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On the possibility of disembodied existence

Michael Tyea
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Northern Illinois University,

To cite this Article Tye, Michael(1983) 'On the possibility of disembodied existence', Australasian Journal of Philosophy,
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 Australasian Journal of Philosophy
Vol. 61, No. 3; September 1983

ON THE POSSIBILITY OF DISEMBODIED EXISTENCE

Michael Tye

It is c o m m o n l y held by dualists and materialists alike that any theory o f the

mind should be able to allow the possibility o f disembodied existence. In
this paper, I examine the m a j o r reasons for supposing that disembodied
existence is possible and I argue that none o f these reasons is compelling.
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In questioning the possibility o f disembodied existence I a m not questioning

the possibility that a brain might still be subject to various mental states were
it removed f r o m its b o d y and kept functioning in vitro. The sort o f
disembodied existence which I wish to examine is the existence o f the mind
not only without a flesh and blood b o d y but also without a brain or indeed
any supporting material object. It m a y be helpful here to try to define the
relevant sort o f disembodiment:
x is a disembodied mind at time t iff (a) x has mental properties at t, (b)
x has no physical properties at t (other than perhaps spatio-temporal
location), (c) there is no material object, y, such that x's mental properties
at t are supervenient u p o n y's basic physical properties at t.
Some c o m m e n t s are necessary on this definition: (1) Clause (b) contains the
indecisive qualification a b o u t spatio-temporal location, since there is no
general agreement as to whether disembodied minds really are spatio-
temporally located when there experiences seem to so locate them. (2) Clause
(c) is included in addition to (a) and (b), since an immaterial mind associated
with a h u m a n being meets the first two clauses, but it is not disembodied, a
I might perhaps add that (c) should be a generally acceptable requirement
for disembodied existence. F o r it is widely agreed that one m a r k o f an
embodied mind is its having mental properties which are determined by or
supervenient u p o n various physical properties o f the associated b o d y (typically
properties o f the brain). (3) It m a y be that the capacity to be associated with
a b o d y is also part o f some philosophers' concept o f a disembodied mind.
I have left this condition out, since it is likely to be contentious. After all,

I assume that the mental properties spoken of in (c) are restricted to those properties whose
exemplification by x at t does not imply anything about the past or future, or anything existing
other than x. Without this qualification, my definition entails that an immaterial mind which
is associated with a human being and which, at t, thinks of Oxford or remembers the war
in Vietnam, for example, is disembodied.
275
 276 Disembodied Existence

it is often said that no supremely perfect mind could have the limitations
of a physical body.
It seems to me that the above definition gives us a reasonably clear idea
of what many philosophers mean when they speak of disembodied existence,
and hereafter I shall assume that disembodiment is to be understood in the
defined way. What, then, are the m a j o r reasons for supposing that
disembodied existence is possible?

II

The first reason I want to consider goes something like this: the sentence 'There
are disembodied minds' does not express a logically contradictory proposition,
since it cannot be reduced to a formal contradiction using the meanings of
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the words 'disembodied' and 'mind' together with the principles of formal
logic. Hence 'There are disembodied minds' expresses a proposition which
could possibly be true.
This argument is, I believe, behind many of the appeals to logical possibility
which are to be found in the literature on disembodied existence. Take, for
example, D. M. Armstrong's comments in the following passage:
[But] disembodied existence seems to be a perfectly intelligible supposition
• . . consider the case where I am lying in bed at night thinking. Surely
it is logically possible that I might be having just the same experiences,
and yet not have a body at all? No doubt I am having certain somatic,
that is to say, bodily sensations. But if I am lying still these will not be
very detailed in nature, and I can see nothing self-contradictory in
supposing that they do not correspond to anything in physical reality. Yet
I need be in no doubt about my identity. 2
Here Armstrong seems to suggest that disembodied existence is a coherent
possibility since nothing in logic rules it out. On this interpretation, Armstrong
m a y be read as subscribing to the argument I have presented above if, as
seems likely, his (unexplained) use of the phrase 'logically possible' is intended
to cover all and only those propositions which are neither formally
contradictory nor entail (formal contradictions via the substitution of
synonyms.
The general assumption upon which the argument rests is that what is
possible (or necessary) is determined by formal logic and the concepts in use.
We conventionally choose to associate given concepts with given parts of
language, and the meanings which result taken together with the principles
of formal logic are the sole factors in deciding what is and what is not possible.
This 'conventionalist' or 'linguistic' theory of modality has been widely
attacked of late, and there appear to be a variety of counterexamples.
Consider, for example, the sentence 'There are bodies of water which do not
contain hydrogen atoms'. The meanings of the words in this sentence in

