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Rehnuma Reza Phil 102 First Paper

What makes us an unique individual? (Body Or Soul)

I want to talk about how Weirob is right to claim that personal identity cannot consist in the sameness of an immaterial, unobservable soul. (24) Gretchen Weirob, a philosophy professor who was dying from injuries suffered in a motorcycle accident, had only a few days to live. Sam Miller came to comfort Weirob at the hospital. Weirob knew she was dying so wanted Miller to give her some hope that there is survival after death. She asked would she be the same person later time as she was at an earlier time. She wasn’t sure if someone’s survival after death is conceivable. Unlike Gretchen Weirob, Sam Miller had a strong belief that there is life after death. They agreed from the beginning that Sam will not try to convince Weirob that it's plausible that there is a life after death, but Weirob said she'll accept an argument about life after death if Miller gives her inevitable facts. Miller gives her hope saying that they will meet in heaven with the same bodies they had on earth. Since Weirob believes in logic, she does not agree with Miller’s hypothetical theory thus keeps questioning him and opposing his ideas. According to Weirob it does not make any sense because she knows her body will be rotten away after she dies hence it is not possible to have the same body. In this paper I will be discussing why I think Weirob’s claims makes more sense than Miller’s claim. (222)

At first Miller argued that soul and body is dependent on each other. Soul cannot move around and it only sticks with the same person. And also when someone’s body diminishes so does their soul. The problem with this theory is if we apply this theory to heaven, it becomes inconceivable for somebody to believe that there is life after our death. After death, body will be rotten so there is no way the same person with the soul will have the same body so it proves that if there’s one body one soul then there is no chance to have life after death. This automatically proves that Miller theory of body and soul is wrong. Miller and Weirob both agreed that if there was survival after death at all, it has to be survival of something other than our body. If we take the box of Kleenex argument what survives must be our mind or our soul. Personal identity is therefore based on sameness of the personal soul. After Weirob proved him wrong, Miller came up with another theory, which was based on memory. Miller claimed that suppose there was two person A and B. If B has the same memory as A then both will be the same person. So in Weirob’s case person A would be Weirob in heaven and person B would be Weirob in earth. So according to Miller Weirob in heaven would be same person if and only Heavenly Miller has Weirob’s memories. In simpler words same memories ensures same person. According to Weirob this theory is also wrong because she argued that what if a mental patient couldn’t remember what had happened to them, wouldn’t they still be considered as the same person? In this case yes we would still call that person who he actually was. Another example could be when I was little I don’t actually remember all the experience that I had, but my mother remembers everything that had happened to me. But clearly that doesn’t mean my mother is the same person as I am. Weirob believes a person is a live human body therefore if body dies the person is dead. Later they started a discussion about the case of Julia North and Mary Frances . That case shows Julia’s body died however her brain was saved. On the other hand Mary Frances

brain died but her body was saved. So Julia’s brain was transferred to Mary Frances’s body. The big argument was if they implant Julia’s brain to Mary’s body, would that be Julia or Mary. According to Miller, Julia has two bodies. One of them is the one she was born with and the other one is Frances body. Miller was sure that Julia’s brain in Mary Frances body must be Julia. Weirob stated that most of the people would think this way, however she doesn’t agree with it. Weirob denies the fact that Miller presented which was Julia has two bodies now. Weirob believes Mary Frances has two brains. Since Weirob thinks a person is a human body, she knows that the new person has to be Mary Frances because Mary Frances body is preserved, not Julia whose body is already dead. According to Weirob brain is a body part, but a person is not a body part. If someone cuts my hand, I would still be the same person without my arm, same goes for the brain. If it’s removed we shouldn’t think that body without brain is no longer the same person. It’s still the same person without the brain. Later Weirob tells Miller that she was offered an operation where her brain was going to be exchanged to another person’s body. She doesn’t think the newly person would be she herself. Weirob would have been done the operation if she knew doctor would duplicate her brain in Weirob’s body. Since she knows doctor can just only make copy of her brain and put it in a different body, she's not sure if it’s the right thing to go for. If the rejuvenation of brain is possible than it’s also possible to make not only one copy of her brain but hundred of the same copy of her brain and implanted into same body. Which would mean there would be hundred of Weirob out there. Weirob strongly believes bodily identity is what really matters. Equality of recollections or mental elements is not sufficient for sameness of individual. She doesn’t buy anything that Miller had told her. So she decides to not do the operation and die with her own body and soul. (769)

At the end, I think Weirob was right to claim that soul cannot determine personal identity. Personal identity can be measured by the individual’s traits, appearance, or the way a person thinks of them. Since soul is invisible there is not much to prove that Miller is right. He had good arguments but didn’t have enough evidence to backup his theory. I can say that I live with an unicorn and my unicorn has magic power but I don’t have enough proofs to make other people believe in what I believe. Thus it is irrelevant. (95)...