Essay On Personal Identity

Personal Identity

In John Perry’s “A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immorality,” John Perry describes three concepts of thinking in an effort to find the answer to the perplexing idea of personal identity. The concepts include the Soul Theory, the Body Theory, and the Memory Theory. These three notions are basically hypotheses on what makes up for a person’s identity and they all question who you are now, who you were then, and who you will be in the future. The idea of personal identity is a big philosophical debate because a body is not enough indication to who a person is because human bodies scientifically change over time as humans grow and form a new genetic makeup. The body that a person had when they are 2 years old is not the same body that they will have when they are 40 years old and so because of this, Perry’s three theories try to create a different approach to personal identity, as the human body is not enough.

John Perry’s three theories are stated as the Soul, Memory, and Body Theory. The Soul Theory is the idea that a person’s soul is what makes them who they are and that people are identical to their souls, not bodies. When your body dies, you—your soul—lives on even though your physical body is rotting away in the ground and that soul is an innate part of who you are. The Memory Theory argues that a person’s memory is what makes up their identity. So, who you are now is the same person as when you are a baby because you have the same memories. If you remember when you are 20 being 8 years old playing baseball for the first time, then you are the same person. The Body Theory argues that bodily identity is what makes up human identity. A person knows that they are the same person because they can see that ...

... middle of paper ...

...over the years? The soul may be an immaterial thing but it is also an innate part of who we are and since it is not connected to the body physically then it should not change. The nature of souls is that it will always be the same soul, so what makes us believe that there are many different other souls? Yes, finding proof of the existence of a soul is next to impossible because it is an untouchable, unattainable object, but many philosophical arguments do not have much actual scientific evidence proving theories right or wrong. Logical theories and reasoning have to be the determining factors in many of these discussions as going and trying to find real facts is not the most efficient thing to do. The Soul Theory has the most logic and reasoning towards personal identity, so therefore it is the most reasonable answer to John Perry’s “A Dialogue on Personal Identity