Hello everybody! For this module we are continuing with Perry’s dialogue. We will be moving on to Perry’s second night. If it has been a while since you viewed the last lecture, you may wish to review your notes because we will be picking up right from where we left off without a great deal of review. If you recall, during the first night Sam Miller was trying to convince Gretchen Weirob that she could survive death, and he was attempting to do so by defending the Soul criterion of personal identity. They had a particular deal. Sam doesn’t need to show that life after death is likely or even that it fits in with our current understanding of science for Weirob to be comforted. He merely needs to show that it is possible. Part of this possibility means: That there are no contradictions. That the kind of survival is meaningful. In other words, that Weirob can look forward to the experiences of the person who survives. That Sam has a conception of what it means when he says she will survive. That he acknowledge her present physical condition. That is to say that she will die and her body will rot away. Now, if you recall, previously Sam Miller defended the Soul Criterion of personal identity. Under this conception of personal identity, a person is the same person if and only if they have the same soul. Miller gives up the soul criterion approach when he begins the second night. Weirob starts the discussion by asking: “Well, Sam, have you figured out a way to make sense of the identity of immaterial souls?” Miller responds, “No, I have decided it was a mistake to build my argument on such a dubious notion.” But this does not mean that he has given up on the idea that she can survive death or that he has abandoned a religious point of view. He is simply giving up on the idea that souls, if they exist, are sufficient to explain personal identity. So when Weirob asks, “Have you then given up on survival? I think such a position would be a hard one for a clergyman to live with, and would feel bad about having pushed you so far.” Miller says, “Don’t worry. I’m more convinced than ever. I stayed up late last night thinking and reading, and I’m sure I can convince you now.” The point of view that Miller is going to put forward today is the Memory Criterion of personal identity. This is a position held by John Locke. A person is the same person if and only if that person has the same memories or connected conscious experiences. These memories may or may not be lodged in a soul. The material that they are made up of is not what is important. What is important is the content. So, Miller need not give up on the idea that souls exist in order to argue for this criterion. They are just not essential to personal identity. Miller says: First, let me explain why, independently of my desire to defend survival after death, I am dissatisfied with your view that personal identity is just bodily identity. My argument will be very similar to the one you used to convince me that personal identity could not be identified with identity of an immaterial soul. Consider a person waking up tomorrow morning, conscious, but not yet ready to open her eyes and look around and, so to speak start the day …Now couldn’t such a person tell who she was? That is, even before opening her eyes and looking around, and in particular before looking at her body or making any judgments about it, wouldn’t she be able to say who she was? Surely most of us, in the morning, know who we are before opening our eyes and recognizing our own bodies, do we not?” Weirob agrees that, yes, she could do just that. Miller continues:” But such a judgment as this person makes—we shall suppose she judges “I am Gretchen Weirob”—is a judgment of personal identity. Suppose she says to herself, “I am the very person who was arguing with Sam Miller last night.” This is clearly a statement about her identity with someone who was alive the night before. And she could make this judgment without examining her body at all. You could have made just this judgment this morning, before opening your eyes. Weirob responds: Well, in fact I did so. I remembered our conversation of last night and said to myself, “Could I be the rude person who was so hard on Sam Miller’s attempts to comfort me?” And, of course, my answer was that I not only could be but was that very rude person. Miller then highlights his point: But then by the same principle you used last night personal identity cannot be bodily identity. For you said that it could not be identity of immaterial soul because we were not judging as to identity of immaterial soul when we judge as to personal identity. But by the same token, as my example shows, we are not judging as to bodily identity when we judge as to personal identity. For we can judge who we are, and that we are the very person who did such and such and so and so, without having to make any judgments at all about the body. So, personal identity, while it may not consist of identity of an immaterial soul, does not consist in identity of material body either. So, this is a reference back Weirob’s arguments before. Since one cannot sense a soul in any way, she argued that Miller could not be judging souls when he judges