display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
32 ideas
| 5512 | Locke uses 'self' for a momentary entity, and 'person' for an extended one [Locke, by Martin/Barresi] |
| Full Idea: For the most part Locke used the word 'self' to refer to a momentary entity, and 'person' to refer to a temporally extended one. | |
| From: report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by R Martin / J Barresi - Introduction to 'Personal Identity' p.38 | |
| A reaction: This might be quite helpful. Compare the word 'event' with the word 'history'. Many selves make a person, and presumably they don't need to be identical to one another, but they must be significantly connected. |
| 1202 | A person is intelligent, rational, self-aware, continuous, conscious [Locke] |
| Full Idea: A person is a thinking, intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places; which it does by that consciousness which is inseparable from thinking. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.09) | |
| A reaction: Locke's famous definition of a person. Several of the terms seem redundant, and it seems to come down to 'conscious, rational, and self-aware'. But 'self-aware' also seems redundant, because you must already be a person to be aware of it… |
| 1381 | Someone mad then sane is two persons, judging by our laws and punishments [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Human laws do not punish the mad man for the sober man's actions, nor the sober man for what the mad man did, thereby making them two persons. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.20) | |
| A reaction: This may be a misinterpretation by Locke; the punishments may be based on the likelihood of the behaviour recurring, rather than on whether it is the same person. I may judge the madman as guilty of the sane action, but think punishment is pointless. |
| 1385 | 'Person' is a term used about responsibility, involving law, and happiness and misery [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Person is a forensic term, appropriating actions and their merit; and so belongs only to intelligent agents capable of law, and happiness, and misery. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.26) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as being essentially correct, and it makes discussions of personal identity focus (at least partly) on the will, as the aspect of the mind which makes decisions, and is held responsible for them. |
| 1372 | Our personal identity must depend on something we are aware of, namely consciousness [Locke] |
| Full Idea: It being the same consciousness that makes a man himself to himself, personal identity depends on that only, whether it be annexed solely to one individual substance, or can be continued in a succession of several substances. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.10) | |
| A reaction: The counterexample would be a highly sophisticated robot that lacked consciousness. IF it could achieve 'sophisticated' behaviour, we might need personal identity to explain its utterances and doings. |
| 1378 | My little finger is part of me if I am conscious of it [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Everyone finds, that, whilst comprehended under that consciousness, the little finger is as much a part of himself as what is most so. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.17) | |
| A reaction: It seems as great a violation of someone's personhood to shave off their hair as to cut off the tip of a finger. Can I steal one of your kidneys, since you are not conscious of them? |
| 5175 | Personal identity is my perceptions, but not my memory, as I forget too much [Ayer on Locke] |
| Full Idea: The number of my perceptions which I can remember at any time always falls far short of the number of those which have actually occurred in my history, and those which I cannot remember are no less constitutive of my self than those which I can. | |
| From: comment on John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by A.J. Ayer - Language,Truth and Logic Ch.7 | |
| A reaction: Ayer is summarising Hume's criticism of Locke. It implies that Hume agrees with Locke on the 'consciousness' theory, which is a theory which should appeal to all empiricists. It is nonsense, though. I am not my awareness of some passing gnat. |
| 1363 | Locke's theory confusingly tries to unite consciousness and memory [Reid on Locke] |
| Full Idea: Memory is a different experience from consciousness, and Locke should not link them together, but should admit that his theory depends on memory. | |
| From: comment on John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.10) by Thomas Reid - Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory Ch 6 | |
| A reaction: Interpreters of Locke over-emphasise memory. He thought that, effectively, a person IS a consciousness, and only got interested in memory as a way of extending consciousness across time. Then the epistemology of memory got him into trouble. |
| 1368 | Locke mistakes similarity of a memory to its original event for identity [Reid on Locke] |
| Full Idea: Locke's mistake arises because he confuses the 'same' consciousness of past events. A memory is only the 'same' in the sense of being similar, not in the sense of complete identity. | |
| From: comment on John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.10) by Thomas Reid - Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory Ch 6 | |
| A reaction: cf Locke's point in Ideas 1197 and 1373. |
| 1373 | Identity over time involves remembering actions just as they happened [Locke] |
| Full Idea: As far as any intelligent being can repeat the idea of any past action with the same consciousness it had of it at first, and with the same consciousness it has of any present action; so far it is the same personal self. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.10) | |
| A reaction: Reid's criticism of 'same' (Idea 1368). |
| 1380 | Should we punish people who commit crimes in their sleep? [Locke] |
| Full Idea: To punish Socrates waking for what sleeping Socrates thought, and waking Socrates was never conscious of, would be no more right, than to punish one twin for what his brother-twin did. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.19) | |
| A reaction: Personally I would feel guilty if I had a dream in which I had behaved immorally, though I wouldn't expect to be punished. It would be shocking to deny all responsibility if you had murdered someone while you were sleep-walking. |
