- This pseudo-Paper is intended as the mechanism to record time spent on the Note 'Corpses1' during my Thesis research, as from 2011.
- For the actual time recorded, click on "Paper Statistics" above.
Write-up2 (as at 02/03/2026 06:24:29): Corpses
Plug Note3
- Thesis Text:
- The “Corpse Problem”
- Corpses are troublesome4 for animalism5, which alleges (correctly in my view) that corpses are not animals6.
- The claim is that, at death7, something ontologically8 new comes on the scene – because a corpse has different persistence9 conditions10 (those of masses of matter11) to those of organisms12.
- Some philosophers – eg. Fred Feldman, in "Feldman (Fred) - The Survival of Death" – disagree. Feldman claims that we survive13 death14, but – rather disappointingly – as a corpse, which solves the “corpse problem”, but at the cost – most likely – of saying that we are bodies15 rather than organisms16.
- The problem if we don’t survive death as our corpses – it is said – is to answer the question where the corpse comes from, and to answer the objection that if it was there all along – as a “corpse-to-be” – then we have a situation where we have two things of different sorts17 in the same place18 at the same time.
- If this is taken seriously, then it can be used against the form of the animalist’s “too many thinkers19” argument.
- I’m willing to accept that this “thinking animal” argument is unsound. However, just how the analogy would work for the “corpse-to-be” needs to be spelled out. The corpse has the persistence conditions20 of a mass of matter21. What are the persistence conditions22 of the “corpse-to-be”? If they are those of an organism23, then the corpse-to-be cannot be the same individual24 as the corpse. The Constitution View25 might be happy with this situation, promoting the idea that persons are constitute by bodies26 (rather than organisms) but what about Animalism?
- I think the issue is again a parallelism in argumentation (the fetus problem for the CV versus the corpse problem for Animalism). We don’t need to follow this argumentative line.
Resurrection
Corpses are probably also important for most Christian materialists27 who hope for some form of resurrection28.
If there is a corpse to be resurrected29, it is easier to see how identity is preserved than if we have total destruction. This is obviously so in the case of resuscitation, but even where we have a real case of death30 – not just clinical death, or brain death31, but real death with a bit of mouldering – there is some physical thing that is responsible for preserving identity.
Further Remarks:
- This Note overlaps somewhat with the following:-
- I have tried to avoid items appearing in their reading-lists from the reading lists below.
References
- Relevant Works cited above:
- "Feldman (Fred) - The Survival of Death", 1992, Read
- For a Page of Links34 to this Note, Click here.
- Works on this topic that I’ve actually read35, include the following:-
- Aeon:
- "Kaufman (Sharon) - Neither person nor cadaver", 2020, External Link, Internal PDF Link
- "Press (Michael) - Mummies among us", 2020, External Link, Internal PDF Link
- General:
- "Baker (Lynne Rudder) - When Do Persons Begin and End?", 2005, Annotations, External Link, Internal PDF Link
- "Carter (William) - Death and Bodily Transfiguration", 1984, Annotations, Internal PDF Link
- "Carter (William) - Will I Be a Dead Person?", 1999, Annotations, Internal PDF Link
- "Feldman (Fred) - A Materialist Conception of Death", 1992
- "Feldman (Fred) - The Survival of Death", 1992
- "Francescotti (Robert) - Fetuses, corpses and the psychological approach to personal identity", 2005, Annotations, Internal PDF Link
- "Hershenov (David) - Do Dead Bodies Pose a Problem for Biological Approaches to Personal Identity", 2005, Annotations, External Link, Internal PDF Link
- "Lockwood (Michael) - When Does a Life Begin?", 1987, Annotations
- "Mackie (David) - Personal Identity and Dead People", 1999, Annotations, Internal PDF Link
- "Olson (Eric) - Animalism and the Corpse Problem", 2004, Annotations, Internal PDF Link
- "Olson (Eric) - Immanent Causation and Life After Death", 2010, Write-Up Note36, Annotations, External Link, Internal PDF Link
- "Olson (Eric) - The Person and the Corpse", 2015, Annotations, External Link, Internal PDF Link
- "Olson (Eric) - Thinking Animals and the Constitution View", 2001, Write-Up Note37, Annotations, Internal PDF Link
- "Rosenberg (Jay) - Bodies, Corpses, and Chunks of Matter: A Reply to Carter", 1984, Annotations, Internal PDF Link
- "Shoemaker (David) - Personal Identity, Rational Anticipation, and Self-Concern", 2009
- "Thomas (Janice L.) - What matters for survival and the logical possibility of resurrection", 2000
- "Wilson (Jack) - Beyond Horses and Oak Trees: A New Theory of Individuation for Living Entities", 1999, Annotations
- "Yourgrau (Palle) - Can the Dead Really Be Buried?", 2000, Annotations, Internal PDF Link
- "Zimmerman (Dean) - Bodily Resurrection: The Falling Elevator Model Revisited", 2010, Annotations, Internal PDF Link
- A further reading list might start with:-
- General:
- "Bullinger (E.W.) - The Rich Man and Lazarus - the Intermediate State", 1902/1992, Book, Read = 3%
- "DeGrazia (David) - Human Persons: Numerical Identity and Essence", 2005, Internal PDF Link, Read = 6%
- "Feldman (Fred) - Death and the Disintegration of Personality", 2015, Read = 6%
- "Hershenov (David) - Death, Persons, and Sparse Ontologies: The Problem of Too Many Dying Thinkers", Undated, External Link, Internal PDF Link, Read = 33%
- "Hershenov (David) - Organisms and their Bodies: Response to LaPorte", 2009, External Link, Internal PDF Link, Read = 17%
- "Hudson (Hud) - Pre-Persons, Post-Persons, Non-Persons, and Person-Parts", 2001
- "Johnston (Mark) - Is Heaven a Place We Can Get To? Addendum: From Corpse Snatching To Identity Voluntarism", 2010, Read = 3%
- "LaPorte (Joseph) - On Two Reasons for Denying That Bodies Can Outlast Life", 2009, Internal PDF Link
- "Sauchelli (Andrea) - The animal, the corpse, and the remnant-person", 2016, Internal PDF Link, Read = 8%
- "Scheick (William J.) - The Author's Corpse and the Humean Problem of Personal Identity in Hawthorne's 'The House of the Seven Gables'", 1992, Internal PDF Link
- For a list of Works that have been considered, but have missed the cut for inclusion in this Section of my Thesis, see the following:-
- Read: No items to list.
- Further Reading: No items to list.
- This is mostly a place-holder38.
In-Page Footnotes
Footnote 2:
- This is the write-up as it was when this Abstract was last output, with text as at the timestamp indicated (02/03/2026 06:24:29).
- Link to Latest Write-Up Note.
Text Colour Conventions (see disclaimer)
- Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2026