Miller s Definition of Survival in The First Night

The First Night In A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality by John Perry, Gretchen Weirob lies on her deathbed due to injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident. In her appeal for comfort, she asks her longtime friend and chaplain, Sam Miller, to comfort her by persuading her that survival after the death of her body is possible. She believes that if he succeeds, the hope will provide comfort, but even if he does not succeed, his attempt to persuade her will serve as a digression. Weirob’s curiosity in “The First Night” revolves around the question of what maintains personal identity over time and how she can anticipate to reason, touch, smell, and remember in the future. Miller claims that survival includes a merger with being. According to Miller’s definition of survival, Gretchen will not be her body, but her soul, self, and mind in the future. Therefore, Gretchen’s conscious, the nonphysical and immaterial parts of her, will continue to exist beyond the death of her body. Weirob, in response, contends that, “To be conscious” is a verb that requires a subject, a body, and if there is no body, because it dies, then one will not be conscious. From their disagreement, Weirob and Miller come to formulate two rival theories regarding personal identity. According to Weirob, personal identity is maintained over time with the same material body, while Miller holds that personal identity over time is maintained with the same soul. Miller’s view holds that one’s immaterial soul gives a person identity over time. He recognizes that the person standing before him is Gretchen Weirob because she has the same soul that she had a week ago when they had lunch at Dorsey’s. Weirob responds by making the Reductial Ad Absurdam argument and concluding that Millers “Same person, same soul” principle leads to absurd scenarios. Two consequences of Miller’s view are the scenarios “Same soul, different body” and “Same body, different soul.” After claiming that Gretchen is the same person that he had lunch with at Dorsey’s a week ago, Weirob becomes weary because Miller’s claim is based on the belief of a soul that cannot be seen or touched. She poses the possibility that the same soul can be present on both occasions but lodged in different bodies. Miller responds to his first critique with the principle, “Same body, same self” to escape the bizarre possibilities proposed by Weirob. Miller explains that he can see the same body that was present on both occasions, and that he knows the same soul is connected with the body that it was connected with before. Weirob critique’s this principle of “Same body, same soul” that Miller employs by claiming that the principle is not something one knows “a priori,” or apart from experience. Therefore, Millers view is groundless and without foundation because there is nothing to justify that connection. However, a simple caramel chocolate gave Miller the analogy that he needed to provide further evidence to his principle of “Same body, same soul.” Just as a certain sort of swirl on top of a chocolate is correlated with a certain type of filing, Miller judges that the soul with which he is conversing is the same soul that he last conversed with when sitting across from that body. Therefore, when observing the outer wrapping, or the physical characteristics, one can infer what is inside. This correlation between what is outside and inside comprises Millers grounds for the principle “Same body, same soul.” Weirob believes that without “biting” into the soul, seeing it, or experiencing it, there is no way of testing the hypothesis that sameness of body means sameness of soul. Finally, Miller modifies his view by including psychological states in his argument to escape Weirob’s previous critique of his caramel chocolate example. In defense of his position, he provides a means to test the hypothesis of the correlation between the “Same body, same soul” principle. He claims that similarity of psychological characteristics including a person’s attitudes, beliefs, memories, and prejudices are observable. These observable characteristics are therefore correlated with the identity of body and sameness of soul. For example, Miller argued that when Weirob entered the room, he expected her to react in an argumentative and skeptical manner. If the person that entered the room had reacted in any other way he would have come to the conclusion that it was not Gretchen. Miller establishes the correlation between body and soul by explaining that the soul, or mind, is responsible for one’s character, memory, and belief. Weirob, still unconvinced that sameness of psychological characteristics means sameness of soul, uses an analogy to force Miller to identify how he recognizes the Blue River. Miller answers that he recognizes the river by the states of the water that comprise it at the time he sees it. Each time he can expect to see the Blue River nearly the same as it previously was. With this analysis, Weirob reasons that the similarity of states of water by which Miller claims “Sameness of river” does not require identity of the water that is in those states at each of those times. In correlation with her Blue River analogy, Weirob claims that Miller’s judgment of personal identity by reference to the similarity of states of mind does not mean that the mind, or soul, is the same in each scenario. Therefore, Miller is wrong to propose that the immaterial soul that is lodged in her body is static and unchanging. However, it is not wrong to deduce that since the soul cannot be seen or touched, that it can easily be replaced or mistaken by another soul that is psychologically similar. In conclusion, Weirob proves that sameness of body does not necessarily mean sameness of person, just as sameness of psychological characteristics does not necessarily mean sameness of person.