L’dea che l’uomo sia formato da corpo e spirito (dualismo) è caduta in discredito.
Secondo Richard Swinburne il motivo di questo discredito è misterioso. Il libro “The evolution of the soul” è un tour de force su questi temi.
Aristotele riteneva che l’anima fosse una proprietà del corpo – in particolare la forma – e che quindi non potesse prescindere dall’esistenza del corpo stesso.
Chi invece crede che l’anima possa esistere anche quando il corpo cessa di esistere è un dualista sostanziale (o cartesiano)…
… The crucial point that Descartes’ and others were presumably trying to make is not that (in the case of men) the living body is not part of the person, but that it is not essentially, only contingently, part of the person. The body is separable from the person and the person can continue even if the body is destroyed. Just as I continue to exist wholly and completely if you cut off my hair, so, the dualist holds, it is possible that I continue to exist if you destroy my body. The soul, by contrast, is the necessary core which must continue if I am to continue…
Ma cos’è l’anima? È ciò che ci dà identità…
… it is the part of the person which is necessary for his continuing existence. The person is the soul together with whatever, if any, body is linked temporarily to it. By saying that the person `can’ continue if the body is destroyed I mean only that this is logically possible, that there is no contradiction in supposing the soul to continue to exist without its present body or indeed any body at all (although such a soul would not then, on the understanding which I have given to `man’-sec pp. 4 f.-he a man or part of a man, although it would have been part of a man). Whether this normally happens, is another question…
Facciamo un esempio. Se mi ami veramente mi ami anche se mi taglio le unghie. Anche se mi rado a zero i capelli, anche se mi amputano una gamba, anche se mi amputano gambe e braccia. Se mi ami veramente, ami la mia anima, ovvero ciò che mi identifica.
Chi non crede nell’esistenza dell’anima non nega l’esistenza dell’identità ma pensa che il corpo sia sufficiente a conferirla.
Ma begare l’anima è altamente problematico. Non si può infatti parlare in modo compiuto delle persone limitando il discorso ai loro corpi.
Facciamo un esempio attraverso un esperimento mentale che riguarda il trapianto del cervello…
… It might be possible one day to remove a whole hemisphere, without killing the person, and to transplant it into the skull of a living body from which the brain has just been removed, so that the transplant takes. There would then appear to be two separate living persons. Since both are controlled by hemispheres originating from the original person p, and since apparent memory and character and their manifestation in behaviour are dependent on factors present in both hemispheres, we would expect each publicly to affirm such apparent memories and to behave as if he had p’s character… two persons, both with p’s apparent memories and character. But they cannot both be p….
Se i due emisferi del tuo cervello – che possono funzionare anche separatamente – vengono trapiantati rispettivamente in A e in B.
Tu chi sei?
Il tuo corpo non ha più cervello, è una scatola vuota. A e B pensano e ricordano come te.
Qui però non si vuole affrontare il problema. Ognuno può fare le sue ipotesi ma nessuno può negare l’incertezza di fondo…
… we may have our views about which (if either) resultant person p is, but we could be wrong. And that is my basic point-however…
Eppure, in un caso del genere sappiamo tutto di quel che succede ai corpi, non dovremmo avere problemi nel ricostruire l’identità delle persone.
Evidentemente, i corpi non ci raccontano l’intera storia.
Con i “trapianti di cervello” si può giocare a lungo, come ha fatto il filosofo Bernard Williams inventandosi un “medico pazzo” che tortura i suoi pazienti trapiantandoli dopo averli fatti scommettere sulla loro sorte…
… He is going to torture one of the resulting persons and free the other with a gift of a million pounds. You can choose which person is to be tortured and which to be rewarded… Whichever way you choose, the choice would, in Williams’s telling word about his similar story, be a `risk’-which shows that there is something other to the continuity of the person, than any continuity of parts of brain or body…
C’è un altro esperimento mentale che mette in luce la necessità dell’anima: il teletrasporto.
