John Perry’s “A Dialogue On Personal Identity And Immorality” discusses how personal identities can be explained by the brain theory, the memory theory, the body theory, or the soul theory. The theories of what and where your personal identity resides develop from the problems with the understanding of what personal identity is and how it relates to the way the word identical is defined. In this paper I will explain three assumptions that are made about identity and how when philosophically thought out can be denied creating problems about personal identity. In response to the problems I will compare all the different theories and defend the memory theory as I state objections made by the brain, body, or soul theories along with evaluating the objections to adequately respond with why the memory theory is superior.
The problem with personal identity is derived …show more content…
In the argument by the body theory about how Julia is no longer able to identify her self as Julia because she is now in the body of Mary and has the abilities of her, the memory theory can respond in the sense that when Julia wakes up it will be from her memory that she recognizes things and people she has seen before not her body. She will remember her family and friends not Mary’s; also when a blind person sees someone they know its not by looking at there body’s that they recognize them its by the memory of their voice or the sound of their footsteps. Confirming that the identity resides in the memory and not the body. In response to the soul theory the memory can point out that there is no way to know if the same soul is present in a body at all different times but leaving the person exactly the same with no differences as the souls change. This shows that the memory theory is more likely to hold ones personal identity rather then the soul