ipl-logo

Summary: A Dialogue On Personal Identity And Immortality

773 Words4 Pages

In “A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality”, Gretchen Weirob and Sam Miller conduct a philosophical debate about the possibility of a continued existence after death. Weirob argues that she herself cannot exist after death because her identity is composed of her body, rationality, and consciousness. In Derek Parfit’s “Personal Identity” he ponders how the concept of identity works, and how the true nature of our identity affects some of the most important questions we have about our existence. I believe that Velleman did a better job of exploring the idea of identity than Weirob did.

The dialogue between Weirob and Miller takes place on Weirob’s deathbed. Her friend Miller is trying to comfort her by convincing her that there is a possibility that her existence will continue after her death. Throughout his explanation, Weirob counters each one of his arguments. On page 324, the two friends discuss the possibility that Weirob will be reincarnated in the future. Miller believes that this idea should give Weirob comfort, because this would mean that she would survive. Weirob used an example to dismantle that theory. “Suppose I took this box of Kleenex and lit fire to it. It is reduced to ashes and I smash the ashes and flush them down the john. Then I say to you, go home and on the shelf …show more content…

To answer some of the questions, he considered Wiggins’s brain splitting experiment. In the experiment, Parfit’s brain is split into two different bodies, both of which now contains personality and memories. Parfit deduced that there are only three possible outcomes. “(1) I do not survive; (2) I survive as one of the two people; (3) I survive as both.” (354). He settles with option 3, he survives as two people, but the two can not identify with each

Show More
Related

  • Summary Of Some Close Encounters Of A Mental Kind By Stephen Jay Gould

    944 Words  | 4 Pages

    The experiment showed how our memory can be easily mislead even if we saw it with our own eyes. I believe Gould’s essay is indeed convincing when it comes to whether or not to doubt what people believe they remember is actually

    Read More

  • Edna Pontellier's Identity Quotes

    742 Words  | 3 Pages

    1. Sense of Identity A."Edna began to feel uneasy. She was seized with a vague dread. Her own like experiences seemed far away, unreal, and only half remembered. She recalled faintly an ecstasy of pain, the heavy odor of chloroform, a stupor which had deadened sensation, and an awakening to find a little new life to which she had given being, added to the great unnumbered multitude of souls that come and go.

    Read More

  • Essay On Carl Rogers Vs Yalom

    1536 Words  | 7 Pages

    THEMBEKILE TSAOANE BL2015-0178 SSIT311 TAKE HOME TEST INTRODUCTION “Between us and heaven or hell, there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world" 1.1 Existentialism and death. The problems we face of death seem somewhat natural with the connection it has to existentialism.

    Read More

  • Comparing John Perry's Dialogue On Personal Identity And Immortality

    115 Words  | 1 Pages

    In the John Perry’s Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality, “The Third Night”, Weirob reveals her point of view about her brain being transferred to another body. She disagrees with the idea that she will be the same person. In the “The Third Night” Miller and Cohen meet with Gretchen as she prepares for her eventual body demise. Miller has already given up trying to persuade her. Cohen, however, suggests that a transplant similar to a woman in California named Julia North.

    Read More

  • Personal Narrative: Time Of Death

    479 Words  | 2 Pages

    ID#513295 who entered the trailer to locate the body and declared time of death at 1934 hours. Roberts did not disturb the body, nor the scene. The deceased was later identified by his Florida Drivers License as William Gilley. I spoke with the property managers Mike Kenny, and Brian Fannon. Kenny advised they received a call from Gilley's boss who grew concerned when he had called out sick and then did not show up for work on 10/22/15 when he was scheduled.

    Read More

  • Immortality In William Rowe's Article, Life After Death

    1155 Words  | 5 Pages

    Many of us have thought about life after death. What happens to us after we die? Where do we go? What happens to our body? Do we go to heaven?

    Read More

  • Who Am I Beverly Daniel Tatum Analysis

    759 Words  | 4 Pages

    In academic article “Who Am I” by Beverly Daniel Tatum; she talks about the complexity of identity, which defined as a person. She describes the multiple identities of different kinds of people and their significance in the community. She illustrate the how person past, historical event, family background, experiences, and thought of person has impact on the personal identification. The concept of past, present, and future, those characterize the person identity. She explains how gander of person is the part of identity, which build identity.

