But I do not deny that there may be additional reasons to posit nonphysical souls—my point is that souls are not needed to explain personal identity. (2013). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Accessed Nov 30, 2015. Mind, brain, and free will. American Philosophical Quarterly, 28, 217–226. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Certainly, many of one’s interests and character traits change as one matures from childhood to adolescence and then to early, middle, and late adulthood. Problems from philosophy (3rd ed.). This theory essentially stipulates that as we move through time we do so consistently as long as we continue to have the same soul. Indianapolis: Hackett. Chalmers, D. (1996). In E. Zalta (Ed. The body theory fails as people's bodies change over time, although still hold the same identity. Suppose someone were to break the vase and make a statue out of all of the pieces. Likewise, it could be that there are extraterrestrials who believe that grass grows, though their brains are composed of materials very different from those that make up human brains. Notes. Reid, T. (1785/1969). However no-one really knows what a soul is. Johnson, W. J. The Book of Mormon. This theory acknowledges many of the elements voided by the ego theory in what is personal identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Religious Studies, 34(3), 281–297. Of the three theories the memory theory - more specifically the memory chain theory - is the closest to the truth. A mental subject is distinct from a human body, a nd any part thereof; it is a no n-physical entity (usually called The distinction between types and tokens of mental phenomena may afford a way for the reductive physicalist to concede a point to the traditional dualist without giving up anything important. Be not entangled again in a yoke of bondage. Of personal identity. Oxford: Clarendon Press. I do not Exist. The idea became a lot more complicated when we are trying to define a rather controversial term – soul. ), A treatise on human nature. Wierenga, E. (2003). ), Essays on the intellectual powers of man. It is not our thoughts, but rather our soul. Locke, J. (Eds.). 2 The memory theory of personal identity In Graham MacDonald (Ed. ), Plato: Complete works. In John Perry’s A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality, Perry discusses both the possibility of immortality (the ability to survive after death) and the question of personal identity. Because I believe that our memories and thought process can be stored in any aspect as long as it has the same functional systematization as the brain, the Soul Theory is the only way to identify a person logically. Swinburne, R. (2013). La Salle, IL: Open Court Publishing. The possibility that it can is, of course, central to many religious doctrines, and it played an explicit role in Descartes’s formulations of mind-body dualism, the view that mind and body constitute fundamentally different substances ( … Purported “out of body” experiences, as well as people’s alleged memories of events occurring minutes after they are pronounced dead, are no more evidence of disembodiment than are the dreams that many people have of witnessing themselves doing various things. This is arguably the Mormon conception of the soul that persists after bodily death: “[After bodily death the] soul shall be restored to the body, and the body to the soul; yea, and every limb and joint shall be restored to its body; yea, even a hair of the head shall not be lost; but all things shall be restored to their proper and perfect frame” (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 2013, Alma 40: 23). Aristotle. Int J Philos Relig 83, 41–55 (2018). ), Personal identity (pp. Personal identity: The dualist theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press. The nature of god: An inquiry into divine attributes. American Bible Society. Survival and identity. Parfit, D. (1984). The conscious mind. One simple example concerns the relation of many mental phenomena to physical space. In any case, as noted above, reductionism—also called materialism or physicalism—is the view that all mental phenomena are nothing but physical phenomena. Oxford: Oxford University Press. . Jacob Berger. For example, consider this remark: “Souls might seem to provide quick answers to many philosophical perplexities about identity over time, but there is no good reason to believe that they exist” (Conee and Sider 2005, pp. Philosophy of mind and empirical psychology, Eliminativism: Behaviourism and instrumentalism, The computational-representational theory of thought (CRTT), Artifactuality and artificial intelligence (AI), Remaining gaps and first-person skepticism, Hear how through philosophy the personal identity of a person is defined. In conclusion, we have discussed the most common theories of personal identity: the body theory, the soul theory and the memory theory. One traditional explanation is - 89.252.188.237. De Anima: Books II, III (with passages from Book I) (D. W. Hamlyn, Trans.). Sider, T. (2001). Quinton, A. The Soul Theory also claims that behavioural similarity is due to that immaterial soul. ), An enquiry concerning human understanding and other writings (pp. Madell, G. (2014). I will do so by showing that the opposing theories – Body and Soul Theories – have evident flaws and that the arguments against the Memory Theory can be responded to adequately. PubMed Google Scholar. The question of what the appropriate relations might be in the case of persons. ), The analogy of religion. But if it is not the body that is essential to being the same person, then it must be something more purely psychological—perhaps one’s memories and character traits. In search of a fundamental theory. The soul cannot be the basis for personal identity because we can imagine the same consciousness being transferred from one soul to another – for example, the prince’s consciousness could be transferred to the cobbler’s body and his soul. Oxford: Oxford University Press. By having the same soul, we are the same person. supporting the same soul theory. Here are themost familiar: Who am I?Outside of philosophy, ‘personalidentity’ usually refers to properties to which we feel aspecial sense of attachment or ownership. Hence the mental substance is not the substance that is in virtue merely of the properties which it has” (2014, p. 151). http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2015/entries/identity-personal/. Coulson, C. A. volume 83, pages41–55(2018)Cite this article. The problem of diachronic personal identity is this: what explains why a person P1 at time T1 is numerically identical with a person P2 at a later time T2, even if they are not at those times qualitatively identical? In S. Buckle (Ed. I note that some might nonetheless prefer a soul theory—such as a soul-based multiple-occupant view—for other reasons. Personhood over Time – If soul theory were true personal identity over time means that you have the same soul in the past, present, and future. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Accessed Feb 5, 2016. My point is that Locke’s thought experiment reveals that there is a question about the relevant criterion—and so we need a theory to answer whether or not the cobbler and prince swap bodies. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. (1970). 