A strange question, but one to which sense can be attached. What I am asking is whether or not the self can be a composite entity, a whole of parts. Or am I a simple entity? The question has a dualist, a materialist, and an idealist form. Dualist: Could I be a mind-body or soul-body composite? Materialist: Could I be a brain-body composite? Idealist: Could I be a composite of items that are all of them of a spiritual nature? And if one is a dualist, the problem occurs in a compound form: given that both soul and body are composites, how can I be a composite of these two composites?
1. I am identical to a soul-body composite. (Assumption)
2. The soul is that in me which thinks. (Assumption)
A materialist may demand to know why the brain cannot be the subject of thinking, that in me which thinks. But this is a separate question. We are now examining the question whether I could be a soul-body composite, not the question whether I could be a brain-body composite.
3. I think in virtue of my soul thinking. (From 1, 2)
4. My soul is a proper part of me. (From 1)
Why? Well if X is composed of A and B, then A is a proper part of X, where a proper part of a whole is a part that is not identical to the whole. Every whole has itself as a part, but not as a proper part. So if you don't balk at (1), you should not balk at (4), since (4) is an immediate logical consequence of (1). Conceivably, one might balk at both (1) and (4) by denying that 'whole,' 'part,' and 'composite' have any meaningful application here. But surely one can use these terms in nonspatial senses. A part need not be a spatial part; analysis need not be a literal physical decomposition. Consider the sense of a declarative sentence and how its sense is built up out of the senses of its constituent words. Those senses are parts — semantic parts or logical parts — of the whole sense. So I see no reason to think that all the parts there are are spatial parts.
I would say that anything that can be analyzed must have parts. Analysis, by definition, operates under the aegis of two distinctions: whole/part, and complex/simple. To analyze is to analyze wholes into parts, and complex parts into simple parts. Can one analyze arguments? Then they must have parts. Can one analyze concepts? Then they must have parts. And so on. Anything that can be understood analytically must have a partite structure. I do not, however, maintain that all understanding is analytic understanding.
Can one subject a physical thing to be both a physical and metaphysical (ontological) analysis? Why not? Suppose you have two red spots of the same shade and shape on a piece of white paper. One could do a chemical analysis of the red ink, but one could also attempt an ontological analysis. The two spots are two, yet they share every non-relational property, and we might even suppose that they share every relational property. What then makes them numerically distinct? In classical jargon, what is the principium individuationis? One can argue that each spot has 'in' it an ontological constituent (ontological part) that grounds (accounts for) numerical difference. In this way one arrives at the notion of an ontological part.
If you deny that coffee cups and red spots and kitty cats have ontological parts, then you are committed to sayimg that they are ontologically simple — and that sounds absurd. After all, cats and cups have properties, and some of these properties induce causal powers, and these powers are presumably in the things that have them. There is arguably also form/matter and essence/existence composition in things. Or do you want to say that cup is identical to its essence and so exists necessarily? Of course, a book-load of argument is needed to back all this up. But the main point is simple: talk of ontological analysis and ontological parts, wholes, and composites makes sense even if, at the end of the day, and for some respectable reasons, you reject such talk.
5. I think in virtue of the thinking of a proper part of me. (From 3, 4)
6. That which is a proper part of me is numerically distinct from me.
This is an instance of the truth that if A is proper part of X, then A is not numerically identical to X. And this sounds rather plausible. If you disagree, explain how a proper part of a whole could be identical to the whole.
7. I think in virtue of the thinking of something numerically distinct from me. (From 5, 6)
8. (7) is incoherent hence necessarily false.
Why is (7) incoherent? Well, when I execute the Cartesian cogito, do I secure an insight into the certain existence of something distinct from me? No, I gain insight into the indubitability of my existence, the existence of my thinking I, as long as thinking is occurring. Is it not self-evident that my indexical use of 'I' — this being the first-person singular pronoun, not the letter 'I' — can refer only to me and not to something distinct from me when I say 'I think that such-and-such?'
It makes sense to say that Frazier falls in virtue of his body falling, just as Frazier is bloody in virtue of some part of his body's being bloody. And Frazier can express these truths to himself using the first-person pronoun. He can say, 'I fall in virtue of the falling of something (my body) which is numerically distinct from me.' But it would make no sense were Frazier to say to himself, 'I think in virtue of the thinking of something numerically distinct from me.'
A falling man has a 'deputy' in the physical world, namely his body. Something distinct from me can 'take the fall' for me. But a thinker has no deputy. Only I can think for me. If I am out of gas, then I am out of gas in virtue of my car's being out of gas. But if I think that being out of gas is not good, then it is not in virtue of the thinking of something distinct from me that I think this thought.
9. (1) is false.
This follows by reductio ad absurdum given the truth of the other assumptions.
10. I am identical to my soul.
What the argument seems to show is that the assumption that I am a soul-body composite entails that I am not such a composite, but identical to my soul. But what about my soul? Is it a complex, a whole of parts? If yes, then the argument can be iterated to show that I am indentical to one part of this whole. And if this part has parts, then the argument can be iterated once again to show that I am identical to a part of this part, and so on, with the upshot that I am identical to a simple entity. We would then have an argument for the simplicity of the soul.
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