John Perry’s Problem with Person Identity

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I believe that Gretchen’s objection raises great questions. How do we know we are dealing with the same person from one moment to another? Since we can’t see or touch a soul, how do we know that we are dealing with the same soul from one moment to another? It is like a candy bar with a caramel filling. Even though the wrapper of of the bar may say it is filled with caramel, the only way I can know for sure is if I bite into the bar to see, feel, and taste the caramel filling and thus confirm that there is a caramel versus a mint filling in the chocolate shell. But since we can’t look into somebody’s body to see, feel, or taste their soul, you can’t know whether their body is containing the same soul, a stream of souls, a different soul every 10 minutes, or any other characteristics of a soul that may exist.

While Gretchen’s response may seem convincing, I feel that some holes may have been left unfilled in her response. In particular, I feel as though the 2nd premise hinges too heavily on the idea of induction. While inductive reasoning is widely accepted by many to determine whether a principle is correct, it isn’t exactly accurate. For example, we say that the sun will rise everyday because it has risen everyday in the past. Saying that the sun is guaranteed to rise next morning based on inductive reasoning implies that the future will always resemble the past. In Gretchen’s 2nd premise of her objection, she states that we have justified beliefs that we are dealing with the same person from one moment to another and her reasoning is based on inductive reasoning. Since we can’t observe any characteristics of a person’s soul, we not only lack certain knowledge that a person is the same from one moment to another, but we also lack any justification whatsoever for believing that a person is the same at different times because induction doesn’t provide us with proof or knowledge that something will happen, only whether it has happened in the past. This possible response may be a little bit over the edge because it appeals to skepticism to undermine Gretchen’s argument, but I feel as though it may be effective because there are problems with using induction as the sole method to find reason.