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Introduction on personal identity
Introduction to self and identity
John Locke's contributions to enlightenment
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I will argue that Locke believed that if you remain the same person, there are various entities contained in my body and soul composite that do not remain the same over time, or that we can conceive them changing. These entities are matter, organism (human), person (rational consciousness and memory), and the soul (immaterial thinking substance). This is a intuitive interpretation that creates many questions and problems. I will evaluate Locke's view by explaining what is and what forms personal identity, and then explaining how these changes do conceivably occur while a human remains the same person.
Locke believed that the identity of a person could be assigned to the consciousness. He thought that a person would remain the same as long as their consciousness continues to be the same over the course of their life: “Consciousness always accompanies thinking, and makes everyone to be what he calls ‘self’ and thereby distinguishes himself from all other thinking things; in this alone consists personal identity, i.e. the sameness of a rational being; and as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of that person” (Essay II.xxvii.9). Locke believes that your body and your personality do not determine your identity. Instead, you can know that a person is the same person as long as their consciousness continues to be the same over the course of their life.
Locke believed that the identity of a person has the sameness of the consciousness: “What makes a man be himself to himself is sameness of consciousness, so personal identity depends entirely on that—whether the consciousness is tied to one substance throughout or rather is continued in a series of different su...
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...he coma, so when they awake from it and do not remember anything, can they still be considered a different person? As they slowly begin to remember things, but not everything, is their consciousness becoming a different one, are they forming a new identity as they begin to remember things? Another example would be if there is a red painted car, that also has motion as it is moving on the highway. It suddenly breaks down due to some malfunction, and it also begins to rain. The rain washes off the red paint making the car white. Does it now become a completely different car now that it is no longer in motion and it's colour has changed? The car itself is still fit for its purpose (driving it) and capable given the certain conditions. So is the car now a completely different car, or is it still the same car? This is one aspect that can be questioned from Locke's view.
Locke clarified the problem by pointing out his notions that mostly derived from the natural state of human beings. Each man was originally born and predestined to have his own body, hands, head and so forth which can help him to create his own labor. When he knew how to use his personal mind and labor to appropriate bountiful subjects around him, taking them "out of the hands of...
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.
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
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.
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
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
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...
If the book remained untouched in perpetuity, then the identity of the book would remain unchanged. But if pages were torn out of the book, Locke’s view would be that it is not the same book anymore – there ceases to be a perfect continued existence of material body (Emerson, 1997:1) Locke viewed the identity of living entities in a different light. Above, change in mass constituted a change in identity. But, in living entities a change in mass does not affect the identity of the object.
In “A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality” John Perry conveys conversations between a philosopher and her two friends a few nights before she dies. We then come to how the dying philosopher is trying to have everyone convince her that she will survive even after her body dies. In this John Perry claims that there are three ways of deliberating personal identity: bodily identity, psychological continuity and immaterial soul. The essay then describes the different types of identity and how they can use them to prove to the perishing philosopher that she can still remain alive. I will argue that the only way we can distinguish personal identity is through psychological continuity and how we can determine a person based on their memories and experiences. From this we can go into discussion about some terms that will be used throughout this paper.
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’s first assumption is that although God gave “the world to men in common,” all men have a ‘right’, in the first instance, “to their preservation, and consequently to meat and drink and such other things as nature affords for their subsistence.” [3] Each individual has also been given “reason to make use of it to the best advan...
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
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:
...tainly possessed these qualities of life even with all is idiosyncrasies Locke believed we were all created equal that this was “self-evident”. Locke’s’ reason was to abide by the laws of God as well as the government. He thought that we should be mindful of how we treat ourselves and others at all times for as long as we live. . As a result of Locke’s views, he established “New liberties that would be enshrined in civil, social, and political rights”. (Biblical Politics pg. 95) “Although Locke’s new political order left individuals free from subjection to authority and helped overcome gender and similar barriers to personal and social advancement, this order also became problematic: a new-found emphasis on reason ultimately led to a disruption in the human spirit and to new forms of social isolation”.( Biblical Politics pg. 95-96)