Personal Identity View

Photo by Kristina Flour on Unsplash

In A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality, by John Perry, Weirob criticizes the soul view of personal identity and tries to replace it with the body identity based on immaterial verses physical material that can be sensed. His main point of criticism relies heavily on the fact that the “soul cannot be seen or felt or touched or smelt,” because it is not physically made up of this world. That being said, he feels that a soul — since it cannot be perceived — cannot be used as an argument for defining identity, nor can it be used to support immortality. Weinob says that Miller’s view of personal identity, based on the soul view, is merely a “principle without foundation” because the soul is not physically real or alive in this world. He claims that a soul cannot define personal identity because no one can test this theory, and there is a possibility that if souls are real, they could leave the body and enter a new body — causing a new identity to that new body — yet no one would realize the difference. He argues that souls could change over time without us knowing it; if souls do change, then does that mean our identities change as well? Weinob is so against the soul view of personal identity because it is immaterial and is part of the conscious. When a body dies, it loses its consciousness, so the soul also could die when the body does. Or the soul could flee into someone else’s body. Because of this theory, the soul does…