Aquinas on drunkenness and sleep

Aquinas argues that

drunkenness is a mortal sin, because then a man willingly and knowingly deprives himself of the use of reason, whereby he performs virtuous deeds and avoids sin, and thus he sins mortally by running the risk of falling into sin.

On the other hand, Aquinas also argues that sleep suspends the use of reason:

What a man does while asleep, against the moral law, is not imputed to him as a sin; as Augustine says (Gen. ad lit. xii, 15). But this would not be the case if man, while asleep, had free use of his reason and intellect. Therefore the judgment of the intellect is hindered by suspension of the senses.

One might try to reconcile the two claims by saying that sleep is something that befalls us involuntarily, and that it would be wrong to willingly and knowingly go to sleep. But that would not fit with ordinary human practice, and would contradict Aquinas’ own rejection of the claim that it is “against virtue for a person to set himself to sleep”. Moreover, Aquinas notes without any moral warnings that sleep—like baths, contemplation of the truth and other apparently quite innocent things—assuages sorrow.

So what’s going on?

And to add a further complication, Proverbs 31:6 seems to recommend the use of alcohol as an analgesic.

I can think of three things one could say on behalf of Aquinas.

First, one might attempt a Double Effect justification. In sleep, the body rests. Aquinas certainly thinks so: the discussion of the suspension of reason during sleep presupposes that the primary effect of sleep is on the body. It is this bodily rest, rather than the suspension of reason, that is intended. One might worry that the suspension of reason is a means to rest. However, non-human animals, who lack reason in Aquinas’s sense of the word, also sleep. Presumably whatever benefits they derive from the sleep are available to us, and it seems not unlikely that many of these do not depend on the suspension of reason. Similarly, alcohol helps with pain in non-human animals, and so the mechanism by which it helps may not depend on the suspension of reason.

That said, I don’t think Aquinas would want to take this approach (though it may well work for me). For Aquinas thinks that it is stupid we cannot claim that an invariable or typical effect of something intended counts as unintended (Commentary on the Physics, Book II, Lecture 8, paragraph 214). But the suspension of reason is indeed an invariable or typical effect of sleep.

A second approach focuses on Aquinas’ response to the question of why the loss of rationality during the sexual act does not render the sexual act wrong, from which I already quoted the rejection of the claim that it’s vicious to set oneself to sleep:

it is not contrary to virtue, if the act of reason be sometimes interrupted for something that is done in accordance with reason … .

This approach does not seem to be based on Double Effect, but rather on some sort of principle that it is permissible to suspend a good for the sake of that same good. This principle applies neatly to sleep as well as to the biblical case of analgesic use of alcohol (given that reason opposes suffering the pain).

But this approach would also moderate Aquinas’s seemingly absolute rejection of drunkenness. For we can imagine cases where it seems that reason would recommend drunkenness, such as when a tyrant will kill you if you refuse to get drunk with them. And once one allows drunkenness in such extreme cases, what is to prevent allowing it in more moderate cases, such as getting drunk with one’s boss in the hope of getting a deserved promotion… or maybe just for fun? Aquinas can say that these cases are immoral and hence against reason, but that would beg the question.

A third approach would note that sleep, unlike drunken stupor, is a natural human state, and information processing in sleep is itself a part of our human rational processing. However, while this gives a neat explanation of why it’s permissible to set oneself to sleep, it doesn’t explain the permissibility of the analgesic use of alcohol or, more significantly in modern times, of the use of general anaesthesia during medical procedures.

A different approach for justifying sleep, the analgesic use of alcohol and general anaesthesia insists that temporary suspension of a good is different from willful opposition to the good. To eat in an hour rather than now does not oppose the good of food. The down side of this fourth approach is that it seems to destroy Aquinas’s argument against drunkenness as opposed to the good of reason. And it seems to let in too much: can’t one say that by torturing someone, one is merely suspending their painless state?

I think the best philosophical solution is the first, Double Effect. Aquinas alas can’t use it because his version of Double Effect is too narrow, given his view that typical effects of intended things count as intended.

The problem of sleep

Consider this natural law argument:

1. Rational functioning is a basic good.
2. One may never intentionally act against a basic good.
3. In intending to fall asleep, one intends to stop rational function (i.e., thought).
4. Therefore, it is wrong to intend to fall asleep.

One could, I suppose, embrace the conclusion and say something like this: At night, we foresee but do not intend sleep. At night we lie down in bed, accepting but not intending the evil of sleep, much like a person who foresees death might lie down to face death in comfort. But this just won't explain all our practices. First of all, we often lie down and close our eyes to sleep hours before we would expect sleep to overtake us were we to stay up. It seems clear that we lie down and close our eyes in order to accelerate the sleep process. And sometimes, with good reason, we may take medication to help us fall asleep. To condemn such practices would be highly counterintuitive. In fact, one might take the anti-sleep argument as a reductio ad absurdum of natural law reasoning, which appears to be committed to premises (1) and (2).

It is tempting to dismiss the argument by saying that we need sleep to be rational. But that doesn't touch the argument. There are circumstances where the only way to survive is by killing an innocent person--but the end does not justify such a means. Likewise, if (1)-(3) are true, even if the only way we can maintain rational functioning is by sleeping, such a means is impermissible.

