John Perry Argument Reconstruction-A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality, p. 27-30

Passage:
 
MILLER: I can remember only my own past thoughts and feelings, and you only yours.  Of course, everyone would readily admit that.  Locke’s insight is to take this relation as the source of identity and not just its consequence.  To remember—or more plausibly, to be able to remember—the thoughts and feelings of a person who was conscious in the past is juts what it is to be that person.
       Now you can see that this easily solves the problem of the possibility of survival.  As I was saying, all you need to do is imagine someone at some future time, not on this earth and not with your present thoughts and feelings, remembering the very conversation we are having now.  This does not require sameness or anything else, but it amounts to sameness of person.  So, now will you admit it?
 
WEIROB: No, I don’t.
 
MILLER: Well, what’s the problem now?
 
WEIROB: …We must distinguish—as I’m sure you’ll agree—between actually remembering and merely seeming to remember.  Many men who think that they are Napoleon claim to remember losing the battle of Waterloo.  We may suppose them to be sincere, and to really seem to remember it.  But they do not actually remember because they were not at the battle and are not Napoleon.
 
MILLER: Of course I admit that we must distinguish between actually remembering and only seeming to.
 
WEIROB: And you will admit too, I trust, that the thought of some person at some far place and some distant time seeming to remember this conversation I am having with you would not give me the sort of comfort that the prospect of survival is supposed to provide.  I would have no reason to anticipate future experiences of this person, simply because she is to seem to remember my experiences.  The experiences of such a deluded imposter are not ones I can look forward to having.
 
MILLER: I agree.
 
WEIROB: So the mere possibility of someone in the future seeming to remember this conversation does not show the possibility of my surviving.  Only the possibility of someone actually remembering this conversation—or, to be precise, the experiences I am having—would show that…
…Let me try to make it clear with another example.  Imagine two persons.  One is talking to you, saying certain words, having certain thoughts, and so forth.  The other is not talking to you at all, but is in the next room being hypnotized.  The hypnotist gives to the person a post-hypnotic suggestion that upon awakening he will remember having had certain thoughts and having uttered certain words to you.  The thoughts and words he mentions happen to be just the thoughts and words which the first person actually thinks and says.  Do you understand the situation?
 
MILLER: Yes, continue.
 
WEIROB: Now, in a while, both of the people are saying sentences which begin, “I remember saying to Sam Miller—“ and “I remember thinking as I talked to Sam Miller.”  And they both report remembering just the same thoughts and utterances.  One of these will be remembering and the other only seeming to remember, right?
 
MILLER:  Of course.
 
WEIROB:  Now which one is actually remembering?… They both satisfy the conditions of remembering, for they both seem to remember.  So there must be some further condition that the one satisfies and the other does not.  I am trying to get you to say what that further condition is.
 
MILLER: Well, I said that the one who had been in this room talking would be remembering.
 
WEIROB: In other words, given two putative rememberers of some past thought or action, the real rememberer is the one who, in addition to seeming to remember the past thought or action, actually thought it or did it.
 
MILLER: Yes.
 
WEIROB: That is to say, the one who is identical with the person who did the past thinking and uttering. 
 
MILLER: Yes, I admit it.
 
WEIROB:  So you argument just amounts to this.  Survival is possible, because imaginable.  It is imaginable, because my identity with some Heavenly person is imaginable.  To imagine it, we imagine a person in Heaven who, First, seems to remember my thought and actions and Second, is me.
       Surely there could hardly be a tighter circle.  If I have doubts that the Heavenly person is me, I will have doubts as to whether she is really remembering or only seeming to.  No one could doubt the possibility of some future person who, after death, seemed to remember the things he thought and did.  But that possibility does not resolve the issue about the possibility of survival.  Only the possibility of someone actually remembering could do that—for that, as we agree, is sufficient for identity.  But doubts about survival and identity simply go over without remainder into doubts about whether the memories would be actual or merely apparent.  You guarantee me no more than the possibility of a deluded Heavenly imposter.
 
