Connecting Souls and Personality

We went deeper into our discussions on death in class after reading A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality. The book makes us think about the idea of souls, and offers the reader two different perspectives on them. On one hand, you have Gretchen Weirob who is not a beliver in our souls being connected to us and does not believe in any sort of afterlife. You also  have Sam Miller, who is trying to convince Gretchen of some sort of afterlife throughout the story by saying our souls live on after our bodies are dead. 
Gretchen says that since we only have access to our material bodies, we are not able to claim when a sould is around us because it is considered to be something immaterial. I personally agree with Sam's next claim that our bodies can express certain psychological characterisitcs we have like our emotions, so there is a connection of our bodies and souls. Gretchen is right about how we cannot be 100% certain of souls existence due to them not having a physical presence, but you could also say the same thing to argue against her point that our souls are seperate from our bodies.

I can understand the uncertainty  Gretchen feels about what happens with our souls after death, but would not expect most to feel the same way she does.  I think hoping for our souls to live on after us is an optimistic way a lot of people try look at their death.  So, I think Gretchen's views on souls may have to do with possible negative thoughts she has about death.

Comments

  1. HarrisonFebruary 10, 2019 at 10:08 AM

    I think that the reason Gretchen does not believe in an after life is because she is a philosopher and believes in something once it is proven true and that is why they are having the debate. I agree with the claim that since our bodies can express certain psychological characteristics that our bodies and souls are connected but Gretchen's argument against what Sam says in the dialogue is normally that souls are immaterial and cannot be certain they exist which is true and makes this whole dialogue pretty pointless to me because Sam is not going to be able to prove souls exist to Gretchen's satisfaction because they are immaterial and cannot be seen.

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  2. Ethan HerringMarch 14, 2019 at 11:21 PM

    "I can understand the uncertainty Gretchen feels about what happens with our souls after death, but would not expect most to feel the same way she does."

    This raises a question that is somewhat fundamental to how each individual philosophizes about people: Cartesian vs phenomenological analysis. That is, the perception of the world as the sum of many objects acting upon one another versus the study of consciousness and the study of the world through what we can learn from conscious experience and of the phenomena thereof. That is, as it relates to the original poster's question, does it matter if people agree with Weirob? In other words, does intersubjective agreement constitute substantial evidence to believe something? If not, for what *does* it count?

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