Boczar on Immortal Souls

At The Review of Metaphysics, philosopher Jack Boczar kindly reviews my book Immortal Souls: A Treatise on Human Nature.  From the review:

“The book's title is an homage to David Hume, and Feser has certainly taken Hume to task, giving cogent arguments for the reality of the self (chapter 2), freedom of the will (chapter 4), immateriality of the intellect (chapter 8), and more…

It is with contemporary developments in the philosophy of mind where Feser is at his best, and readers will not be disappointed with his critique of positions such as Buddhism's no-self doctrine (chapter 2)…

Feser again is at his best in cogently establishing the immateriality of the intellect.  He puts forth various arguments.  His most powerful argument is a modified version of James Ross's argument from the indeterminacy of the physical (chapter 8)… One of the unique contributions that Feser makes to contemporary literature is his defense of the immateriality of the intellect from its simplicity (chapter 8).  Readers should pay close attention to this powerful argument.”

End quote.  Boczar also offers two lines of criticism.  First, he suggests that I could say more to explain how disembodied human souls are individuated after death.  He notes that I hold, as Aquinas does, that the fact that they were associated with distinct bodies before death is sufficient to individuate them.  However, says Boczar, “this should be spelled out more, as it is well known that the Latin Averroists at Paris held that the individual ceases to exist after death, even though the intellect is immaterial and immortal.”

This is a view Aquinas addressed in several places, and the philosophical anthropology he appealed to in answering it is essentially the same as the one I defend in the book.  Start with the fact that any two human beings, such as Socrates and Plato, are distinct substances of the kind rational animal.  Part of what this entails is that they are not fewer than two substances.  When Socrates walks or talks and Plato walks or talks, there are two numerically distinct things carrying out two numerically distinct activities.  There is Socrates and his walking, and Plato and his walking.  And there is Socrates and his talking, and Plato and his talking.  There is not somehow one substance here that is doing all the walking and talking.  We know this from experience, as surely as we know from experience that two trees or two stones are numerically distinct things with numerically distinct properties.

Another part of what it entails is that Socrates and Plato are not more than two substances.  With Socrates, for example, it is one and the same substance that both walks and talks.  It is not that Socrates is an aggregate of two substances, one which does the walking and one which does the talking.  Now, as a rational animal, among the many other things a human being like Socrates does are thinking, willing, seeing, hearing, thirsting, and digesting.  And again, it is one and the same substance that does all of these things.  This too we know from experience, as surely as we know in the case of a tree or a stone that it is one and the same substance that does the things characteristic of the tree and that has the properties characteristic of a stone. 

What these facts rule out are, first, the Averroist view that it is a single, common intellectual substance that is really doing all the things of an intellectual kind that we attribute to different human beings; and, second, the Cartesian view that there are, in the case of any human being, two substances doing what human beings do, a res cogitans doing the intellectual things and a res extensa doing the corporeal things.  Contra the Averroist, there are as many distinct substances with intellects as there are human beings.  Contra the Cartesian, each of these substances not only does intellectual things but also bodily things like walking, seeing, and digesting.

Now, on Aquinas’s account, matter individuates members of a species, so that the fact that there are distinct bodies associated with different human beings suffices to make them distinct individual members of the same species rational animal.  But because the intellectual powers are incorporeal, each individual member of this particular species can carry on after the death of the body, as an incomplete substance whose operations are reduced to those of its intellectual powers. 

Why, Boczar wonders, wouldn’t the fact that they can carry on after death make them comparable to angels, each of whom is the unique member of its own species?  The answer is that it is normal for an angel to be disembodied, but not normal for a human being to be disembodied.  An angelic intellect without a body is nevertheless a complete substance, but a human intellect without a body is not a complete substance.  Even when it persists beyond the death of its body, it is by nature ordered to its body, whereas an angelic intellect is in no way ordered to a body. 

Boczar overlooks this natural ordering.  He notes that I hold that “the fact that all human beings start out with distinct bodies is sufficient to individuate them,” but wonders why this would be sufficient.  This would indeed be a mystery if the intellect were related to the body the way the Cartesian supposes, because that sort of relationship is entirely contingent.  But again, the intellect is not related to the body in that way.  It is not a complete substance that is only contingently related to (some distinct substance with) corporeal powers; rather, the intellect is an incorporeal power of a substance which in its complete state also has corporeal powers.

