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?
|
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.
|
21306
|
Causation unites our perceptions, by producing, destroying and modifying each other
[Hume]
|
|
Full Idea:
As to causation, the true idea of the human mind is to consider it as a system of different perceptions, which are linked together by the relation of cause and effect, and mutually produce, destroy, influence and modify each other.
|
|
From:
David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.IV.6)
|
|
A reaction:
He suggests that the associations of memory and causation might be sufficient to produce identity of the mind, and he gives the priority to memory. Eventually the good empiricist despairs because you cannot experience the links.
|
21311
|
Are self and substance the same? Then how can self remain if substance changes?
[Hume]
|
|
Full Idea:
Is the self the same with substance? If it be, how can that question have place concerning the subsistence of self, under a change of substance? If they be distinct, what is the difference between them?
|
|
From:
David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature, + Appendix [1740], Appendix)
|
|
A reaction:
Locke seems to think there is a characterless substance which supports momories, and the latter constitute the self. So if my substance acquires Nestor's memories, I become Nestor. Hume, the stricter empiricist, cares nothing for characterless things.
|
7546
|
A man is a succession of momentary men, bound by continuity and causation
[Russell]
|
|
Full Idea:
The real man, I believe, however the police may swear to his identity, is really a series of momentary men, each different one from the other, and bound together, not by a numerical identity, but by continuity and certain instrinsic causal laws.
|
|
From:
Bertrand Russell (The Ultimate Constituents of Matter [1915], p.124)
|
|
A reaction:
This seems to be in the tradition of Locke and Parfit, and also follows the temporal-slices idea of physical objects. Personally I take a more physical view of things, and think the police are probably more reliable than Bertrand Russell.
|
7946
|
The memory criterion has a problem when one thing branches into two things
[Williams,B, by Macdonald,C]
|
|
Full Idea:
The memory criterion for personal identity permits 'branching' (where two things can later meet the criteria of persistence of a single earlier thing), which presents it with serious problems.
|
|
From:
report of Bernard Williams (Personal Identity and Individuation [1956]) by Cynthia Macdonald - Varieties of Things Ch.4
|
|
A reaction:
Of course, any notion of personal identity would have serious problem if people could branch into two, like fissioning amoeba. If that happened, we probably wouldn't have had a strong notion of personal identity in the first place. See Parfit.
|
5521
|
If my brain-halves are transplanted into two bodies, I have continuity, and don't need identity
[Parfit]
|
|
Full Idea:
If the two halves of my brain are transplanted into different bodies just like mine, they cannot both be me, since that would make them the same person. ..But my relation to these two contains everything that matters, so identity is not what matters.
|
|
From:
Derek Parfit (The Unimportance of Identity [1995], p.314)
|
|
A reaction:
I challenge his concept of what 'matters'. He has a rather solipsistic view of the problem, and I take Parfit to be a rather unsociable person, since his friends and partner will be keenly interested in the identities of the new beings.
|
5504
|
Maybe we should see persons in four dimensions, with stages or time-slices at an instant
[Martin/Barresi]
|
|
Full Idea:
Some recent philosophers have argued that we should replace the three-dimensional view of persons with a four-dimensional view according to which only time-slices, or 'stages', of persons exist at short intervals of time.
|
|
From:
R Martin / J Barresi (Introduction to 'Personal Identity' [2003], p.3)
|
|
A reaction:
At first glance this seems to neatly eliminate lots of traditional worries. But why would I want to retain my identity, if someone threatened to brainwash me. I also want to disown my inadequate earlier selves. Interesting, though. Lewis.
|
7947
|
In continuity, what matters is not just the beginning and end states, but the process itself
[Macdonald,C]
|
|
Full Idea:
What matters to continuity is not just the beginning and end states of the process by which a thing persists, perhaps through change, but the process itself.
|
|
From:
Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.4)
|
|
A reaction:
This strikes me as being a really important insight. Compare Idea 4931. If this is the key to understanding mind and personal identity, it means that the concept of a 'process' must be a central issue in ontology. How do you individuate a process?
|