This paper defends a hylomorphic version of animalism according to which human persons survive as immaterial, bodiless animals after death. According to the hylomorphism under consideration, human persons have souls that survive death, and according to the animalism under consideration, human persons are necessarily animals. One might think this implies that human persons don't survive their deaths since if they were to survive their deaths, they would be immaterial animals after death, but necessarily animals are material. This paper shows that (...) the hylomorphic animalist can overcome this problem in a way that respects the intuition that animals are material. In addition, the paper defends the hylomorphic animalist survivalist from the objection that her view introduces an insoluble mereological puzzle. (shrink)

In discussing Disembodied Persons we need to confront two problems: A. Under what conditions would we consider that a person was present in the absence of the normal bodily cues? B. Could such circumstances arise? The first question may be regarded as epistemic and the second as metaphysical.

How can we better understand and treat those suffering from schizophrenia and manic-depressive illnesses? This important new book takes us into the world of those suffering from such disorders. Using self descriptions, its emphasis is not on how mental health professionals view sufferers, but on how the patients themselves experience their disorder. A new volume in the International Perspectives in Philosophy and Psychiatry series, this book will be of great interest to all those working with sufferers from such disorders - (...) helping them to better understand their mental lives, and providing important insights into how best to treat them. (shrink)

In a recent article in Religious Studies, Professor P. W. Gooch attempts to wean the orthodox Christian from anthropological materialism by consideration of the question of the nature of the post-mortem person in the resurrection. He argues that the view that the resurrected person is a psychophysical organism who is in some physical sense the same as the ante-mortem person is inconsistent with the Pauline view of the resurrected body; rather, according to him, Paul's view is most consistent with that (...) which affirms the disembodied survival of the person. ‘I want to argue’, he writes, ‘for the thesis that a Pauline resurrection body may well be ontologically the same as a disembodied person.’ I intend to show that Professor Gooch has failed to provide any support for this view and indeed that his own view falls prey to the criticisms which he has raised against other views. (shrink)

We consider and reject a variety of attempts to provide a ground for identifying and differentiating disembodied minds. Until such a ground is provided, we must withhold inclusion of disembodied minds from our picture of the world.

The idea that we may continue to exist in a bodiless condition after our death has long played an important role in beliefs about immortality, ultimate rewards and punishments, the transmigration of souls, and the like. There has also been long and heated disagreement about whether the idea of disembodied existence even makes sense, let alone whether anybody can or does survive dissolution of his material form. It may seem doubtful that anything new could be added to the debate (...) at this late date, but I hope to show that this is not so. I will explore the problem of disembodiment from a somewhat different direction than has been tried before, one that leads to what seem to me more interesting and more definite conclusions about its unintelligibility. Furthermore, the approach I will be taking puts both the traditional mind-body problem and the competing claims of dualism and physicalism in a fresh light that can help us to understand better the nature of our embodied existence. (shrink)

This paper considers the nature of schizophrenic autism and urges its importance for understanding the phenomenological core of schizophrenia. Different clinical manifestations of schizophrenic autism are demonstrated, and it is asked whether these might reflect different aspects of one underlying phenomenologically intelligible phenomenon. Four phenomenological hypotheses are put forward: that autism is a function of semantic drifting, emotional drifting, ontological incompleteness, or a particular ethic rejecting common sense. By way of conclusion an integrative hypothesis is considered: that autism is intelligible (...) in terms of the experience of disembodiment. (shrink)

The issues that Paul Standish alerts us to are significant since they situate McDowell's argument in reference to works lying outside the mainstream tradition o.

We evaluate the role of embodiment in ordinary mental state ascriptions. Presented are five experiments on phenomenal state ascriptions to disembodied entities such as ghosts and spirits. Results suggest that biological embodiment is not a central principle of folk psychology guiding ascriptions of phenomenal consciousness. By contrast, results continue to support the important role of functional considerations in theory of mind judgments.

In a recent paper, I challenged a currently fashionable argument against the intelligibility of disembodied survival. This argument urges that only bodily continuity can provide a satisfactory criterion for personal identity and since bodily continuity is, of course, ruled out ex hypothesi in disembodied survival, we could have no satisfactory criterion for identity of a disembodied person. Toward the end of the paper I issued a challenge to supporters of this argument; if there are reasonable standards for (...) a criterion of personal identity which do not beg the question in favor of the bodily continuity criterion, let them be stated and let us see if other criteria of personal identity can meet them as well as bodily continuity.The recent republication of a number of early papers by Bernard Williams has drawn my attention to a paper by Williams which may seem to anticipate and answer this challenge. In what follows I wish to see whether or not this is so; whether Williams has given standards for a criterion of personal identity which are reasonable, which bodily continuity can meet, and which other criteria cannot meet. (shrink)

In discussing Disembodied Persons we need to confront two problems:A. Under what conditions would we consider that a person was present in the absence of the normal bodily cues?B. Could such circumstances arise?The first question may be regarded as epistemic and the second as metaphysical.

