LOCKE 3: PERSONAL IDENTITY WHO YOU ARE IS DEFINED BY THE SCOPE OF YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS

John Locke (1632 – 1704) British Empiricist Primary-Secondary Quality Distinction Personal Identity Political Philosophy

[Background] Locke was pondering how a person could survive bodily death (religion). For Locke, Descartes, etc. (Christianity): (Same) man = (Same) body + soul. Body dies, but soul lives eternally. But all souls have same essence: thought/consciousness. So only accidental properties can distinguish one soul from another: contents of thought/consciousness

Definition of “Person” “…thinking, intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places.” (366)

Locke’s Concept of Personal ID “Consciousness always accompanies thinking.” (366) SO: sameness of thinking being [identity] reaches “as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought” (366)

Implication 1 It is irrelevant whether a thinking being has same substance or not (366-7) [God is a functionalist? Or Locke?] Analogy: one life in a changing body is analogous to one person in a changing substance

Implication 2 Resurrection is possible: same person in different body (367). Note: one will remain same person even without a body, that is, as a mere soul. Resurrection refers to the reassembly and perfection of one’s body —as a home for ones soul.

Implication 3 Prince’s soul in body of Cobbler Locke’s thought experiment: A cobbler comes to have the same (qualitatively) memories (skills? passions? Vices?) as a prince. Locke’s conceptualization: The cobbler is the same (numerically) person as Prince, but different man. (367)

Implication 4 What about memory loss? If your memory of a past action or event is wholly lost: then you are not same person who did that action or witnessed that event. Problem for Locke’s theory of personal ID? What about false memories?