personal identity. He cannot sense them so he cannot connect a soul to a body, such as judging she is the same person he had lunch with. Miller is now trying to use this same argument against her. If Weirob can know who she is without sensing her body then she must not be judging her own personal identity through her body. She must be judging that she is the same person based on something else. Weirob’s first attempted response is to say “But I also said that the notion of the identity of an immaterial unobservable unextended soul seemed to make no sense at all. This is one reason that cannot be what we are judging about, when we judge as to personal identity. Bodily identity at least makes sense. Perhaps we are assuming sameness of body, without looking.” But Miller presses the point: “Granted. But you do admit-that we do not in our own cases actually need to make a judgment of bodily identity in order to make a judgment of personal identity?” Weirob doesn’t quite admit this, but she says that they can currently work with that and proceed with the argument for the time being. Miller then alters his thought experiment, asking her to imagine that she wakes up in an entirely different body. He says, “Okay. Now it seems to me we are even able to imagine awakening and finding ourselves to have a different body than the one we had before. Suppose yourself, just as I have described you. And now suppose you finally open your eyes and see, not the body you have grown so familiar with over the years, but one of a fundamentally different shape and size.” Weirob doesn’t see the full force of this point at first. She says, “Well, I should suppose I had been asleep for a very long time and lost a lot of weight— perhaps I was in a coma for a year or so.” But, Miller is suggesting a more drastic change: He asks, “But isn’t it at least conceivable that it should not be your old body at all? I seem to be able to imagine awakening with a totally new body. “ Weirob wonders how this could possibly happen, but Miller correctly points out that, “That’s beside the point. I’m not saying I can imagine a procedure that would bring this about. I’m saying I can imagine it happening to me. In Kafka’s Metamorpheses, someone awakens as a cockroach. I can’t imagine what would make this happen to me or anyone else, but I can imagine awakening with the body of a cockroach. It is incredible that it should happen— that I do not deny. I simply mean I can imagine experiencing it. It doesn’t seem contradictory or incoherent, simply unlikely and inexplicable.” So, he is right about this. He is presenting a thought experiment, and the point isn’t how something like this might happen, but rather to test our conceptions with the variables that the thought experiment allows us to change to see if they hold. Weirob responds, “So, if I admit this can be imagined, what follows then? “ Miller replies: “Well, I think it follows that personal identity does not just amount to bodily identity. For I would not, finding that I had a new body, conclude that I was not the very same person. I would be the same person, though I did not have the same body. So we would have identity of persons but not identity of body. So personal identity cannot just amount to bodily identity” Weriob asks where this leaves him, and presses: ”What do you claim I have recognized as the same, if not my body and not my immaterial soul?” Miller then goes back to the Blue river example. He says, Let me appeal as you did to the Blue River. Suppose I take a visitor to the stretch of river by the old Mill, and then drive him toward Manhattan. After an hour-or-so drive we see another stretch of river, and I say, “That’s the same river we saw this morning.” As you pointed out yesterday, I don’t thereby imply that the very same molecules of water are seen both times. And the places are different, perhaps a hundred miles apart. And the shape and color and level of pollution might all be different. What do I see later in the day that is identical with what I saw earlier in the day?” Weirob says: “Nothing except the river itself. Miller then says, “Exactly. But now notice that what I see, strictly speaking, is not the whole river but only a part of it. I see different parts of the same river at the two different times. So really, if we restrict ourselves to what I literally see, I do not judge identity at all, but something else.” So, Weirob asks what could be the same and he says, “In saying that the river seen earlier, and the river seen later, are one and the same river, do I mean any more than that the stretch of water seen later and that stretch of water seen earlier are connected by other stretches of water?” And Weirob says, “That’s about right.” So, what miller he saying here? Imagine a river stretching for miles. We want to say that multiple sections of this river are the same river. Likewise we want to say that it is the same river that flowed in roughly the same area since colonial times and if we came back in a 100 years we would still want to say it was the same river. But notice that the water isn’t the same for the multiple parts of the river, even if the exact same segment is visited. The water changes swiftly over time. Likewise