The other part of Immortal Souls that Boczar takes issue with is my discussion of the fixity of the will after death.  Like Aquinas, I argue that while the ultimate end toward which the will is oriented is not fixed while the intellect is embodied, it becomes fixed with the loss of the body at death.  Why, Boczar wonders, would it not become changeable again when the body is restored at the resurrection?

Here it seems to me that Boczar has not paid sufficient attention to the details of my discussion of this issue.  As I argue in my New Blackfriars article “Aquinas on the Fixity of the Will After Death” and repeat in chapter 10 of Immortal Souls, it is not embodiment as such that entails the changeability of the will.  What is going on is, rather, this.  An end can be changed only by reference to some further end.  For example, if my goal is to get from Los Angeles to San Francisco as efficiently as possible and I intend to buy a train ticket in order to realize this end, I might change my mind and go by airplane instead if I find that that would be a more efficient way to realize it.  And if my reason for wanting to get to San Francisco is that I believe that an American Catholic Philosophical Association meeting is being held there, I might change my mind about going to San Francisco if I find out that my belief was mistaken and that the meeting is actually going to be in San Diego.

But when we come to the ultimate end toward which all my actions are ordered (whatever it might be), that cannot be changed, precisely because it is ultimate.  There is, in the nature of the case, no higher end by reference to which it might be changed.  Now, in the case of an angel, its highest end is fixed immediately after its creation.  Its will comes to be ordered most fundamentally to whatever its intellect first judges to be the highest good, and anything else it might will ever afterward will be willed only insofar as it conduces to that perceived highest good.  That perceived highest good cannot itself be changed, because there is nothing higher by reference to which it might be changed.

The reason this does not happen immediately upon the creation of a human being does indeed have crucially to do with the body, but not quite in the way Boczar (like many other readers of Aquinas) supposes.  Because human beings are embodied, they, unlike angels, have passions and sensory appetites that influence the will in a way that prevents it from becoming fixed on any particular end as highest.  It is only when these passions and sensory appetites disappear with the death of the body that the will, now relevantly like that of an angel (insofar as it is free of these distracting influences), becomes fixed on a perceived highest end.  And as with an angel, once this happens, there is no way for that end to be changed, for in the nature of the case there is no higher end by reference to which it might be changed.

As others do when first becoming familiar with this position, Boczar wonders why the restoration of the body at the resurrection would not open the door to this perceived highest end being changed.  The mistake they are making is that they suppose that Aquinas’s claim is that, though the will can become fixed on some ultimate end during a human being’s lifetime, the body makes it possible for it to become unfixed from that end and fixed instead on some other ultimate end.  And in that case, why wouldn’t the restoration of the body allow it once again to become unfixed?

But that is not what is going on at all.  It’s not that, during life, the presence of the body allows the will successively to become fixed on different ultimate ends.  Rather, the presence of the body prevents it from ever becoming fixed on any ultimate end.  The will, while the body is present, is not like an arrow that reaches a target but can somehow be removed from that target and fired at another.  Rather, it is like an arrow that has not yet reached any target at all.  The target is reached only at death.  But it is reached then.  That is why restoring the body would in no way allow the will to change its ultimate end.  It could do so only if the will were still at that point like an arrow that had not yet reached any target. 

To take a different analogy, the will before the death of the body is like wet clay that is being molded into a series of successive shapes but has not yet fixed on any of them.  Death is like the furnace that dries the clay into some one determinate shape, such as a pot.  Once that happens, the clay cannot ever again take on any other shape.  And in the same way, once the will has at last fixed on some ultimate end at death, it cannot become fixed on another, no matter what happens.  To ask “Why wouldn’t the restoration of the body allow the ultimate end to be changed?” is like asking “Why wouldn’t pouring some water into the pot make the clay once again malleable?”

This, in any event, is what I would say is the correct way to understand Aquinas’s position, or at least what he should say given the relevant principles he is reasoning from.  Naturally, there is much more to be said, and I address the subject in detail in Immortal Souls (and I have more to say about the exegetical issues surrounding the relevant texts from Aquinas in the New Blackfriars article).