Summary of John Locke’s view on personal identity The concept of personal identity is a central philosophical component to a debate to which many theorists have contributed their theories to. One of the most prominent theories on personal identities was by John Locke, one of the influential theorist in the 17th century. Locke first begins by making an important distinction between the nature of identity as being relative, rather than absolute. Through this distinction Locke claims that, the questioning of something being identical to another will be relative to the “category” or context we are discussing it in. Without identifying “the category” or classifying the thing we are discussing, it is unreasonable to assume questions or explore …show more content…
As Locke advances into his reasoning, he expands on the definition of a person, as beings that are able to rationalize, perceive, and contemplate. These are all faculties that are in fact “conscious” or in other words, things that we are self- aware of. A person is aware of themselves as well as their surroundings, which they are able to perceive through their senses and from there, they are able to internally rationalize, think and interpret. Locke’s definition of a person would require them to possess a certain level of intellectual understanding and poses innate characteristic, such as those possessed by human, however this will evidently exclude all other animals from this category. The contextual meaning of consciousness also helps derive of the concept of self. According to Locke, through consciousness, we are self-aware and, therefore “self” can be used directly to describe ourselves (Jacobson: 55). The position of self is crucial to the theory as identity is often pertained in reference to an …show more content…
Locke’s does not take into account of the fact that human’s recollection of memories is limited, as time and age progresses it makes it difficult to remember or recall. Although, humans are self-aware and exhibit consciousness, not everything we have thought, rationalized or interpreted is available to us on command. This creates a problem because the complexities around the concept of consciousness require the psychological criterion as a necessary condition for this theory. The limitations placed on human memory demonstrate that the psychological link or relationship between a person at one time and at another time can be broken, which leads to new
Personal identity, in the context of philosophy, does not attempt to address clichéd, qualitative questions of what makes us us. Instead, personal identity refers to numerical identity or sameness over time. For example, identical twins appear to be exactly alike, but their qualitative likeness in appearance does not make them the same person; each twin, instead, has one and only one identity – a numerical identity. As such, philosophers studying personal identity focus on questions of what has to persist for an individual to keep his or her numerical identity over time and of what the pronoun “I” refers to when an individual uses it. Over the years, theories of personal identity have been established to answer these very questions, but the
John Locke believes that A is identical with B, if and only if, A remembers the thoughts, feelings, and actions had or done by B from a first-person point of view. This shows that the important feature, memory, is linking a person from the beginning of their life to the end of their life. Locke’s memory theory would look something like this: The self changes over time, so it may seem like personal identity changes too. However, even if you are changing, you are still retaining past memories. Therefore, if you can retain memories, memories are the link between you and an earlier you, so personal identity persists over time. So, memory is the necessary and sufficient condition of personal
Locke believed that the mind is blank upon birth. As a person grows and develops, so does their mind. He urged individuals to formulate theories and to test them through experiments. The fundamental claim is that human knowledge begins with sense experience and primarily is derived from it. Locke begins his philosophical examination of knowledge by trying to disprove the claim that some of our knowledge is original, in the sense that it comes from ideas which are innate or inborn. Locke's attempted refutation depends on a questionable assumption: if an individual has an idea, then that individual would understand it and assent to its content.
Review all beliefs for clarity and coherence.”(South University Online) Different from Descrate and his philosophy, empiricist John Locke had different thoughts on the mind and body. Locke felt that what really lead to knowledge of things was our experiences beginning at the time we are born, he believed that our brains were blank with no knowledge or information and only existed until our senses activated at the time we were born. Locke believed that as an individual lives life and grows older we are then filled with experiences that allows our mind to communicate with our bodies, something that Descrate was unable to answer since he believed that the mind and the body were totally separate. Locke also thought that some things just are for example, an object just is, whether it be broken, dissolved, melted, cut it just is because it remains the same, same volume, ounces and weight, this is known as the primary qualities, the secondary qualities he believed were created in the
He argued that personal identity goes hand in hand with the consciousness of someone. So if you switched bodies, you would still view your new body as “yourself” because your mind and consciousness is with it. Thomas Reid attempted to falsify Locke’s proposition by creating the “Brave Young Officer” situation. This objection is a story about a military officer. When the 40-year old officer goes to steal food, he remembers himself stealing an apple from his neighbors as a 10-year old child. Then, at 80-years old, the now general remembers stealing food as a 40-year old officer, but not as a 10-year old child. Locke would say that the general is both the same and not the same as the child. This is because the officer shares continuity of consciousness with the child and the general, so both the general and the child must be related. But also according to Locke, if something doesn’t share a continuous stream of memory, then they are not related. So the general and the child can’t be the same person if they don’t share continuity of consciousness. Reid argues: how could you be the same but not the same? How can continuity of memory or consciousness dictate personal identity if we forget our memories? Joseph Butler declared that John Locke’s theory was circular because the notion of memory it employs presupposes the notion of personal identity. Both critics favor a substance-view of personal