    Read More

  • Eric Olson's An Argument For Animalism

    581 Words  | 3 Pages

    Persistence is the view that persons have psychological continuity, thus, a person is the future being that inherits the mental features from that person. A person is also the past being whose mental features they have inherited. Olson refers to this question of persistence as the “traditional problem” of personal identity. The question of persistence asks what is essential and adequate for a person existing at one time to be identical with something present at another time. Therefore, Olson believes that contemporary philosophers think an answer to this question would resolve all there is to know about the metaphysics of personal identity (“An Argument for Animalism”, 613).

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Clarence Darrow's The Myth Of The Soul

    745 Words  | 3 Pages

    In response to the long-standing philosophical question of immorality, many philosophers have posited the soul criterion, which asserts the soul constitutes personal identity and survives physical death. In The Myth of the Soul, Clarence Darrow rejects the existence of the soul in his case against the notion of immortality and an afterlife. His primary argument against the soul criterion is that no good explanation exists for how a soul enters a body, or when its beginning might occur. (Darrow 43) After first explicating Darrow 's view, I will present what I believe is its greatest shortcoming, an inconsistent use of the term soul, and argue that this weakness impacts the overall strength of his argument.

    Read More

  • Aboriginal Identity Essay

    1190 Words  | 5 Pages

    Later, the cultural critic Stuart Hall has opined about the changing nature of identity. He says that there is no fixed identity that can be attributed to an individual for his life period; it evolves through several changes in each phase of life. So it can be understood that formation of identity involves several steps: construction, reconstruction and deconstruction. The politics behind this formation may depend on the nature of identity that an individual tries to hold. Indeed, the cultural critic Kobena Mercer reminds us: “One thing at least is clear - identity only becomes an issue when it is in crisis, when something

    Read More

  • Identity In Susan Glaspell's A Jury Of Her Peers

    1362 Words  | 6 Pages

    Identity is an expression of a person, and through this expression it makes them different or the same from one another. The way someone expresses himself or herself, whether it is through their religion, preferences, moral, goals, or their ethnicity, make up their identity. People often express themselves through their likes and dislikes. Their preference shapes who they are and whom they associate themselves with. For example, a fan of a particular sports team identifies themselves as a fan of the team, and also can identify other people who are also a fan of the sports team.

    Read More

  • Purpose Of Memories In Fitzgerald's Babylon Revisited

    1060 Words  | 5 Pages

    The words “ghost” and “haunt” are used to describe how the memories impact Charlie. While Charlie is trying to turn his life around, his memories slow him down. For example, when Lorraine asks for Charlie’s address, “he hesitated, unwilling to give the name of his hotel” (Fitzgerald 217). Here, the walking memory, Lorraine, serves as a secondary conflict for Charlie. It is also shown that Charlie resists the memory to focus on his main goal.

    Read More

  • Derek Parfit's Theory Of Personal Identity

    1354 Words  | 6 Pages

    Each hemisphere of the man’s brain is then separately transplanted into the two waiting bodies. The aim of this case for Parfit is to establish whether or not the man survives. It has been proven

    Read More

  • Ego Theory And Bundle Theory: Ego Theory Vs. Bundle Theory

    1423 Words  | 6 Pages

    The argument of whether or not a human has a soul has been argued throughout centuries. Derek Parfit discusses two separate theories of personal identity, Ego Theory and Bundle Theory. The argument of which present a more accurate account of personhood is very hard to determine. The Ego Theory has some flaws such the soul is separate from the body and is a immaterialist object within us. Bundle Theory is reinforced and proven by the split-brain case, however it can lead to the argument that there is no self.

    Read More

  • Rene Descartes On Personal Identity

    1801 Words  | 8 Pages

    For many years, the issue of self-identity has been a problem that philosophers and scholars have been to explain using different theories. The question on self –identity tries to explain the concept of how a person today is different from the one in the years to come. In philosophy, the theory of personal identity tries to solve the questions who we are, our existence, and life after death. To understand the concept of self-identity, it is important to analyze a person over a period under given conditions. Despite the numerous theories on personal identity, the paper narrows down the study to the personal theories of John Locke and Rene Descartes, and their points of view on personal identity.

    Read More

More about Summary: A Dialogue On Personal Identity And Immortality

Open Document