Supponete che la cabina A vi teletrasporti nella cabina B (situata a distanza), lo fa distruggendo il vostro corpo in A e ricostruendolo in B. Una specie di stampa 3d.
La vostra stampa site ancora voi?
E se la stampa non implicasse la distruzione del vostro corpo originale?
E se voi, dopo aver ucciso un uomo, vi stampate da A in B distruggendo il vostro vecchio corpo, la stampa è imputabile per omicidio?
Guardate, per esempio, questo video:
Ancora: qui non chiediamo risposte, chiediamo solo di notare le mille incertezze che emergono in relazione all’identità pur disponendo di un resoconto minuzioso dei corpi.
La morale è una sola: sapere tutto dei corpi ci dice poco dell’identità. Evidentemente in queste storie manca un pezzo: l’anima. Parlare delle persone senza assumere l’anima conduce a discorsi sconclusionati…
… My argument has been that knowledge of what has happened to a person’s body and its parts will not necessarily give you knowledge of what has happened to the person, and so, that persons are not the same as their bodies…
Ma l’anima continua ad esistere anche se il corpo viene distrutto?
Di certo è possibile immaginarla anche in assenza di corpo. Io potrei svegliarmi in una stanza buia e non sentire più il corpo, un po’ come chi si sveglia paralizzato dopo un incidente…
… life after death. It seems self-consistent to affirm with respect to any person who is the subject of mental properties that he continue to have them, while his body is annihilated… suppose that a person who has been a man now finds himself no longer able to operate on the world, nor to acquire true beliefs about it; yet still to have a full mental life, some of it subject to his voluntary control. He would be disembodied…
Una situazione del genere sembra coerente, non ci sono impedimenti ad immaginarla…
… The supposition that a person who is currently a man might become disembodied in one or other of these ways seems coherent. Not merely is it not logically necessary that a person have a body or brain made of certain matter, if he is to be the person which he is; it is not even necessitated by laws of nature.`…
Un’anima “eterna” può essere immaginata facilmente, ciò non significa che esista. Per argomentare sulla sua esistenza occorre una conoscenza pregressa, per esempio di tipo teistico, ma dopo approfondiremo questo punto.
Per ora limitiamoci a constatare un altro fatto che depone a favore dell’esistenza dell’anima: potrei anche svegliarmi e constatare che col mio pensiero controllo parte del corpo di mia moglie oltre a parte del mio, e viceversa mia moglie potrebbe controllare con la sua mente parte del mio corpo oltre che parte del suo…
… Suppose that one morning a man wakes up to find himself unable to control the right side of his body, including his right arm and leg. When he tries to move the right-side parts of his body, he finds that the corresponding left-side parts of his body move; and when he tries to move the left-side parts, the corresponding parts of his wife’s body move…
Con la mia mente, insomma, controllo più corpi. Ma chi sono io? Qual è il mio corpo…
…My point now is that what natural laws still in no way determine is which animate body is yours and which is mine… My conclusion-that truths about persons are other than truths about their bodies and parts thereof-is, I suggest, forced upon anyone who reflects seriously on the fact of the unity of consciousness over time and at a time…
Ancora una volta: evidentemente, parlare dei corpi delle persone ci dice poco delle persone. Per rendere coerente il discorso dobbiamo parlare di anima.
Se racconto una fiaba e dico che il mago Merlino con la sua mente addestrata è in grado di controllare il corpo di Semola, chi mi ascolta sprovvisto del concetto di anima (in questo caso implicito nei nomi propri) conclude che Merlino e Semola sono la stessa persona. Non ha capito niente perché senza il concetto di anima molti discorsi che noi tutti afferriamo diventano inafferrabili. Invece, i bambini, dotati come sono del concetto di anima, comprendono tutto alla perfezione.
… A framework of thought which makes sense of this fact is provided if we think of a person as body plus soul, such that the continuing of the soul alone guarantees the continuing of the person…
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Ma quando nasce un’anima?
