Personal Identity and Immortality Notes

C. PERSONAL IDENTITY

The dialogue involves Gretchen Weirob, a philosophy teacher, and her friends Sam Miller, a chaplain, and Dave Cohen, a former student.
The conversations occur in Weirob's hospital room in the days leading up to her death from a motorcycle accident.

Cohen expresses disbelief at Weirob's hopeless situation despite her lucidity.
Weirob explains that her vital organs are irreparably damaged, but her brain remains uninjured, maintaining her clarity.
Miller acknowledges Weirob's impending death and offers help.
Weirob criticizes Miller's uncomforting statement about her being a "goner."

Miller usually comforts the dying with assurances of survival and God's mercy but finds it difficult with Weirob's lack of belief in God.
Weirob states that even an improbable possibility can be comforting and asks Miller to persuade her that survival after death is conceivable.
She clarifies that "possible" means conceivable, not necessarily probable or conforming to physical laws.
She challenges Miller to explain how survival makes sense given the inevitable decomposition of her body.

Miller suggests various conceptions of immortality, including life with a body in the Hereafter, life without a body (Greek idea), and merging with the flow of being.
Weirob dismisses these, asserting that survival means the continued existence of the same person, capable of experiencing, remembering, and anticipating.
She emphasizes that identity is the only relation that supports anticipation and memory, rejecting the idea of simply merging with being.
Weirob gets emotional about the misuse of the term "survival" when it does not imply the continued existence of the same person.

Miller admits that the notion of survival as the continued existence of the same person seems outdated in modern theology.
He vaguely believes that Weirob will live again, with or without a body, and that they will communicate and grow spiritually.
Weirob reiterates that Miller only needs to convince her of the possibility of real survival, not some ersatz version that equates to ceasing to exist.

Miller suggests that Weirob simply continues to exist after her body dies, but Weirob finds this nonsensical given that her body will decompose.
She uses the analogy of a box of Kleenex being burned to ashes and then someone claiming that the same box survives on a shelf at home.
Miller responds that there could be an identical box of Kleenex, implying similarity, but Weirob insists that similarity is not identity.
She stresses that for survival to be comforting, there must be one person who exists now and continues to exist in the Hereafter.

Miller clarifies that he doesn't believe Weirob is merely a live human body, but rather that her soul, self, or mind is fundamental to her identity.
Weirob questions whether Miller uses "soul," "self," and "mind" to mean the same thing.
Miller says the nonphysical and nonmaterial aspects of her, her consciousness, is what he means and sees no relevant distinction at that moment.
Weirob asks what the subject of consciousness is, suggesting it is merely the body, which will soon be buried and cease to be conscious.

Miller invokes Descartes' distinction between the body and the mind, asserting that Weirob's mind or soul is immaterial and lodged in her body.
He says that it is this soul that must be identical to the person present now and the one in heaven in the future.
Weirob confirms that Miller is saying she is not really her body, but a soul that cannot be perceived by the senses because it's immaterial.

Weirob questions how Miller knows that the soul he is confronting now is the same one he encountered at Dorsey's, since souls are imperceptible.
Miller says that to say it is the same soul and to say it is the same person, are the same.
Weirob poses the question of how Miller knows he's talking to Gretchen Weirob and not someone else.
Miller says that he can see who he is talking to.
Weirob reminds him that all he can see is her body and that he said Gretchen Weirob is not corporeal but that she is a soul, inferring that Miller must be making a judgement about souls.