Argument Reconstruction:

Miller’s Original Argument:
1. We can imagine someone in Heaven remembering Gretchen Weirob's thoughts and feelings. (P)
2. A person can remember only their own thoughts and feelings. (P)
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)
4. So we can imagine someone identical with Gretchen Weirob in heaven. (from 1, 2, 3)
5. If something is imaginable, then 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 identity is possible. (from 5)
8. Survival is identity with a future person. (P)
9. Gretchen Weirob’s survival is possible. (from 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)
 
Weirob first attacks (1).  She (implicitly) agrees or does not challenge 2 and 3 at this point.  The argument proceeds as follows: The concept of what it is to “remember” is first analyzed.  Memory is then broken down into “seeming to remember” and “actually remembering.”  From here, Weirob shows that if “seeming to remember” is what Miller initally meant, then his argument is invalid and it is not possible that she, Weirob, will sruvive.  If “actually remembering” is what is meant by Miller,  then his argument is, Weirob attempts to show, circular.
10. Many men who think they are Napoleon, but are not actually, claim to remember losing the battle of Waterloo. (P)
11. These men seem to remember losing the battle of Waterloo. (P)
12. Therefore, these men do not actually remember losing the battle, they only seem to remember it. (from 2, 10, 11)
13. Therefore, there is a difference between actually remembering and only seeming to remember. (from 12)
14. A person can seem to remember X’s thoughts and feelings without being identical with X. (from 10, 12)
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)
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)
       This is not sufficient to show that it is possible that Gretchen Weirob is identical with a heavenly person, so since identity is necessary for survival (7), this is not sufficient to show that Gretchen Weirob survives.
 
18. A person talks to you. (P)
19. Another person is hypnotized into believing they talked to you. (P)
20. Both people say the same thing and report remembering the same thoughts and experiences. (P)
21. Therefore, upon examining the content of what they are now thinking or saying, there is no way to tell the difference between the person actually remembering and the one only seeming to remember. (from 18, 19, 20)
22. Examining the content of what a person is now thinking or saying cannot establish whether that person is identical with a person existing at an earlier time. (from 14, 21)
 
Miller's proposed account of real memory (as reconstructed by Weirob):
23. Really remembering  a thought or action is just seeming to remember  it plus having really thought it or done it. (P)
 
Miller's argument using this proposed account (as reconstructed by Weirob):
24. If X really thought or did something, X is identical with the person who thought it or did it. (P)
25. So Miller's proposal is that real memory is the combination of seeming to remember and identity. (P)
26. We can imagine someone in heaven (i) remembering my thought and action in heaven, and (ii) being identical with me. (P)
27. So my identity with a heavenly person is imaginable. (from 26)
28. So my identity with a heavenly person is possible. (from 5, 27)
29. So I can survive. (from 7, 28)
30. But anyone who had doubts about 29 would have doubts about 26(ii). (P)
 
