The identity objection
Even if something survives, nothing guarantees it would still be me.
Objects to
Locke, Paul Ricœur
- Suppose some part of us escapes death. That part must still be me, and not an impersonal remnant: a survival that would be no one's would console no one.
- But what makes me myself, whether one seeks it in a body, in the continuity of a memory, or in the story of a life, holds to that very life, to its ties and its history. Strip all that away, and it becomes hard to say in what way what remains would still be the same person.
- The hope is then caught in a vise: either what survives resembles me enough to be me, and it would take almost a body and a memory; or it is a pure soul, and one struggles to recognize anyone in it.
Therefore So immortality, supposing it occurs, might save something while losing precisely the person: what would survive may no longer be my .
Deepenings
Memory and narrative
- ties identity not to a substance but to the continuity of consciousness and memory: I am the same as the one whose deeds I remember.
- adds narrative to this: a person is the story they tell themselves and that others tell of them. In both cases, the survival of a soul without memory or history would be no one's in particular.
Possible resolutions of the objection
Challenges
Problem