even the QUALITY of the water might change. It might be polluted today, but 100 years ago it might have been pristine. Differences in rainfall or times of year might mean that it is sluggish some years and flows swiftly during others, and so forth. So, what makes the river the same? Miller is saying it is the connectedness and relationship of the parts that makes the river segments part of the same river. All of these parts of the river are the same because they are connected in a continuous way throughout space and time. Can the point that Miller is trying to make about personhood with this? Pause the video and think about it for a moment. What do you think about his point about persons? So, Weirob asks “…is all of this something special about rivers?” And Miller says, “Not at all. It is a recurring pattern. After all, we constantly deal with objects extended in space and time. But we are seldom aware of the objects’ wholes, but only of their parts or stretches of their histories. When a statement of identity is not just something trivial, like “This bed is this bed,” it is usually because we are really judging that different parts fit together, in some appropriate pattern, into a certain kind of whole.” Miller gives another example. He says, “Suppose we are sitting together watching the first game of a doubleheader. You ask me, “Is this game identical with this game?” This is a perfectly stupid question, though, of course, strictly speaking it makes sense and the answer is “yes.” But now suppose you leave in the sixth inning to go for hot dogs. You are delayed, and return after about forty-five minutes or so. You ask, “Is this the same game I was watching?” Now your question is not stupid, but perfectly appropriate. Weirob clarifies: Because the first game might still be going on or it might have ended, and the second game begun, by the time I return. So, for those of you who might be as inept with sports as I am, a double header is a when two teams play against each other Twice. What Miller is saying is that if Weirob left for the concession stand in the middle of the game and was gone for a long time, when she came back, her questions if whether this is the same game makes perfect sense. The first game might have finished, but the very same players might be back on the field playing the second part of the double header. So, the players could be the same and the game could the same or different. Note, even the score could be the same but the game could be different. So, Weirob crystalizes his point: “So, you think that judgments as to the identity of an object of a certain kind—rivers or baseball games or whatever—involve judgments as to the parts of those things being connected in a certain way, and are significant only when different parts are involved.” And Miller confirms, “Yes, and I think it is an important one. How foolish it would be, when we ask a question about the identity of baseball games, to look for something else, other than the game as a whole, which had to be the same. It could be the same game, even if different players were involved. It could be the same game, even if it had been moved to a different field. These other things, the innings, the plays, the players, the field, don’t have to be the same at the different times for the game to be the same, they just have to be related in certain ways so as to make that complex whole we call a single game.” So, I will explain this in a little bit more detail. I will alter Millers example slightly. Imagine, for example, that you were playing a chess game by e-mail with somebody. You have a physical chessboard set up in your living room so that you can visualize the moves. Each day you e-mail your friend one move. One day there is a fire in your house and the physical chessboard burns down. After moving to a new house, you go through all of your old e-mails and set up all the same moves on a new chessboard. Given this setup, it seems perfectly sensible to say that you are playing the same game even though the original board was destroyed. It is the same game not because of the physical pieces used. The originals burned. It is not the same game, even because of the position of the pieces. Two other players else could have gotten to that exact same board arrangement through an entirely different series of moves. No, it is the same game because all of the moves are connected in a particular way through time. Move. Response. Move. Response. That is what makes it the same game. The same is true with the baseball players on the field and the score of the double header. So, Miller then says that his pursuit of the soul was a kind of wild goose chase when talking about personal identity. Weirob says, “With rivers and baseball games, I can see that they are made up of parts connected in a certain way. The connection is, of course, different in the two cases, as is the sort of “part” involved. River parts must be connected physically with other river parts to form a continuous whole. Baseball? Innings must be connected so that the score, batting order, and the like are carried over from the earlier inning to the later one according to the rules. Is there something analogous we are to say about