Summary Of A Dialogue On Personal Identity And Immortality
676 Words3 Pages
A Dialogue on Personal identity and immortality by John Perry starts off with a Philosophy professor named, Gretchen Weirob that had been admitted into a hospital after a life threating motorcycle accident. Two of her friends come to visit her in the hospital, a man named, Sam Miller that is a chaplain and Dave Cohen, her former student. Weirob’s brain is perfectly fine and she has ability to cognitively response, but her body would not last long and she would be died within the next few days. Miller and Cohen attempt to convince Gretchen that there is a possibility that her identity will follow her to the afterlife. She doesn’t believe it and challenges it. Miller states to Gretchen will have the same identity here on Earth and the same one…show more content… He states that the soul is what makes a person the same or not. This goes with the soul theory that no matter what body a person be in, if they have the same soul then that is the same person. It goes with the concept of “follow the soul”. On the other hand, Gretchen Weirob believes the body theory, in which, same body same person. If the person you’re speaking to today is the same person you spoke to before can only be true because they posse the same body. Gretchen believes that it is the body that makes a person’s identity. She gives an analogy that breaks Miller’s argument, it is called the chocolate analogy. With this analogy, Miller picks up a certain piece of chocolate and Gretchen questions why he choice that specific one, and he responses that it had a certain swirl on the top that shows that it is caramel. Gretchen shows how he correlates the certain swirl on top of a piece