2 D. M. Armstrong, A Materialist Theory o f Mind (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968),
p. 19.
 Michael Tye 277

combination with the rules of formal logic do not guarantee that the
proposition expressed by the sentence is false. Hence, the proposition that
there are bodies of water which do not contain hydrogen atoms is not logically
contradictory. Nonetheless, it seems plausible to maintain that it is false at
all possible worlds. Let me briefly summarise the familiar line of reasoning
which leads to this result.
According to the account of natural kind terms which has been elaborated
and defended by Kripke and Putnam, 3 'water' is a rigid connotationless
designator. That is to say, 'water' designates but does not describe the same
entity in all possible worlds, namely HzO. The descriptions which we associate
with 'water' in the actual world, for example, 'the liquid which comes out
of taps and fills lakes', are at best ways of fixing the reference of 'water'.
They are not ways of giving its meaning. It is then, on this view, necessary
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that water is HzO. But this is not because 'water' means the same as 'H20'.
How could it? After all, we discovered the sentence 'Water is H 2 0 ' expresses
a true proposition not by a p r i o r i reflection upon the meanings o f the words
involved but rather by a p o s t e r i o r i scientific investigation. 4
Now if this view is correct, then there is no possible world in which water
is not HzO, and hence no possible world in which there is water without
hydrogen. So, the sentence 'There are bodies of water which do not contain
hydrogen atoms' expresses a proposition which is false at all possible worlds
although it is not logically contradictory.
Problem cases for the conventionalist or linguistic theory of modality are
not restricted to natural kind terms. Consider, for example, the Axiom of
Choice or Fermat's Last Theorem. In my view, each of these statements is
necessarily true or necessarily false, yet neither fits the conventionalist thesis. 5
For another sort of case, consider the proposition that there are human-
beings who are alike in all o f their naturalistic properties yet differ in some
moral property. According to G. E. Moore, R. M. Hare, and others, 6 this
proposition is necessarily false, since moral properties s u p e r v e n e upon
naturalistic properties. On this view, although moral properties are not
definable in terms of naturalistic properties, the former properties are
nonetheless strongly dependent upon the latter in that once a person's
naturalistic properties are completely fixed, the moral properties he exemplifies
are thereby completely determined. If the thesis stated here is correct, then
we have a further counterexample to the linguistic theory of modality. For
nothing in the m e a n i n g of the sentence 'There are human beings who are

3 Saul Kripke, 'Naming and Necessity', in Semantics of Natural Language, eds. D. Davidson
and G. Harman (Boston: Reidel, 1972); Hilary Putnam, Mind, Language and Reality,
Philosophical Papers, Vol. 2 (Cambridge University Press, 1975), passim.
4 Furthermore, 'water', on the Kripkean account, lacks any connotation, but 'H20' is
semantically compound.
5 I assume that mathematical hypothesesalwayshave truth values, and that their truth values
are the same in all possible worlds.
6 G. E. Moore, Philosophical Studies (London:Routledgeand KeganPaul, 1922);R. M. Hare,
The Language of Morals (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), passim.
 278 Disembodied Existence

alike in all of their naturalistic properties yet differ in some moral property'
guarantees that it expresses a false proposition.
It appears, then, that a variety of propositions which are logically possible
are really, and in a no less absolute sense, metaphysically impossible. For
factors other than a p r i o r i ones grouped under the headings of meaning and
formal logic can guarantee that propositions are false -- factors pertaining
to the real essential natures and relationships of the entities the propositions
are about.
I shall refrain from adducing any more examples. In so doing, I certainly
do not mean to suggest that the above survey is exhaustive. 7 My point is
merely that the cases briefly adumbrated already suffice to cast doubt on the
linguistic or conventionalist theory. Hence the first argument for supposing
that disembodied existence is possible is very far f r o m compelling.
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It m a y be objected that all my examples really show is that the linguistic