persons? Miller then says “Writers who concern themselves with this speak of “person-stages.” That is just a stretch of consciousness, such as you and I are aware of now. I am aware of a flow of thoughts and feelings that are mine, you are aware of yours. A person is just a whole composed of such stretches as parts, not some substance that underlies them, as I thought yesterday, and not the body in which they occur, as you seem to think. That is the conception of a person I wish to defend today.” So, Miller does not have to say that there is no underlying substance, like a soul---but his point is that that isn’t that makes up personal identity. Personal identity, he is now saying, is the person as a whole throughout time. It is the connection of one stage of consciousness to the other. You are the same person today as you were yesterday because the stages of your consciousness are connected in a particular way. Weirob clarifies saying, “So when I awoke and said to myself, “I am the one who was so rude to Sam Miller last night,” I was judging that a certain stretch of consciousness I was then aware of, and an earlier one I remembered having been aware of, form a single whole of the appropriate sort—a single stream of consciousness, we might say.” And Miller says, “Yes that is it exactly.” The immaterial soul might be the same, if there is one, or it might not be. The body might be the same, if there still is one, or it might not be. What is important now, according to Miller, “…is not, so to speak, something under the person-stages, nor in something they are attached to, but something you build from them.” So, if this is true, Miller says that survival is perfectly possible “All you need suppose is that there is, in Heaven, a conscious being, and that the person-stages that make her up are in the appropriate relation to those that now make you up, so that they are parts of the same whole—namely, you. If so, you have survived. So will you admit now that survival is at least possible.” So, to survive Miller is saying that a future her in heaven would just have to exist with a consciousness that was appropriately related to her current consciousness. This would mean having the same memories are so forth. Weirob says, “Hold on, hold on. Comforting me is not that easy. You will have to show that it is possible that these person-stages or stretches of consciousness be related in the appropriate way. And to do that, won’t you have to tell me what that way is?” Miller replies: “Yes, of course. I was getting ahead of myself. It is right at this point that my reading was particularly helpful. In a chapter of his Essay On Human Understanding Locke discusses this very question. He suggests that the relation between two person-stages or stretches of consciousness that makes them stages of a single person is just that the later one contains memories of the earlier one. He doesn’t say this in so many words—he talks of “extending our consciousness back in time.” But he seems to be thinking of memory. So, here we have the memory criterion of identity. As I mentioned before, Miller is using Locke’s concept, and that is important to remember. A is the same person as B if and only if A has the same memories as B. So, Weirob asks if “..any past thought or feeling or intention or desire that I can remember having is mine?” And Miller says, “That’s right. I can remember only my own past thoughts and feelings…Now you can easily see that this solves the problem of the possibility of survival. As I was saying, all you need to do is imagine someone at some future time, not on this Earth and not with your present thoughts and feelings, remembering the very conversation we are having now.” So, what miller is saying is that nothing other than memory needs to be the same. The body can be destroyed. The soul could be the same, different, or non-existent. Miller is saying that Weirob survives if she has the same memories as she did before. So, now Miller has elucidated the memory criterion of personal identity. Can you see or anticipate any potential problems or objections against this view? Pause and consider this for a while before moving on. You can always hit pause on the video to give yourself time to think. So, Weirob admits part of what he says, but points out that there could be a problem. She says, “I admit that if I remember having a certain thought or feeling had by some person in the past, then I must indeed be that person. This is the kernel of Locke’s idea, and I don’t see that I could deny it. But we must distinguish—as I’m sure you will agree— between actually remembering and merely seeming to remember. Many men who think that they are Napoleon claim to remember losing the battle of Waterloo. We may suppose them to be sincere, and to really seem to remember it. But they do not actually remember because they were not at the battle and are not Napoleon.” So, what Weirob is pointing out here is that a person can think or seem to remember something that never really happened to her. Some people are so far gone that they think that they remember the lives of famous historical figures, but it does not mean that they are those historical figures. Miller agrees with this, saying, “Of