Argument Explanation:
       (Because this argument is a dialogue, it deviates from the argument form that we have dealt with previously.  In this case, the reconstruction is best suited to the back-and-forth pattern that occurs in the actual passage.)  The general structure of  the argument is as follows: Miller begins by making an argument for identity being equivalent with memory, and then uses this in an attempt to show Weirob how it is possible that she (Weirob) will survive.  Then, Weirob wages a counterargument that differentiates between apparent and actual memory.  Once Weirob has made this distinction, she can prove Miller wrong on both fronts by showing that, if he intended to use “seeming to remember”, then the argument does not show the possibility of her survival, and, if Miller intended to use “actually rememmering”, then he is arguing in a circle.  The best method of reconstructing this argument is to first try to summarize the arguments each character makes, then try to formalize each summary.
       First, reconstruct Miller’s original argument.  Miller makes the argument that memory is identity.  He states (further in the passage, but still explicitly) that we can imagine someone in Heaven remembering Gretchen Weirob’s thoughts and feelings.  He says that a person can remember only their own thoughts and feelings.  He states that to remember the thoughts and feelings of a person who was conscious in the past is just what it is to be that person.   From this, Miller can conclude that we can imagine someone identical with Gretchen Weirob in Heaven.  Now that Miller has a foothold (because it is imaginable that there will be someone identical with Gretchen Weirob in Heaven), we must insert the premise that if something is imaginable, it is possible.  This is not exactly an implicit premise, as we have understood the term from the other argument reconstruction examples; but is, instead, restated later in the passage whenWeirob herself paraphrases Miller’s argument in an attempt to show its circularity.  By drawing on Weirob’s later recapitulation of Miller’s argument, we can reconstruct Miller’s original argument more easily here.
       Having established that if something is imaginable, then it is possible, we can conclude validly that if identity is imaginable, then it is possible.  We must now recharacterize identity in terms of survival in order to conclude that Weirob’s survival is possible.  We need to supply the premise that survival is identity with a future person. With this, we have completed Miller’s argument that Gretchen Weirob’s survival is possible. 
       In reconstructing Weirob’s argument, we see that her first response to Miller’s argument is to challenge his assertion that we can imagine someone in Heaven remembering Gretchen Weirob’s thoughts and feelings.  She gives a clear example of a case in which several people are deluded and think they are each Napoleon.  Obviously, none of these men is Napoleon, but they all strongly believe it and all seem to remember losing the battle of Waterloo.  The example illustrates the difference between seeming to remember and actually remembering, which is a key, if not the key, point in Weirob’s argument.
       Next, once the distinction between actually remembering and seeming to remember has been made, we can conclude that the possibility of someone in the future seeming to remember the conversation does not show the possibility of Weirob surviving, since seeming to remember is not equivalent with identity.  Weirob uses another example to clarify the argument for Miller and to further refute his point that to be able to remember the thoughts and feelings of a person who was conscious in the past is just what it is to be that person.  Weirob explains that there are two people, one who is actually conversing and one who is hypnotized into believing and remembering that she was conversing.  If both people say the same thing and report remembering the same thoughts and experiences, there is no way to tell the difference between the two from the content of what they are now thinking or saying.  From this, Weirob can validly conclude that to be able to remember the thoughts and feelings of a person who was conscious in the past is not just what it is to be that person.  Weirob has now taken to completion the “seeming to remember” branch of the remembering argument, showing that “seeming to remember” cannot extablish the possibility of her survival.
       Not yet finished her attack, Weirob then rephrases Miller’s account of real memory as seeming to remember a thought or action plus having really thought or done it.  Now Weirob has Miller trapped.  We can reconstruct this part of the argument in a straightforward way, drawing on much of what Weirob explicitly states.  The point of this section of Weirob’s response is to try to prove the circularity of Miller’s argument, but this is where Weirob’s argument runs into trouble.  Miller is arguing that we can imagine someone in Heaven who remembers Weirob’s thoughts and actions and is identical to her.  If this is the case, then  her identity with a Heavenly person is imaginable, and, since whatever is imaginable is possible, Weirob’s identity with a Heavenly being is possible.  To continue in this fashion, if Weirob’s identity with a Heavenly being is possible, her survival is possible.   However, upon consideration of the above argument, we now note that Weirob’s survival being possible is assumed by the claim that we can imagine a Heavenly being who remembers Weirob’s thoughts and action and is identical to her.  Weirob concludes that Miller’s argument is circular.  On the strict definition of circular, however, Miller’s argument is not circular, although very flawed.  Strictly speaking, a circular argument is one in which one of the premises is the conclusion, which is not the case with Miller’s argument.  Despite this error on Weirob’s part, she is  still able to show that, regardless of which type of remembering Miller intended (whether “seeming to remember” or “actually remembering”), Miller’s argument does not hold.

Sample Paper on Perry's Dialogue

Objections to Perry's Argument