Aquinas discusses the question whether sex can be permissible in light of the fact that sex involves such an "excess of pleasure" that "it is incompatible with the act of understanding" (he attributes the latter claim to Aristotle). His answer is that sex can be done in accordance with reason, and what is done in accordance with reason is not sinful. He then says: "For it is not contrary to virtue, if the act of reason be sometimes interrupted for something that is done in accordance with reason, else it would be against virtue for a person to set himself to sleep." Unfortunately, Aquinas doesn't tell us which premise of the anti-sleep argument is false. It is not even clear that he has the same argument clearly in mind. In the case of sex, after all, the hampering of rational function looks like a side-effect (it's interesting that Aquinas doesn't just use Double Effect here) which need not be intended, while in sleep the lack of thought seems central.

For years I've struggled with the anti-sleep argument (but lost no sleep over it). I have two responses. Both of them leave (1) and (2) intact, but query (3). The first response is that in intending to fall asleep one intends to put off one's rational functioning rather than to stop it. A philosopher who leaves his office to walk around the beautiful campus intends that his rational functioning occur outdoors rather than in his office. Likewise, one might intend that one's rational functioning occur in the morning rather than late at night. And the reasons can be similar. The rational functioning outdoors or in the morning is likely to be fresher than in the office or late at night. The analogy here is strongest if one accepts a B-theory of time (and in fact, it may be an argument for a B-theory of time that it makes it easier to justify sleep).

The second answer is that sleep is not actually a cessation of rational function. It is very plausible that unconscious mental processes occur during asleep (it is clear that brain processes do!)--and an important part of sleep involves consciousness anyway. Sleep seems to be an important part of our rational functioning rather than an interruption. Clearly it is not an action against a basic good to switch from one kind of rational functioning to another, say turning one's mind from practical to abstract matters.

A difficulty with the second answer is that some people may not know that rational function continues in sleep. Yet surely such ignorance doesn't make it wrong to fall sleep. I agree. But we can also say that such a person may not intend the cessation of rational functioning. She may simply intend sleep, a particular natural human organic process. And if I am right that sleep is not constituted by a cessation of rational function, then we cannot even say that she "implicitly" acts against rationality or anything like that.

So, the anti-sleep argument fails, and natural lawyers can sleep with a sound conscience.

Personal identity, memory and fission

Suppose that (a) memory connections are constitutive of personal identity and (b) fission of memories destroys a person. If one accepts (a), then (b) is very plausible, so (a) is the crucial assumption.

Now consider this case:

• At 4 pm, due to trauma, Sam suffers complete and irreversible amnesia with respect to events between 2 pm and 4 pm.

Then the 5 pm Sam has first-person memories of the 1 pm Sam, and it seems thus that:

1. The 5 pm Sam is identical with the 1 pm Sam.

But the 3 pm Sam also has first-person memories of the 1 pm Sam, and by the same token:

2. The 3 pm Sam is identical with the 1 pm Sam.

By symmetry and transitivity:

3. The 3 pm Sam is identical with the 5 pm Sam.

There is as yet no absurdity here. There is, after all, a chain of memory connections between the 3 pm Sam and the 5 pm Sam, though the connections don't run in the same direction (3 pm Sam remembers 1 pm Sam who is remembered by 5 pm Sam). But I think there is a tension between (3) and (b), the claim about fission. For now imagine a different case:

• At 2 pm, Sam's memories are copied into a spare brain, call it Bissam, and Bissam immediately time travels forward to 4 pm. (Forward time travel does not seem metaphysically problematic.) At 4 pm, Sam is killed.

This is clearly a case of fission, and so the 1 pm Sam no longer exists at 5 pm. But in terms of the structure of memories, this case is exactly the same as the initial amnesia case. The 5 pm Bissam remembers (or quasi-remembers, if we want to nitpick) the 1 pm Sam but not the 3 pm Sam. Likewise, in the original story, the 5 pm Sam remembers the 1 pm Sam but not the 3 pm Sam. In both stories the 3 pm Sam remembers the 1 pm Sam. So it seems that in both cases the 5 pm person and the 3 pm person are the results of the fission of the pre-2 pm person. Well, almost. Bissam exists for an instant at 2 pm while the memories are copied into him. But that isn't essential. We could imagine the copying process works such that the memories are only fully seated once Bissam arrives at 4 pm.

So the memory theorist who thinks that fission kills a person should think that total amnesia with respect to a short time period also kills one.

But if that's right, then we don't survive those nights where we do not remember our dreams upon waking up. For the dreaming person has memories (skill memories at least; but also temporarily inaccessible episodic memories) of the person who went to bed. But the waking person doesn't have memories of the dreaming person, though she does have memories of the person who went to bed. So the person who went to bed fissions into the person who dreams and the person who wakes up.

This means that the memory theorist shouldn't think that fission kills. (Another standard argument for this conclusion: If fission kills and identity is constituted by memory, then you can be killed by having your brain scanned and the data put into another brain; but you can't be killed by a process that doesn't affect your body.) But if fission doesn't kill, then it seems that the best view is that in cases of fission there have always been two persons. And that leads to various absurdities, too.

Sleep

Here is a quick argument that sleep is bad in some respects. Sleep either involves unconsciousness or non-veridical experiences. Unconsciousness is bad, since it is the lack of consciousness, which is a good, and a good due to our nature as rational. Non-veridical experiences are clearly a bad. So, sleep always is bad in some respects.

Whether this argument succeeds or not (I think it doesn't; from our nature as rational beings it does not follow that it is our nature to always exercise rationality), it does raise a question about the value of sleep. Clearly, sleep is instrumentally good. Is it good non-instrumentally, though? And will we sleep after the resurrection of the body? As one of our grad students pointed out, Scripture considers sleep analogical to death. There are also positive portrayals of wakefulness. So when death is no more, will there be sleep? Aquinas thinks not.