theory is suspect as a universal thesis. But f r o m this it does not follow that
the linguistic theory is unqualifiedly false. Perhaps 'mind' is one of those terms
which does accord with the conventionalist's view. If so, the Armstrongian
reason for denying that disembodied existence is possible still stands.
It seems to me that this response is unsuccessful. Let me clarify my position.
I am not claiming that the linguistic theory is unqualifiedly false. I do not
deny that ther'e are sentences which may be seen to express necessarily false
propositions via the substitution o f synonyms and the application of formal
logic. Nor do I deny that at least some sentences which fail the substitution
test, for example, 'Some thrones are made of gold', express propositions which
are true at some world or other. My point is that once we recognise the
existence of genuine, n0nlinguistic, metaphysical necessity we cannot assume
that all such sentences express possibly true propositions. To assert that 'There
are disembodied minds' is a sentence to which the conventionalist's theory
applies is to assume that there is no nonlinguistic necessary connection
between the properties of being a mind and being embodied. Hence any
a r g u m e n t that disembodied existence is possible which begins with such an
assertion is inevitably question begging.
The upshot is that even a restricted appeal to conventionalism does not
demonstrate that disembodied existence is possible. Without some further
support for the restricted conventionalist's premise, the argument from
conventionalism achieves nothing. With such support, the appeal to
conventionalism becomes redundant. For if it can be shown that the
conventionalist's view applies to the sentence 'There are disembodied minds'
then it must already have been shown that disembodied existence is possible.
A further objection to my discussion is that the concept of logical possibility
which it assumes is narrower than the one some philosophers have in mind
(including perhaps Armstrong) when they claim that disembodied existence
is logically possible. W h a t is often meant, it could be suggested, is that

7 For some interesting counterexamples involving 'world-indexed' properties, see Alvin

Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1974), Chapter 5.
 Michael Tye 279

disembodied existence is conceivable. This leads to the second reason I wish

to consider for supposing that disembodied existence is possible. It is possible,
so some philosophers argue, precisely because it is conceivable.
The trouble with this argument is that talk of conceivability is slippery
at best. Conceivability is sometimes identified with epistemic possibility. This
is of little help, however, in the present context. For epistemic possibility
does not entail metaphysical possibility. After all, an astronomical novice
might say 'Hesperus is conceivably a different planet from Phosphorus', and
what he would mean could be true (assuming his claim is one of epistemic
possibility), but it surely would not imply that Hesperus has a genuine modal
property that Phosphorus lacks. The general point here is that since some
necessity is a p o s t e r i o r i rather than a priori, it is possible for a person (in
ignorance of the necessity) to conceive (in the epistemic sense) of the falsity
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of a claim which is in fact a metaphysically necessary truth.

If the defender of the inference from conceivability to possibility means
something else by conceivability, I do not know what he can have in mind
other than perhaps imaginability. Let us now examine this way of arguing
for the hypothesis that disembodied existence is possible.
To begin with, let us agree to use the word 'imagine' so that if anyone can
imagine a possible world in which such and such obtains, then there is such
a possible world. This usage m a y strike some as unduly restrictive. Can't we
imagine that water is not HzO even though it is metaphysically impossible?
In my own view, it may certainly s e e m to us that we can imagine such a thing
but in reality we cannot now and never could. What we really imagine is
that some liquid with the superficial qualities of water is not H 2 0 and that
is something quite different. Those who find this line counter-intuitive m a y
either dismiss the argument f r o m imaginability as invalid or accept the
proposed usage of 'imagine' as stipulative. The question we have to address,
then, is whether disembodied existence is imaginable.
Consider the story which Jerome Shaffer tells in the following passage:
I suddenly feel an intense pain in my chest, i feel myself falling, and
everything goes black. And then I seem to see the following: people bending
over a body which appears to be mine, a doctor feeling for a pulse, an
ambulance arriving, the doctor saying it is too late, and my body taken
away. I no longer see anything which could be a body which belongs to
me . . . . Later I watch a funeral, hear people say kind things about me,
see weeping. All during this time I have thoughts, sense impressions,
feelings. I continue to be conscious, but no longer have a body. Surely
this is intelligible. 8
Here Shaffer is trying to persuade us that survival after bodily death, and
hence disembodied existence, is imaginable, at least in one's own case. This
project may be taken in two ways. Suppose for the moment that Shaffer's
view is that the described events are imaginable and that their imaginability

