In this paper I offer an explication of John Perry’s dialogue on the problem of personal identity, and my evaluation of the strongest account of personal identity between the body, mind, and soul. In this paper I will argue that the strongest account of personal identity is that a person can be identified by their soul. By having the sameness of soul you will then be able to solve the problem of personal identity. Your soul is the foundation of whom you are and by definition, personal identity means “The persistent and continuous unity of the individual person normally attested by continuity of memory with present consciousness.” And without your soul memory could not exist. Why is personal identity a problem? This seems to be the question of life or death. Your personal identity …show more content…
A problem with personal identity revolves around if you are the same person today, which you were last week? Do we always remain the same? I read a short story about Muhammad Ali and how he changed his religion and name. Muhammad Ali went from the legendary “ float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” champion, to an old man struggling with Parkinson’s disease. There is the generic “ you have changed” saying many of us may get depicting us as someone different, but are we really someone different? In the dialogue, the main characters discuss several accounts of personal identity and analyze the issue on personal identity. In the dialogue, the two main characters, Miller and Weirob, engage in a discussion on the problem of personal identity. I believe the strongest account of personal identity is same soul, same person. In the first night, Miller’s premise is sameness of soul, not
In John Perry’s “dialogue on personal identity and immorality”, Dave Cohen and Sam Miller visit Gretchen Weirob in the hospital because of Weirob’s injury in a motorcycle accident, they raise a discussion on personal identity. Cohen later takes up issues raised in the case where Julia’s brain is taken from her deteriorated body and placed on the healthy body of Mary whose brain has been destroyed. Therefore Mary has her own body with Julia’s memory and personality. The case proposes an argument
In the following essay, I will develop my thoughts by talking about how Weirob challenges her long life friend Miller to comfort her on her death bed for three nights, about the slight possibility of her soul surviving after death. This is based on the author John Perrys’ ideas. I will also be discussing the two personal criterions that we discussed in class that I believe fit best to the passage.
To answer the question of whether a person can persist through time, it is important to consider what is meant by a ‘person’. This consideration seems trivial at first, and if one were to take the physicalist route, it would be – a person persists through time by existing as the same human animal. However, it is in fact a lot harder to pinpoint what the ‘self’ actually consists of if we were to take the psychological route and consider the voice inside our heads, the voice that thinks and experiences and suffers. What is this mysterious immaterial phenomenon that we hold to be our personal identity? And what makes it the same entity as the one yesterday? Although these questions don’t have an explicit answer yet, in this essay I will attempt to give an insight on how they could be answered, offering a psychological
The purpose of this paper is to explore Locke's account of personal identity and show that critics of Locke's account wrongfully advocate for an interpretation that equates consciousness to memory. Section one of this paper will discuss Locke's account of personal identity as it appears in the text. Followed by section two which will discuss traditional interpretations of Locke's account which equate memory with consciousness. Section two will draw mainly on Thomas Reids "Gallant Officer argument. Finally, section three will reflect on the first two sections and argue why the memory criterion is wrong.
Problems of personal identity generally involve questions about what makes one the person one is and what it takes for the same person to exist at separate times (Olson, 2010). Parfit aims to defend the following two claims about personal identity:
and second nights, Weirob and her friends discuss personal identities’ relationship with soul, memory and
Who are we? Most individuals would answer that we are human beings. But consider taking this concept one step further by asking the following: What makes us human beings? What makes each individual person that same person over a period of time? When do we, as human beings, begin to exist and cease to exist? These questions give rise to the problem of personal identity, which is centered on the idea of essential properties. An essential property of any specific thing makes that thing what it is, and if an essential property is changed or is taken away, that specific thing no longer exists. The problem of personal identity asks the following: What are the “essential” properties of human beings? Numerous philosophers have attempted to answer the question of personal identity, contributing to one of three core theories studied in class: Plato’s/Descartes’ Soul Theory, the Psychological Continuity Theory, and the Bodily Continuity Theory. For the purpose of this paper, I claim that the best rationale regarding
Peter Ramos’ description of identity in his essay entitled “Unbearable Realism: Freedom, Ethics, and Identity in The Awakening” as “a social construct, a practical fiction one inhabits, more or less intentionally and with a certain amount of will,” (Ramos 147) supporting her claim that a human arriving at his or her true identity is a myth because “people are constantly changing being in relationships with others” (43-44).
