display all the ideas for this combination of texts
2 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. |