8 Jerome Shaffer, Philosophy of Mind (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1968), p. 73.
 280 Disembodied Existence

guarantees or demonstrates the imaginability of disembodied existence. Then

it seems to me that the view is straightforwardly false. For the counterfactual
situation (or possible world) which I imagine upon reading Shaffer's story
may be one in which I am still associated with a material object. Let me
explain.
Suppose that I have a non-fatal heart attack and black out afterwards.
While I am unconscious, some doctors remove my brain from my body and
keep it alive and healthy. Suppose that these doctors and allied technicians
link up the sensory inputs for my brain via radio to a unit which has a
television camera 'eye' and microphone 'ears', and which is moveable by
remote control. Things are so arranged, however, that the camera can't swing
into its own field of view. Finally, suppose that most of my brain's motor
units aren't in operation, but that the ones that control leaning right, left,
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up and down are connected (via radio) to the unit carrying the camera. 9
Now the events which Shaffer lists are easy to comprehend. Upon regaining
consciousness after the heart attack, when I look down, which I do by emitting
the same motor controls to my mechanical 'neck' that I used to emit to my
flesh neck, I see no human body (assuming, of course, that the camera has
been set up some distance away from the scene of the attack). I do not see
the camera unit either, if it is positioned behind the camera and always
remains outside of the field of view. But if I turn toward the place that I
collapsed while having the heart attack, as the camera moves closer I can
certainly see people bending over my body and doctors examining it. And
later I can witness my own funeral: when the camera is trained on the grave,
I can see the coffin and even my own face if it is exposed. I can also hear
the sermon, the weeping of friends, and so on.
It seems, then, that Shaffer's story does not demonstrate that disembodied
existence (that is, immaterial existence of the sort specified earlier) is
imaginable. Since the world which I imagine when I read Shaffer's story may
be one in which I am in the state described above, it does not f o l l o w that
I have imagined a world in which I am properly disembodied.
Shaffer might respbnd to this point by insisting that he can imagine a
possible world in which the events described in his story take place a n d he
is not associated with a disembodied brain or any other material object.
However, this reply has the effect of making Shaffer's story otiose. For it
is now admitted that something extra must be added to the original situation
in order to guarantee that disembodied existence is being imagined. What
is this extra thing? Answer: it is nothing less than disembodied existence itself.
Perhaps Shaffer is not trying to d e m o n s t r a t e that disembodied existence
is imaginable. Perhaps his story is intended merely to make plausible and
give content to the claim that disembodied existence is imaginable. If he is
successful in this more limited task, then it follows that it is at least reasonable
to conclude that disembodied existence is possible.

9 The above description draws on Daniel Dennett's papers 'Where am I?', in Brainstorms:
Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology (Montgomery,VT: Bradford Books, 1978).
I am also indebted to Terence Horgan.
 Michael Tye 281

The m a j o r p r o b l e m I have with this suggestion m a y be b r o u g h t o u t as

follows. S u p p o s e I c l a i m to b e a b l e to i m a g i n e t h a t G o l d b a c h ' s c o n j e c t u r e
is false. W h e n p r e s s e d for details, I say t h a t I can i m a g i n e f a m o u s
m a t h e m a t i c i a n s excitedly r e a d i n g the p r i n t - o u t t a p e f r o m an a p p r o p r i a t e l y
p r o g r a m m e d c o m p u t e r a n d exclaiming, ' S o t h e r e are even n u m b e r s which
are not the s u m o f t w o p r i m e s ! ' D o e s this m a k e it p l a u s i b l e to say t h a t I
have succeeded in i m a g i n i n g t h a t G o l d b a c h ' s c o n j e c t u r e is false? I f so, t h e n
my t h o u g h t experiment m a k e s it r e a s o n a b l e for m e to believe that G o l d b a c h ' s
conjecture is p o s s i b l e false a n d hence t h a t the c o n j e c t u r e is in fact false. I°
But on the basis o f m y t h o u g h t e x p e r i m e n t it is evidently w r o n g h e a d e d for
me to say t h a t I m a y r a t i o n a l l y d e n y G o l d b a c h ' s c o n j e c t u r e . Surely I have
no logical right to an o p i n i o n on the m a t t e r (assuming t h a t I have no o t h e r
relevant i n f o r m a t i o n ) .
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W h a t , I t h i n k , leads to the e r r o r in the a b o v e case is the t h o u g h t that if

