Sample Explication Paper on an Excerpt from Perry's "Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality"

(for the premise number references, see argument reconstruction)
 
       In this paper, I offer an explication of John Perry’s arguments on pages 27-30 of his Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality.  In this excerpt from the dialogue, the two primary characters, Miller and Weirob, engage in discussion dealing with the connection between memory, identity, and survival.  I will argue that the arguments, presented are, with the exception of one argument and with the addition of a few implicit premises, valid.
       The dialogue moves back and forth between Miller and Weirob.  First, Miller presents an argument in favor of identity being defined as remembering the thoughts and feelings of a person who was conscious in the past in order to show that Weirob has a chance of surviving.  Weirob responds to this argument by breaking Miller’s idea of “remembering” down into seeming to remember and actually remembering.  She uses this distinction to refute Miller’s attempt at proving Weirob’s possibility of survival.  Weirob further argues, albeit invalidly based on the definition of a circular argument, that Miller has made a circular argument.
       Miller says, “I can remember only my own past thoughts and feelings, and you only yours.”  From this, he makes the jump to the following premise:
 
(3)   To remember the thoughts and feelings of a person who was conscious in the past is just what it is to be that person. (P)
 
Once Miller establishes (3), that identity is just memory, he proceeds to argue “that this solves the problem of the possibility of survival.”  Miller explains that we need only imagine someone in heaven remembering Weirob’s thoughts and feelings.  If we can imagine this, then what we are really imagining is someone in heaven who is identical with Weirob, since Miller has already shown that identity rests in memory.  In the passage, Miller then jumps to the conclusion that survival is therefore possible.  In order to validly deduce the conclusion Miller makes, however, we must infer the following:
 
(5)  If something is imaginable, it is possible. (P)
(6)  It is possible that there will be someone identical with Gretchen Weirob in heaven. (from 4, 5)
(7)  If identity is imaginable, then it is possible. (from 5)
(8)  Survival is identity with a future person. (P)
 
From this, we can validly conclude that Weirob’s survival is possible.  This argument is recapitulated later by Weirob herself as part of her counterargument that attempts to show the circularity of Miller’s argument.
       Weirob counters Miller’s argument by distinguishing seeming to remember from actually remembering.  This distinction is crucial in highlighting the flaw in Miller’s argument, for he simply states “to remember the thoughts….”  If Weirob finds error in this definition, then she has shown Miller’s argument to be unsound.  Weirob does locate an error, since Miller took for granted his assertion that memory is sufficient for identity.  Miller gives the example of men who think they are Napoleon.  These men all claim to remember the battle of Waterloo, are all sincere, and all really seem to remember.  But, of course, none of these men is actually remembering, because none is Napoleon.  Once she has drawn this distinction, Weirob can conclude:
(13)   Therefore, there is a difference between actually remembering and seeming to remember.
 
       After distinguishing actually remembering and seeming to remember, Weirob can make the progression to the sub-conclusion as follows:
 
(15)   We can imagine someone in heaven seeming to remember X’s thoughts and feelings. (P)
(16)   It is possible that there will be someone in heaven seeming to remember X’s thoughts and feelings. (from 15, 5)
 
Weirob can then use this conclusion to show that Miller’s original proof of the possibility of Weirob surviving is flawed.  After asserting (16), Weirob can then conclude:
 
(17)   It is possible that someone in heaven seems to remember Gretchen Weirob’s thoughts and feelings without being identical with Gretchen Weirob. (from 14, 15, 5)
 
       Weirob has now shown that Miller’s original claim is inaccurate and so goes on to show that Miller’s account of identity is therefore faulty.  In order to present her counterargument to Miller’s definition of identity, Weirob uses another example.  If one person talks to you, and another is hypnotized into thinking and believing that she talked to you, then there will be no difference in the content of what each reports remembering afterward.   There is no way to tell the difference between the hypnotized person and the person who was actually talking to you.  Upon using this example to clarify, Weirob can then conclude the following:
 
(22)   Examining the content of what a person is thinking or saying cannot establish whether that person is identical with a person existing at an earlier time. (from 14, 21)
 
       At this point in the dialogue, Weirob forces Miller to describe what would be sufficient for real memory upon considering the distinction between actual and apparent memory.  Miller then defines real memory as:
 
(23)   Really remembering a thought or action is just seeming to remember it plus having really thought or done it.
 
Weirob then reconstructs Miller’s original argument, taking into account his definition of real memory, so that she can try to argue that Miller’s argument is circular.  At this point, we must supply premises in order to break apart and clarify the dialogue.  Weirob tries to prove the circularity of Miller’s argument by, first, stating that:
 
(24)   Miller’s proposal is that real memory is the combination of apparent memory and identity.
 
       Already, upon examining this premise, we can tell that there is a problem in Miller’s argument, for he is using identity to characterize real memory, and real memory to define identity.  Weirob tries to make the supposed circularity of Miller’s argument even more apparent by reiterating that we can imagine someone in heaven remembering her thoughts and actions and being identical to her.  From this, we can implicitly make the claim that her identity with a heavenly person is imaginable, and, as previously determined, therefore possible.  After asserting this, Weirob can reconstruct Miller’s conclusion:
 
(29)   So Weirob can survive.
 
       However, if one doubted that Weirob can survive then one would doubt that we can imagine someone in heaven remembering her thoughts and actions and being identical with her, since survival is simply identity with a future person (as previously asserted).  Therefore, Weirob concludes that Miller’s argument is circular.  However, while there is a distinct problem with Miller’s argument, circularity is not that problem.  A circular argument is one in which one of the premises is identical with the conclusion.  In this circumstance, strict circularity, as just defined, does not occur.  So, despite Weirob’s attempt to show that Miller’s argument is circular, Miller’s argument stands as flawed, but not circular.
       I have reconstructed Perry’s arguments on pages 27-30 in his Dialogues on Personal Identity and Immortality.  I have shown that, with the help of the above supplied premises, Weirob develops a valid counterargument to challenge Miller’s claims that identity is merely memory and that Weirob’s survival is possible.  I have also explicated Weirob’s argument for the circularity of Miller’s claims, and shown this argument made by Weirob to be flawed itself, despite the flawed nature of Miller’s argument.

Reconstruction from Perry's Dialogue on Personal Identity

Objections to Perry's Argument