One of Locke’s statements that he discusses is that of an individual’s own person. Example, when an individual takes away something from nature through his/her hard work, it will not be considered as “common property” of all mankind no more, because it would belong ONLY to himself. For instance, If an individual picks up (fruits) under a tree, the so called fruit will automatically belong to him at the moment they were gathered, rather than at the
John Locke is a philosopher who wrote one of the first responses to the question of personal identity. Locke writes that you cannot say if something is the same or different unless you define what kind of identity you are looking at, he calls this relativity of identity. He then mentions that there are three different criterion for identity: bodily, human being, and personhood. Bodily states that if any matter has changed then it is no longer the same mass, human being states that the identity of a man stays the same as long as it continues the same life and personhood states that if something has a consciousness then it remains the same as longer as it consider itself itself. Now, when his view on identity is applied to Theseus’ ship one can see that he would believe that the ship at the destination would not be the same ship because it is only a body of matter and has no consciousness. One verify this by looking at one of his essays; he is talking about identity concerning animals and he states “there may be a manifest change of the parts; so that truly they are not either of them the same masses of matter, they be truly one of them the same oak and the other the same horse.”2 In this passage it shows that Locke believes the body of the living thing has changed and that they are classified as the same living thing is because of the life they
From Locke's point of view, a person is a "thinking intelligent being that has reason and reflection and can consider itself as itself...in different times and places...{through} only consciousness which is inseparable from thinking" and can only be considered the same person over time if he or she retains their memories. For Locke, it is the capacity to reason, understand, and browse through our memories and thoughts that makes a individual a full fledged person rather than being just a human being or dog or dolphin or any other non-human animal. This presents major implications on the concept of what identity over time is. Locke believed that when it came to this topic, our corporeal self was insignificant as living things cannot just depend on the sameness of particles to be considered to have th...
(11) John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter Nidditch, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1972. (II. xxvii. 6. 2-9) Pg. 332
Why the necessity to fully analyse the definition of identity? Locke believed that the identity of things was not always as readily discernable as what first meets the eye and as a consequence set about defining the identity of all things from physical objects, the identity of living entities and ultimately the identity of man and the identity of person.
John Locke was born on August 29, 1632. He was born in a quaint village, called Wrington, in the county of Somerset, to two Puritan parents. His father was a captain in the English Civil War, and was a country lawyer. With his father being so involved with the English government, Locke was blessed to receive the best education out there.
One of Locke’s largest points is "All ideas come from sensation or reflection” (Locke 101). He thinks that man is completely blank when they are born and that their basic senses are what gives them knowledge. Locke states, “Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper” (Locke 101). Locke is basically saying that human nature is like a blank slate, and how men experience life in their own ways is what makes them good or evil. Overall, Locke believes that any and all knowledge is only gained through life
Locke feels that we do not have any innate ideas. Then the question arises of
The personal identity continues to be same since a person is the same rational thing, same self, and thus the personal identity never changes (Strawson, 2014). Locke also suggests that personal identity has to change when the own self-changes and therefore even a little change in the personal identity has to change the self. He also provides an argument that a person cannot question what makes something today to remain the same thing it was a day ago or yesterday because one must specify the kind of thing it was. This is because something might be a piece of plastic but be a sharp utensil and thus suggest that the continuity of consciousness is required for something to remain the same yesterday and today. John Locke also suggests that two different things of a similar type cannot be at the same time at the same place. Therefore, the criteria of the personal identity theory of Locke depends on memory or consciousness remaining the same (Strawson, 2014). This is because provided a person has memory continuity and can remember being the same individual, feeling, thinking, and doing specific things, the individual can remain to be the same person irrespective of bodily
What is personal identity? This question has been asked and debated by philosophers for centuries. The problem of personal identity is determining what conditions and qualities are necessary and sufficient for a person to exist as the same being at one time as another. Some think personal identity is physical, taking a materialistic perspective believing that bodily continuity or physicality is what makes a person a person with the view that even mental things are caused by some kind of physical occurrence. Others take a more idealist approach with the belief that mental continuity is the sole factor in establishing personal identity holding that physical things are just reflections of the mind. One more perspective on personal identity and the one I will attempt to explain and defend in this paper is that personal identity requires both physical and psychological continuity; my argument is as follows: