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Characters
Gretchen Weirob
Sam Miller Dave Cohen
Setting
First Night
Against personal identity explained in terms of an immaterial soul
Millers objective
Definition of terms
-possible -identity -survival -similarity
Second night
Against personal identity explained in terms of bodily identity
Underlying question in the dialogue
-Whether it was the identity of soul or body that was involved in the identity of persons.
Miller against the view that personal identity is just bodily identity
We can judge who we are, and that we are the very person who did such and such and so and so, without having to make any judgments at all about the body. So, personal identity, while it may not consist of identity of an immaterial soul, does not consist in identity of material body either.
Miller against the view that personal identity is just bodily identity
Survivalis no problem at all once we have this conception of personal identity. There is, in heaven, a conscious being, and that the personstages that make her up are in the appropriate relation to those that now make you up, so that they are parts of the same wholenamely, you. If so, you have survived.
Miller on Locke
The relation between two personstages or stretches of consciousness that make them stages of a single person is just that the later one contains memories of the earlier one.
The mere possibility of someone in the future seeming to remember this conversation does not show the possibility of my surviving. Only the possibility of someone actually remembering this conversationor, to be precise the experience I am havingwould show that.
Weirobs interpretation
Survival is possible, because imaginable. It is imaginable, because my identity with some Heavenly person is imaginable. To imagine it, we imagine a person in Heaven who, first, seems to remember my thoughts and actions, and second, is me.
Weirobs interpretation
If God creates a Heavenly person, designing her brain to duplicate the brain I have upon death, that person is me. If, on the other hand, a Heavenly being should come to be with those very same memory-like states by accidents (if there are accidents in heaven) it would not be me.
Third night
More on memory theory/personal identity explained in terms of memory Cohen on Julia Norths case Weirob on Julia Norths case
You said, Sam, that I had an irrational attachment for this unworthy material object, my body. But you too are as irrationally attached to your brain. I have never seen my brainnever felt it, and have no attachment to it. But my body? That seems to me all that I am. I see no point in trying to evade its fate.