Locke on Personal Identity

---

Personal Identity

• We are discussing two problems: the unity of the self, and personal identity.
• The problem of the unity of self is, what makes a person one person?
• The problem of personal identity is, what makes a person one person over time?
• Locke primarily addresses this second concern.

Locke's View

• This selection from Locke is from his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, from the 1694 edition.
• Locke begins by noting that when we see an object we assume it is one object (two of the same kind do not occupy the same space at the same time).
• His ontology allows for three basic kinds: God, finite spirits, bodies (physical things). The origin of the latter two makes for the criterion of its identity.
• Identity in an instant is given: each thing is identical to itself. Locke thinks that this explains then identity over time for simple bodies, since in each instant they are self-identical, as long as there is no change observed.
• But for life, for example, perhaps things are different. A heap of matter is different over time if any chance is made of it. But an oak tree changes constantly, but we say it is the same tree. Locke's answer: the tree continues to be the same one tree as long as it partakes of the same one life. The continuity of this one life over time is given by a continuity in organization.
• The same is true of animals: they are a single organization, continuous over time. They are like machines in this regard, but that their motivating force "comes from within."
• Locke does not assume that humans are animals, but he does say that the identity of a "man," by which he means the body of a human, is one over time because it is "vitally united to the same organized body."
• Locke warns us off the intuition of seeing the man in the soul, and then the body is almost irrelevant: were "the soul of Heliogabalus in one of his hogs, [no one] would yet say that hog were a man or Heliogabalus." (S6) Just so, we would call a completely unintelligent man a man, and a talking intelligent parrot a parrot -- the animal nature or man-nature is notdetermined by these intelligence features (S8) Indeed, Locke wants to separate the term "man" and "person," allowing that a Cobbler could get the consciousness of a Prince, and thus become that person, but he would not be the same man as that man the Prince was (S15)
• This should make clear to us that we should not ask "what makes something the same thing?" or somesuch very general question, but rather, must apply more specific concepts, like: What makes a substance the same substance? What makes a man the same man? What makes a a person the same person? And so on. The concept will determine what the identity criteria are. (S7)
• A person is "a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places; which it does only by that consciousness whic his inseparable from thinking" (S9)
• Personal identity is then "the sameness of a rational being; and as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of that person" (S9)
• But consciousness is interrupted! But this is not a problem, since when it resumes it has memory and so consciousness of its past. If the matter of the body has changed in the interim this does not matter, since it is the consciousness and memory, not the matter, that constitute the person. (S10)
• Note also that the matter does change: someone can lose a limb, and we still rightly say they are the same person. (S11)
• Can we then switch the thinking substance, and switch the person? Locke answers this by demanding that we get an account of thinking substance sufficient to tell us if it works like matter for the materialists -- that is, whether you can have the same organization in two instances of immaterial substance such that they are the same person (at different times), in the way that you can have the same organization in two heaps of matter, such that they are the same animal or plant (at different times). (S12)
• Memory is the important link: Locke rejects the view for example of those who claim we are reincarnated but that we cannot remember our past lives. Those were not our lives then -- that is not the life of the same person. (S14)
• Locke also offers a theory of self: self is that conscious thing that is concerned for itself, as far as the consciousness extends. The self extends then just as far in this moment as the consciousness extends; I am not conscious of the inside of the table, for example, so the table is not part of myself. (S17)
• We must be careful about the use of "I" and similar terms: they can refer to a man, or to a person. (S20)
• Are we wrong to punish those who claim not to remember the crime they committed (e.g., they were drunk). Locke suggests we are, but that it is expedient to punish them because we cannot know when their claim is true. (S22)