In his latest and last book, Mortality, Christopher Hitchens writes, "I don't have a body, I am a body." (86) He goes on to observe that he has "consciously and regularly acted as if this was [sic] not true." It is a curious fact that mortalists are among the worst abusers of the fleshly vehicle. But that is not my theme.
Is a person just his body? The meditation is best conducted in the first person: Am I just my body? Am I identical to my body? Am I one and the same with my body, where body includes brain? Am I such that, whatever is true of my body is true of me, and vice versa? Let's start with some 'Moorean facts,' some undeniable platitudes.
1. I am not now identical to a dead body, a corpse. There is, no doubt, a dead body in my future, one with my name on it. But that lifeless object won't be me. I will never become a corpse. I will never be buried or cremated. I am not now and never will be identical to a dead body. For when the corpse with my name on it comes to exist, I will have ceased to exist; and when I cease to exist, it will still exist. This property difference via the Indiscernibility of Identicals entails the non-identity of me and 'my' corpse.
'My' corpse is the corpse that will come into existence when I cease to exist, or, if mortalism is false, when I am separated from my body. Strictly speaking, no corpse is my corpse: hence the scare quotes around 'my.' But I can speak strictly of my body: my body is the body that is either identical to me, or is related to me in some 'looser' way.
2. I am obviously not identical to a dead body. And I have just argued that I will never become identical to a dead body. Am I then identical to a living body? Not if the following syllogism is sound: My living body will become a dead body; I will never become a dead body; therefore, I am not identical to a living body.
This argument assumes that if x = y, then whatever is true of x is true of y, and vice versa. Little is self-evident, but surely this principle is self-evident. There is something true of my living body that is not true of me, namely 'will become a dead body.' Therefore, I am not identical to a living body. And since the only living body I could be identical to if I were identical to a living body would be my living body, I am not identical to my living body. Of course, I have a living body in some to-be-explored sense of 'have'; the point is that I am not identical to it.
3. Consider now the following rather more plausible identity claim: I am (identically) a self-conscious animal. Let's unpack this. I am a living human animal that says 'I' and means it; I am a thinker of I-thoughts, an example of which is the thought *I am just a self-conscious animal.* I am self-aware: aware of myself as an object, both as a physical object, a body, through the five outer senses, and as psychological object, a mind, through inner sense or introspection. Both my body and my mind are objects for me as subject. As such a self-aware animal, I am aware of being different from my body. In some sense I must be different from my body (and my mind) if they are my objects. 'My objects' means 'objects for me as subject.'
Now if you were paying attention you noticed that I made an inferential move the validity of which demands scrutiny. I moved from
a. I am aware of being different from my body
to
b. I am different from my body.
The materialist is bound to resist this inference. He will ask how we know that the awareness mentioned in (a) is veridical. Only if it is, is the inference valid. He will suggest that it is possible that I have an non-veridical, an illusory, awareness of being different from my body. I can't credit that suggestion, however. It cannot be an illusion that I am different from anything I take as object of awareness including my brain or any part of my brain. That is a primary and indubitable givenness. Awareness is by its very nature awareness of something: it implies a difference between that which is aware, the subject of awareness, and the object of awareness. Without that difference there could be no awareness of anything. If the self-aware subject were identical to that object which is its animal body, then the subject would not be aware of the body.
4. Will you say that the body is aware of itself? Then I will ask you which part of the body is the subject of awareness. Is it the brain, or a proper part of the brain? When I am aware of my weight or the cut on my arm, is it the brain or some proper part of the brain that is aware of these things? This makes no sense. My brain is no more the subject of awareness than my glasses are. My glasses don't see the wound; I see the wound by the instrumentality of the glasses. Similarly, my brain doesn't see the wound; I see the wound by the instrumentality of the brain (and the visual cortex, and the optic nerves, and the glasses, etc.) The fact that my visual awareness is causally dependent on my having a functioning brain does not show that my brain or any part of it is the subject of awareness. I am not identical to my brain or to any bodily thing.
5. Who or what asks the question: Am I identical to this body here? Does the body ask this question? Some proper part of the body such as the brain? Some proper part of this proper part? How could anything physical ask a question?
"Look, there are are certain physical objects that ask themselves whether they are identical to the physical objects they are, and entertain the (illusory) thought that they might not be identical to the physical objects they are."
This little materialist speech is absurd by my lights since no physical object -- as we are given to understand 'physical object' by physics -- could do such a thing. If you insist that some physical objects can, then you have inflated 'physical' so that it no longer contrasts with 'mental.'
So with all due respect to the late Mr Hitchens, brilliant talker about ideas whose depth he never plumbed, I think there are very good reasons to deny that one is identically one's body.
Further questions: If I am not identical to any physical thing, can it be inferred that I am identical to some spiritual thing? If I am not identical to my body or any part thereof, do I then have a body, and what exactly does that mean?
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