course I admit that we must distinguish between actually remembering and only seeming to.” Remember, also, Weirob’s condition for what survival means. It must be, according to her, real surivival—a future with experiences she can look forward to. So she says, “And you will admit too, I trust, that the thought of some person at some far place and some distant time seeming to remember this conversation I am having with you would not give me the sort of comfort that the prospect of survival is supposed to provide. I would have no reason to anticipate future experiences of this person, simply because she is to seem to remember my experiences. The experiences of such a deluded imposter are not ones I can look forward to having.” And Miller says that the agrees. Now maybe you can see the problem beginning to form. The mere fact that it is possible that somebody in the future seems to remember having the exact same conversation Weirob is having with Miller now, even if this person also seems to remember all of her other past thoughts, does not show that it is possible for her to survive. To survive the person would have to ACTULLY remember their current conversation, her past, and so forth. Though Miller agrees with this condition, he does not see the problem at first. He says, “But what are you driving at? Where is the problem? I can imagine someone being deluded, but also someone actually being you and remembering your present thoughts.” And here is where things get hairy. Weriob asks, “But, what’s the difference? How do you know which of the two you are imagining, and what you have shown possible?” So, she is asking him how he could possibly make this judgement about personal identity. He meets a future her in heaven that seems to have all of her memories, but how does he know that this person is really remembering or only seeming to remember identical memories. This is true even for himself. He dies and appears in heaven, how does he know that he survived and really remembers his past as opposed to being a new person who only seems to remember his past. Everything has changed after all—his original body as destroyed. Miller doesn’t see a problem at first. He says, “I just imagine one and not the other.” But Weirob thinks that the problem is more difficult than this. Weirob says: “Let me try to make it clear with another example. Imagine two persons. One is talking to you, saying certain words, having certain thoughts, and so forth. The other is not talking to you at all, but is in the next room being hypnotized. The hypnotist gives to this person a post-hypnotic suggestion that upon awakening he will remember having had certain thoughts and having uttered certain words to you. The thoughts and words he mentions happen to be just the thoughts and words which the first person actually thinks and says. Do you understand the situation?” Miller says that he does, so she continues, “Now, in a while, both of the people are saying sentences which begin, “I remember saying to Sam Miller—” and “I remember thinking as I talked to Sam Miller.” And they both report remembering just the same thoughts and utterances. One of these will be remembering and the other only seeming to remember, right?” Miller says, “Of course.” WEIROB: “Now which one is actually remembering?” And Miller says, “Why, the very one who was in the room talking to me, of course, The other one is just under the influence of the suggestion made by the hypnotist and not remembering talking to me at all.” Weirob continues, “Now you agree that the difference between them does not consist in the content of what they are now thinking or saying.” Miller then agrees saying “Agreed. The difference is in the relation to the past thinking and speaking. In the one case the relation of memory obtains. In the other, it does not.” It is worth pausing here and clarifying Weirob’s point. When she says “The difference does not consist in the content of what they are now thinking or saying” she is pointing out that this person’s memory content can be absolutely perfect replicas of the real Weirob’s, and Miller agrees that this is not sufficient for identity. This is important to understand. A hypnotist probably couldn’t actually convey such memories perfectly because he doesn’t know what Weirob is thinking when participating in the conversation. We are to imagine, however, that the hypnotized victim has memories with the same content. Imagine, for example that the hypnotist has a device that scan’s Weirob brain in the other room and copies over all the memories and thoughts, overwriting this person’s own. Miller is agreeing that only the Weirob who engaged in that conversation has the thoughts and memories connected in the appropriate way. The other is not really her. Weirob continues, “But they both satisfy part of the conditions of remembering, for they both seem to remember. So there must be some further condition that the one satisfies and the other does not. I am trying to get you to say what that further condition is.” Miller says, “Well, I said that the one who had been in this room talking would be remembering. Weirob: In other words, given two putative rememberers of some past thought or action, the real