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Joseph Butler Leggiamo da The analogy of religion (1736), Dissertation I, of personal identity Vedremo che, laddove Locke relativizza l’identità a idee (concetti, categorie), per cui distingue SAME SUBSTANCE, SAME MAN, SAME PERSON, Butler, distingue tra identità stretta e identità in senso lato. Ma prima qualche notizia su Butler …

Dalla voce di David E. White della Internet Enc. Of Phil. http://www.iep.utm.edu/butler/ Joseph Butler (1692—1752) Bishop Joseph Butler is a well-known religious philosopher of the eighteenth century. He is still read and discussed among contemporary philosophers, especially for arguments against some major figures in the history of philosophy, such as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. In his Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel (1729), Butler argues against Hobbes's egoism, and in the Analogy of Religion (1736), he argues against Locke's memory- based theory of personal identity.

Overall, Butler's philosophy is largely defensive Overall, Butler's philosophy is largely defensive. His general strategy is to accept the received systems of morality and religion and, then, defend them against those who think that such systems can be refuted or disregarded. Butler ultimately attempts to naturalize morality and religion, though not in an overly reductive way, by showing that they are essential components of nature and common life. He argues that nature is a moral system to which humans are adapted via conscience. Thus, in denying morality, Butler takes his opponents to be denying our very nature, which is untenable. Given this conception of nature as a moral system and certain proofs of God's existence, Butler is then in a position to defend religion by addressing objections to it, such as the problem of evil.

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Thomas Reid Leggeremo da Essays on the intellectual powers of men (1785), Essay 3, Of memory: Chapter 4: Of Identity Chapter 6: Of Locke’s account of our personal identity Ma prima qualche notizia su Reid …

Dalla voce sulla SEP di Ryan Nichols and Gideon Yaffe Reid, Thomas  Thomas Reid (1710–1796) is a Scottish philosopher best known for his philosophical method, his theory of perception and its wide implications on epistemology, and as the developer and defender of an agent-causal theory of free will. In these and other areas he offers perceptive and important criticisms of the philosophy of Locke, Berkeley and especially Hume. He is also well known for his criticisms of Locke's view of personal identity and Hume's view of causation. Reid also made influential contributions to philosophical topics including ethics, aesthetics and the philosophy of mind. The legacy of Thomas Reid's philosophical work is found in contemporary theories of perception, free will, philosophy of religion, and widely in epistemology.

 … he published An Inquiry Into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense (or ‘IHM’) in 1764. Later he received a prestigious professorship at the University of Glasgow. He resigned from this position in 1781 in order to give himself more time to write, and published Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man(or ‘EIP’) in 1785 and Essays on the Active Powers of Man (or ‘EAP’) in 1788. 

In the Inquiry, a methodologically pioneering work due to its extensive and rigorous use of observational data to justify claims about perception, Reid examines each of the five senses and discusses the ways in which we achieve knowledge of the world by employing them. Intellectual Powers expands his system beyond the apprehension of the world through the senses to consideration of memory, imagination, knowledge, the nature of judgment, reasoning and taste. The Active Powers examines a collection of topics concerning ethics, the nature of agency generally, and the distinctive features of human agency. … Reid often articulates his theoretical positions in terms defending common sense and the “opinions of the vulgar”. Indeed, he is often described as a “common sense philosopher”.

Cominciamo a leggere da Essays on the intellectual powers of men (1785), Essay 3, Of memory, Chapter 4: Of Identity [NB: Memory No. 3 of Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man Thomas Reid Copyright ©2010–2015 All rights reserved. Jonathan Bennett [Brackets] enclose editorial explanations. Small ·dots· enclose material that has been added, but can be read as though it were part of the original text. Occasional •bullets, and also indenting of passages that are not quotations, are meant as aids to grasping the structure of a sentence or a thought. Every four-point ellipsis . . . . indicates the omission of a brief passage that seems to present more difficulty than it is worth. Longer omissions are reported between brackets in normal-sized type. First launched: April 2006 Last amended: May 2008]

Everyone has a conviction of his own identity as far back as his memory reaches; this conviction doesn’t need help from philosophy to strengthen it, and no philosophy can weaken it without first producing some degree of insanity.

The philosopher, however, may very properly regard this conviction as a fact about human nature that is worth attending to. If he can discover its cause, that will add something to his stock of knowledge. If not, ·i.e. if no-one can discover its cause·, the conviction of one’s own identity must be regarded as either a part of our original constitution or something produced by that constitution in a manner unknown to us.

First point: this conviction ·of one’s own identity· is utterly necessary for all exercise of reason. The operations of reason—whether practical reasoning about what to do or speculative reasoning in the building up of a theory—are made up of successive parts. In any reasoning that I perform, the early parts are the foundation of the later ones, and if I didn’t have the conviction that the early parts are propositions that I have approved or written down, I would have no reason to proceed to the later parts in any theoretical or practical project whatever. SALTIAMO 3 CAPOVERSI

Let us consider •what is meant by ‘identity’ in general, •what is meant by ‘our own personal identity’, and •how we are led into the irresistible belief and conviction that everyone has of his own personal identity as far as his memory reaches. These are appropriate things to look into if we want to form as clear a notion as we can of this phenomenon of the human mind.

Identity in general I take to be a relation between a thing known to exist at one time and a thing known to have existed at another time. If you ask whether they are one and the same or two different things—·for example, ‘Is the professor who persuaded you to take the course the one who gave you an F in it?’·—everyone of common sense understands perfectly what your question means. So we can be certain that everyone of common sense has a clear and distinct notion of identity.