I imagine certain events which would or could occur if G o l d b a c h ' s conjecture
were false, t h e n it's p l a u s i b l e f o r m e to claim t h a t I have i m a g i n e d t h a t the
conjecture itself is false. In s o m e sense o f ' i m a g i n e ' which is n o t l i n k e d to
possibility, this m a y be acceptable. But in the m o d a l l y relevant sense I suggest
that it is a serious m i s t a k e .
Similarly, in the case o f d i s e m b o d i e d existence, the fact that S h a f f e r can
imagine having certain experiences o f the sort which w o u l d or c o u l d occur,
if he were d i s e m b o d i e d does n o t itself m a k e it plausible to say t h a t
disembodied existence is imaginable. This m a y perhaps seem counter-intuitive.
But once we a c k n o w l e d g e the existence o f aposteriori metaphysical necessity,
we should realise t h a t o u r a priori i n t u i t i o n s a b o u t w h a t is i m a g i n a b l e (in
the m o d a l l y r e l e v a n t sense) are no l o n g e r reliable. W h a t a priori seems
i m a g i n a b l e m a y well t u r n o u t n o t to be. Thus, i m a g i n a b i l i t y loses its p o w e r
as a useful c r i t e r i o n o f possibility. Ix

III

A rather different sort o f a r g u m e n t might be constructed b y reflecting u p o n

the n a t u r e o f m e n t a l states. W h a t e v e r else m e n t a l states m a y be, it a p p e a r s
that they are n o t p h y s i c o - c h e m i c a l states. F o r it seems plausible to s u p p o s e
that m e n t a l states have p o s s i b l e r e a l i s a t i o n s in creatures with r a d i c a l l y
different n e u r o p h y s i o l o g i c a l o r g a n i s a t i o n s . But, it m i g h t be held, if m e n t a l
states are n o t p h y s i c o - c h e m i c a l states (if, say, they, are f u n c t i o n a l states),
l0 This follows given the premise that mathematical hypotheses are either necessarily true or
necessarily false.
n It may be objected that in my earlier story of the brain in vitro, I, in effect, appealed to
imaginability as a way of demonstrating possibility. However, this is not what I intended.
My thought was rather that our scientific knowledge of the brain and its relationship to the
senses gives us good reason to believe that the situation I described is theoretically possible.
Thus, while I do not deny that we can imagine the case of the brain in vitro, I do not believe
that we should try to argue that it is possible simply by pointing out that it is a priori
imaginable. For a lengthy general discussion of imaginability and possibility (one with which
I find a good deal to agree), see George Seddon's interesting paper, 'Logical Possibility',
Mind, 81 (1972), pp. 481-494.
 282 Disembodied Existence

then it is not necessary that they always be realised in material organisms.

Hence, it is possible that mental states have immaterial realisations, and this
means that disembodied existence is indeed possible.
This argument is open to two possible criticisms. First, it could be objected
that the mere fact that mental states are subject to 'multiple realisations' does
not entail that mental states are not physico-chemical states. According to
David Lewis, for example, mental state terms are context-dependent non-
rigid designators for physico-chemical states so that pain, for example, is
always some physical state through which state it is varies from species to
species (or individual to individual), lz Secondly, it seems clear that even if
mental states are non-physico-chemical functional states, still the conclusion
of the argument is a non sequitur. After all, the property of being a chair
is (arguably) a non-physico-chemical functional property. But it hardly
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follows from this that there can be immaterial chairs!

IV

I conclude that the reasons I have discussed do not establish that disembodied
existence is possible. Further reasons could still be adduced, of course. For
example, it might be held that the Ontological Argument proves that there
is, in fact, a supremely perfect being, and since no supremely perfect being
could be limited by a physical body, it follows that there is, in fact, a
supremely perfect disembodied spirit. But this line of thought is certainly
no better than the previous ones. Some versions of the Ontological Argument
implicitly assume that disembodied existence is possible, by assuming that
it is possible that there is a supremely perfect being, in which case they take
for granted the very thing that is at issue. Others assume merely that any
adequate definition of supreme perfection must include existence. These
versions are generally conceded to be invalid and I shall only say here that
I accept this view. Since I know of no other reasons which carry any weight,
I conclude that the case for the possibility of disembodied existence has not
yet been made out. 13

N o r t h e r n Illinois University Received June 1982

lz See DavidLewis,'Mad Pain and Martian Pain', in Readings in the Philosophy of Psychology,
Vol. 1 (Harvard UniversityPress, 1980). For an extended critical discussion of Lewis'view,
see my 'Functionalism and Type Physicalism', forthcomingin Philosophical Studies.
13 I received helpful comments and discussion on earlier versions of this paper from Terence
Horgan and William Tolhnrst. I am also indebted to an anonymous referee for the
Australasian Journal of Philosophy, and to Peter Van Inwagen.