rememberer is the one who, in addition to seeming to remember the past thought or action, actually thought it or did it. Miller says “Yes.” Weirob continues: “That is to say, the one who is identical with the person who did the past thinking and uttering?” Miller says: “Yes, I admit it.” Are you seeing the problem? Weirob puts it this way, “So, your argument just amounts to this. Survival is possible, because imaginable. It is imaginable, because my identity with some Heavenly person is imaginable. To imagine it, we imagine a person in Heaven who, first, seems to remember my thoughts and actions, and second, is me. Surely, there could hardly be a tighter circle.” Think about this for a minute. Miller’s position might at first seem to make sense, but he is admitting that merely having the same memories is not enough. There must be some further condition for identity. But his second condition seems to just be that it is really her remembering. That can’t have any force. That is just saying that if it is really her then it is really her. She wants to know what it is that he is saying is surviving that would allow her to exist after death. Simply saying that if it is really her who survives death then it is really her who survives death is not even a little bit helpful. As Weirob says, “If I have doubts that the Heavenly person is me, I will have doubts as to whether she is really remembering or only seeming to. No one could doubt the possibility of some future person who, after death, seemed to remember the things he thought and did. But that possibility does not resolve the issue about the possibility of survival. Only the possibility of someone actually remembering could do that—for that, as we agree, is sufficient for identity.” Now Cohen finally speaks. Remember, I said that there were three characters in the room. Cohen, Gretchen’s former student, had mostly been listening until now, but now he jumps in because he thinks that he can strengthen Sam Miller’s argument. He says, “But wait, Gretchen. I think Sam was less than fair to his own idea just now. “ Weirob asks if he thinks that he can “break out of the circle of using real memory to explain identity, and identity to mark the difference between real and apparent memory?” And Cohen continues, “Let us return to your case of the hypnotist. You point out that we have two putative rememberers. You ask what marks the difference, and claim the answer must be the circular one—that the real rememberer is the person who actually had the experiences both seem to remember. But that is not the only possible answer. The experiences themselves cause the later apparent memories in the one case, while the hypnotist causes them in the other. We can say that the rememberer is the one of the two whose memories were caused in the right way by the earlier experiences. We thus distinguish between the rememberer and the hypnotic subject, without appeal to identity.” So, Cohen is trying to save the argument from circularity here by appealing to something other than identity itself—in this case a particular kind of causation. So, what Cohen is arguing for here is that what seems to make the one Gretchen real and the other only seeming to remember isn’t the mere content of the memories, but the causal relationship they have with each other. Remember the chess game example—or the example of the double header. What makes the game the same is the relationship of the moves to one another. What makes the doubleheader the same isn’t the score or players on the field but all the steps about how those player got to be in the places they were and how the score came to be what it was. The fake remember has the same memory content, but it was not caused in the right way. Cohen also points out that memory itself as the basis for personal identity is too mercurial. He says, “The idea that real memory amounts to apparent memory plus identity is misleading anyway. I seem to remember, as a small child, knocking over the Menorah so the candles fell into and spoiled a tureen of soup. And I did actually perform such a feat. So we have apparent memory and identity. But I do not actually remember; I was much too young when I did this to remember it now. I have simply been told the story so often I seem to remember. Here the suggestion that real memory is apparent memory that was caused in the appropriate way by the past events fares better. Not my experience of pulling over the Menorah, but hearing my parents talk about it later, caused my memory-like impressions.” Cohen is right about how often we are wrong about our own memories. There is a lot of modern science going into this. The more often you access a memory the more likely you are to change it—in fact, every time you access a memory by remembering it is likely to change a little bit. I myself often have a memory of some scene in a movie or a book, but can’t remember whether the scene was a movie I saw visually or whether it was out of a book I read and the I created the scene for myself from words on a page. Many of our core memories are accessed multiple times and have probably changed in many ways from what we think that we actually remember—no matter how certain they feel. Weirob