Carlos Eire writes, “How can millions of us humans be in multiple locations simultaneously via the internet, day after day, but still feel the need to scoff at bilocation?” (They Flew: A History of the Impossible, Yale UP, 2023, p. 23.) Eire defines bilocation as “the act of being present at two distinct locations simultaneously.” (p. 2) By this (inadequate) definition, I am bilocated right now inasmuch as my head and my feet are in two distinct locations simultaneously. What is correctly meant by ‘bilocation,’ however, is that one and the same body, together with all its parts, is in two numerically distinct locations at one and same time. Despite what Eire says, it remains easy to scoff at this notion.
“Do you really mean to tell me that Padre Pio was at one and the same time both on the ground in his monastic enclosure and up in the air warding off Allied bombers approaching his beloved town?” C’mon, maaan (as Joe Biden might say.)
But instead of scoffing, let’s try thinking. Consider a human voice, by which I mean a particular human vocal utterance. It is a physical item, albeit rather less substantial than the human being whose vocal utterance it is. It is physical in that it is spatiotemporally qualified and empirically discernible. It can be far or near from the one who hears it, and can last for a short or a long time. Voices can move. Voices can be literally heard, recorded and transmitted, by telephone, for example. They are therefore physical items.
The same goes for shadows. A shadow can be a measurable distance from the one who sees; it can have a specifiable shape; it can last for a measurable period of time. Shadows can move: the shadow cast by a moving car against an embankment moves with the same velocity (same speed, same direction) as the car. Shadows are empirically discernible in that we see but cannot hear them, just as voices are empirically discernible in that we can hear but cannot see them. Shadows can be photographed and otherwise depicted. Voices and shadows can be either hallucinated or real. Both voices and shadows are intersubjectively verifiable: you and I can corroborate each other’s perception of a voice or a shadow.
But surely a shadow cannot be bilocated. So you might infer that since shadows and voices are ‘on all fours’ (to use and old U.K. expression), a voice cannot be bilocated either. Suppose we try thinking a little harder.
Might it be possible to argue plausibly that a physical item such as a voice could be in two places at the same time? And if that can be plausibly argued, would it soften us up for the idea that Padre Pio, say, could be in two different places at the same time?
Suppose I phone my friend Dave in Montana. He picks up and, having heard me say “Hello, Dave” says, “It’s good to hear your voice, Bill.” The vocal utterance Dave hears is the very same vocal utterance I speak when I say “Hello Dave.” My voice or vocal utterance is in two distinct places, Phoenix and Billings, say, at one and the same time. What we have here, it seems, is a physical item that is bilocated.
Objection: “It’s not numerically the same vocal utterance. What Dave hears is a numerically distinct copy of what Bill utters, not what Bill utters. There are two utterances, not one, the original made by Bill, and the copy heard by Dave. Two items can be indiscernible in every respect without being one item. Suppose Bill writes Dave a note, makes a photocopy of it and sends the copy to Dave while keeping the original. It’s like that, except that transmission and receipt occur at the same time.
Reply: It’s not like that. It’s like the situation in which Bill writes a note to Dave, makes no copy, but mails the original to Dave.
But even if I’ m right about voices, and I am not at all sure that I am, I am still a long way from telling a story that renders reasonable the belief in the (real, not merely epistemic) possibility of the bilocations amply described in Eire’s fascinating book.
I am out of ideas, so I stop . . .for now.
This post brought to mind Dennett’s long-ago story about bilocation, Where Am I?