How Did Weirob Rejected The Memory Theory?

In John Perry’s A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality, Perry uses a conversation between friends Gretchen Weirob, Sam Miller, and Dave Cohen to discuss four theories: soul theory, body theory, memory theory, and brain theory. This paper is going to cover memory theory and why Weirob rejected the theory. I will raise an objection to the reasoning behind Weirob’s rejection of the memory theory. To explain the memory theory, I am going to use two people, person A and person B. The memory theory, put simply, states that person B can be identical to person A if they have sameness and continuity of memories. By continuity I mean that person B can recall the thoughts and feelings that person A experienced in a memory. This is made possible
The basis of her rejection is the distinction between remembering and simply seeming to remember (Perry 27). A person seeming to remember can’t recall the thoughts or feeling and therefore is not the same person as the one they have memories of. Weirob does not think the memory theory allows for survival of death, because the distinction can’t be made between someone actually remembering and someone seeming to remember. She uses the example of two individuals, one is talking to someone and the other is in the next room being hypnotized (Perry 28). According to Weirob, you wouldn’t be able to contrast the memories of either person even if you had knowledge of the person being hypnotized to remember the conversation and certain thoughts. To her there isn’t a solid way to prove some is actually remembering the thoughts and feeling of someone else. Weirob rejects that the memory theory can give the possibility of surviving death, even if God created an identical being with her memories in Heaven. She states that God can only create someone like her, but not identical (Perry 33). The person would only be designed after her, but would not be identical to her. Weirob finds no way that the theory allows for people sharing the same stretch of consciousness to be proven numerically
Taking the example of the hypnotized person, you know they are remembering the thoughts and feelings of another person is caused by an outside source and aren’t true memories. However, someone remembering without the influence of external things can be actually remembering because they acquired the memories on their own. The person with memories caused by something other than themselves, or internal forces, won’t have all the details seeing as the influence can’t have all the details either. For example, if the hypnotist missed something in the conversation, the person in the room would remember and the one being hypnotized would not. Unless able to remember down to the last minute detail, the person would be considered not identical to the person in their memories. This could be confirmed, at least in this case, by the other individual in the room with whom the conversation was taking place. As for how the person felt during the conversation, it can be simply said that the hypnotist would not know how the person in the room truly feels, and that brings further distinction of remembering and only seeming to remember the conversation. Let’s say the hypnotist made up how the person felt based on the tone of the discussion. These false feelings could then be disputed by both people that were present in the room. The person that was in the room would