What is personal identity? This question has been asked and debated by philosophers for centuries. The problem of personal identity is determining what conditions and qualities are necessary and sufficient for a person to exist as the same being at one time as another. Some think personal identity is physical, taking a materialistic perspective believing that bodily continuity or physicality is what makes a person a person with the view that even mental things are caused by some kind of physical occurrence. Others take a more idealist approach with the belief that mental continuity is the sole factor in establishing personal identity holding that physical things are just reflections of the mind. One more perspective on personal identity and the one I will attempt to explain and defend in this paper is that personal identity requires both physical and psychological continuity; my argument is as follows:
“The real reason seems to me now this. Does personal identity just consist in bodily and psychological continuity, or is it a further fact, independent of the facts about these continuities? Our reactions to the ‘problem cases’ show, I believe, that we believe the latter. And we seem inclined to believe that this further fact is peculiarly deep and is all-or-nothing---we believe that in any describable case, it must hold completely or not at all. My main claim is the denial of this further fact” (Robinson).
Locke believed that the identity of a person has the sameness of the consciousness: “What makes a man be himself to himself is sameness of consciousness, so personal identity depends entirely on that—whether the consciousness is tied to one substance throughout or rather is continued in a series of different su...
The problem of personal identity is difficult to solve, especially since there is ambiguity in the terms. Identity may mean the same person or how one sees oneself. Anyhow, philosophers wish to assess this issue and find a suitable explanation, one motivation being responsibility. Humans will hold others responsible for acts such as murder, theft, and fraud. However, the person who will face the consequences must be the one who truly committed the wrongful act. A second motivation is interest in the future. An individual may become concerned or excited for an event that will occur in the future. Surely, these emotions entail that they will be the same person once that event occurs. The last motivation for resolving personal identity is immortality; basically, what will connect a person to whatever lives on after their physical death. Something can be identical in two ways: quantitatively or qualitatively. To be quantitatively identical is to be numerically identical, and to be qualitatively identical is to share exact qualities. There are two criterions on which personal identity is based, but the most important is the metaphysical criterion, which attempts to explain “being” or existence, without the necessity of physical evidence ...
In a time where science and materialism reign, the topic of the soul is rarely mentioned, ostensibly left in the past with the philosophers of old. Nichols, however, candidly broaches this difficult topic and gives new life to the argument that humans do indeed have an immaterial, immortal soul. Nichols summarizes several popular arguments for the existence of the soul as he builds his own argument, which discusses a soul as limited in relation to its environment as well as a soul that is one with the mind and a controller of the body. He discusses both the strengths and challenges to his argument, offering rebuttals to the challenges. Because this soul is the organizing principle of the body it is involved in the Resurrection as well, bridging the gap between the material and spiritual worlds. However, I disagree with Nichols’ assessment, instead choosing the side of materialism where an immaterial soul does not exist.
Personal identity examines what makes a person at one time identical with a person at another. Many philosophers believe we are always changing and therefore, we cannot have a persisting identity if we are different from one moment to the next. However, many philosophers believe there is some important feature that determines a person’s identity and keeps it persistent. For John Locke, this important feature is memory, and I agree. Memory is the most important feature in determining a person’s identity as memory is the necessary and sufficient condition of personal identity.
There are two major religious beliefs on the soul, and though they may seem diametrically opposed, we must remember that our ideas on the soul exist only because of the conditioned acceptance of these religiou...