The communitarian critique of liberal agency is reminiscent of two earlier critiques: C. B. Macpherson's theory of possessive individualism and Marx's theory of alienation. As with the communitarian critique, Macpherson and Marx saw the liberal individual as being in some way 'disembodied'. Where they differed from communitarians was in the attention they paid to the actual social relations that gave rise to such an image. The comparison is thus fruitful because the emphasis Macpherson and Marx give to the concrete (...) circumstances of disempowerment highlights the overly abstract nature of the communitarian critique, demonstrating how it, and other similarly abstract normative theories, might maintain a focus on actual social relations. Key Words: alienation • communitarism • disembodiment • labor • liberalism • Macpherson • Marx • self. (shrink)

A good case can be made for the claim that most recent studies in the philosophy of mind are marred by a failure to attribute sufficient importance to what is revealed from the first person perspective. When that perspective is ignored or neglected, a number of problems concerning the nature of self and consciousness arise, or become more difficult to resolve. One such problem is that of whether we can conceive of disembodied existence, i.e., of a self continuing to (...) exist after the death of the physical body. (shrink)

Abstract The idea of disembodied communication has received widespread discussion in the context of the various kinds of online interaction. Electronic mail is probably the purest form of text-based communication where interlocutors are present in mind rather than body. I argue that this online model provides a way of understanding and defending the possibility of a certain kind of public religious experience, contra the many critics of the very coherence of genuine religious experience. I introduce the concept of ‘telic (...) possibility’, a specific kind of modality, applying it to e-mail. I argue that we can reasonably move from the telic possibility of disembodied communication in mundane e-mail exchanges to the epistemic possibility of communication from a divine being in cases where the content of the messages is sufficiently extraordinary. Content Type Journal Article Category Special Issue Pages 1-17 DOI 10.1007/s13347-011-0051-6 Authors David S. Oderberg, Department of Philosophy, University of Reading, Reading, RG6 6AA UK Journal Philosophy & Technology Online ISSN 2210-5441 Print ISSN 2210-5433. (shrink)

David Murray; VII—Disembodied Brains, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 70, Issue 1, 1 June 1970, Pages 121–138, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotel.

David Murray; VII—Disembodied Brains, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 70, Issue 1, 1 June 1970, Pages 121–138, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotel.

David Murray; VII—Disembodied Brains, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 70, Issue 1, 1 June 1970, Pages 121–138, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotel.

In light of the theme and concerns of the present collection of essays, we may ask whether ‘distance in general’, and ‘critical distance in particular’, has truly disappeared with postmodernity. Proposing an immediate and interruptive political engagement with local issues, Jacques Rancière’s articulation of political mobilisation does seem to confirm this claim. Upon further inspection, however, his emancipatory politics repeat the same mistake of valuing an abstract universal at the expense of a concrete particular, however paradoxical this may seem at (...) first sight. The present article develops this thesis in three moments. On the first hand, it highlights Rancière’s notion of conflict as being institutive of politics. Secondly, it connects this ‘sensible’, and Rancière’s understanding of politics as being aesthetic, to Kant’s ‘Transcendental Aesthetics’. The French author sees in the leading section of the first Critique the grounding possibility of freeing up time and space within the social realm; the representation of a common political surface that can be reshaped; political equality; emancipation. The last section shows how this recourse to the transcendental subject in Rancière’s politics follows and embraces a traditional position in the history of philosophy whereby identity is denigrated at the profit of a disembodied universalism. (shrink)

Embodied and phenomenological approaches to neuropsychiatry have proven to be promising for assessing social cognition and its impairments. Second-person neuroscience has demonstrated that the dynamics of social interaction make a difference when it comes to how people understand each other. This article presents the Perceptual Crossing Experiment (PCE) as a paradigm for studying real-time dyadic embodied interactions in the context of schizophrenia. We draw on the phenomenological concept of interbodily resonance (IR) and show how the PCE can be used to (...) accurately model and assess IR. We then turn to disembodied interaction in schizophrenia and finally propose the PCE as a translational tool for systematically assessing the hindered IR that individuals with schizophrenia suffer from. We offer an experimental approach to phenomenology which could be informative for the development of more embodied interventions aiming to remedy the profoundly disrupted social life that patients with schizophrenia live with. (shrink)

Medieval Aristotelians assumed that we cannot assimilate forms unless our soul abstracts them from sensory images. But what about the disembodied soul that has no senses and hence no sensory images? How can it assimilate forms? This article discusses this problem, focusing on two thirteenth-century models. It first looks at Thomas Aquinas’ model, which invokes divine intervention: the separated soul receives forms directly from God. The article examines the problems this explanatory model poses and then turns to a second (...) model, defended by Matthew of Aquasparta: the separated soul actively apprehends forms that are present to it. It will be argued that this model explains assimilation in terms of appropriation, rather than reception, of forms and thereby radically changes the traditional account of cognition. Finally, the article draws some methodological conclusions, arguing that the focus on the ‘limit case’ of separated souls made theoretical change possible. (shrink)

