Summary Of Will Tom Sladek Survive By John Perry

The Problem of Personal Identity In the essay written by John Perry called “Will Tommy Vladek Survive?” Perry presents a very controversial topic. In this story Tommy Vladek is considered brain dead but his body is still totally functional. There is another child in the story who has had an accident, and his body is completely destroyed. The child’s body that is completely destroyed still has perfect brain function, and the doctors can put his brain into Tommy’s body. Perry presents different views on the topic of who will survive the operation, Tommy who is providing the body, or Sam who is providing the brain? When looking at the main question at hand. Who is Harry Vladek likely to bring home from the hospital? Perry states many times throughout his essay that, Tommy will probably not be the one who survives the operation. Perry is not 100% certain of this, but he states many different concepts of identity and the mind, to help understand who should survive the operation and why. These concepts include identity and similarity, body transfers, brain identity, mind identity and memory theory. The first main concept that Perry states is identity and similarity. He starts by stating the difference between identity and similarity, which most people use to describe the
Parry uses example’s to put the other theories in the wrong and makes this situation look like there is only one possible outcome. He uses the example of taking all the thoughts in your mind right now and calling them Fred, then taking all of the thoughts in your mind from a few seconds ago and calling them Frank. Parry then says for the reader to do the same thing, only the reader calls their thoughts something else. What Parry is getting at with this example is that people cannot share identical memories, if they if they could they would be the same