| 5511 | For Locke, conscious awareness unifies a person at an instant and over time [Locke, by Martin/Barresi] |
| Full Idea: Central to Locke's account of the self is the idea that consciousness is reflexive and that it plays a dual role in self-constitution: it is what unifies a person not only over time, but also at a time. | |
| From: report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by R Martin / J Barresi - Introduction to 'Personal Identity' p.37 | |
| A reaction: This is a good explanation of Locke's view, and shows clearly why Locke does not hold a 'memory' theory (unless, of course, one held the view that all consciousness is memory). Consciousness unites self, or self unites consciousness? |
| 12509 | If the soul individuates a man, and souls are transferable, then a hog could be a man [Locke] |
| Full Idea: If identity of soul makes the same man, and the same individual spirit may be united to different bodies, it is possible men living in distant ages may have been the same man. But if the soul of Heliogabalus is in a hog, we would not say a hog is a man. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.06) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Locke uses this to say that Heliogabalus remains Heliogabalus, despite being in a hog. This is a good case of conceivability being very misleading about actual possibility. If Heliogabalus is transferable, then of course he isn't physical. |
| 1376 | Identity must be in consciousness not substance, because it seems transferable [Locke] |
| Full Idea: If the same consciousness can be transferred from one thinking substance to another, then two thinking substances may make but one person. For one consciousness being preserved, whether in the same or different substances, personal identity is preserved. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.13) | |
| A reaction: I take the sensible modern view to be that the transfer of the same consciousness between two different physical substances is absurd, since consciousness is (at the very least) entailed by the physical state. Could there be mentally identical twins? |
| 12512 | If someone becomes conscious of Nestor's actions, then he is Nestor [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Let a person once find himself conscious of any of the actions of Nestor, he then finds himself the same person with Nestor. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.14) | |
| A reaction: This seems to invite the sort of response Butler offered, that it would be a given that it was YOU who was thinking Nestor's thoughts, and presumably becoming puzzled thereby. If I imagine Troy, am I thinking Nestor's thoughts? |
| 12513 | If a prince's soul entered a cobbler's body, the person would be the prince (and the man the cobbler) [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Should the soul of a prince, carrying with it the consciousness of the prince's past life, enter the body of a cobbler, everyone sees he would be the same person with the prince, accountable for the prince's actions. But who would say he is the same man? | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.15) | |
| A reaction: This is another case of conceivability being misleading about possibility. I take this transfer to be utterly (metaphysically) impossible, and hence not a good 'intuition-pump' for assessing what personal identity means. |
| 12514 | On Judgement Day, no one will be punished for actions they cannot remember [Locke] |
| Full Idea: In the Great Day, wherein the secrets of all hearts shall be laid open, it may be reasonable to think no one shall be made to answer for what he knows nothing of. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.22) | |
| A reaction: If you could persuade devout criminals of the truth of Locke's idea, you could make a fortune selling them 'forgetfulness pills', which guaranteed they couldn't remember a thing on Judgement Day. Or perhaps that's what marihuana does. |
| 1397 | Locke sees underlying substance as irrelevant to personal identity [Locke, by Noonan] |
| Full Idea: The heart of Locke's account of personal identity is the claim that identity of substance is irrelevant. | |
| From: report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.25) by Harold Noonan - Personal Identity 2.6 | |
| A reaction: It is irrelevant whether a sound recording is made of wax, vinyl or CD-stuff. This is a functionalist view. A basic question is whether we consider it naturally or metaphysically possible to make a person out of anything other than brain. |
| 6139 | Locke implies that each thought has two thinkers - me, and 'my' substance [Merricks on Locke] |
| Full Idea: Locke's thesis about persons implies that, whenever I have a thought, two thinkers have that thought: me and 'my' thinking substance. | |
| From: comment on John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by Trenton Merricks - Objects and Persons §2.IV | |
| A reaction: Although Locke asserts the existence of a distinct entity, the 'person', he is fairly vague about the ontology involved. Some have suggested that he is a functionalist, and we could say that the substance 'constitutes' the person. |
| 5513 | Two persons might have qualitatively identical consciousnesses, so that isn't enough [Kant on Locke] |
| Full Idea: Kant thought that personal identity could not simply consist in sameness of consciousness, since someone's consciousness might be qualitatively similar to that of someone else who had existed previously. | |
| From: comment on John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by Immanuel Kant - Critique of Pure Reason | |
| A reaction: An interesting point, which leads to the question of whether two conscious events must by type-identical or token-identical to confer identity over time. Locke implies type- (which leads to Kant's objection). He needed, but couldn't have, token-. |
| 1345 | Locke's move from substance to consciousness is a slippery slope [Butler on Locke] |
| Full Idea: Because Locke says that personal identity is in consciousness rather than substance, this is a slippery slope which leads others to deny that the self exists (because consciousness is never quite the same). | |
| From: comment on John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by Joseph Butler - Analogy of Religion App.1 | |
| A reaction: If you are hoping to have a personal identity that can last for all of eternity, the slightest change now will mean disappearance eventually. There might be boundaries, but then the boundaries would define the identity more than consciousness does. |
