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Compare and contrast locke and hume
Compare and contrast locke and hume
Comprehensive essay david hume vs john locke
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Hume and Locke on Personal Identity
Hume believes that personal identity is not the feeling of existence of what is called the self as many philosophers believe. He proposes that every idea is the product of one impression. The self is not one impression, but is all of our impressions that combined Impressions could be pain, pleasure, grief, or joy, but they do not happen at the same time, they follow each other. Hume uses the theater analogy to explain this (Hume). The mind is the stage where perceptions make their appearance. They are like actors who walk across the stage and are exposed to different situations and environments. Just like various actors walk across the stage at various times with different perceptions to tell the same
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Locke and Hume both agree that memory is key to define personal identity. Locke believes that memory and consciousness define personal identity. While Hume’s thinks it is the source of personal identity, he does not fully agree with Locke and thinks that memory reveals personal identity, it does not create it. They both agree that there is a change; Locke understands that a person changes and what relates everything to who we are is …show more content…
This change does not change a person’s identity. Hume’s “Bundle Theory” defines personal identity as perceptions. The views are very similar that I don’t think it matters which view we accept. Hume’s personal identity theory is like a newer version of Locke’s theory. Hume thinks the self if a fiction while Locke believes that if there is no memory continuum the person is not the same person. The only things that would be at stake is whether you believe that what you think of yourself is fiction or not and whether you are the same person or not. I think for many the thought of thinking of us, as being fictitious would be a very disappointing thought. Personal identity is more than memory continuum. I agree with Locke that you need memory continuum to be the same person and are necessary in order to exist, but it’s not everything that defines personal identity. However, I don’t think a person is not the same person if they don’t remember certain events. I agree with Hume’s that memory reveals personal identity. Personal identity is composed of bundles of
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
...ver a true definition of identity and his own real identity, he is still as naïve and as gullible as he was at the beginning. He is the “same human individual, [seen] [differently] only in appearance” (Griffon 161). Every person who he had encountered had held a unique perception of him and even if that is not how he had desired to be perceived it is his own actions that originally driven them to that belief. Yes, he still has a unique identity of his being held in his core, but it is just as real as the identity that others hold around him but only relevant by the existence of belief. Identity is a tool only relevant to those who use it, if man functioned away from society then identity becomes pointless, illogical. Yet as the Narrator chooses to live as a part of society, he is still solely responsible for creating the path that serves to define him negatively.
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
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.
His claim is that the mind is merely a bundle of perceptions that derive ultimately from sensory inputs or impressions. He follows on to say that ideas are reflections of these perceptions, or to be more precise, perceptions of perceptions, therefore can still be traced back to an original sensory input. Hume applied this logic to the perception of a ‘self’, to which he could not trace back to any sensory input, the result was paradoxical, thus he concluded that “there is no simplicity in (the mind) at one time, nor identity in different; whatever natural propension we might have to imagine that simplicity and
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
David Hume was a Scottish philosopher who lived in the 18th century. Hume marked a turning point in philosophy with his now almost infamous skepticism. And while he claimed to be a mild skeptic, the ramifications of his claims were felt by all subsequent philosophers. His critique was impactful for the sheer variety of subjects Hume seemingly uprooted. One such subject that Hume assaulted with his arguments was the idea of personal identity. Hume is in the middle of a philosophic dialogue were people reason metaphysical claims from arguments predicated upon the existence of the self. He does this to put an end to arguments that justify the soul and from that further claim erroneous notions such as god and substance before they can be made. Hume would compare our sense of self to a daily illusion we experience. Hume does posit how these illusions come about. Hume claims that
Philosophers have been pondering over the problem of personal identity for centuries and today we still have not completely figured it out. The body and soul theories clearly failed to answer that, so philosopher John Locke attempted to answer the question with his new theory, the memory theory. The memory theory states that an identical persons are equal to one another if they share at least one memory experience. This means that a present person that his past self are only identical person’s if they can both recall one memory. For example, Johnny at age 30 and Johnny at age 12 both remember their big birthday party when they were seven, so they are considered to be the same person. As stated in the claim, it only applies to memory experiences,
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.
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...
Briefly, we can conclude by deduction that body, brain, and soul are not sufficient to explain personal identity. Personal identity and immortality will always cause questions to arise from philosophers, as well as other individuals, and although many philosophers may object and disagree, the memory criterion offers the most sufficient explanation.
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:
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
Hume believes that there is no concept of self. That each moment we are a new being since nothing is constant from one moment to the next. There is no continuous “I” that is unchanging from one moment to the next. That self is a bundle of perceptions and emotions there is nothing that forms a self-impression which is essential to have an idea of one self. The mind is made up of a processions of perceptions.