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A Challenge to Anti-Criterialism

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Abstract

Most theists believe that they will survive death. Indeed, they believe that any given person will survive death and persist into an afterlife while remaining the very same person. In light of this belief, one might ask: how—or, in virtue of what—do people survive death? Perhaps the most natural way to answer this question is by appealing to some general account of personal identity through time. That way one can say that people persist through the time of their death in the same way that people persist through time in general. Then the obvious question is: how—or, in virtue of what—do people persist through time in general? Many different answers to this question have been proposed. Some philosophers think that personal identity through time consists in something, such as psychological or biological continuity. They think that there are informative necessary and sufficient conditions—i.e., criteria—for personal identity through time. These philosophers are criterialists. Other philosophers are anti-criterialists. Anti-criterialists believe that people persist through time, but they deny that there are any informative criteria for personal identity through time. In this paper I develop a challenge to anti-criterialism. I begin by spelling out the commitments of anti-criterialism. Then I argue that there are good reasons for anyone to reject anti-criterialism. And then I argue that theists have special reasons to reject anti-criterialism (This is particularly important and noteworthy because a substantial portion of those who defend anti-criterialism are theists. Examples include [but may not be limited to] Trenton Merricks, Richard Swinburne, Joseph Butler, and Thomas Reid). I conclude that there is an informative criterion for personal identity through time and death, even if we haven’t heard of it yet.

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Notes

  1. This claim applies to all objects, but in this paper I will focus only on its application to persons.

  2. Shoemaker (1985) and Noonan (2003) hold versions of the psychological view. Dainton (2008) and Strawson (1999) hold the phenomenological view.

  3. van Inwagen (1990) and Olson (2007) defend such views.

  4. Reid (2008) and Butler (2008) were early proponents of anti-criterialism. Merricks (1998), Lowe (2009), Langsam (2001), Madell (1981), Swinburne (1985), and Chisholm (1976) are more recent defenders of anti-criterialism. See also Zimmerman (1998).

  5. Swinburne (1985) also claims that, “complete knowledge of what has happened to a person’s body and its parts, and of the extent of the apparent memory by later persons of the deeds and experiences of the earlier person, would not automatically give knowledge of what has happened to the earlier persons …” (p. 35). Again, this suggests that Swinburne’s view is that there are no informative sufficient conditions for personal persistence. Noonan (2003) claims that Swinburne’s view is that there are no informative necessary conditions for personal persistence (p. 94). But I think Noonan is mistaken. Swinburne (1985) does argue that bodily continuity is unnecessary for personal persistence. But, elsewhere, Swinburne claims that there are certain other informative conditions that are necessary for personal persistence (e.g., having certain mental capacities, indivisibility; see p. 21).

  6. Here I equate Non-Reductionism with anti-criterialism and Reductionism with criterialism because this is consistent with Langsam’s (2001) treatment of Reductionism and Non-Reductionism. I do not wish to make any claims about other, distinct views that may go by the name ‘Reductionism’ or ‘Non-Reductionism’.

  7. For example, Shoemaker (2002) writes, “So the non-reductionist [i.e., anti-criterialist] believes that even when we have gathered all the facts together regarding the body, brain, and experiences of the person in question, we still do not have the key further fact necessary to determine questions of identity” (p. 146). See also Lowe (2009, p. 139), Parfit (1984, p. 309), Chisholm (1976, p. 111), and Eklund (2004). These philosophers say things that suggest, but do not entail, that anti-criterialists’ view is that there are no informative sufficient conditions for personal persistence.

  8. Trenton Merricks may be an exception. Merricks (2001) claims that anti-criterialism is at least consistent with the view that there are informative sufficient conditions for personal persistence (p. 195). However, Merricks (2001) does not explicitly say whether he believes that there are any such conditions.

  9. I leave the precise nature of this biological continuity open. One might think that biological continuity is some sort of causal process or relation connecting entities at different times. Or if one is inclined to think that the same biological entity could exist at two different times without being causally connected (if one believes that ‘gappy existence’ is possible, for instance), then biological continuity might be construed differently (e.g., in terms of qualitative similarity of certain biological attributes). Of course, if one prefers to use a different informative condition here (e.g., psychological continuity, phenomenal continuity, etc.), then that’s fine. One could even suppose that there is more than one informative sufficient condition for Sam’s persistence. None of these differences make a difference to the arguments that follow.

  10. And no anti-criterialist that I know of explicitly defends anything like (1) (3), or (4). Contrary to (1) and (3), anti-criterialists like Swinburne (1985, p. 21) and Merricks (1998, p. 118) grant that there are necessary conditions for personal persistence. And while Merricks (2001) seems to allow that something like (4) is consistent with anti-criterialism, he does not explicitly endorse any such view.

  11. Anti-criterialists rarely talk about the specific formal commitments of their view. They tend to focus their attention on attacking various criterialist positions (see e.g., Lowe 2009; Swinburne 1985; Merricks 1998), or on other issues connected with anti-criterialism (see e.g., Langsam 2001).

  12. I stipulate that these connections are non-branching because some (e.g., Shoemaker 1985, p. 85; see also Noonan 2003, p. 12-15) maintain that this is a necessary condition on personal persistence. These philosophers point to cases of fission (as well as fusion)—i.e., imaginary cases where one person is psychologically or physically continuous with two (or more) persons or entities—and they suggest that, in such cases, the original person does not survive, even though various psychological, phenomenal, biological, physical, etc., connections obtain between that person and some other person(s). Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for raising this point.

  13. In fact, we can go even further. For we might just suppose that all of the qualitative facts that have anything to do with Sam remain fixed from t to t* so that Sam and Sam* are qualitatively indistinguishable. We might even suppose that the entire universe remains qualitatively fixed from t to t*. In this scenario, it is even more absurd to think that Sam could possibly fail to persist from t to t*.

  14. Although the primary point of my argument is non-epistemic—that is, my argument is not about whether or how we can know that a person persists—it is worth making an epistemic point here. Many philosophers believe that our epistemic access to facts about our own existence in and through time is especially secure. But this belief is in tension with anti-criterialism because, if anti-criterialism is true, then a person could easily be wrong about facts concerning her existence in and through time.

  15. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this point.

  16. According to most theists, God is essentially all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good. This means that God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good in every possible world in which he exists. And I assume that if something is essentially all-good, then it is essentially just. So I assume that, if most theists are right, then God is essentially just.

  17. I have just talked about God’s justice and honesty here, but one can imagine that there are a wide variety of traits that are normally attributed to God that would be hard to square with Elijah’s case.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Corin Fox, John Mahlan, Trenton Merricks, Andrew Morgan, Paul Nedelisky, Nick Rimell, Craig Thompson, Adam Tiller, David Vander Laan, and anonymous reviewers for help on several drafts of this paper.

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  1. University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA

    Matt Duncan

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Duncan, M. A Challenge to Anti-Criterialism. Erkenn 79, 283–296 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-013-9494-8

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