Dalla nostra esperienza l’anima emerge quando si realizza una configurazione particolare della materia.
Conoscere la neurofisiologia è quindi importante per rispondere..
… the answers to these questions depend in part on the answers to detailed questions of physiology which I shall not attempt to provide, I hope to show what kind of physiological information is relevant…
Come possiamo capire se il nostro prossimo ha un’anima?
Non esiste un modo certo, lo si intuisce da certi comportamenti e da certi fatti neurofisiologici: se ha un corpo simile al nostro e si comporta in modo simile a noi probabilmente ha un’anima come noi. Per esempio…
… The evidence available to others that some man is currently conscious will, we saw in earlier chapters, be his testimony and certain patterns of bodily behaviour which manifest his conscious life (e.g. screaming when in pain)… This direct evidence of consciousness is found to be correlated with physiological phenomena… the electrical rhythm of a man’s brain, his EEG, is found to have a certain pattern… evidence of the connection of EEG rhythm with consciousness, means that (since a man’s own apparent memory of whether he was at some time conscious or not can err, like all memory) it can be used to correct apparent memory-e.g. if a man woken up from what by EEG rhythm evidence is deep dreamless sleep claims that he was woken from a long dream, the EEG evidence acts at least to cast doubt on his claim… The same goes for the evidence of rapid eye movements during sleep (REMs) showing that a man is dreaming… there are periods of deep sleep in which a man is not conscious at all… The absence of consciousness for those periods is clearly dependent on the state of the brain, and not vice versa. A man can be made unconscious-by drugs, being knocked out, etc.-or woken up. The functioning of the soul depends on the correct functioning of the brain…
Anima e coscienza non sono la stessa cosa poiché noi manteniamo la nostra identità anche in uno stato di incoscienza, per esempio quando dormiamo…
… there is no conscious life before some point between conception and birth. No one can recall conscious episodes immediately after conception, there are no bodily movements evidential of sensations, thoughts, or purposings, and there is no brain to evince the electrical patterns characteristic of consciousness…
Il feto ha una sua identità ma forse non è cosciente (perlomeno noi non ricordiamo di essere stati dei feti)…
… The evidence suggests that consciousness originates when the foetus has a brain with the kind of electrical rhythms characteristic…
Funzionare ed esistere sono cose differenti. Per gli oggetti la cosa è evidente. Pensiamo ad un orologio…
… What I have argued so far is that without a functioning brain, the soul will not function (i.e. have conscious episodes)-not that it will not exist…. The distinction between existence and functioning is clear enough in the case of a material substance, which has some sort of life (e.g. a plant) or some sort of working (e.g. a machine). The substance continues to exist so long as the matter of which it is made continues to exist… But it functions only so long as normal life-processes or machine-use continue…. The clock exists, when it no longer tells the time, so long as the parts remain joined in roughly the normal way… a dead tree is still a tree…
Cos’ come per gli oggetti, anche l’anima può esistere senza funzionare, come nel caso dell’uomo profondamente addormentato…
… The soul functions while it is the subject of conscious episodes-while it has sensations or thoughts or purposes. But is it still there when the man is asleep, having no conscious episodes?… In saying that some such person still exists, we mean, I suggest, that the sleeping body will again by normal processes give rise to a conscious life,… although persons only exist while they are conscious, the bodies which they previously owned continue to exist during the periods of unconsciousness…
Suona assurdo pensare che chi si addormenta entra ed esca dall’esistenza. È più naturale pensare che continui ad esistere sospendendo le sue funzioni…
… that would be a very unnatural way to talk, largely because it has the consequence that certain substances (persons) are continually popping in and out of existence… it seems a less cumbersome way to describe the cited fact to say that persons exist while not conscious…
Una persona ha solo un’esistenza e una sola anima…
… This will have the consequence that persons normally have only one beginning of existence during their life on Earth… With this usage, a soul exists while its owner exists; and a soul will normally have only one beginning of existence during a man’s life on Earth…
Ciò non significa che i confini dell’esistenza siano chiari, tutt’altro…
… But the boundaries of this usage are not as clear as they look. It all depends on what we understand by ‘normal’ bodily processes…
Il caso del rinvenimento in seguito a respirazione artificiale non sembra presentare problemi…
… If a drowned body of a person can be revived by artificial respiration, t certainly exists before the respiration is given…
E il caso del coma irreversibile?…
