In his “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” John Locke discusses personal identity where he tries to show that personal identity depends on our memories. Locke also discuses some of the changes that are possible in our constitution that still result in the same personal identity. However, I think that Locke fails to account for certain aspects of memory that effect personal identity which leads me to think personal identity may not be what Locke proposes it to be. Locke distinguishes between three types of substances: God, finite intelligences and bodies. God is infinite and his identity cannot be doubted, whereas finite intelligences have their own beginning of existence as their identity, for example souls. (Essay II.xxvii.2) By identity Locke means being able to tell the difference between things, however similar, that exist at the same time. (Essay II.xxvii.1) Bodies have the same identity as long as there is no addition or subtraction of any particles of matter. (Essay II.xxvii.3) Organisms such as animals, can be identified through the continued existence of the same life with changing particles of matter that are organized to meet the needs of that life. (Essay II.xxvii.5) Locke thinks this is where identity of man also resides, he states, “… identity of the same man consists in the continuation of the same continued life … vitally organized to the same organized body”. (Essay II.xxvii.6) Locke then differentiates between what a person is and what a man is. A person for Locke is a being that can think, is intelligent and knows it can think, “…a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as self…” (Essay II.xxvii.9) Personal identity, moreover, depends on consciousness of pas... ... middle of paper ... ...personal identity is also not real. This leads me to think that Locke’s theory does not account for the possibility of false memories. Furthermore, we know today our memories are not perfect, the way I think Locke perceived them to be. For example, eyewitnesses have been known to misremember events. Since our memories are not always perfect, maybe personal identity depends on something else. Locke proposed great ideas concerning the understanding of personal identity. The notion of man and how it is different from what a person is helps to understand many scenarios such as: two persons switching bodies or a person switching his body with an animal. Locke’s ideas regarding two souls being able to be the same person or one soul being able to be different persons are also very interesting. However, I do not fully agree with some aspects of Locke’s theory of memory.
The psychological continuity claims that personal identity is a necessary condition for personal identity persistence. According to the psychological continuity, “A person X at t is identical with Y at t* if and only if Y is psychologically continuous with X.” According to John Locke” identity of persons, is identity of consciousness” What this means is that you can change your body entirely but still be the same person because it only consider the mind. The mind is what stays the same hence psychological continuity is a necessary condition for personal identity. Though, Locke’s argument might seem convincing it’s has a lot of fallacies. A strong objector to that argument was Reid. Reid suggested through his “brave soldier” example that Locke’s argument isn’t the basis for personal identity. First, let me point out that psychological continuity has a chain of person stages connected by episodic memory. Also, psychological continuity claims that as long as you remember now being the same person in the past, then your body right now is identical to the same person you were before. In other words, if you lose your memories, then you aren’t the same person as
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
Personal identity is a nonphysical structure and cannot be found within the soul or in the body. Due to the separation between consciousness and body, Locke proclaims that physical injuries do not influence who somebody is. Personal identity is limited to an individuals compacity to continue the sameness of consciousness. Locke states that “whatever past actions [a man] cannot reconcile or appropriate to that present self by consciousness, can be no more concerned in than if [it] had never been done”, (Locke 4). which proclaims that the forgotten experience was not part of them at all. According to Locke, who a person is, can be tracked by their memories of their life previously. Therefore, Locke’s views imply the body of Clive is constantly harboring new consciousness that comprises different personal identities. Since each “new” life of Clive every few seconds is oblivious to the lives before, the multiple personal identities must not be a part of his present state or
The question of personal identity is very intuitive, yet very difficult to define. Essentially, what makes you, you? John Locke was one philosopher who attempted to answer this question. He proposed a psychological theory to define personal identity. His theory does have some merit, but it is not a correct definition of personal identity, since there are some counter-examples that cannot be accounted for. My argument will prove that Locke’s theory of personal identity is false.
John Locke's account of identity was a radical rethinking on the subject of personal identity. Moreover, his conception of personal identity shaped modern thought about the subject by placing the emphasis on a psychological criterion . Locke argued that there is a distinction between the human being, the person, and the soul, and that the identity of the person relies upon the continuation of the same consciousness. In other words, Locke believed that personal identity remains if the same consciousness remained. However, at the time of publication, Locke was heavily criticised by those who argued that his uses of the word 'consciousness' was too ambiguous. Some, such as Thomas Reid, interpreted Locke as equating consciousness with memory, and as a result of the fallible nature of memory, argued that Locke's account of personal identity failed .
