There is No Captain Kirk: A Theory of Universal Lack of Personal Identity :: Identity Essays

There is No Captain Kirk A Theory of Universal Lack of Personal Identity There atomic number 18 multiple ways to realise the second scenario provided to us. In general, the Captain Kirks in scenario two are either identical or they are not. Since we know that anything can only be numerically identical to itself, we in like manner know that the two Kirks are not numerically or perfectly identical to each other. Thus, the question we are left with is how are the two Kirks identical and how are they not? In the first scenario, we only witness that there is only one Captain Kirk throughout, therefore we recognise the assumption that the Kirk on the surface of the planet and the one that stood on the transporter platform are numerically identical to each other and that they are in particular the same Kirk. In the second scenario, the two Kirks that we witness are identical in respects to dead personate, brain, memory, and functionality. However, there ar e many reasons that these factors do not make the two Kirks the same person.The two Kirks appear to be identical physically. This is known as bodily identity, which is in short, the theory that you are your body and that wherever your body goes there you are. Daniel C. Dennett refutes this theory in Where Am I? using the following argumentIf Tom and Dick switch brains, Tom is the fellow with Dicks former body just ask him hell claim to be Tom, and tell you the most intimate details of Toms autobiography. (See Endnote 1) John Perry also discusses this in A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality Weirob And would you reason conversely also? If there were in this bed Barbara Walters body that is, the body you see every night on the news would you infer that it was not me, Gretchen Weirob, in the bed? Miller Of course I would. How would you have come by Barbara Walters body? Weirob But then merely extend this principle to heaven, and you will see that your conception of survival is without sense.