Kevin Corcoran

Defenders of a priori arguments for dualism assume that the Cartesian thesis that possibly, I exist but no bodies exist and the physicalist thesis that I am identical with my body, are logically inconsistent. Trenton Merricks offers an argument for the compatibility of those theses. In this paper I examine several objections to Merricks’ argument. I show that none is ultimately persuasive. Nevertheless I claim that Merricks’ argument should not be accepted. I next propose a view of persons that is an alternative both to person-body identity and Cartesian dualism and offer a view of the afterlife that is compatible both with the alternative conception of persons I present and the Christian doctrine of resurrection.

What kind of things are we? Well, we are persons, of course. But what kind of things are persons and, more particularly, human persons? I hold a view according to which persons are essentially psychological beings of a certain sort and that human persons in particular are wholly physical things, without being identical to the physical things that are their bodies. In other words, I hold a view according to which we are one thing and our bodies are numerically distinct things. And yet, as I believe that we are wholly physical things, I therefore reject substance (or person-body) dualism.I also believe that you and I could be exactly like computers or combustion engines, elaborate machines made out of wholly material components that interact with each other in such ways as to produce very predictable behaviors. But were not. We have conscious experiences. Theres something its like for us, but not for computers or car engines, to taste a strawberry, to feel a pain, to see a sunset, to hear a Mozart Concerto or a Mumford and Sons anthem. Of course, both our brains and computers (and even our car engines) process information. But computers and car engines lack an experiential component. Theres nothing its like for them to see or hear or taste or experience anything at all.In the pages that follow, I aim to say just what persons are, explain the physicalist view of human persons I hold and also suggest (in a very brief, schematic and hand wavy way) just how consciousness might fit into an overall picture of a world made entirely of physical components.

In his book Defending Life, Francis Beckwith claims that the question of personhood and human nature is the central question in the abortion debate. He further asserts that the unborn entity, from the moment of conception, is a full-fledged member of the human community. In this paper I try to show that the argument Beckwith offers for the moral wrongness of abortion in Defending Life is unpersuasive, his elucidation of key terms question-begging, and his claims concerning embryology and zygotic (and postzygotic) development highly controversial.