Discussion of the human soul has bulked large in the literature of philosophy and religion. I defend the possibility of disembodied Cartesian minds by examining the criticisms of three philosophers who argue that there are serious difficulties about any attempt to account for the identity of such Cartesian minds through time. I argue that their criticisms of the possibility of disembodied minds are damaging but not fatal. I hold that the central issue behind their criticisms of Cartesian minds (...) is whether any nonphysical mental criterion can be formulated for the identity of such entities. Even though no such criterion can be given, disembodied minds that persist through time remain logical possibilities. (shrink)

Discussion of the human soul has bulked large in the literature of philosophy and religion. I defend the possibility of disembodied Cartesian minds by examining the criticisms of three philosophers who argue that there are serious difficulties about any attempt to account for the identity of such Cartesian minds through time. I argue that their criticisms of the possibility of disembodied minds are damaging but not fatal. I hold that the central issue behind their criticisms of Cartesian minds (...) is whether any nonphysical mental criterion can be formulated for the identity of such entities. Even though no such criterion can be given, disembodied minds that persist through time remain logical possibilities. (shrink)

The dominant discourse on dementia promotes a view that as individuals progress with the disease, they experience a neurological decline causing a loss of self. This notion, grounded in a Cartesian representation of selfhood, associates a loss of self as directly related to cognition. This paper presents an alternative anthropological framework, embodied selfhood, that challenges this representation. It then examines a potential tool, graphic medicine, to translate this theory into caregiving practice. Through analyzing three graphic novels—Wrinkles, Tangles, and Aliceheimer’s—this paper (...) demonstrates how tension exists between different conceptions of selfhood and associated implications for caregivers and patients alike. (shrink)

Employing insights from Italian sexual difference theory on law and rights, this article examines how both the text of the Italian Abortion Law of 1978 and its operation reveal the contradictions within liberal rights discourse on reproductive freedom. The Act itself contains traces of both Roman Catholic and liberal pluralist worldviews and has, since its introduction, been the site of conflict over competing notions of citizenship and legal identity. This article explores the impact of the Act's paradoxical nature on its (...) operation against the background of the complex debates within the different strands of feminist theory in Italy over the question of reproductive freedom. (shrink)

In his "Death and Eternal Life" John Hick criticizes H.H. Price's view of disembodied existence after death on the grounds that (1) Price cannot consistently hold that this world is a public or semi-public world, the joint product of a group of telepathically-interacting minds, and that this world is formed by the power of individual desire, and (2) in a world that is the product of the individual's desires, moral progress is impossible. I argue that there is no contradiction (...) in (1), and that in the world envisioned by Price greater moral progress is possible in that one can no longer be deceived about one's motives or by the ambiguity of actions. (shrink)

In an attempt to make the idea of surviving one's own death in a disembodied state intelligible, H. H. Price has presented a possible description of what the afterlife might be like for a disembodied self or consciousness. Price suggests that the world of the disembodied self might be a kind of dream or image world. In it he would replace his present sense-perception by activating his image-producing powers, which are now inhibited by their continuous bombardment by (...) sensory stimuli, to produce mental images. Though he would be cut off from any new supply of sensory material, he might be able to draw upon his memory of his previous physical existence to create an entire environment of images. A nexus of perspectively inter-related images would constitute an object; this would serve as a substitute for the material objects which he perceived in his past life. The entire environment of the disembodied individual would be composed of such families of mental images and would serve to constitute his world. It need not, however, be a solipsistic world, for by means of telepathy the discarnate individual could communicate with other disembodied selves and in this way acquire new information. Price notes that since this world would be as real to the discarnate self as our present world is to our embodied self, in the afterlife the disembodied self in effect would create for itself a real world, though of course if it took it to be anything other than an image world it would be deceiving itself. (shrink)

In a number of places, Richard Swinburne has defended the logical possibility of perception without a body; and has inferred from this logical possibility that substance dualism is true. I challenge his defence of disembodied perception by arguing that a disembodied perceiver would not be able to distinguish between perceptions and hallucinations. I then claim that even if disembodied perception were possible, this could not be used to support substance dualism: such an inference would be either invalid (...) or question-begging. (shrink)

Successful social functioning requires quick and accurate processing of emotion and generation of appropriate reactions. In typical individuals, these skills are supported by embodied processing, recruiting central and peripheral mechanisms. However, emotional processing is atypical in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Individuals with ASD show deficits in recognition of briefly presented emotional expressions. They tend to recognize expressions using rule-based, rather than template, strategies. Individuals with ASD also do not spontaneously and quickly mimic emotional expressions, unless the task encourages (...) engagement. When processing emotional scenes, ASD individuals show atypical basic motivational responses, despite intact ability to verbally determine stimulus valence. We discuss how these findings highlight the contribution of both embodied and disembodied mechanisms to typical and atypical emotional functioning. (shrink)

This paper looks at embodiment from a cross-disciplinary perspective. The notion that embodiment is an essential requirement for conscious awareness is explored using both a scientific and religious approach. Artificial intelligence, transhumanism and cybernetics are discussed as they force a pragmatic approach to defining and understanding situated embodiment. The concept of human immortality or extended longevity is also investigated as this further exposes the myths of transcending corporeality and also helps to explain the mission of transhumanism.