The Self-Immolation of Duc

 

On June 10, 1963, South Vietnam is a month into the Buddhist Crisis.  The government of President Ngo Dinh Diem is committing actions that restrict free religious practice by the country’s Buddhist majority.  In response, there has been a large movement of civil resistance and protest, led primarily by Buddhist monks and nuns, against the government and its repressive, anti-Buddhist policies.

Blocks away from the Presidential Palace, a crowd gathers around a group of some 350 monks and nuns, who plan to demonstrate against the South Vietnamese government.  A monk by the name of Thich Quang Duc and two other monks emerge from a car in the middle of the procession.  A circle has formed around them.

One monk places a cushion in the middle of the road; and Duc, prayer beads in hand, seats himself in the lotus position.  Duc, prior to this demonstration, has written a letter, in which he “respectfully plead[s] to President Ngo Dinh Diem to take a mind of compassion towards the people of the nation and implement religious equality to maintain the strength of the homeland eternally.”

In the middle of the road, Duc continues to sit calmly while the second monk pours on him gallons of gasoline.  Duc lights a match and then drops it onto himself.

David Halberstam of The New York Times wrote:

I was to see that sight again, but once was enough.  Flames were coming from a human being; his body was slowly withering and shriveling up, his head blackening and charring.  In the air was the smell of burning human flesh; human beings burn surprisingly quickly.  Behind me I could hear the sobbing of the Vietnamese who were now gathering.  I was too shocked to cry, too confused to take notes or ask questions, too bewildered to even think ... As he burned he never moved a muscle, never uttered a sound, his outward composure in sharp contrast to the wailing people around him.

This form of suicide, usually done in protest, is known as self-immolation.

 

In the article “In Defense of Mind-Body Dualism,” Brie Gertler puts forward her Disembodiment Argument.  According the argument, the identity theory of physicalists is false because it is supposedly conceivable and, therefore, possible for pain to be felt while disembodied.

I do not find her argument to be convincing because I do not believe that it is reasonable to appeal to disembodiment.  How can we ever have a “sufficiently comprehensive” concept of disembodiment if none of us has ever had the experience of being disembodied?

Instead, I believe that identity theory can be disproved by looking at events that actually have happened and have been observed.  According to the identity theorist, mental states are identical to particular physical states.  This applies universally.

From this, I believe that it is reasonable to say that the physical state of being on fire will, under the identity theory, be identical to, in all people, a mental state of extreme pain.  Who on fire would not experience extreme pain?  The identity theorist probably would argue that being on fire causes in the nervous system extreme pain, which the individual experiences in the mind, which is part of the body.

When looking at purported laws that are supposed to apply universally, one should look at extreme cases to see if the theory or hypothesis holds up under all circumstances.

The identity theory, in my opinion, is disproved by the self-immolation of Thich Quang Duc.  Fire causes a person extreme pain, and extreme pain causes a person to react.  Duc did not react when he was on fire.  As far as I see it, it is impossible for a person not to react to being on fire, unless that person has separated his consciousness from his body.  If the mind and the body are separable, then the identity theory is false and dualism must be true.

In other words:

1) Being on fire causes the nervous system to send to the brain signals that should trigger pain if the identity theory is true.  The pain that is caused by being on fire is so intense that a person’s body involuntarily will react if the identity theory is true.

2) It is impossible for a person not to react to being on fire if the identity theory is true because the nervous system signals being sent to the brain, which is physical, would be identical to the pain that should be felt by the mind, which is part of the body.

3) The only possible way to avoid such signals caused by fire from causing pain would be to separate consciousness from the body.

4) Thich Quang Duc did not react at all to being on fire; therefore, to endure being on fire, he must have, through meditation or some other method, separated his mind from his body.

C) Therefore, the identity theory is false.  Since the mind and body can be separated, dualism must be true.

The de facto First Lady of South Vietnam offered what I believe to be the only rational objection that an identity theorist could make in response to Duc not responding to being on fire:

 

 

Madame Nhu argued that Duc must have been intoxicated, which is why he did not respond to being on fire.  Whether any level of intoxication could prevent someone whose mind and body are identical from responding to being burned alive, I will let you be the judge.