… But what about the man in a coma for reviving whom there are no techniques available to doctors at that place and time, though there will be such techniques usable a few years later?… If he recovers, have ‘normal processes’ made his soul function again’?…
Per valutare la sorte dell’anima dei comatosi i concetti da considerare sono quelli di “normale processo corporeo” e di “tecnica disponibile” Una persona è viva se i processi corporei sono “normali” oppure se esiste una tecnica per riportarli alla “normalità”…
… we must, I think, develop the account which I have given so far by giving fairly arbitrary stipulative definitions of ‘normal’ bodily processes and ‘available’ techniques… If our talk of persons existing is not to depart too wildly from ordinary usage, we must deny that it is sufficient for the existence of a man merely that it is logically possible that he be brought to life again; for in that case all dead men would continue to exist (as a mere logical consequence of once having existed)…. I suggest that we understand in this context by a bodily process being ‘normal’, that it will yield its outcome with a high degree of predictability given normal nutrition, respiration, etc…. and by a technique being ‘available’, that it is available to doctors during that period of history within a region of the size of the average county…. My preferred definition does allow that it sometimes happens that a person (and so his soul) ceases to exist and then by an unexpected accident comes to exist again…
E l’embrione prima delle 20 settimane? Anche in questo caso consideriamo i processi corporei: il cervello ha una sua attività dopo le 20 settimane ma i processi corporei partono dalla concezione per cui l’anima sembrerebbe esistere da quel momento…
… So, given that the soul functions first about twenty weeks after conception, when does it come into existence? There exist normal bodily processes by which the fertilized egg develops into a foetus with a brain after twenty weeks which gives rise to a functioning soul. If the soul exists just because normal bodily processes will bring it one day to function, it surely therefore exists, once the egg is fertilized, at conception….
E gli animali hanno un’anima?
Guardiamo ai comportamenti e al nostro intuito: probabilmente alcuni mammiferi ce l’hanno, sentiamo con loro certe affinità…
… the grounds for attributing a mental life of sensation, thought, purpose, desire, and belief to other men are provided by the pattern of their public behaviour, including above all what they say…. There are, as we noted there, similar grounds for attributing a mental life characterized by these elements to the higher animals, especially mammals…. animals sometimes show the facial signs which humans show when struck by th by these elements to the higher animals, especially mammals…. animals sometimes show the facial signs which humans show when struck by thought…
Quel che manca all’animale è un linguaggio strutturato e dei principi etici. Difficilmente riteniamo un animale responsabile delle sue azioni…
… But of course the most obvious difference between the higher animals and ourselves is that they do not have a structured language… this meansncAn organism can have sensations without having mental events of other kinds; and my suspicion is that the conscious life of the first conscious animals was purely sensory… lusions we reach about their mental lives must he much more tentative than any conclusions we may reach about the mental lives of other men… Since, as I shall argue, creatures without language cannot have moral concepts, desire alone must move such creatures to action… beliefs must have been present in all purposing animals. Sooner or later animals must have formulated their beliefs to themselves in thought…
Del resto, quanto detto per l’uomo in tema di dualismo e trapianti di cervello, vale anche per certi animali, seppure in forma depotenziata…
… Now the claim which I made in Chapter 8 about the need to describe humans as composed of body and soul applies to conscious animals as well…. If you divide my cat’s brain and transplant the two halves into empty cat skulls and the transplants take, there is a truth about which subsequent cat is my cat which is not necessarily revealed by knowledge of what has happened to the parts of my cat’s body…
Nel pensiero greco e medioevale l’anima era riconosciuta agli animali…
… Talk about animal souls as well as human souls was normal in Greek philosophy and Christian medieval thought…
Fu Cartesio a ritenere che gli animali fossero robot…
… The idea of a very sharp division between animals who had no souls, and men who had souls, arrived in the seventeenth century with Descartes and his strange view that animals were unconscious automata…
Forse è il caso di ritornare alla distinzione tra anime sensitive e anime razionali…
… The difference between animals and men, as the medievals well recognised, was not that men had a mental life and so souls, and animals did not; but that man had a special kind of mental life (mental capacities which went beyond those of animals) and so a special kind of soul. The medievals called this soul the rational or intellectual soul, as opposed to the animal or sensitive soul.’ …
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Ma la scienza è in grado di spiegare la coscienza? E’ in grado di capire quando è nata e come?
