On Personal identity

A detailed Summary of On Personal identity

At various times, characters in Perry's Dialogue defend the immaterial soul, the body, and psychological connections as the key to understanding personal identity. Each of these theories is provided as a means to reject or defend survival after death. The immaterial soul theory argues that personal identity is found in the soul which is distinct from the body. The survival of a person depends on whether the soul survives. The body theory claims that personal identity is just bodily identity. The memory theory (psychological connections) makes the case that personal identity is associated with person stages which are appropriately connected by memory. This paper will further explain the immaterial soul theory and how it supports the view of survival after death. I will then consider objections to this theory and respond to these objections.

The soul is a non-physical substance. Because it is non-physical, it has no sense-based qualities, but rather symptoms such as consciousness. It is this non-physical substance which is the true self. According to Robert Langbaum, author of The Mysteries of Identity: A Theme in Modern Literature1, identity is the sameness of a person or thing at all times or in all circumstances (25

Perry's character, Gretchen Weirob, used an example of a piece of candy of which Miller knew what kind of filling was inside because of the swirl. This example is used as an objection to how you cannot establish correlation without experiencing both things which you are trying to correlate. Miller was making a judgement about what was inside from what was on the outside just as he does with a person's soul. But wouldn't Miller have had to have the initial experience with the candy before he could make any judgements. If he had never had the candy with the swirl, he would have never known what was inside. This also relates to souls in that when a person first meets another person he is establishing the qualitative states - personality, beliefs, desires - about the person. It is with this initial experience that the person is able to know that the same soul exists in the same body of the person in the future as the person in the past.

Person at T1 is the same person at T2 if and only if

Person at T1 is the same person at T2 if and only if

similar psychological traits are present at T1 and T2

the same immaterial soul is present at T1 and T2

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nsciousness is a symptom of the soul, could you imagine the consciousness existing without the soul or some other form for it to be a property? Also, consciousness and psychological traits are also intangible like the soul. You cannot see or touch a belief, desire, hope, or memory. These are all qualitative states that are also symptoms of the soul.

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1172
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History