What Is Hume's View Of Synchronic And Chronic Identity?

Locke’s argument for the memory criterion of personal identity, is that psychological continuity (the consciousness of past experiences) is the aspect that preservers our personal identity. Locke

However the ambiguity and concern about the weakness of the analogies already mentioned for sub conclusion 1 remain. As described above Hume objected to the analogies used to support The Argument from Design due to their weakness and lack of similarity. He argues that they fail to support the idea that the same cause was brought about by the same effect, i.e. that a superior intelligent designer was involved in the existence of natural occurrences in the same way as a human designer’s involvement with a human made artefact. The objection is that the analogies are weak and do not prove conclusive.

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

A simple example of this is: The person is the same person as someone in the past if the person has the consciousness of the experience that the someone in the past did. Thus, the identity of a person is limited to how much the conscious of later person remembers their earlier conscious memories. Only then he is truly the same person or himself. But then this bring few questions: Can there be a the same thinking substance in different people or different thinking substance in the same person and how do we punish people? To answer the first question he believes that the issue lies whether a immaterial being with consciousness could have its consciousness of its past actions be completely removed then begin a life with new consciousness. Nonetheless if it was possible then Locke argues that there is no reason to say that the person who’s soul and conscious lived before the removal is the same person whose new consciousness took over. To answer the second part, Locke says that the answer depends on whether the conscious of the past actions can be transferred to another person who did not experience it. Locke believes this phenomenon is possible and if it was, would this person be the same person he was before? Yes. Using Locke’s theory where

John Locke claims that memory is the key to identity, so “as far [as] someone’s memory goes, is so far the identity of the person.” (Campbell) First, Locke explains the concept of body swapping in terms of the prince and the cobbler: the “transfer of memories between the body of the prince and the body of the cobbler would mean the people have swapped bodies.” (Campbell) In this example, the

Thomas Reid’s argument is that identity is attributed only to the things that have continued existence, and since consciousness is transient and often interrupted, it cannot constitute personal identity. Reid gives an example of consciousness being transient when a person is either asleep or unconscious. Reid states that when a person is sleeping or unconscious, his/her consciousness is interrupted temporarily during that period of time. Locke can respond to this objection by questioning if consciousness is really transient. He can question if it is undeniably the case that we are unconscious when we are sleeping. Many other philosophers and psychologists argue that even though our conscious may be numbed during sleep, it is still functioning and has not been interrupted, that is why we are able to hear loud sounds and wake up from our sleep. Secondly, Locke only requires that it be possible and that there is a disposition to remember the

In addition, any fact will ultimately be dependent on a primary fact, which in turn is founded on cause and effect. It is only after Hume establishes this that he affirms that knowledge of this relation is never attained by reasonings a priori. Knowledge based on cause and effect, for Hume, relies entirely on human experience, and it is for this reason that it can not be a priori. Hume does not blindly state this proposition, he supports it with several examples that I find irrefutable. He suggests that no man when presented with gunpowder can imagine the explosion that can follow.

John Locke argued that people are able to identify themselves through time if they have continuity of memory. According to Locke, personal identity is found on continuity of memory and not the substance of either the soul or body.1  If humans were to lose their memory, it would be impossible to identify themselves just based upon their bodies.  Memory must be preserved in order to preserve your personal identity.2  Locke, describes that all life forms in this universe are made up of atoms called a "mass of matter".  As time goes on, life forms lose and gain matter as

Identity criteria are a main component of who a person actually is, central elements of how someone sees who they are and essential properties are urged to determine a person’s identity. How philosophers view the soul is essential one’s personality. The duelists believe that wherever the soul goes, that’s where the mind goes. The dualists view is based off of the fact that there is more to our brain and ourselves than just the physical aspect, the soul strongly supports this claim. Materialism argues against the duelists because they only believe in the physical component of the world, in their eyes a soul does not exist. Lastly, in the psychological view, John Locke implemented memory into personal identity. Leibniz and Reid challenged Locke’s ideas and came up with a reasonable conclusion. Personal identity can be defined is through identity theft, but it is the central elements of how someone perceives themselves to determine who they actually are. “One is that a single soul, one and the same, has been with this body I call mine since it was born. The other is that one soul was associated with it until five years ago and then another, psychologically similar, inheriting all the old memories and beliefs, took over. A third hypothesis is that every five years a new soul takes over. A fourth is that every five minutes a new soul takes over” Weirob views souls by being able to move from one body to the next without us knowing, the duelists strongly disagree with this theory.

Locke`s view of personal identity consists of self awareness and one`s conscious thoughts. He believes that a person`s consciousness is what makes a person the same person over time. Locke explains the differences between being the same man and the same person. Locke states these differences: “the identity of the same man consists in nothing but a participation of the same continued life, by constantly fleeting particles of matter, in succession vitally united to the same organized body” (§6), “since consciousness always accompanies thinking, and it is that which makes every one to be what he calls self, and thereby distinguishes himself from all other thinking things; in this alone consists personal identity,i. e. the sameness of a rational being: and as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of that person” (§9). Being the same man and having the same body does not make a person the same over time because the body changes over time. A man is only a living human animal. Being a person means that he can think intelligently and reflect on his own thoughts. The consciousness is what makes a person a person, and not simply just a man. A person is self aware of everything; he is able to use his senses. He can think, see, hear, smell, feel, and taste. Being aware of these things that one does makes him a person.

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.

Hume rejected lockes theory of experiencing cause. He argued that you do not feel the connection between your mind and arm, and thus don't sense the cause of the muscles contracting to raise your arm. Cause, in Hume's mind, is a synthetic experience used to explain the unobservable things in reality. To help explain he used the billiard ball experiement. Ball A is hit and put into motion towards ball B.When ball A collides with ball B the cause of ball B's movement is not experienced, there is no observable connection between the two. This would mean that there is no way to be certain that everytime Ball A collides with ball B that ball B will move, ball A could just as likely bounce off and begin rolling in a random direction. He believd that there is no way of knowing for certain the outcome of an event without being able to perceive the cause.

Hume creates a real world example- the sun. He begins with the rational assumption that we all believe the sun will rise again in the morning. He states that our continuous belief relies on the rotation of the Earth. However, we base this off of the reoccurring appearance of the bright ball of fire. We have unbreakable confidence that this will continue to happen daily. Hume’s argument is the fact that we cannot rely on the past, and states that we have no rational basis for believing. He reaches further into the subject by explaining to the reader how we use our expectations to create an idea. In other words, we form habits and basically create ideas from those. Hume gives the reader a perfect analogy to sum his theory up. He gives us a simple mathematical problem that the majority should know. But the reason we know the answer, he says, is not because we proved it in principle, but instead we know because of repetition. Now myself being a math major, this interested me a great bit. It took me a short time to realize that is essentially all we do when we solve math problems. We memorize a set of rules through repetition and then apply those rules to solve the problem. Hume’s analogy helped immensely in the understanding of his

Locke rationalizes, an older person may not remember their “self” as young child, but they have memories from when they were middle-aged. When they were middle-aged, they remember their “self” as a young child, therefore their consciousness can be linked.

	With Hume's assumption that " our ideas reach no further than our experience," would lead him to raise skeptical questions about the existence of God. Most attempts to demonstrate the existence of God rely upon some version of causality. Sometimes experimental models are built with no present knowledge of what the finished model will be like. Is the universe a trial model or the final design? By