In genere la scienza mette in luce una correlazione tra eventi cerebrali ed eventi della coscienza…
… Most writers who discuss the relation of mind and body and consider the possibility of scientific explanation in this field normally make an assumption of one-many simultaneous mind-brain correlation… the assumption of one-many correlation is an assumption for which no one has ever produced any detailed evidence…
Si assume di solito che il nesso causale vada dal cervello alla coscienza senza poter provare nulla in merito…
… The assumption of one-many mind-brain correlation would follow from the assumptions that every event has a cause, and that all mental events are caused exclusively and instantaneously by brain-events…
Possiamo concludere che la scienza ci dice ben poco sul tema della coscienza…
… I shall make the assumption of one-many mind-brain correlation for humans, animals, and any other conscious beings there may be; and show that even with it, central theses of mine about the structure and causal efficacy, and yet ultimate inexplicability, of the soul still follow…
In questo senso l’evoluzionismo è impotente sul tema della coscienza e dell’anima…
… … The assumption of one-many mind-brain correlation would follow from the assumptions that every event has a cause, and that all mental events are caused exclusively and instantaneously by brain-events…
C’è una cosa che difficilmente la scienza potrà mai dirci: come si passa da una certa configurazione della materia ad uno stato di coscienza…
… what physics and chemistry could not possibly explain is why the brain-events to which the impinging light gives rise, in turn give rise to sensations of blueness (as opposed to redness), a high noise rather than a low noise, this sort of smell rather than that sort of smell-why sodium chloride tastes salty, and roses look pink. And the reason why physics and chemistry could not explain these things is that pink looks, high noises, and salty tastes are not the sort of thing physics and chemistry deal in… mental properties are different properties from physical properties; and even if there is one-many correlation between mental events and brain-events, physics and chemistry cannot explain why there are these correlations rather than those correlations…
Dovremo attendere una nuova fisica?…
… But could not physics and chemistry be enlarged so as to become a super-science dealing with both physical and mental properties…
No. Probabilmente una fisica del genere non emergerà mai poiché si tratta di connettere realtà di natura differente. Le rivoluzioni passate della scienza non hanno mai introdotto realtà di natura differente. Tra cervello e coscienza la differenza è qualitativa…
… There is a crucial difference between the two cases. All other integrations into a super-science, of sciences dealing with entities and properties apparently qualitatively very distinct, were achieved by saying that really some of those entities and properties were not as they appeared to be; by making a distinction between the underlying (not immediately observable) entities and properties and the phenomenal properties to which they gave rise…
Le grandi “riduzioni” del passato (colore, calore, gusto, suono…) conservavano la qualità…
… All `reduction’ of one science to another dealing with apparently very disparate properties has been achieved by this device of denying that the apparent properties (i.e. the `secondary qualities’ of colour, heat, sound, taste, etc.) with which one science dealt belonged to the physical world at all…
Nel nostro caso quel meccanismo di riduzione non funziona: se devi spiegare una sensazione non puoi negare che sia una sensazione per affermare che sia un gioco di molecole…
… But then, when you come to face the problem of the sensations themselves, you cannot do this. If you are to explain the sensations themselves, you cannot distinguish between them and their underlying causes and only explain the latter…
Introducendo il concetto di “sensazione” l’ evoluzionismo – inteso come filosofia – entra in crisi: perché avere sensazioni dovrebbe comportare un vantaggio evolutivo? Non basterebbe essere dei robottoni? Perché questa eccedenza, questo sovrappiù?…
… can natural selection explain why animals with the capacity to have sensations survived? What evolutionary advantage does the capacity to have sensations give to a creature?…
