Perry's 'Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality': An Exploration of Faith?
In A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality, John Perry explores the two eponymous concepts logistically--in abstract terms, but with a stress on the tangible or the quantifiable and how these could lend credence to the idea of the survival of death, or not. In addition, as I see it, it is also an exploration of different common presentations of faith, or a lack thereof.
This is significant philosophically because common presentations of ideology are an inevitability as long as the word 'common' remains subjective, but I do not think it is a point of particular contention to assert that majority opinions arise, if not from direct contact and conformity pressures or someone merely being convinced by discourse, then they arise from a convergent evolution of ideas. Convergent evolution is no coincidence; it is different people applying the same logical mechanisms to arrive at the same conclusion, only in different contexts. This is a big part of what lends inter-subjectivity its value in philosophy.
Because of the importance of inter-subjectivity in philosophy, and because there are so many faithful people, I will make an argument of my own regarding Perry's Dialogue. This argument, however, will be of a kind which is more like Doughty's or May's central arguments: arguing more abstractly in favor of a value or perspective through a Stoic lens--for its practical effect on one's levels of suffering--as opposed to Perry's arguments for and against the possibility of something of philosophical significance.
I argue that, to continue with what I believe Cohen was trying to get across to Weirob before he was so tragically cut short, in Stoic terms of good and bad wherein less suffering is better, it is better to have faith than not to have faith.
To clarify, I see Perry's dialogues as an exploration into faith because Weirob represents the side without faith, Miller the faithful side, and Cohen represents something in the middle. Weirob is a constant skeptic, Miller always wants to believe, and Cohen serves as an intermittent arbitrator, due to his neutrality. Faith, here, I define as 'knowingly believing something is so in spite of lack of evidence.'
Cohen, before being interrupted by Weirob's death, begins speaking about how anticipating a tomorrow in spite of evidence to the contrary would make everyone happy, so, he says, "Where exactly is the mistake?" (49). That is, where is the harm in believing things that make us happy, so long as it does not harm anyone else? Whatever is going to happen is going to happen, so why worry oneself about it and suffer before the event, as well as--in the case that things do not go as hoped--during and after, when the believer feels let down? Even more importantly, if things do go as desired, unless a non-anticipator spent their faithless time before-hand working on solutions, they will have suffered for nothing.
This is significant philosophically because common presentations of ideology are an inevitability as long as the word 'common' remains subjective, but I do not think it is a point of particular contention to assert that majority opinions arise, if not from direct contact and conformity pressures or someone merely being convinced by discourse, then they arise from a convergent evolution of ideas. Convergent evolution is no coincidence; it is different people applying the same logical mechanisms to arrive at the same conclusion, only in different contexts. This is a big part of what lends inter-subjectivity its value in philosophy.
Because of the importance of inter-subjectivity in philosophy, and because there are so many faithful people, I will make an argument of my own regarding Perry's Dialogue. This argument, however, will be of a kind which is more like Doughty's or May's central arguments: arguing more abstractly in favor of a value or perspective through a Stoic lens--for its practical effect on one's levels of suffering--as opposed to Perry's arguments for and against the possibility of something of philosophical significance.
I argue that, to continue with what I believe Cohen was trying to get across to Weirob before he was so tragically cut short, in Stoic terms of good and bad wherein less suffering is better, it is better to have faith than not to have faith.
To clarify, I see Perry's dialogues as an exploration into faith because Weirob represents the side without faith, Miller the faithful side, and Cohen represents something in the middle. Weirob is a constant skeptic, Miller always wants to believe, and Cohen serves as an intermittent arbitrator, due to his neutrality. Faith, here, I define as 'knowingly believing something is so in spite of lack of evidence.'
Cohen, before being interrupted by Weirob's death, begins speaking about how anticipating a tomorrow in spite of evidence to the contrary would make everyone happy, so, he says, "Where exactly is the mistake?" (49). That is, where is the harm in believing things that make us happy, so long as it does not harm anyone else? Whatever is going to happen is going to happen, so why worry oneself about it and suffer before the event, as well as--in the case that things do not go as hoped--during and after, when the believer feels let down? Even more importantly, if things do go as desired, unless a non-anticipator spent their faithless time before-hand working on solutions, they will have suffered for nothing.
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