1 / 17

PHILOSOPHY!

PHILOSOPHY!. *** THERE IS SO MUCH: Left to be said. THERE IS SO LITTLE: Time remaining. THERE IS NO NEED: To fear. ***. Guiding Question. What can we know? Unit Three: Can we know what happens to us after we die?. Perry’s Dialogue. Gretchen:

paiva
Télécharger la présentation

PHILOSOPHY!

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  1. PHILOSOPHY! *** THERE IS SO MUCH: Left to be said. THERE IS SO LITTLE: Time remaining. THERE IS NO NEED: To fear. ***

  2. Guiding Question What can we know? Unit Three: Can we know what happens to us after we die?

  3. Perry’s Dialogue Gretchen: • Philosophy teacher who lies, injured and dying, in the hospital. Sam: • Chaplain and long-time friend of Gretchen’s. Dave: • Former student (and current friend) of Gretchen’s.

  4. Gretchen’s Challenge 1. Physical death entails (eventually) the complete dissolution of one’s body. 2. The notion of "survival", if it is to be comforting, must be personalsurvival. -------------------------------------------------------------- C. Either (a) personal identity does not depend on physical identity, or (b) survival of physical death is not possible.

  5. Two Questions Immortality: • Is life after death possible? Personal Identity: • What makes a person the same person over time?

  6. Qualitative vs. Numerical Identity Qualitative identity: Qualitative identity is a relation that holds between two or more distinct objects that are the same with respect to some important qualities. Numerical (or quantitative) identity: Numerical identity is a relation that holds between an object and itself.

  7. Qualitative Identity Examples: • "Identical" twins are qualitatively, but not numerically, identical. • We all have the same book (Perry’s “Dialogue”) in the qualitative but not numerical sense. • The Kleenex box.

  8. Numerical Identity Gretchen’s point when drawing this distinction is: When talking about “personal identity”, we are interested in numerical identity. • I don’t care if there is a qualitatively identical person who lives in heaven after I die. I am interested in whether I can survive my death.

  9. Digression: The Ship of Theseus • Ship A = Theseus' original ship. • Ship B = The ship Theseus returns in. • Ship C = The ship that is built from the original parts that Theseus threw overboard. Question: Which of these ships (if either) is identical to the original ship?

  10. Gretchen’s Challenge 1. Physical death entails (eventually) the complete dissolution of one’s body. 2. The notion of "survival", if it is to be comforting, must be personalsurvival. -------------------------------------------------------------- C. Either (a) personal identity does not depend on physical identity, or (b) survival of physical death is not possible.

  11. Souls In attempting to answer “Gretchen’s Challenge”, Sam tries to show (a) (personal identity does not depend on physical identity). Sam claims that “souls” provide the criterion for personal identity. A “soul”, according to Sam, is: “The nonphysical and non-material aspects of you, your consciousness.”

  12. Same Person = Same Soul Remember our second question: What makes a person the same person over time? • Sam’s answer is that a person’s soul is what remains the same over time. In terms of a formula, Sam claims: Same person = Same Soul.

  13. Gretchen’s Reductio 1. Assume towards a contradiction that a person is identical with an immaterial soul. 2. Thus, a person is an immaterial substance. [from 1] 3. No immaterial substance can be perceived by the senses. 4. Thus, no person can be perceived by the senses. [2,3] 5. If no person can be perceived by the senses, then we have no way of knowing any person’s identity. 6. Thus, we have no way of knowing any person’s identity. [4,5] 7. But we dohave ways of knowing persons’ identities. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- C.Contradiction! Therefore, a person is not identical with an immaterial soul.

  14. Gretchen’s Reductio • Gretchen is not arguing that souls don’t exist or that she doesn’t have one. • She has just attacked the idea that souls provide a criterion for personal identity. • Her key point is that souls, by definition, are not the kind of things we can sense. • Sam tries to respond to “Gretchen’s Reductio” by questioning this key point.

  15. The SBSS Principle • Sam admits that we can’t directlyperceive souls. • But he claims that we can indirectly do so. The Same Body/Same Soul Principle (SBSS): The same soul is always associated with the same body, during the earthly existence of that body.

  16. The SBSS Principle • But Gretchen, as you might expect, questions the SBSS principle. • This begins a long back-and-forth between Sam and Gretchen. (Sam tries repeatedly to argue for the SBSS principle and Gretchen responds to each attempt with different objections.)

  17. “Soul Changes” Remember, people can survive a lot of physical changes. Blackburn, citing Locke, raises the question: Why couldn’t we survive “soul changes”? Or, as Gretchen puts it in her final response to Sam: “Well, consider these possibilities. One is that a single soul, one and the same, has been with this body of mine since it was born. [A second hypothesis] is that one soul was associated with it until five years ago and then another, psychologically similar, inheriting all the old memories and beliefs, took over.”

More Related