summarizes Cohen’s point saying, “You analyze personal identity into memory, and memory into apparent memory which is caused in the right way. A person is a certain sort of causal process.” Cohen agrees that this is right, and so Weriob asks how this can help Sam’s case for the possibility of survival. She says, “In ordinary memory, the causal chain from remembered event to memory of it never leads us outside the confines of a single body. Indeed, the normal process of which you speak surely involves storage of information somehow in the brain. How can the states of my brain, when I die, influence in the appropriate way the apparent memories of the Heavenly, person Sam takes to be me?” Here Miller jumps back in saying, “Surely, this does provide me with the basis for further defense. Your challenge, Gretchen, was to explain the difference between two persons in Heaven, one who actually remembers your experience— and so is you—and one who simply seems to remember it. But can I not just say that the one who is you is the one whose states were caused in the appropriate way? I do not mean the way they would be in a normal case of earthly memory. But in the case of the Heavenly being who is you, God would have created her with the brain states (or whatever) she has because you had the ones you had at death.” So, Weirob clarifies, “So if God creates a Heavenly person, designing her brain to duplicate the brain I have upon death, that person is me. If, on the other hand, a Heavenly being should come to be with those very same memory-like states by accident (if there are accidents in Heaven) it would not be me.” Miller says “Exactly” but Weriob still has a problem. She says, “The problem I see is this. If God could create one person in Heaven, and by designing her after me, make her me, why could he not make two such bodies, and cause this transfer of information into both of them? Would both of these Heavenly persons then be me?” Oops, this is a problem. As Weirob continues to point out: If A is B and if C is B, then A must also be C. In other words, if Batman is Bruce Wayne, and if Bruce Wayne is the person who saw his parents murdered as a child, then Batman must also be the person who saw his parents murdered as a child. Weirob is referring back to numerical identity. Batman can be Bruce Wayne if and only if they are the same exact person. Anything that is true of one must be true of the other. This does just not mean having the same qualities, such as identical copies of a Kleenex box or book, but rather being identical objects. So, Weirob continues, “…if each of these Heavenly persons is me, they must be each other. But then they are not two but one. But my assumption was that God creates two, not one. He could create them physically distinct, capable of independent movement, perhaps in widely separated Heavenly locations, each with her own duties to perform, her own circle of Heavenly friends, and the like. So either God, by creating a Heavenly person with a brain modeled after mine, does not really create someone identical with me but merely someone similar to me, or God is somehow limited to making only one such being. I can see no reason why, if there were a God, He should be so limited. So I take the first option. He could create someone similar to me, but not someone who would be me. Either your analysis of memory is wrong, and such a being does not, after all, remember what I am doing or saying, or memory is not sufficient for personal identity. Your theory has gone wrong somewhere, for it leads to absurdity.” So see the problem here. If God can take a person who is utterly destroyed and copy the memories in such a way as to create a person who is really Gretchen in heaven, there seem to be no reason why he could not do this two or a hundred times. But 2 is not equal to 1. And there seems to be no reason to say that one of these copies is really Gretchen and the other is not. Cohen comes to Sam’s defense again. He says, “Why can’t Sam simply say that if God makes one such creature, she is you, while if he makes more, none of them is you? It’s possible that he makes only one. So it’s possible that you survive. Sam always meant to allow that it’s possible that you won’t survive.” Weriob points out that this is a change in position. “Now you are not claiming that memory alone is enough for personal identity. Now, it is memory plus lack of competition, the absence of other rememberers, that is needed for personal identity.” Cohen agrees that the position has shifted, but he is right that this doesn’t matter. The new theory would need to be evaluated, and he asks if there is anything untenable about the position. Weirob says, Let’s look at this from the point of view of the Heavenly person. She says to herself, “Oh, I must be Gretchen Weirob, for I remember doing what she did and saying what she said.” But now that’s a pretty tenuous conclusion, isn’t it? She is really only entitled to say, “Oh, either I’m Gretchen Weirob, or God has created more than one being like me, and none of us is.” Identity has become something dependent on things wholly extrinsic to her. Who she is now turns on not just her states of mind and their relation to my states of mind, but