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Full Idea
My thoughts, and actions, and feelings, change every moment: they have no continued, but a successive, existence: but that self, or I, to which they belong, is permanent.
Gist of Idea
Thoughts change continually, but the self doesn't
Source
Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 4)
Book Ref
'Personal Identity', ed/tr. Perry,John [University of California 1975], p.109
A Reaction
The word 'permanent' may be excessive, but one could hardly say there is nothing more to personal identity than the contents of consciousnes, given how much and how quickly those continually fluctuate.
| 5266 | It would seem that the thinking part is the individual self [Aristotle] |
| 1401 | Since I only observe myself to be thinking, I conclude that that is my essence [Descartes] |
| 2299 | I can exist without imagination and sensing, but they can't exist without me [Descartes] |
| 6907 | For Descartes a person's essence is the mind because objects are perceived by mind, not senses [Descartes, by Feuerbach] |
| 5017 | In thinking we shut ourselves off from other substances, showing our identity and separateness [Descartes] |
| 6721 | Ideas are perceived by the mind, soul or self [Berkeley] |
| 1352 | Thoughts change continually, but the self doesn't [Reid] |
| 5549 | Mental representations would not be mine if they did not belong to a unified self-consciousness [Kant] |