A Soul - Personal Identity

A soul is spiritual component that makes up every living being. The soul is is what makes up a person and what makes them unique and different from everyone else. It is what makes up someone's personality, and has no correlation to their physical body. The body and soul are separate, because although you may not look like you did a year ago, your soul doesn't change, it only learns and matures as you grow older.

P1: Sameness of body does not guarantee sameness of soul

P2: You can see the body, but not the soul

C: The soul of a person can not be judged to personal identity by reference to similarities to state of mind

Weirob makes an analogy that Miller picks the chocolate with the swirl on it cause she knows it has caramel inside. And so therefore, due to that judgement of the chocolate and its respective filling, Miller states that her judgement of the exterior helped her figure out what is going to be in the interior. But Weirob makes a point that if Miller had never ate or seen the swirl, how would she know it was caramel? And so Weirob asks Miller if she has never seen her soul before, how does she know it is the same, and that it hasn't changed from day to day.

Weirob states that due to that fact that we can not see the soul of another person, we don't actually know if they're soul or “personality” is the same simply because it looks like the same person. Therefore, the soul of somebody can change day after day, so in reality, does the concept of a “soul” even exist if we can see or touch it? Does this mean that perhaps the body and the mind are, after all, one unit?

Perry, John. A dialogue on personal identity