Kisses, Slaps, and Souls

On my favourite bad objection to Dualism

I—along with most humans for most of history—think people have immaterial souls as well as bodies. That makes me a Substance Dualist.

According to Richard Swinburne, dualist extraordinaire, Substance Dualism “. . . holds that each of us living on earth consists of two distinct substances (two distinct parts)—body and soul, but the part that makes us who we are is our soul. Bodies keep us alive, and by enabling us to interact each other and the world make our lives so greatly worth living; but souls are what we essentially are.”¹

According to the widely uncriticized Amos Version of the King James Version (AVKJV [forthcoming]): “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no [soul]”. Sometimes, the fool says these wicked words not only in his heart but out loud, and gives philosophical reasons for having said them. Some of these reasons are philosophically interesting, but many are not and do my soul great damage.

Of the latter sort, the objection I’m most baffled by says the following: ‘If Substance Dualism is true, what you are essentially is your soul. But your soul—supposing you have one, which you don’t—cannot be touched, since it’s immaterial. But you can be touched, I’m doing it now! I don’t care if we’re in the workplace! Therefore, you are not a soul. I have proven it thus.’

The objection has been phrased more seriously by Alexander Pruss, the author of many great things and a great many things, who writes, in the character of someone called Bob:

This dualistic view has various paradoxical consequences. My wife has never kissed me–she has only kissed Bob, my body. You cannot touch me–you can only touch Bob.²

This consideration does not move me, and nor should it move you, nor anyone. To see why, consider the following exchange between S, a Substance Dualist, and B, who holds that we are only our bodies:

S: I believe, strongly, that Substance Dualism is the correct theory of personal identity. We are one part body and one part soul, but our essential part—that which makes us who we are—is our soul, an immaterial thinking thing that interacts causally with the brain.

B: Sir, you still need to pay for your meal.

S: *taps card*

B: Thank you.

S: But do you disagree with me?

B: Yes, I disagree. I don’t think people have souls.

S: Why?

B: *smacks S so loudly that the whole restaurant falls quiet and S flies like an al dente spaghetti string* Do you agree that I just slapped you?

S: Yes. *peels slowly off the wall* How could I not?

B: Ah-ha! You’ve been had, sir. If you’re essentially a soul, then I didn’t slap you, did I? I only slapped you face.

S: Oh, B. Sweet B. Naïve B. With that once comment, you have sowed the seeds of your own demise.

B: You seem sure of yourself. If you show me how, I will subscribe to the Going Awol Substack and like his most recent article. I think I speak for everyone.

*the whole restaurant, in unison* He does, he does!

S: Well now, observe that you said: ‘I only slapped his face’.

B: Yes, I did. And your point?

S: That was close to the truth, but off by a hair. Technically, all you did was slap a hand-shaped region of face-skin, the skin that’s now bruised and glowing red.

B: Uh, I suppose. . .

S: Come now. Don’t just ‘suppose’. Agree with me. When you slapped that portion of my face, you didn’t slap the whole of my face. You didn’t slap my other cheek, for instance.

B: Yes, yes, I agree.

S: And yet, you happily—nay, gleefully—say things like: ‘I slapped your face’ and ‘I slapped you’, even though the hand-shaped region of face-skin is, strictly speaking, neither me nor my face, under any plausible theory of personal or facial ontology.

B: I do say things like that, it’s true.

S: Why do you? Don’t you think you’re contradicting your view that we are bodies?

B: No, not really. I guess I think it makes sense to say and think—under our ordinary linguistic and conceptual schemas—things like: ‘I slapped you’ and ‘I slapped your face’, when all I really did, strictly speaking, was slap a proper part of you and your face that both you and your face could survive the loss of.

S: Right! So why can’t the dualist say that too?

B: Hmmm. . .

S: Let me finish that thought for you. Standardly, dualists say that your body and its parts are inessential parts of you, just like the hand-shaped region of face-skin that’s still jiggling three minutes on from me getting my shit rocked by your mammoth spatula hand is an inessential part of me, on your own view! So the dualist—without guilt—can say things like: ‘this waiter slapped me, officer, arrest him and his family, then burn his house down and kill his dog’ just as sincerely as you can.

B: You’re killing my dog?

S: Not if you subscribe to the Going Awol Substack and like the article you just finished.

1. Swinburne, Richard. 2019. Are We Bodies or Souls? Oxford: Oxford University Press: p. 1.

2. Pruss, Alexander. 2011. I Was Once a Fetus: That Is Why Abortion Is Wrong. In Persons, Moral Worth, and Embryos, ed. by Stephen Napier (Dordrecht: Springer): p. 24.