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3 ideas
| 12942 | Memory doesn't make identity; a man who relearned everything would still be the same man [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: If a man were made young again, and learned everything anew - would that make him a different man? So it is not memory that makes the very same man. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 2.01) | |
| A reaction: Leibniz takes this as a foregone conclusion. If you flipped to a possible world where someone you know well, as a physical being, has been brought up entirely differently (new language, culture, ethics etc), is it really the same person? |
| 12973 | We know our own identity by psychological continuity, even if there are some gaps [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: To discover one's own moral identity unaided, it is sufficient that between one state and a neighbouring (or just a nearby) one there be a mediating bond of consciousness, even if this has a jump or forgotten interval mixed into it. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 2.27) | |
| A reaction: Leibniz appears to accept the psychological continuity view of personal identity (which was probably a new problem to him), even though he rightly rejects the account based purely on memory. |
| 19368 | The will determines action, by what is seen as good, but it does not necessitate it [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Choice, however much the will is determined to make it, should not be called absolutely and strictly necessary: a predominance of goods of which one is aware inclines without necessitating, though this is determining and never fails to have its effect. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 2.21) | |
| A reaction: Something like seeing that 7+5 equals 12 makes you say '12', but it doesn't actually necessitate your saying '12'? Certain facts seem determined by nature, but not necessitated. Or not necessarily necessitated? |