Darwin è impotente sulla giustificazione degli epifenomeni, deve negarli contro l’evidenza…
… If epiphenomenalism were true, there would be no evolutionary advantage in having sensations… having of sensations would never make any difference to the animal’s behaviour…
La sensazione diventa quindi un pleonasma nel paradigma darwiniano e la posizione eliminativista l’unica coerente…
… this system of ours in which sensations are causally intermediate between stimulus and response will clearly have no evolutionary advantage over a mechanism which produces the same behavioural modifications without going through sensations to produce them…
Così come la sensazione, nemmeno la coscienza dà vantaggi evolutivi…
… What advantage is there in the mental awareness as opposed to the unconscious disposition’?…
Per avere un’idea minimamente completa dell’uomo bisogna andare oltre Darwin…
… So we have noted one crucial all-important question which is utterly beyond the powers of Darwinism or apparently science itself to answer-why do certain brain-events give rise to certain mental events-and one question on which there are possibilities for a Darwinian answer…
Ma lo stesso vantaggio evolutivo della verità è revocato in dubbio…
… Why is the brain connected via the optic nerve to the eye in such a way that the brain-event which gives rise to the belief that there is a table present is normally caused to occur when and only when there is a table present? The answer is evident-animals with beliefs are more likely to survive if their beliefs are largely true…
La teoria evoluzionista – si dice in gergo – è autorimuovente (si propone come verità affermando che la verità non è cio’ che cerca l’uomo), cosicché va integrata per renderla meno precaria.
In conclusione, non sembra che la scienza possa mai isolare le leggi che regolano l’interazione tra mente e corpo, probabilmente queste leggi non ci sono e il vuoto è riempito dalla libertà umana…
There may be some natural law concerning when and how soul and body interact, but my argument suggests that there is not (because our present evidence would count against any suggested law) and in consequence scientists are unlikely to find one.
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Ma ci sono anime su altri pianeti? Riusciremo ad ottenere delle anime attraverso procedimenti diversi dalla riproduzione sessuale?…
… what of organisms who might be found on other planets, made of very different kinds of molecule from animals on this planet (let us call them `Martians’); and what of organisms which are brought into being, not by normal sexual processes, but are put together in a laboratory on this Earth, made either of similar molecules and similar construction to animals (let us call them `synthesized animals’) or of very different molecules and construction (let us call them `robots’)?…
La cosa non può essere esclusa. La risposta però non può prescindere dalla conoscenza di questi esseri e soprattutto da una prolungata esperienza di interazione diretta con loro…
… The difference of construction of robots and Martians from ourselves, means that we no longer have the crucial grounds for attributing consciousness… If they have a mental life like ours, we must obviously treat them differently from the way in which we treat machines… synthesized animals, having considerable similarity of brain to ourselves, are justifiably believed to have souls. There is no reason to suppose that souls will come into existence only through the normal sexual processes…
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Torniamo da ultimo al tema delle anime prive di corpo…
… Can this complex evolved human soul survive on its own apart from the body which sustains it?…
Dopo la morte del corpo l’anima sembrerebbe cessare la sua esistenza…
… When the body dies and the brain ceases to function, the evidence of the kind considered in Chapter 10 suggests that the soul will cease to function also…
Ma non possiamo escludere asimmetrie rispetto all’inizio della vita (quando l’inesistenza di un corpo designa chiaramente l’inesistenza ddell’anima)…
… However, there are arguments and evidence of less usual kinds which purport to show that things are different after death from what they are before birth…
