The idea of personhood/personal identity surely varies from philosopher to philosopher, and even from non-philosophical persons to others. Ifeanyi A. Menkiti and John Locke are philosophers from very different time periods, Menkiti from the 1900’s and Locke from the mid 1600s. This gap in time may lead one to believe that their beliefs about personal identity are just as separate-- that if they were to talk to each other, they would simply be talking past each other on completely different paths of thinking. This however, is not entirely true. At face value, one may believe Menkiti’s emphasis on the community over the individual regarding personal identity is the opposite of Locke’s view that focuses on the individual. Although this belief …show more content…
He believes that all living things are individuated, meaning their functional organization rather than their substance defines them. He emphasizes that substance does not equal personal identity by explaining how the loss of substance, be it, an arm, does not change the identity of the person who lost said arm. This is because that person is still functionally organized as a “person” just as corgis, bulldogs, and pitbulls are functionally organized as animals, more specifically, dogs. Locke proceeds to differentiate a “person” from a “man” in his philosophy. A “man” or “human” is simply someone who is just functionally organized the same way overtime. A “man” could be an animal, a tree, and technically a “person”. However, a “person” is much more aware than a “man.” Locke notes that a person is a thinking, intelligent being capable of reason and reflection. What clearly separates a person from a man is that a person considers itself as itself due to consciousness. As far as we know from modern science, trees are not self-aware; they do not know they are trees. It is the individual and distinct consciousnesses of persons that distinguish them from one another as well as allowing them to be self-aware. For Locke, personhood is rooted in the continuation of consciousness regardless of …show more content…
He believes that people are not born as “persons” but instead become persons or rather achieve personhood overtime in a sort of ontological progression: becoming another being. Applying Locke’s terminology, people are born humans and through living and interacting with the community, they become persons. A common misconception with Menkiti’s use of the word “community” is that it signifies a group of individuals when in actuality, a “community” is something that is ontologically, metaphysically, and epistemically preexisting, like the world or perhaps the universe. This community creates the person. Because Menkiti believes community to be something akin to the universe, he further believes that there are no things in the community that without a community could be able to exist. Henceforth, persons are not even thinkable without the existence of a community. Menkiti’s entire view of personhood and personal identity is dependent on how the community shapes the individual to even become an
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
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...
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
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 first outlined his view of personal identity in Chapter XXVII of book II in ‘An Essay concerning Human Understanding’ however faced a number of criticisms. This essay will assess how convincing John Locke’s account of personal identity is, whilst analyzing Reid and Berkeley’s criticisms of his view. Locke’s psychological account of personal identity is not a persuasive one due to the inconsistencies that are highlighted by Reid and Berkeley and I will defend this view in this essay. Locke’s account of personal identity leads to a number of contradictions which he attempts to respond to, however whilst barely addressing the criticisms he faces, his responses are also unsuccessful as both Reid and Berkeley counter each response further.
In Locke’s state of nature, men exist in a “state of perfect freedom” over their actions, possessions, and persons, within the law of nature (Locke 269). They do not depend on other men for anything. This complete intellectual and physical freedom is a natural state, but is not a perfect state. Locke acknowledges that full freedom, without a government to moderate it, doe...
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
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 uses the example of the oak tree. It starts off as a sapling and grows into a huge oak tree, with a massive change in mass. That oak tree could be subjected to the cutting of branches, and the winter fall of leaves, however it still remains an oak tree because it continues the life of a tree. It maintains the same functional arrangements of components (Blackburn, 1999: 125-126). An interesting example is raised by Blackburn in assessing “how much change to tolerate while still regarding it as the same ‘thing’” (Blackburn, 1999:127). ‘Theseus’ ship’ is used to illustrate this. The ship goes on a long voyage and is in need of constant repair and maintenance. By the end of the voyage, all the components of the ship have been changed.
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
In conclusion, John Locke’s philosophy states that the experiences that people go through can determine who they are. People go through good and bad experiences that can change who they are. In the book Frankenstein, the monster went through experiences that made him a good person; ultimately, the negative experiences outweigh the good, causing he to become a bad person. In the end, it is the experiences that count that stand out the most in a person’s life making them who they are - proving Locke’s philosophy to be
John Locke possesses many characteristics of an idealist. However, he also believes that we were created by God and that we our morally obligated to preserve ourselves and the rest of humankind. How he can come to this conclusion when he believes we have no pre-knowledge of anything is somewhat disturbing. If we only perceive things with our senses, or though our own mind reflection how is this logic possible? It seems to be a contradiction in th...
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
Because of the several failings of the theory, Locke’s ideas on self-identity are often discarded nowadays. Nevertheless, new revisions of the texts invite readers to evaluate the context in which Locke presented his ideas at the same time than his work. It is important to recognize Locke as a pioneer on the exploration of the theme (Allison 41). Even more, the philosophical atmosphere of the time also influenced his position; that is, the dominance of the philosophy of Descartes which proposed a problem to Locke (Allison 42). Furthermore, and maybe the most overlooked factor by the critics while analyzing Locke’s text, are his intentions to design a term that would explain the relationship between identity and a person’s moral responsibility.
As Locke advances into his reasoning, he expands on the definition of a person, as beings that are able to rationalize, perceive, and contemplate. These are all faculties that are in fact “conscious” or in other words, things that we are self- aware of. A person is aware of themselves as well as their surroundings, which they are able to perceive through their senses and from there, they are able to internally rationalize, think and interpret. Locke’s definition of a person would require them to possess a certain level of intellectual understanding and poses innate characteristic, such as those possessed by human, however this will evidently exclude all other animals from this category. The contextual meaning of consciousness also helps derive of the concept of self.