Sameness of person consists not in sameness of soul nor the sameness of body, but in sameness of consciousness. According to the memory view, the personal identity is established by (genuine) memory-relations. Locke’s theory manifests the idea that rather than being tied to our physical bodies, our identity is bound to our consciousness. Locke, in one of his works states that consciousness is the perception of what passes in a man’s own mind. Essentially, meaning that consciousness equals memories. Unlike, the conventional theories; bodily and soul view, Locke’s views that memory relations constitute “a person is a sequence of person-stages linked by (genuine) memory.” As personal identity is not bound by a constant component of a person to be present over a whole lifetime, neither body nor a soul. …show more content…
Using this analogy, the person is the “rope” and the “fibres” are the memory connections, and the mental processes they connect. However, as long as the personal is psychological connected, in other words, if the person can remember their childhood memories, then they are the same person. Philosophers reasons the attractiveness of this theory, as unlike bodily and soul views, the identity of the self is not the identity of the body or soul. Therefore, a person would know who they are without examining their body and in case of someone waking up in a different body, they would not conclude they were not the same person. Furthermore, memory view reflects the importance of personal identity, as psychology is more important, both to ourselves and to others, than our bodily
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 is considered one of the best political minds of his time. The modern conception of western democracy and government can be attributed to his writing the Second Treatise of Government. John Locke championed many political notions that both liberals and conservatives hold close to their ideologies. He argues that political power should not be concentrated to one specific branch, and that there should be multiple branches in government. In addition to, the need for the government to run by the majority of the population through choosing leaders, at a time where the popular thing was to be under the rule of a monarch. But despite all of his political idea, one thing was extremely evident in his writing. This was that he preferred limited
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
Essay I agree with Document B… Locke, because he basically believes about the government begin by nature and everyone. He said “it teaches all mankind of being equal and independent”. “No one should harm another’s life, health, liberty or professions”. I also agree with having independence and freedom without harm. Naturally with freedom and have your own opinion. Well disagreeing with another basically telling your opinion of State of Nature. Not depending on one another but more of nature. Hobbes believes that everyone is selfish and just terrible but Locke believes of independence and believes we shouldn’t spoil anything God has created of this world also with Political powers. He speaks about opinions are okay and are spoken freely. Living
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
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
Accordingly, all that is needed for an individual to possess and maintain his personal identity are certain mental capacitates for having conscious experiences, the examples of thoughts and sensation are given, and the ability to perform intentional actions. It this portion of the theory, a departure from the traditional Aristotelian view of substances is made. The original viewpoint of Aristotelian forms can apply only to inanimate objects, which have no personal identity, in this dualist theory, if the arguments illustrating that two people can be the same person, even if the is no continuity between the physical matter of each body are correct. Consequently, for two substances to be considered the same, in this reformed view, they
Locke viewed the identity of physical objects based on “perfect continued existence of the material body” (Emerson, 1997: 1). An object will remain the same object if it has all the same physical components. The arrangement of the physical particles is irrelevant. Locke used the example of simple and compound substances, involving atoms (Wanderer, 2005: 59). However, a simpler example would be a book on a shelf. 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)
For this paper I am going to argue that in “A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality” Gretchen Weirod was correct by claiming that personal identify cannot consist in the sameness of an immaterial, unobservable soul. My view is that one is who they are because of the brain/mind not their soul. (52)
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
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
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: