Essay on Personal Identity

John Locke believes that personal identity depends on our consciousness and I agree with him because if we are not aware of ourselves then how can we know we exist. But Locke personal claims that personal identity is a matter of psychological continuity. Locke holds that consciousness can be transferred

For Locke, "the mind many times recovers the memory of a past consciousness" (Locke) meaning he believes that the continuity of the conscious self is guaranteed by memory, which in turns plays a critical role in identity. Locke believes that the reason that someone is the same person that they were twenty years ago is due to the fact that the person remembers being that person in the past (Locke). This means that the person can bring to mind the subjective conscious experiences that they had as a teenager through the faculty of memory. Through this function, they can remember, for the most part what they have done, who they have met, and sometimes even how they felt at a given moment in time. He explains that this is why, after waking from a night of sleep, one can find themselves to be the same person in the morning. Thus, he concludes that self is "determined... only by identity of consciousness (Locke)." Furthermore, it is for this reason that one should bear moral responsibility for their past actions. As such, memory is of paramount importance to the human experience of acting as responsible

Locke offers a variety of perplexing, philosophical, ideas within this text, but from my understanding ideas begin with two separate categories of sensation and reflection. From their, our mind perceives these concepts and splits our train of thought into groups of either simple or complex ideas. Simple ideas stand alone, and are built up of four subcategories such as one sense, (light, noise, taste or secondary properties) multiple senses, (motion, space, primary properties) reflection, and from both sense and reflection (such as existence and emotion). Whereas complex ideas are constructed by combinations of simple ideas. He

On the one hand, personal identity is the identity of body organization (the identity of man). On the other hand, the personal identity is determined by consciousness/soul (the identity of person). The combination of the two makes a whole personal identity. Moreover, to conclude from the Prince and the Cobbler’s example, Locke pays more attention to the identity of the body. Whereas under the guidance of this concept, it is not difficult to understand the reason Locke has separated the identity of person from the identity of man, that these two belong to two different entities: the material and the

From this brief understanding of identity Locke creates his theory of personal identity. Locke first makes the important distinction between non-living objects and living objects. The identity of a non-living object, a bundle of atoms, changes, “if one of these atoms is taken away, or one new one added, it is no longer the same mass or the same body.” (Locke 368R). In Locke’s theory the moment the atoms change even in the slightest bit with one atom being lost or added the bundle of atoms are no longer the same bundle that existed before the addition/subtraction of atoms. For example, if a stick of chalk made a line on a blackboard for every time one atom of chalk left stick to form the line a completely new stick of chalk would exist.

Locke’s main assertion was that personal identity could best be described by the sameness in awareness or consciousness, and not the sameness in physicality or in substance. In Locke’s view, consciousness was used as a synonym of memory although he did not specify the perspective i.e whether in first person experience or in the second person etc. Therefore, many scholars regard Locke as the originator of the view that a person’s identity on the time continuum consists of memories and the capacity to remember them. In summary, Locke’s view is that a person existing today is the same person as that who existed many years ago, if he or she can remember, or has the capacity to remember, the life experiences of the person that existed in an earlier time (Perry, 114). Some scholars insist that there is a difference in perspective because knowledge and experience are

According to John Locke the question “what are you?” is personal identity. As for what personal identity is Locke states, “depends on consciousness, not on substance” or a soul (John Locke: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding). Locke seems to define memories as the source of a consciousness in his chapter of Identity and Diversity. In addition, Locke believes that consciousness is independent from all substances, but cannot exist independently without a body or a mind. However, that doesn’t mean that consciousness is confined to a particular body or mind. For example, in Locke’s Chapter XXVII Of Identity and Diversity states, “Upon separation of this little finger, should this consciousness go along with the little finger, and leave the rest of the body, it is evident the little finger would be the person, the same person; and self then would have nothing to do with the rest of the body.”. Locke asserts that this applies to all parts of the body. This would suggest that if a person fell into a coma, they would be dead according to lock. As they no longer have any awareness or can access their memories. Unless somehow the person’s consciousness could be inserted into another individual. For example, if the person in

…the originals of all our ideas are simple elements. Because of this assumption, Locke’s method became a search for simple units of sensation (or reflection). But do we start with the ideas “red,” “sweet,” “spherical,” and compound them to get he idea “apple?” Or do we see an apple and then, by a process of selective attention, note that it is red, spherical, and so on? Surely, the latter. The world of ordinary experience is a world of objects, and Locke’s simple ideas, far from being starting points of experience, are terminals. (Jones 251)

The purpose of this paper is to both examine and critically evaluate John Locke’s account of personal identity by (1) summarizing the basic tenants of his theory, (2) understanding the arguments opposed to his theory, and (3) highlighting the overall influence that his ideas have had on the larger philosophic community. Locke’s theories regarding the nature of personal identity were first discussed in his text titled “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding”. Within his work he discussed an array of philosophically troubling issues such as the relation that the body and mind share, the nature of consciousness, and the effect of time on human life. These and countless other topics that Locke covered have been extremely influential in modern

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. 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 identity. Locke’s theory says that we continuously exist and consciousness, or memory, is the link that informs you of the past, therefore memory is the necessary condition of personal identity.

John Locke’s account of personal identity is rooted in a general account of identity. The identity of living creatures “depends not on a mass of the same particles, but on something else” (Locke, 13). This is to say that our bodies are constantly changing and so is the substance that makes it. Before finding what personal identity consists of, it’s important to know what exactly a person is and according to Locke, a person is “a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places” which it only does by consciousness (Locke, 14). When something is being perceived by a person, or if somebody smells, hears or tastes something, they are aware that this is happening during that moment. Consciousness always “accompanies thinking and this makes everyone to be what [Locke] calls self, and distinguishes one person from other thinking things, in this alone consists personal identity” (Locke, 14).

For Locke, what consists of a being remaining the same over duration of life has nothing to do with contributing factors of physical or mental properties. Therefore, when physical and mental properties are demolished, how would Locke explain a female who recollects on memories corresponding to her life experience. Would he suggest that the female is the same entity regardless of time slot in her life span or would she be different based on time slot, or past experience. One will unravel where consciousness plays a role, and just how he comes to the conclusion that“Self is not determined by identity or diversity of substance, which it cannot be sure of, but only by identity of consciousness”(Essay, 2.27.23). Locke’s discussion on Identity has arisen plenty of questions, more so than answers one will identify puzzling, conflicting material and configure just how Locke, would attempt to soothe even my

For a being to have a personal identity, they must have the characteristic of rationality, which involves having conscious awareness of sameness of the self or the person. However, even a conscious, rational, thinking person can have moments of forgetfulness, which may seem like a weakness in the ground of the argument considering that, if you have no memory of an experience, how can that experience be yours or how can you maintain continuity of self with chunks of missing information? Locke argues that this is not relevant to the argument concerns the sameness of personal identity. In an experience-to-be-forgotten at some time in the future, in that exact moment a person was almost definitely consciously aware that they, as their own personal identity consistent with the past, were experiencing that specific event. Even though as humans we forget information every day, that cannot necessarily point to the assumption that our moments of forgetfulness are separate from our personal

John Lock was an English empiricist philosopher. His beliefs on human knowledge, personal identity, and consciousness were all based on the senses experience and reflection, like Aristotle. Certainty was not a problem for Locke like it was for Gene Descartes. He explained this theory very well in "Essay Concerning Human Understanding." Locke spoke of the mind. He believed memories were the key to ones' self. He considered that the person was a forensic term. If a person was accused of a crime and they were not aware or could not remember doing said offense, Locke believed they shouldn't be held responsible. He thought if a person loses their memory, they become a different person. He also believed that once the mind left the body, it just went into someone else. Even sleeping can make us lose sight on our past selves since we are not conscious. Once a person's memory is lost, Locke tells us the self has moved to a new body and your self is a new one You are a new person. Locke theorized every time we fell asleep, we were not the same "thinking thing" but It does not affect the personal identity of us.

Locke argued that personal identity had to do with physical or mental consciousness. He described our “self” as the existence of our thoughts and actions. These thoughts and actions are kept throughout a person’s life. “ Consciousness always accompanies thinking, and makes everyone to be what he