Schwartz?

Schwartz?       

        When reviewing the case of Schwartz, my philosopher friends, John Locke, St. Thomas Aquinas and I uncovered some curious and profound metaphysical questions.  Like who exactly is Schwartz? How does he/she differ now from before his/her ordeal?  And will he/she be the same in the future? This paper aims to explore Schwartz’s existence through philosophical examination and is our attempt to answer these questions.

       Almost immediately John Locke declared that indeed if Schwartz’s memories have been transplanted from one body to another then Hylomorphism (a philosophical theory developed by Aristotle that views “being” as a combination of form and matter.) must be false because Schwartz proves that mind and body can be separated into discreet existences.  He also states that regardless of the body the mind will believe it is the same self it was before the accident because all the memories of past experiences remain unchanged. And sensory input would not change much either with a new body.  A flower would still be recognizable, red is still red, a bell still sounds like a bell and so on. Even though the accident and subsequently the operation would add to the experience of the mind and shape the self dramatically it wouldn’t force Schwartz into accepting an entirely new identity.  Simply put; time and experiences change everyone but it doesn’t mean they are not the same person.

       St. Thomas Aquinas replied that without the operation Schwartz would not even exist and therefore mind and body can only exist, as a whole, in relation to one another. He continued by stating that both of the two individuals that comprise Schwartz would be, or were considered dead and incomplete as a person without their respective mind or body functioning.   St. Thomas contends that it is unnatural for humans to exist without a body because the soul is incomplete without the body just as the body is inanimate without the soul.  Although Schwartz retained memories of the past life, St. Thomas insists that, Schwartz is a completely new person having undergone a second birth of sorts.  The operation forced a soul into an unfamiliar body meaning mind and body had different physical experiences.  Aquinas believes that memories of physical injuries and scars that don’t exist on the new body, as well as those that do without any such memory, would only prove to influence Schwartz to accept his/her new identity as different from before the accident. 

       Locke made some very interesting points with his arguments.  However he can’t prove that while mind and body are separate they can still function independently of one another.  While we know the mind can store and retain memories outside the body we don’t know if it can function properly without sensory input or if it can gain any new memories while separated from the body.  Although I agree that all people change or evolve over time with experiences, Locke has no way to prove that changing the body wouldn’t profoundly affect the mind or alter its’ perception of self. Making his argument unsound.

       St. Thomas on the other hand seems to contradict his own religious beliefs by suggesting that the soul is incomplete without the body (and vice versa).  To which I ask; what about Jesus Christ?  Was he incomplete when his body died?  Isn’t God without a physical body?  And angels?  What of them?   Seems like an invalid argument to me.  However his belief that the injuries and scars obtained through physical experiences would influence the mind into accepting an entirely new identity doesn’t seem that farfetched.  But his argument that Schwartz wouldn’t exist without both the mind and the body is both valid and sound. 

       So who is Schwartz?  Schwartz is definitely a person because it possesses both a mind and a body.  The memories Schwartz has will ultimately influence his/her person more so than the body in which the mind inhabits simply because it has no other information upon which to draw conclusions from.  Schwartz can only make use of what is stored in the memories it has access to.  The body may have some ability or limitation the new mind is not aware of but the body need not know the IQ of the mind to function at peak performance.  This leads me to believe that Schwartz, and indeed the self, is the mind more than the body. 

      Now is Schwartz the same person he/she was prior to the accident and operation, obviously there is some ambiguity there but the short answer is no.  A change as profound as replacing the mind or body with another, especially of the opposite sex, will undoubtedly change a person’s perspective and perception.  Gender is a big part of self-identity.  And to suddenly find ourselves on the other side of the fence would force anyone to reevaluate their opinion on the opposite sex.  But gender aside the entire experience would cause most of us to question everything we knew about reality, self and religious beliefs.  So one must come to the conclusion that Schwartz will never be the same person he/she once was but will also not be a completely new person because the mind possesses information, memories and feelings attained before the accident occurred.