Personal Identity: Locke

This lecture will help you

understand:
Lockes Psychological
Continuity Approach
Reids objections to Locke
Gallant Officer argument

Reids Common Sense

Approach

Ren Magritte, Not to Be

Reproduced (La
Reproduction Interdit),
(1937)

Psychological Continuity Approach

Locke was probably the greatest and
most influential English philosopher.
He was a contemporary of Descartes,
and like Descartes he was a dualist.
However, unlike Descartes he was not
rationalist. He was an empiricist. He
denied that we are born with any
knowledge. At birth, we are a tabula
rasa.
An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding (1689)

John Locke (16321704)

 Self is that conscious thinking thing

whatever substance made up of (whether
spiritual or material, or simple or
compounded, it matters not)which is
sensible or conscious of pleasure and pain,
capable of happiness or misery, and so
concerned for itself, as far as that
consciousness extends (IP 273-274).

Man
The identity of the same man consists . . . in
nothing but a participation of the same
continued life, by constantly fleeing particles
of matter, in succession vitally united to the
same organized body (IP 271).

Prince and the Cobbler

For should the soul of a prince, carrying with
it the consciousness of the princes life, enter
and inform the body of the cobbler . . .
everyone sees that he would be the same
person with the prince, accountable only by
the princes actions. But who would say that it
was the same man? (IP 273)

Man = Cobbler

Person = Prince

Man = Cobbler

Question 2:
In Lockes view,

A. a rational parrot could not be the same

person as an individual at another time.
B. a rational parrot could not be the same
human as an individual at another time.
C. a rational parrot could be the same person
as an individual at another time.
D. B and C

Person
the substance whereof personal self
consisted at one time may be varied at
another, without the change of personal
identity; there being no question about the
same person, though the limbs which but now
were a part of it, be cut off (IP 273).

Accountability
In this personal identity is founded all the
right and justice of reward and punishment
(IP 274).

Memory and Consciousness

Had I the same consciousness of that I saw
the ark and Noahs flood, as that I saw an
overflowing of the Thames last winter, I could
no more doubt that I who write this now, that
saw the Thames overflowed last winter, and
that viewed the flood at the general deluge
was the same self . . . than that I who writes
this am the same myself now whilst I write . . .
that I was yesterday (IP 273).

Personal Identity
personal identity consists: not in the identity
of substance, but, as I have said in the identity
of consciousness (IP 274).

Loss of Memory?
But yet possibly it will still be objected,
Suppose I wholly lose the memory of some parts
of my life, beyond a possibility of retrieving
them, so that perhaps I shall never be conscious
of them again; yet am I not the same person
that did those actions, had those thoughts that I
once was conscious of, though I have now forgot
them? To which I answer, that we must here
take notice what the word I is applied to; which,
in this case, is the man only (IP 274).

Drunkenness?
But if it be possible for the same man to have distinct
incommunicable consciousness at different times, it is past
doubt the same man would at different times make different
persons; which, we see, is the sense of mankind in the
solemnest declaration of their opinions, human laws not
punishing the mad man for the sober man's actions, nor the
sober man for what the mad man did, thereby making
them two persons: which is somewhat explained by our way
of speaking in English when we say such an one is "not
himself," or is "beside himself"; in which phrases it is
insinuated, as if those who now, or at least first used them,
thought that self was changed; the selfsame person was no
longer in that man (IP 274).

Sleep?
if the same Socrates waking and sleeping do not
partake of the same consciousness, Socrates waking
and sleeping is not the same person. And to punish
Socrates waking for what sleeping Socrates thought,
and waking Socrates was never conscious of, would
be no more of right, than to punish one twin for
what his brother-twin did, whereof he knew nothing,
because their outsides were so like, that they could
not be distinguished; for such twins have been seen
(IP 274)

Thomas Reid (1710-1796)

Reid is famous for starting
what is often called the
Commonsense school of
philosophy and for his
defense of free will.
For him it is commonsense
that we are the same people
we were yesterday, last year,
ten years ago, at birth.

Objections to Locke
Mr. Locke tells us, however, that personal
identity, that is, the sameness of a rational
being, consists in consciousness alone, and, as
far as this consciousness can be extended
backwards to any past action or thought, so
far reaches to the identity of that person. So
that whatever has the consciousness of
present and past actions is the same person to
whom they belong (IP 289).

Reid: Objections 1 and 2

1. That if the same consciousness can be transferred from
one intelligent being to another, which he thinks we
cannot show to be impossible, then two or twenty
intelligent beings may be the same person (IP 289).
2. And if the intelligent being may lose the consciousness
of the actions done by him, which surely is possible, then
he is not the person that did those actions; so that one
intelligent being may be two or twenty different persons,
if he shall often lose the consciousness of his former
actions (IP 289).

Locke
Could we suppose two distinct incommunicable
consciousnesses acting the same body, the one
constantly by day, the other by night; and, on the
other side, the same consciousness, acting by
intervals, two distinct bodies: I ask, in the first case,
whether the day and the night man would not be
two as distinct persons as Socrates and Plato? And
whether, in the second case, there would not be one
person in two distinct bodies, as much as one man is
the same in two distinct clothings? (IP 275)

Reid: Objection 3
There is another consequence of this
doctrine, which follows no less necessarily,
though Mr. Locke probably did not see it. It is,
that a man may be, and at the same time not
be, the person that did a particular action. . .

 Suppose a brave officer to have been flogged

when a boy at school for robbing an orchard,
to have taken a standard from an enemy in his
first campaign, and to have been made a
general in advanced life; suppose, also, which
must also be admitted as possible, that, when
he took the standard, he was conscious of
having been flogged at school, and that, when
he made a general, he was conscious of his
taking the standard, but had absolutely lost
consciousness of his flogging. . .

 These things being supposed, it follows, from

Mr. Lockes doctrine, that he who was flogged
at school is the same person who took the
standard, and that he who took the standard
is the same person who was made a general.
Whence it follows, if there be any truth in
logic, that the general is the same person with
him who was flogged at school.

 But the generals consciousness does not

reach back so far as his flogging; therefore
according to Mr. Lockes doctrine, he is not the
same person who was flogged. Therefore the
general is, and at the same time is not, the
same person with him who was flogged at
school. . . . (IP 289)
A contradiction!

Hypothetical Syllogism
A hypothetical syllogism is a deductive
argument consisting of two premises and one
conclusion having a conditional statement for
one or both of its premises.

If A = B
and
If B = C
Then A = C

Reid Against Locke

It may here be observed (though the observation
would have been unnecessary, if some great
philosophers had not contradicted it), that it is not
my remembering any action of mine that makes me
to be the person who did it. This remembrance
makes me to know assuredly that I did it; but I might
have done it, though I did not remember it. That
relation to me, which is expressed by saying that I
did it, would be the same, though I had not the least
remembrance of it. To say that my remembering
that I did such a thing, or, as some choose to express
it, my being conscious that I did it, makes me to
have done it, appears to me as great an absurdity as
it would be to say, that my belief that the world was
created made it to be created. (IP 287)

Not Bodily Continuity

If [a person] has a leg or an arm cut off, he is
the same person as before (IP 286).

The Subject of Acts

I am not thought, I am not action, I
am not feeling; I am something that
thinks and acts and suffers (IP 286).
Reid defines the self as the one who
remembers, who thinks, who has
consciousness, who believes, who
desires

Self
perfect identity (IP 287) (i.e. it doesnt
change)
indivisible (IP 286) (i.e., it cannot be
separated into any component parts)
foundation of all rights and obligations,
and of all accountableness (IP 288).
Is this true?