on the existence or nonexistence of other people. Is this really what you want to maintain? Or look at it from my point of view. God creates one of me in Heaven. Surely I should be glad if convinced this was to happen. Now he creates another, and I should despair again, for this means I won’t survive after all. How can doubling a good deed make it worthless?” Cohen asks, if Weirob is saying that the position is contradictory. Weirob says no, but that “it seems odd in a way that shows that something somewhere is wrong with your theory. Here is a certain relationship I have with a Heavenly person. There being such a person, to whom I am related in this way, is something that is of great importance to me, a source of comfort. It makes it appropriate for me to anticipate having her experiences, since she is just me. She continues, “Why should my having that relation to another being destroy my relation to this one? You say because then I will not be identical with either of them. But since you have provided a theory about what that identity consists in, we can look and see what it amounts to for me to be or not to be identical. If she is to remember my experience, I can rightly anticipate hers. But then it seems the doubling makes no difference. And yet it must, for one cannot be identical with two. So you add, in a purely ad hoc manner, that her memory of me isn’t enough to make my anticipation of her experiences appropriate, if there are two rather than one so linked. Isn’t it more reasonable to conclude, since memory does not secure identity when there are two Heavenly Gretchens, it also doesn’t when there is only one?” The phrase “ad hoc” means without justification or grounds. It was simply added to fulfill a particular purpose. Cohen admits that it is ad hoc, but not a contradiction. Weriob then says, “An infinite pile of absurdities has the same weight as a contradiction. And absurdities can be generated without limit from your account. Suppose God created this Heavenly person before I died. Then He in effect kills me; if He has already created her, then you really are not talking to whom you think, but someone new, created by Gretchen Weirob’s strange death moments ago. Or suppose He first creates one being in Heaven, who is me. Then He creates another. Does the first cease to be me? If God can create such beings in Heaven, surely He can do so in Albuquerque. And there is nothing on your theory to favor this body before you as Gretchen Weirob’s, over the one belonging to the person created in Albuquerque. So I am to suppose that if God were to do this, I would suddenly cease to be. I’m tempted to say I would cease to be Gretchen Weirob. But that would be a confused way of putting it. There would be here, in my place, a new person with false memories of having been Gretchen Weirob, who has just died of competition—a strange death if ever there was one.” So, notice how strange the position is that is being put forward. God creates one Gretchen and it is really her. Remember what is necessary for personal identity here. Gretchen must REALLY BE ABLE TO LOOK FORWARD TO EXPERIENCING THE LIFE OF THAT PERSON. She—the Gretchen laying in the bed will experience that person’s life in heaven—it will not merely be somebody identical to her experiencing it. But, how suppose God created another. The ad hoc explanation is that they are now neither Gretchen. This means that the first Gretchen effectively died. But not only died but she was replaced by another Gretchen with the same memories---only these memories are no longer connected in the right way for her to actually anticipate these experiences. An ENTIRELY NEW PERSON would be having experiences—somebody who did not exist before the second Gretchen was created. But, how could God creating a second Gretchen possibly cause this to happen to her? As she pointed out this new her could be created in an entirely separate part of heaven---suddenly she dies a death of “competition” which she points out is very strange death indeed. She finishes, “Surely this is nonsense; however carefully God should choose to duplicate me, in Heaven or in Albuquerque, I would not cease to be, or cease to be who I am. You may reply that God, being benevolent, would never create an extra Gretchen Weirob. But I do not say that he would, but only that if he did this would not, as your theory implies, mean that I cease to exist. Your theory gives the wrong answer in this possible circumstance, so it must be wrong. I think I have been given no motivation to abandon the most obvious and straightforward view on these matters. I am a live body, and when that body dies, my existence will be at an end.” And that finishes this presentation on Perry’s The Second Night. There is a third night for those of you who are interested, but we must begin to push on to a different topic in the next module. Make sure to really spend some time thinking about these matters. There is probably some position about this topic that you would prefer to believe, but do not that that prevent you from struggling with the arguments on one side or another—only by really thinking about the arguments will you gain a full appreciation for the theories. Until next time.