Swinburne’s Hyper-Cartesian Dualism
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Date
2021-03-19
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Towarzystwo Naukowe KUL, Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II
Abstract
This paper maintains that Swinburne’s argument that the body is not essential to who I am is vulnerable to a similar objection to that put forward by Arnauld against Descartes: how do I know that my self-identification furnishes a complete and adequate account of the essential “me,” sufficient to show I could really continue to exist even were the body to be destroyed? The paper goes on to criticize Swinburne’s “hyper-Cartesian” position, that we are simply “souls who control bodies,” and thus only contingently human. This denial of our essential humanity compares unfavourably with Descartes’s own more intuitively attractive view that the human being is a genuine entity in its own right.
Description
Keywords
dualism, Descartes, human being, soul, hyper-Cartesian, embodiment
Citation
"Roczniki Filozoficzne", 2021, Vol. 69, nr 1, s. 23-31