Chicago Studies Fall/Winter 2019/2020 58:2

and such a property, then there is also a property of thinking about that property. But, there is a further property that needs distinguishing. This property is the kind of property that is necessarily present while I am thinking. The fact that I have thoughts about my hands or my animal presupposes that I am thinking those thoughts—and unless or until we can demonstrate that those properties are reducible to the properties of physical things, physicalism of all kinds is necessarily excluded as an explanation for this data. Instead, I am a primitive characterized by the thoughts I have. I am neither the whole animal, the parts of the animal, nor the thoughts that I have—but, I am a substance that makes my thoughts my thoughts, which I show is a feature (or property of distinct souls as mental substances). 17 There are other thought experiments that support the fact that I am a primitive mind or psychological being.

Consider the fact that certain qualitative experiences are potentially dependent on my particular substance (something like a trope), but not on any properties that universally explain those qualitative experiences. All we need to show is that my cognitive operations support this modal fact in order to demonstrate that some explanation is missing when it comes to qualitative experiences. Let’s take the qualitative experience of peanut butter. Why is it that some individuals like peanut butter and others do not? It is true that, in some cases, this can be partially explained by the properties of one’s own biology. There are cases that make the tasting of various items different from person to person, but it is not clear that all cases are explicable in terms of said genetic and biological properties. In fact, in all of these cases part of the explanation depends on the reports of the experiences that individuals have, for example of peanut butter.

Testimonial reports depend in some way on the fact that there is a mind that has powers of access to one’s own experiential states that are quite invisible to other minds. In other words, the public-private distinction plays an important role in determining what it is that distinguishes one mind from another mind. In this way, there is either a sufficient explanation for my being me or there is not. The apparent distinction I have of my own mind is quite distinct from other minds or other objects and furnishes a sufficient ground for my being me.

Coming back around to the question of Thomistic variations of personhood, Thomist understandings of the soul, or the person as soul substance, appear to provide an insufficient ground for understanding identity at a time and across time without this fundamental Cartesian principle. Hence, as some would say, the Cartesian principle regarding the person as a primitive mind is unavoidable. 18 With this in principle in view, let us consider some of the most sophisticated Thomist options.

For Aristotle and Thomas, a complete human being cannot exist via the soul alone. Instead, for Thomas (and this goes for Aristotle as well), the disembodied (or unembodied soul, if there is such a thing like God) soul is not a complete human being. Aquinas’ understanding requires that humans are animals because they “can be grasped by the senses and occur in nature.” 19 “Since the soul is a part of the human body, it is not the whole human being, and my soul is not me.” 20 If this is Thomas’ understanding, then, intuitively, it appears that we do not survive our deaths. Yet, on a Platonic or Cartesian conception we can and do, in fact, persist as complete in some sense.

There are two models in Thomism that attempt to account for survival beyond somatic death. The first is extinctionism or corruptionism. 21 The second is survivalism. In the next section, I will put forward these Thomist views and advance defeaters (reasons to reject these views) to them.