John Perry’s Problem with Person Identity

Personal Identity: Sam vs Gretchen

In John Perry’s Problem With Person Identity, we find several attempts to solve, dissolve, or shed light on some aspects of personal identity and the soul. In particular, we study a dialogue between two characters named Sam and Gretchen and their attempt to elaborate on the problem with personal identity and what happens to you after your physical death. What makes you who you are? What kind of changes to my body could I survive? If there is an afterlife, what will make the person who exists there, identical to the person they used to be when alive on earth? (Reader, 218). All these questions relate to the problem of personal identity.

        Before I introduce the dialogue between Sam and Gretchen, the difference between numerical identity and qualitative identity must be understood. For objects A and B to be qualitatively identical they must share all the the same intrinsic properties. Two objects are considered qualitatively identical if they are exactly similar or indiscernible. For objects to be numerically identical, they are one and the same object, or A=B. Something must be intrinsically identical as well as extrinsically identical in order to be numerically identical. For example, if I have CD A and CD B—CD’s A and B both contain copies of the exact same songs, memory, shape of CD, and size—at best, these CD’s are qualitatively identical because they are still two different objects. While the two CDs might be intrinsically identical—or exact copies of each other—there is no way that they could be numerically identical because they they occupy different space; this shows how CD’s A and B differ in extrinsic properties, which makes it impossible to be numerically identical. The question of personal identity is a question of the conditions of the numerical identity of persons; What makes me at this current time the same person I was at an earlier or later time?

        To answer the question of personal identity, and what happens to you after death, Sam proposes a theory known as The Soul Proposal which is as follows: Person A and Person B are numerically identical if and only if Person A has the same soul as Person B; so I am the same person today as I was in 1994 if I have the same soul today as I did in 1994. The Soul Proposal by Sam is a classic example of metaphysical thesis. According to the soul proposal, the soul ≠ body; therefore bodily death does not determine personal death because a person can live as long as their soul exists.

 Gretchen responds to the soul proposal by stating that it is implausible due to epistemological consequences, in particular, the soul proposal entails that we can never have justified beliefs that we are dealing with the same person at different times. Gretchen objects to Sam as follows: If the soul proposal is true, I can’t ever have justified beliefs about whether I’m dealing with the same person from one moment to another. However, I often do have justified beliefs about whether I’m dealing with the same person from one moment to another, for example: if I say bye to my roommate before he goes to class, I have justified beliefs that he will be the same person when he comes back to the room. Therefore, the soul proposal is false. The reason we have justified beliefs that we are dealing with the same person from one moment to another is based on inductive reasoning. We can use inductive reasoning to say that the sun will rise tomorrow because the sun has risen every morning in the past. Like how we use inductive reasoning to determine that the sun will rise and set everyday, we can induce that your roommate will be the same person as he was before he left for class.