| 1197 | No two thoughts at different times can be the same, as they have different beginnings [Locke] |
| Full Idea: No thought, considered as at different times, can be the same, each part thereof having a different beginning of existence. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.02) | |
| A reaction: cf Reid's objection (Idea 1368). Presumably there could be type-identity? If I have a thought which is identical to the thought I had yesterday, how do I tell whether it is the same token or merely the same type? It fails Locke's introspection test. |
| 1364 | Locke confuses the test for personal identity with the thing itself [Reid on Locke] |
| Full Idea: In Locke's doctrine, personal identity is confounded with the evidence which we have of our personal identity. | |
| From: comment on John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.10) by Thomas Reid - Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory Ch 6 | |
| A reaction: A clever criticism. Compare Idea 5424. I think I agree. If Locke says I have continuous consciousness, and Parfit says it is all I care about, this needs explaining. How do we explain the fact that I care about my past and my future? |
| 12511 | If consciousness is interrupted, and we forget our past selves, are we still the same thinking thing? [Locke] |
| Full Idea: In cases of our consciousness being interrupted and we losing sight of our past selves, doubt are raised whether we are the same thinking thing, i.e. that same substance or no. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.10) | |
| A reaction: Only Locke and Parfit, with their psychological continuity theory, need to anguish over this problem. Personally I see myself as irredeemably an animal, retaining my identity even when I can't remember my own name. |
| 1361 | If identity is consciousness, could a person move between bodies or fragment into parts? [Reid on Locke] |
| Full Idea: Locke's theory implies one person could shift between twenty intelligent beings, and one intelligent being could fragment mentally into twenty different persons, which is ridiculous. | |
| From: comment on John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.13) by Thomas Reid - Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory Ch 6 | |
| A reaction: Locke only says that IF the person 'shifted', that would not alter our notion that one person existed here, as long as the consciousness remained the same. The notion of 'fragmenting', though, leads to Parfit saying that personal identity is unimportant. |
| 21326 | Locke's memory theory of identity confuses personal identity with the test for it [Reid on Locke] |
| Full Idea: In Locke's doctrine not only is consciousness confounded with memory, but, which is still more strange, personal identity is confounded with the evidence which we have of our personal identity. | |
| From: comment on John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.14) by Thomas Reid - Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory III.Ch 6 | |
| A reaction: The same type of criticism as Russell's view of the coherence theory of truth (Idea 5424). I'm inclined to think that Reid has precisely identified Locke's main error. Some confuse the existence of a chair with our tests for whether the chair is there! |
| 1387 | Butler thought Locke's theory was doomed once he rejected mental substance [Perry on Locke] |
| Full Idea: Butler thought that Locke's denial of the requirement of identity of substance doomed his analysis of personal identity. | |
| From: comment on John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.25) by John Perry - Introduction to 'Personal Identity' Intro | |
| A reaction: Butler seems to have thought that psychological criteria were a slippery slope, whereas substance gives the necessary fixed identity (such as a bishop would require). Personally I say that personal identity is the activity of a physical substance. |
| 12809 | Nothing about me is essential [Locke] |
| Full Idea: 'Tis necessary for me to be as I am; God and Nature has made me so: but there is nothing I have is essential to me. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.06.04) | |
| A reaction: This is the aspect of Locke's critique of essentialism which Leibniz particularly disliked. Locke's view still has plenty of defenders, but I take it to be wrong, and Pinker seems to suggest that empirical research is beginning to agree with me. |
| 3792 | We are free to decide not to follow our desires [Locke] |
| Full Idea: We have a power to suspend the prosecution of this or that desire; as everyone daily may experiment in himself. This seems to me the source of all liberty, ..which is (as I think improperly) call'd 'free will'. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.21.47) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as a feeble defence of free will, since we have no idea of the origin of the decision not to act according to some desire. I see no sign of free will in introspection, despite what some people claim. |
| 12494 | Men are not free to will, because they cannot help willing [Locke] |
| Full Idea: A man is not at liberty to will or not to will, because he cannot forbear willing. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.21.24) | |
| A reaction: Not quite an answer to the big problem, but an interesting observation for those who have high hopes of a truly, deeply and extensively free will. |
| 12492 | Liberty is a power of agents, so can't be an attribute of wills [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Liberty, which is but a power, belongs only to agents, and cannot be an attribute or modification of the will, which is also but a power. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.21.14) | |
| A reaction: He is suggesting the 'free will' is a category mistake, but why shouldn't a power have a power? Magnetism can be strong, or focused. He is ducking the question of what ultimately controls the will. |
| 12493 | A man is free insofar as he can act according to his own preferences [Locke] |
| Full Idea: So far as his power reaches, of acting or not acting, by the determination of his own thought preferring either, so far is a man free. ..We can scarcely imagine any being freer, than to be able to do what he wills. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.21.21) | |
| A reaction: It take this approach, which Hume echoes, to be ducking the metaphysical problem, of where the act of willing originates. Locke goes on to admit this. |