12–39). Not only is every mental phenomenon constituted by physical phenomena, but every property of the mental crucially depends upon some physical property. The Soul theory will be the next common theory in defining personal identity. I often write as though a soul inheres in or occupies a body, or that a body possesses a soul, but these expressions are of course a kind of loose talk. (2010). This unwanted implication can be avoided by noticing an ambiguity in identity statements between types and tokens. Peterborough: Broadview Press. In his classic paper “Materialism” (1963), the Australian philosopher J.J.C. Material beings. The lecture focuses on the question of the metaphysical key to personal identity. Conceivability and possibility. Name 1 Soul/Mind Theory of Personal Identity The question of whether the mind and body of a human are indeed one and the same entity, or whether there is a clear distinction between the mental aspect, and the physical body continues to form part of the questions, and reflections that inform an individual’s personal identity (Barresi and Martin 61). In particular, what is it that underlies the peculiar concern and attachment one feels about the even distant future and past portions of one’s life? In presenting the memory theory, Perry argues that memory is the most iconic component of a person’s identity, and maintains that it is not just about the activities they engaged in, in the past. van Inwagen, P. (1990). Although it can often seem as though debates between dualism and reductionism—the view that, in some sense, all mental phenomena are “nothing but” physical phenomena—are about the existence of disembodied spirits, virtually none of the contemporary forms of these disputes take this possibility seriously, and for good reason: there is simply no serious evidence that anyone’s mind has ever survived the complete dissolution of his body. The persistence question, the question of what personal identity over time consists in, is literally a question of life and death: answers to it determine, insofar as that is possible, the conditions under which we survive, or cease to exist in the course of, certain adventures. Swinburne, R. (1997). And as Olson (2007, p. 150) observes, such views come in two basic forms: views on which we are simply souls (which Olson (2007, p. 151) calls ‘immaterialism’) and views on which we are complexes in some way of souls and material bodies (the view defended by Swinburne (1984) and suggested by his quote above). This is because it seems possible for two people to have brains composed of slightly different substances and yet to share the same belief or other mental state. Kind, A. (1997). By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica. An alternative is to say not that mental phenomena are identical to physical phenomena but rather that they are “constituted” by them. It follows that it is impossible for there to be two universes that are physically identical throughout their entire history but that differ with respect to whether a certain individual is in pain at a particular time. Arguably, if the replacement was extensive enough, one would be the same person with a new body. When I say there is a ‘chain of overlapping X-continuity linking P1 and P2’, I mean that there are various person stages between P1 and P2 and at each junction between stages the adjacent stages can be said to have the same relevant feature X (in this case, the soul) (see, e.g., Parfit 1984, p. 206). The comparisons with lightning and water, however, carry what many philosophers have thought to be an implausible implication. Consider a porcelain vase. Regarding the soul theory, in which an immaterial soul defines personal identity, the argument is sufficient to discard this theory as determinant of personal identity. I thank Kristopher Phillips for suggesting to me this possible reply. Descartes, R. (1641/1984). For example, every piece of luggage is presumably a physical object, but no one believes that “luggage” is a classification that can be expressed in—or reduced to—physics, and no one has ever seriously proposed a “luggage-physics” dualism. This view is also called reductionism, which unfortunately conveys the misleading suggestion that the mental is somehow “made less” by being physical. Web Edition: https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm?lang=eng. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-016-9594-x, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-016-9594-x, Over 10 million scientific documents at your fingertips, Not logged in Oxford: Blackwell. This is quite a strong claim, akin to saying that every letter of the alphabet is identical to a certain type of physical shape (or sound). There is, however, an interesting problem related to the question of disembodied souls, one that can be raised even for someone who does not believe in that possibility: the problem of personal identity. ), Perception and identity. The Holy Bible, King James Version. https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm?lang=eng, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2015/entries/identity-personal/, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-016-9594-x. What does it mean for a person that presently exists to be the very same person in the future? Personal identity. If both the vase and the statue are identical to the pieces, it would follow that the statue is identical to the vase, which is absurd. Subscription will auto renew annually. The same way the brain is separate from the mind, that’s the same way the body is … A more reasonable claim would be that every token of the letter a is identical to a token of some type of physical shape (or sound). And while that may be a reasonable consideration, notice that such an argument supports a soul theory not on the grounds that it explains ordinary (living) personal identity, but rather that it explains how persons might exist separately from their bodies. According to the soul view, the key to personal identity across time is having the very same soul. And it is presumably something like this possibility that people envision when they imagine reincarnation. What the appropriate relations are in the cases of rivers and baseball games. Basic writings (G. Montgomery, Trans.). My point, however, is not that these scenarios establish a particular criterion as being relevant to personal identity (e.g., psychological-, rather than bodily-, continuity). In A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality, Weirob argues that souls cannot be seen, or touched, or smelled (Perry 1978: 8); nevertheless, we cannot know when a soul is present or not. Outliving oneself: Trauma, memory, and personal identity. Madell, G. (1981). The primary argument for this view is that it enables a kind of economy in one’s account of the different kinds of things in the world, as well as a unification of causal claims: mental events enter into causal relations with physical ones because in the end they are physical events themselves. Shoemaker, S. (1977). ), Contemporary dualism: A defense. The immaterial soul theory argues that personal identity is found in the soul which is distinct from the body. Article  Your browser does not support the video tag. Grab a copy of our NEW encyclopedia for Kids! In P. Nidditch (Ed. Swinburne, R. (2014). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Why this seems to make possible the immortality of the soul. The soul theory is the idea that persons are identical to their souls. As long as my soul exists, I exist. So it would seem that a mental image cannot be a physical thing. 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