Locke says that all ideas come from experience and that that experience can be broken into two categories of perception, sensation and reflection. Sensation is what comes from our senses analyzing external objects. To hold an object and feel if it is hot or cold or if it is soft or spiky, sensations come from the senses interacting with external things. Reflection comes from within. It is the mind reflecting and thinking about its own operation. Locke states that reflection is being conscious of the mind and examining “thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing and all the different actings of our own minds”. According to Locke every idea is either derived from sensation or reflection. He states “ he has not any idea in his mind but what one of these two have imprinted.” Locke goes on to explain evidence to support this by using children as an example. By simply being alive in the world children are being imprinted with infinite amounts of ideas as they experience things like light and color and tough and smell. If a child never tasted an apple they would not have the idea of what an apple tastes, it would need to come from the sensation or through the senses. Children do not obtain ideas through reflection because it takes more attention and contemplation. Children are too occupied with gaining ideas through external objects and sensation to concentrate on reflection and it only occurs once the child gets older. Besides classifying the process of gaining ideas as sensation and reflection Locke also talks of primary and secondary ideas. Primary ideas come through one sense, while secondary ideas come through multiple senses. This concept is important in Locke’s idea of sense impressions and obtaining
For individual property to exist, there must be a means for individuals to appropriate the things around them. Locke starts out with the idea of the property of person; each person owns his or her own body, and all the labor that they perform with the body. When an individual adds their own labor, their own property, to a foreign object or good, that object becomes their own because they have added their labor. This appropriation of goods does not demand the consent of humankind in general, each person has license to appropriate things in this way by individual initiative.
Locke believes that everyone is born as a blank slate. According to Locke there is no innate human nature but human nature is something we create. And because we are born as an equal blank slate all men have the opportunity to create human nature therefore Locke believed all men are created equal. Unlike Bentham Locke believed that government needed to take a step back and allow for each individual to have the right to three things: life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. The Governments role should not be in dictating people what to do but to allow individuals to their three
Locke feels that we do not have any innate ideas. Then the question arises of
In John Locke’s work he talks about how we obtain our thought and belief of the real world from our sense like smell, touch, sight. His argument is that you cannot get representation about everyday life through experience you need your sense to help find the truth of reality. In the reading above Locke talks about internal ideas, and those ideas being taken from particular things, this is stating that the mind plays tricks by creating stereotypes for us to compare ourselves to everyday in our reality. Locke also talks about mental representations which are the picture we have in our mind of thing we have obtained from our sense. For example if you were to picture a cinnamon roll cooking in the oven you could smell it if you have smelled it
In his essay “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” John Locke makes a connection between memory and consciousness and called this connection the memory theory. The memory theory states that if “a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, [and is] the same thinking thing, in different times and places” then it is continuously the same rational being has a consciousness (Locke 1959). Locke ties the consciousness and memory together by saying that “as far as … consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of that person”; meaning that if a person has memories of their existence and actions they are the same person. Locke connects the memory
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
So the mind at birth is a tabula rasa, a blank slate, and is informed only by “experience,” that is, by sense experience and acts of reflection. Locke built from this an epistemology beginning with a pair of distinctions: one between SIMPLE and COMPLEX ideas and another between PRIMARY and SECONDARY qualities. Simple ideas originate in any one sense (though some of them, like “motion,” can derive either from the sense of sight or the sense of touch). These ideas are simple in the sense that they cannot be further broken down into yet simpler entities. (If a person does not understand the idea of “yellow,” you can’t explain it to him. All you can do is point to a sample and say, yellow.) These simple ideas are Locke’s primary data, his psychological atoms. All knowledge is in one way or another built up out of them.
Personal identity examines what makes a person at one time identical with a person at another. Many philosophers believe we are always changing and therefore, we cannot have a persisting identity if we are different from one moment to the next. However, many philosophers believe there is some important feature that determines a person’s identity and keeps it persistent. For John Locke, this important feature is memory, and I agree. Memory is the most important feature in determining a person’s identity as memory is the necessary and sufficient condition of personal identity.
The first philosopher, John Locke, laid the foundations of modern empiricism. Locke is a representational realist who touches reality through feelings. He believes that experience gives us knowledge (ideas) that makes us able to deal with the world external to our minds. His meaning of ideas is "the immediate object of perception, thought, or understanding." Locke's ideas consist of simply ideas which turn into complex ideas. Simple ideas are the thoughts that the mind cannot know an idea that it has not experienced. The two types of simple ideas are; sensation and reflection. Sensation is the idea that we have such qualities as yellow, white, heat, cold, soft, hard, bitter, and sweet. Reflection ideas are gained from our experience of our own mental operations. Complex ideas are combinations of simple ideas that can be handled as joined objects and given their own names. These ideas are manufactured in the human mind by the application of its higher powers. Locke believes in two kinds of qualities that an object must have; primary and secondary. Primary qualities o...