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Locke's Theory of Personal Identity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Paul Helm
Paul Helm
Affiliation:
University of Liverpool
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Extract

It is widely held that Locke propounded a theory of personal identity in terms of consciousness and memory. By ‘theory’ here is meant a set of necessary and sufficient conditions indicating what personal identity consists in. It is also held that this theory is open to obvious and damaging objections, so much so that it has to be supplemented in terms of bodily continuity, either because memory alone is not sufficient, or because the concept of memory is itself dependent upon considerations of bodily continuity. Alternatively it has been suggested that Locke's theory could be modified by allowing that for the purposes of personal identity ‘remember’ should be regarded as a transitive relation. So if A remembers the experiences of B but not those of C, and B remembers the experiences of C, then A, B and C can be regarded as belonging to the same unit of consciousness.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 54 , Issue 208 , April 1979 , pp. 173 - 185
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1979

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References

1 By, for example, Flew, Antony, ‘Locke and the Problem of Personal Identity’ in Locke and Berkeley: A Collection of Critical Essays, Martin, C. B. and Armstrong, D. M. (eds) (Garden City, 1968)Google Scholar; Mackie, J. L., Problems from Locke (Oxford, 1976), Ch. 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Williams, Bernard, ‘Personal Identity and Individuation’ in Problems of the Self (Cambridge, 1973).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 On the development of this point see, for example, Penelhum, Terence, Survival and Disembodied Existence (London, 1970).Google Scholar

3 Mackie, , op. cit., 180.Google Scholar

4 Flew, , op. cit., 161Google Scholar; Mackie, , op. cit., 175–176, 181–183.Google Scholar

5 Essay II, xxvii, 1–2.Google Scholar All quotations from the Essay are from the edition of John Yolton (London, 1961).

6 For further discussion of this and related points see Brody, Baruch, ‘Locke on the Identity of Persons’, American Philosophical Quarterly (10 1972).Google Scholar

7 Flew, , op. cit., 164.Google Scholar

8 Mackie, , op. cit., 184.Google Scholar

9 Mackie, , op. cit., 182.Google Scholar

10 See Hughes, M. W., ‘Personal Identity: A Defence of Locke’, Philosophy (1975)Google Scholar for a similar conclusion about the character of memory according to Locke.

11 Like Mackie I think that it is necessary not to slur over the distinction between truth-conditions and evidence by the use of the term ‘criterion’ (Mackie, , op. cit., 185–186Google Scholar). By ‘criterion in the strong sense’ I mean ‘truth-conditions’.

12 Cf. Hughes, , op. cit., 172.Google Scholar

13 Alciphron VII. 8Google Scholar, Works, edited by Luce, A. A. and Jessop, T. E. (London 1950) III. 229.Google Scholar

14 Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, III. 6.Google Scholar

15 See e.g. Flew, , op. cit., 161–162Google Scholar; Mackie, , op. cit., 179.Google Scholar

16 Mackie, , op. cit., 178–179.Google Scholar

17 Flew, , op. cit., 161 f.Google Scholar

18 Flew, , op. cit., 161 f.Google Scholar

19 Brody, , op. cit., 332 (footnote 11).Google Scholar

20 Mackie, , op. cit., 188.Google Scholar

21 Mackie, , op. cit., 142.Google Scholar

22 Cf. Chisholm, R. M., Person and Object (London, 1976), who denies this (p. 111).Google Scholar

23 Op. cit., 184.

24 Op. cit., 184.

25 Mackie, , op. cit., 183.Google Scholar

26 Williams, , op. cit., 3.Google Scholar

27 Mackie, , op. cit., 186.Google Scholar