Poniamo il caso di un cervello che si spegne e che viene riattivato. Nasce una nuova persona? No. ma se è così la condizione dell’anima dallo spegnimento alla riaccensione è una forma di esistenza…
… we must consider the question of whether, after death, the brain which ceases to function at death can be made to function again…
Il caso dell’ibernato è di questo tipo…
… Suppose you die of a brain haemorrhage which today’s doctors cannot cure, but your relatives take your corpse and put it straight into a very deep freeze in California. Fifty years later your descendents take it out of the freeze; medical technology has improved and the doctors are able quickly to mend your brain, and your body is then warmed up. The body becomes what is clearly the body of a living person, and one with your apparent memory and character. Is it you?… the satisfaction of the criterion of apparent memory (together with the-at any rate partial-satisfaction of the criterion of brain continuity) would suggest that we ought to say ‘Yes’…
Il caso dell’ibernato, però, puo’ essere fatto rientrare nell’analisi “normale funzionamento/tecnica disponibile” visto più sopra.
Poniamo invece che il cervello si disgreghi in milioni di pezzi non più riconponibili? Cosa succede in questi casi?
Prima di rispondere vediamo un’ altra domanda che costituisce un passo intermedio: quanti atomi originali deve contenere il nuovo cervello riassemblato per poter dire che la persona morta sia stata riportata in vita?…
… how many of the original atoms do we need in the original locations?… But it remains unclear and indeed insoluble exactly how much of the original brain is needed to provide satisfaction of the brain criterion….
Un curioso problema teologico medievale: il caso del cannibale che mangia solo carne umana. Il suo corpo è in buona parte costituito da atomi che appartengono anche ad altri corpi. Il giorno della resurrezione in quali corpi saranno destinati questi atomi…
… thinkers of the early Christian centuries and of the Middle Ages. They considered the imaginary case of the cannibal who eats nothing but human flesh. Given that both the cannibal and his victims are to be brought to life in the General Resurrection, to whom will be flesh of the cannibal belong?…
Soluzione di Tommaso…
… Aquinas’ begins his answer by saying that `if something was materially present in many men, it will rise in him to whose perfection it belonged’, i.e. that that part of the body which is necessary for a man being the person he is will belong to him in the General Resurrection…
Teoria del “nocciolo”: ogni corpo ha un “nocciolo” che, una volta ricostituito è come se rianimasse il corpo originale.
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Torniamo alla domanda principale: l’anima puo’ sopravvivere ad un corpo disgregato in miliardi e miliardi di pezzi?
Gli argomenti sella sopravvivenza dell’anima sono di due tipi: 1) parapsicologici (in cui una persona manifesta la sua presenza dopo la morte), 2) legati ai cosiddetti “risvegli” (in cui una persona data per morta recupera e torna alla vita inspiegabilmente).
L’argomento della parapsicologia non sembra essere molto convincente…
… My conclusion on parapsychology is that it provides no good evidence that the soul continues to function without the brain to which it is currently connected, functioning…
Anche le storie dei “risvegliati” lasciano adito a troppi dubbi. In genere il dualismo non mostra argomenti stringenti per l’immortalità dell’anima…
… The failure of the above arguments is, I suggest, typical of the failure of dualist arguments to show that the soul has an immortal nature…
Parrebbe che l’immanentismo sia la via di uscita più ragionevole (immanentismo: anima e corpo sono sempre connessi, quando cessa il corpo cessa anche l’anima).
Noi non abbiamo esperienze di anime sopravvissute ai corpi, per quanto non possiamo escludere che la cosa sia possibile…
… The situation is simply that the fairly direct kinds of evidence considered so far give no grounds for supposing that anyone has survived death, but we know of no reason to suppose that it is not possible for anyone to survive death…
È un po’ come con i marziani: non li abbiamo mai visti ma non possiamo escludere la loro presenza.
