Writing Assignment #3

Write a two-page (double-spaced, 12-point Times New Roman font, 1-inch margins) essay on each of the following three topics. (You should submit a total of 6 pages of written work.) Your essays should NOT include any introduction, conclusion, footnotes, bibliography, or any other paraphernalia of the standard college term paper. Avoid the use of jargon (any term that would be unfamiliar to someone who has not taken a philosophy course) and '-isms' (for example, 'relativism,' 'subjectivism,' 'nihilism') UNLESS you give a precise definition of the term with its first occurrence in your essay. Best to play it safe, though: a philosophical essay ought to be written in clear, and so short, declarative sentences.

1. (1)  In John Perry's A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality, Gretchen Weirob challenges Dave Cohen to find a way to "break out of the circle of using real memory to explain identity, and identity to mark the difference between real and apparent memory" (p. 30). First explain how, according to Gretchen, the memory view of personal identity is circular. Then explain how Cohen attempts to break out of the circle Gretchen has described. Do you think he is successful? Why or why not?

2. (2)  Shelly Kagan claims that "there are some implications of rejecting the existence requirement that may be rather hard to swallow" (p. 217). What is the version of the existence requirement that appears as a premise in Epicurus' argument? What are the implications of rejecting it that Kagan finds hard to swallow? (Hint: here you need to explain what a possible person is and how they are harmed.) How can these implications be avoided by adopting what Kagan calls the "modest" version of the existence requirement?

3. (3)  Kagan thinks that death can be, and very often is, bad for the person who dies (and this is so because death deprives that person of the goods of life). But Kagan denies that it is reasonable or appropriate to fear death. Explain as clearly as you can his view. What are the conditions he places on reasonable or appropriate fear? What are the different things he thinks we might fear in fearing death? And why does he think it isn't reasonable or appropriate to fear any of these things?