| 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. |
| 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-. |
| 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. |
| 21314 | Consciousness presupposes personal identity, so it cannot constitute it [Butler] |
| Full Idea: One would think it really self-evident that consciousness of personal identity presupposes, and therefore cannot constitute, personal identity, any more than knowledge can presuppose truth, which it presupposes. | |
| From: Joseph Butler (Analogy of Religion [1736], App.1) | |
| A reaction: It rather begs the question to dogmatically assert that mere consciousness presupposes a self, especially after Hume's criticisms. That consciousness implies a subject to experience needs arguing for. Is it the best explanation? |
| 21312 | Perceptions are distinct, so no connection between them can ever be discovered [Hume] |
| Full Idea: If perceptions are distinct existences, they form a whole only by being connected together. But no connexions among distinct existences are ever discoverable. We only feel a connexion ...to pass from one object to another. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature, + Appendix [1740], Appendix) | |
| A reaction: This first part of this is a problem for any 'bundle' theory of objects or self. This is why Hume abandons all hope for his theory of personal identity based on association. You infer the associations, but don't perceive them. |
| 21321 | Memory reveals my past identity - but so does testimony of other witnesses [Reid] |
| Full Idea: Although memory gives the most irresistible evidence of my being the identical person that did such a thing, I may have other good evidence of things which befell me. I know who bare me and suckled me, but I do not remember those events. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 4) | |
| A reaction: A splendidly accurate and simple observation. Reid's criticisms of Locke are greatly superior to those of Butler. We now have vast collections of photographs showing our past identities. |
| 21324 | If consciousness is transferable 20 persons can be 1; forgetting implies 1 can be 20 [Reid] |
| Full Idea: If the same consciousness can be transferred from one intelligent being to another, then two or twenty beings may be the same person. If he may lose the consciousness of actions done by him, one intelligent being may be two or twenty different persons. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 6) | |
| A reaction: Reid says Locke was aware of these two implications of his theory of personal identity (based on consciousness). The first example is me replicated like software. The second is if I forget that I turned the light off, then who did turn the light off? |
| 21325 | Boy same as young man, young man same as old man, old man not boy, if forgotten! [Reid] |
| Full Idea: Suppose a brave officer, flogged as a boy for robbing an orchard, to have captured a standard in his first campaign, and become a general in advanced life. [If the general forgets the flogging] he is and at the same time is not the same as the boy. | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 6) | |
| A reaction: The point is that strict identity has to be transitive, and if the general forgets his boyhood that breaks the transitivity. If identity is less strict there is no problem. The general may only have memories related to some part of his boyhood. |
| 21327 | If a stolen horse is identified by similitude, its identity is not therefore merely similitude [Reid] |
| Full Idea: When a stolen horse is claimed, the only evidence that this is the same horse is similitude. But would it not be ridiculous from this to infer that the identity of a horse consists in similitude only? | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 6) | |
| A reaction: Actually that is exactly Hume's view of the matter (Idea 21292). For a strict empiricist there is nothing else be close resemblance over time. I prefer Reid's account to Hume's. - but then I am not a 'strict' empiricist. |
| 1366 | If consciousness is personal identity, it is continually changing [Reid] |
| Full Idea: Is it not strange that the identity of a person should consist in a thing (consciousness) which is continually changing? | |
| From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 6) | |
| A reaction: This is the panicky slippery slope view of Locke, that sees his doctrine as the first step to the destruction of religion. The fact is, though, that parts of my consciousness changes continually, but other parts stay the same for years on end. |
| 21452 | I can only determine my existence in time via external things [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The determination of my existence in time is possible only by means of the existence of actual things that I perceive outside of myself. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B275) | |
| A reaction: This may be the germ of Hegel's much more social view of the self. Kant is only concerned with the question of identity across time. |
| 5582 | As balls communicate motion, so substances could communicate consciousness, but not retain identity [Kant] |
| Full Idea: A series of elastic balls can successively communicate motion to one another. If mental substances communicated consciousness in this way, the last substance would be conscious of the previous states, but would not be the very same person. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B406-/A364) | |
| A reaction: A nice attack on John Locke's proposal, though Locke was aware of this scenario, and claimed the identity followed the consciousness. Clearly, though, if I share my thoughts with you, you don't instantly become me! |
| 5327 | Temporal gaps in the consciousness of a spirit could not be bridged by memories [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: If there were temporal gaps in the consciousness of disembodied spirits, the occurrences of memory-experiences would not be sufficient to bridge them. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (The Central Questions of Philosophy [1973], §VI.C) | |
| A reaction: Ayer is very sympathetic to the idea that the body is a key ingredient in personal identity. Without a body, there would be no criteria at all for the continuity of a spirit which lost consciousness for a while, since consciousness is all it is. |
| 1396 | We identify persons before identifying conscious states [Carruthers] |
| Full Idea: We can have no conception of the particularity of conscious states prior to, and independently of, a conception of a particularity of persons. | |
| From: Peter Carruthers (Introducing Persons [1986], 2.iii (C)) | |
| A reaction: agrees with Butler |