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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 January 2009
[We understand by ‘person’] a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself, as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places… (John Locke).
There has been a tendency among philosophers ever since Locke to conflate the problem of the self with the problem of personal identity, and since memory is clearly essential to a sense of one's identity through time, it is easy to suppose that having a concept of self requires memory too.
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13 In its present form this paper owes much to criticisms of earlier versions made independently by D. W. Hamlyn and S. A. M. Burns.
