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Philosophy journal essays on personal identity
Reflection of john Locke's on personal identity
Reflection of john Locke's on personal identity
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Who are you? What makes me the same person over time? These are some of the questions that people often ask themselves. According to Sider “the question of what makes persons numerically the same over time is known to philosophers as the question of personal identity.” Different philosophers have different views on personal identity, and they all have different answers to those questions. We have looked at different views and theories from different philosophers. In this paper, I am going to defend why I think the psychological continuity theory is the most defensible, and why I disagree with the other theories.
First, Hume believes that there is no self. He thinks that humans are nothing but a bundle of different perceptions, so he believes
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He also believes in biological continuity. He does not agree with psychological continuity and he believes in biological continuity, he stated ‘‘what it takes for us to persist through time is what I have called biological continuity”, because he believes that a person is surviving purely on animal functions. I don't agree with Olson, I think that the animal functions – metabolism, breathing, circulating blood etc. are necessary in every human person to survive. It does not make sense for him to say that biological continuity is what makes a person the same person over …show more content…
He thinks that psychological continuity is what makes the same person over time, and it is the consciousness that creates our identity. According to Locke, “psychological continuity theory is when a past person is numerically identical to the future person, if any, who has that past person’s memories, character traits, and so on – whether or not the future and past persons are spatiotemporally continuous with each other.” In other words, Locke believes that personal identity is not the sameness of body; instead, he believes the consciousness creates our identity. He thinks that an individual can have different bodies and still have continuity, and the fact that we are aware of what is going on is who we are in that moment. Locke came up with the analogy of the prince and the cobbler. The memories and consciousness of the prince were transferred to the cobbler’s body. When the cobbler wakes up in the morning, he still thinks he is the prince because he has all the memories as being a prince. Likewise, the example in the movie Freaky Friday is similar. Lindsay Lohan and Jamie lee curtis’s souls were switched in the movie after they ate a Chinese fortune cookie. Lindsay’s mind was switched with Jamie Lee, so Lindsay had Jamie’s brain in her body. In other words, Lindsay was behaving exactly like Jamie, but just in her own body. Even though Lindsay and Jamie now look different, they are still the same person but just in different
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
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
Locke’s theory states that A is the same as B if and only if B remembers at T2 something done or experienced by A at T1. He often uses the word “consciousness” to help explain his theory, saying that one can remember back to a past conscious state, and can connect it to his current conscious state (Locke 367). I am currently conscious of my introspective experience of last Christmas, therefore I am the same person I was last Christmas, which is correct. Memories are also very personal, so they are exclusive to the person who possesses them. Although two people may share a similar memory, they do not have th...
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 .
But this would allow for three bodies to have the same identity, which cannot be the case when talking about an identity that can belong to one and only one person. Therefore, in defense of the memory theory, memory theorists like those in Perry’s work advocate for the addition of an addendum to the original theory: person A at time point A is identical to person B at time point B if and only if there is only one person at time point B who is psychologically continuous with person A. This revision eliminates the possibility of duplication examples discrediting the memory theory as a viable answer to our questions of personal
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
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.
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:
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.
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
The problem of personal identity is difficult to solve, especially since there is ambiguity in the terms. Identity may mean the same person or how one sees oneself. Anyhow, philosophers wish to assess this issue and find a suitable explanation, one motivation being responsibility. Humans will hold others responsible for acts such as murder, theft, and fraud. However, the person who will face the consequences must be the one who truly committed the wrongful act. A second motivation is interest in the future. An individual may become concerned or excited for an event that will occur in the future. Surely, these emotions entail that they will be the same person once that event occurs. The last motivation for resolving personal identity is immortality; basically, what will connect a person to whatever lives on after their physical death. Something can be identical in two ways: quantitatively or qualitatively. To be quantitatively identical is to be numerically identical, and to be qualitatively identical is to share exact qualities. There are two criterions on which personal identity is based, but the most important is the metaphysical criterion, which attempts to explain “being” or existence, without the necessity of physical evidence ...
Locke says that that the person in the cobbler's body is to be prosecute since he sustains the prince’s psychology. Bernard Williams argues that since it is simple to alter the brain to change psychology, than psychology could be easily duplicated. If psychology continuity is personal identity, then there could be two numerically same persons. Now, duplication problem has to be considered, for there can not be two numerically same people. Psychological sameness would make two individuals qualitatively alike but they would still remain numerically
As mentioned earlier, Locke rejected the view that we need to be in the same form as earlier to be the same person. For instance, in a hypothetical sense if a human and a dog were to switch forms, and the human in dog form had the consciousness of the human, which would consist of past memories, then this would result in the same person. Although this example is hypothetical, the impact of memories on identity is paramount, since memory would be considered the psychological criterion- which is basically a psychologically linking relationship between a person at one time with a person in another time, in order to be considered one entity or comprising of the same identity (Jacobson: 55). The psychological criterion is a necessary condition for the theory, because without the memories, people would have multiple identities scattered over an individual’s life
He also states the evidence of self-identity is not one’s soul, but one’s consciousness and memories. As an illustration of his argument, as a person getting older, his self-identity may change, so his unchanging soul can not be the evidence of his self-identity. In “Personal Identity in Change of Substance” section of “On Personal Identity,” Locke states “For the same consciousness being preserved, whether in the same or different substances, the personal identity is preserved.” Therefore, in short, his view on “self” is that memories and consciousness compose self-identity, and it does not matter what a substance or a soul a possessor of the memories