Perry's Dialogue, Night I The three nights of Perry's Dialogue examine three theories of personal identity. The first is what we might call a substance account (that's a technical term.) Identity is carried by a certain thing, namely your soul. The second night offers a psychological account of personal identity -- that it is memory that knits the stages of a person together into a single whole. And the third night considers, first, the view …showed first 75 words of 1204 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1204 total…to be an invisible, intangible, undetectable thing that somehow makes us who we are. That's not just common sense. That's a very strange metaphysical notion that has somehow crept into the way people talk. Maybe there is such a thing. But it's not obvious. It's also not obvious that it matters, since -- to reapeat yet again -- whether there is a soul and whether there is life after death simply aren't the same question.