied persons can be the same despite their being no bodily continuity between
them, can also, like the argument of Descartes just discussed, if we assume the wider
Aristotelian framework, be cast into the form of arguments for classical dualism. . . .
There is, however, one argument often put forward by classical dualists—their argu-
ment from the indivisibility of the soul to its natural immortality—from which I must
dissociate myself. Before looking at this argument, it is necessary to face the problem of
what it means to say that the soul continues to exist. Clearly the soul continues to exist
if a person exercises his capacities for experience and action, by having experiences and
performing actions. But can the soul continue to exist when the person does not exer-
cise those capacities? Presumably it can. For we say that an unconscious person (who is
neither having experiences or acting) is still a person. We say this on the grounds that
natural processes (i.e., processes according with the laws of nature) will, or at any rate
may, lead to his exercising his capacities again—e.g., through the end of normal sleep
or through some medical or surgical intervention. Hence a person, and so his soul, if
we talk thus, certainly exists while natural processes may lead to his exercising those
capacities again. But what when the person is not exercising his capacities, and no natural
processes (whether those operative in our present material universe or those operative
in some new world to which the person has moved) will lead to his exercising his ca-
pacities? We could say that the person and so his soul still exists on the grounds that
there is the logical possibility of his coming to life again. To my mind, the more natural
alternative is to say that when ordinary natural processes cannot lead to his exercising
his capacities again, a person and so his soul has ceased to exist; but there remains the
logical possibility that he may come into existence again (perhaps through God causing
him to exist again). One argument against taking the latter alternative is the argument
that no substance can have two beginnings of existence. If a person really ceases to exist,
then there is not even the logical possibility of his coming into existence again. It would
follow that the mere logical possibility of the person coming into existence again has
the consequence that a person once existent, is always existent (even when he has no
 Richard Swinburne: The Dualist Theory 519

capacity for experience and action). But this principle—that no substance can have two
beginnings of existence—is one which I see no good reason for adopting; and if we do
not adopt it, then we must say that souls cease to exist when there is no natural possibility
of their exercising their capacities. But that does not prevent souls which have ceased
to exist coming into existence again. This way of talking does give substantial content
to claims that souls do or do not exist, when they are not exercising their capacities.
Now classical dualists assumed (in my view, on balance, correctly) that souls cannot
be divided. But they often argued from this, that souls were indestructible, and hence
immortal, or at any rate naturally immortal (i.e., immortal as a result of the operation
of natural processes, and so immortal barring an act of God to stop those processes
operating). That does not follow. Material bodies may lose essential properties without
being divided—an oak tree may die and become fossilized without losing its shape. It
does not follow from a soul’s being indivisible that it cannot lose its capacity for expe-
rience and action—and so cease to be a soul. Although there is (I have been arguing)
no logical necessity that a soul be linked to a body, it may be physically necessary
that a soul be linked to one body if it is to have its essential properties (of capacity for
experience and action) and so continue to exist.

Test Yo u r U n derstan di ng

1. A criterion of personal identity is a statement of the form “Later person Y is identical

to an earlier person X if and only if X and Y are related thus and so,” where “thus and
so” is specified without using the word “person” or anything like it. Does Swinburne
propose a criterion of personal identity in this sense?

2. Does Swinburne think that a person is an immaterial soul with no material parts?

3. Swinburne argues that it is possible for a person to exist without her body (and that a
person is therefore not identical to her body). Give a quick statement of the argument.

4. True or false: Swinburne thinks that it is possible for a person to survive complete
amnesia (and that Locke’s theory of personal identity is therefore mistaken).

Notes a n d Q u estions

1. What is “classical dualism”? Set out Swinburne’s argument for it in the form of premises
and conclusion. Is the argument valid? Is it sound?

2. Identity as analyzable. Every other theory of personal identity considered in this

chapter holds that when a later person Y is identical with an earlier person X, there is
also something to say about what makes Y identical to X: sameness of body, continuity
of memory, and so forth. Swinburne holds that there is no criterion of personal identity
in this sense. For him, the facts of personal identity over time are not grounded in more
basic facts. This raises a question.