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Interessante questione: ma su chi grava l’onere della prova?…
… Someone may argue that failure to find something when you have looked for it is evidence that it does not exist. But that is so only if you would recognize the object when you found it, and if there is a limited region within which the object can exist and you have explored quite a lot of the region. Failure to find oil in the English Channel after you have drilled in most parts of it, or to find the Abominable Snowman if you have explored most of the Himalayas, is indeed evidence that the thing does not exist. But that is hardly the case with souls whose brains have ceased to function…
La prova spetta a chi sostiene l’esistenza di X allorché X è stato cercato e non trovato. Ma se X non è stato cercato o non è possibile cercarlo le cose cambiano, anche perché in questi casi non è mai nemmeno provabile una tesi diversa.
Diciamolo in altro modo: la prova spetta non tanto a chi afferma l’esistenza di qualcosa ma a chi afferma un fatto che è meno probabile di alcune alternative fornite da altri.
Se dico che nel canale della manica c’è il petrolio ma molti scavi sono già stati fatti senza successo, allora l’onere di provare questa esistenza spetta a me poiché l’alternativa (“nel canale della manica il petrolio non esiste”) è al momento la più probabile. Se invece affermo che i marziani esistono non spetta a me l’onere della prova perché le ricerche fin qui condotte senza successo – essendo di portata minima – non rendono più probabile l’ipotesi alternativa.
La regola è: confronta le alternative. E non invece come crede l’ingenuo: chi afferma l’esistenza di qualcosa deve provarla.
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L’immortalità dell’anima può derivare da una semplice teoria metafisica…
… human souls survive death as a result of their nature or as a result of the predictable action of some agent who has the power to bring them to life….
Come quella del karma buddista…
… One such theory is the Hindu-Buddhist metaphysic of karma…
Oppure del teismo cristiano…
… Another such theory is of course Christian theism. The theist has first to argue for the existence of God…
In questa teoria metafisica la bontà di Dio implica l’immortalità dell’anima…
… The Christian theist will need further to show that God intends to bring souls to function after death. He could show this either by showing that it was an obligation on an omnipotent being to do such a thing, and so that, being good, God would do it… if I am right in my claim that we cannot show that the soul has a nature such that it survives `under its own steam’, and that we cannot show that it has a nature such that it cannot survive without its sustaining brain, the only kind of argument that can be given is an argument which goes beyond nature…
Per quanto detto prima, se l’ipotesi teista è la teoria del tutto più probabile, allora l’immortalità dell’anima diventa l’ipotesi più probabile.
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Ma come dobbiamo immaginare la resurrezione cristiana? Forse il problema del cannibale richiede “corpi nuovi”…
… Note that if there does occur a general resurrection of souls with new bodies in some other world, yet with apparent memories of their past lives (or a general reincarnation on Earth with such memories), they would have grounds for reidentifying each other correctly. For then the general failure of the results of the criterion of bodily continuity to coincide with those of apparent memory would by the arguments of Chapter 9 justifiably lead us to abandon the former criterion and rely entirely on the latter…
L’analogia della lampadina…
… The soul is like a light bulb and the brain is like an electric light socket… If the socket is damaged or the current turned off, the light will not shine… Destroy the brain or cut off the nutriment supplied by the blood, and the soul will cease to function… But it can be revived and made to function again by repairing or reassembling the brain-just as the light can be made to shine again by repairing the socket… But now, my analogy breaks… there is a practical limit to the ability of humans to repair brains… Humans can move light bulbs and put them into entirely different sockets… the task is one involving no contradiction and an omnipotent God could achieve it…
Ecco allora un’ipotesi che forse merita di essere privilegiata: risorgeremo con corpi che ci renderanno riconoscibili ma che materialmente non saranno esattamente i nostri vecchi corpi perché esistono molti atomi che sono comuni a molti corpi.
