Post on 05-Jul-2018
8/16/2019 Phil 102 Personal Identity Locke and Reid
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Personal Identity: Locke
This lecture will help you
understand:
• Locke’s Psychological
Continuity Approach
• Reid’s objections to Locke
– Gallant Officer argument
• Reid’s “Common Sense”
Approach
René Magritte, Not to Be
Reproduced ( La
Reproduction Interdit ),
(1937)
8/16/2019 Phil 102 Personal Identity Locke and Reid
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Psychological Continuity Approach
• Locke was probably the greatest andmost influential English philosopher.
• He was a contemporary of Descartes,and like Descartes he was a dualist.
• However, unlike Descartes he was notrationalist. He was an empiricist. Hedenied that we are born with anyknowledge. At birth, we are a tabularasa.
• An Essay Concerning HumanUnderstanding (1689)
John Locke (1632-1704)
8/16/2019 Phil 102 Personal Identity Locke and Reid
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• “Self is that conscious thinking thing—
whatever substance made up of (whether
spiritual or material, or simple or
compounded, it matters not)—which is
sensible or conscious of pleasure and pain,
capable of happiness or misery, and so
concerned for itself, as far as thatconsciousness extends” (IP 273-274).
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“Man”
• “The identity of the same man consists . . . in
nothing but a participation of the same
continued life, by constantly fleeing particles
of matter, in succession vitally united to the
same organized body” (IP 271).
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Prince and the Cobbler
• “For should the soul of a prince, carrying with
it the consciousness of the prince’s life, enter
and inform the body of the cobbler . . .
everyone sees that he would be the same
person with the prince, accountable only by
the prince’s actions. But who would say that it
was the same man?” (IP 273)
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8/16/2019 Phil 102 Personal Identity Locke and Reid
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Man = Cobbler
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Man = Cobbler
Person = Prince
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Question 2:In Locke’s view,
A. a rational parrot could not be the same
person as an individual at another time.
B. a rational parrot could not be the same
human as an individual at another time.
C. a rational parrot could be the same person
as an individual at another time.D. B and C
8/16/2019 Phil 102 Personal Identity Locke and Reid
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Person
• “the substance whereof personal selfconsisted at one time may be varied at
another, without the change of personal
identity; there being no question about thesame person, though the limbs which but now
were a part of it, be cut off” (IP 273).
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Accountability
• “In this personal identity is founded all the
right and justice of reward and punishment”
(IP 274).
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Memory and Consciousness
• “Had I the same consciousness of that I saw
the ark and Noah’s flood, as that I saw an
overflowing of the Thames last winter, I could
no more doubt that I who write this now, that
saw the Thames overflowed last winter, and
that viewed the flood at the general deluge
was the same self . . . than that I who writesthis am the same myself now whilst I write . . .
that I was yesterday” (IP 273).
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Personal Identity
• “personal identity consists: not in the identity
of substance, but, as I have said in the identity
of consciousness” (IP 274).
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Loss of Memory?
“But yet possibly it will still be objected, —Suppose I wholly lose the memory of some partsof my life, beyond a possibility of retrievingthem, so that perhaps I shall never be consciousof them again; yet am I not the same personthat did those actions, had those thoughts that Ionce was conscious of, though I have now forgotthem? To which I answer, that we must here
take notice what the word I is applied to; which,in this case, is the man only” (IP 274).
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Drunkenness?
• “But if it be possible for the same man to have distinctincommunicable consciousness at different times, it is pastdoubt the same man would at different times make differentpersons; which, we see, is the sense of mankind in thesolemnest declaration of their opinions, human laws not
punishing the mad man for the sober man's actions, nor thesober man for what the mad man did, — thereby makingthem two persons: which is somewhat explained by our wayof speaking in English when we say such an one is "nothimself," or is "beside himself"; in which phrases it is
insinuated, as if those who now, or at least first used them,thought that self was changed; the selfsame person was nolonger in that man” (IP 274).
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Sleep?
“if the same Socrates waking and sleeping do notpartake of the same consciousness, Socrates waking
and sleeping is not the same person. And to punish
Socrates waking for what sleeping Socrates thought,
and waking Socrates was never conscious of, would
be no more of right, than to punish one twin for
what his brother-twin did, whereof he knew nothing,
because their outsides were so like, that they couldnot be distinguished; for such twins have been seen”
(IP 274)
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Thomas Reid (1710-1796)
• Reid is famous for starting
what is often called the
“Commonsense” school of
philosophy and for his
defense of free will.
• For him it is commonsense
that we are the same peoplewe were yesterday, last year,
ten years ago, at birth.
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Objections to Locke
• “Mr. Locke tells us, however, “that personal
identity, that is, the sameness of a rational
being, consists in consciousness alone, and, as
far as this consciousness can be extended
backwards to any past action or thought, so
far reaches to the identity of that person. So
that whatever has the consciousness ofpresent and past actions is the same person to
whom they belong” (IP 289).
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Reid: Objections 1 and 2
1. “That if the same consciousness can be transferred from
one intelligent being to another, which he thinks we
cannot show to be impossible, then two or twenty
intelligent beings may be the same person” (IP 289).
2. “And if the intelligent being may lose the consciousness
of the actions done by him, which surely is possible, then
he is not the person that did those actions; so that one
intelligent being may be two or twenty different persons,
if he shall often lose the consciousness of his formeractions” (IP 289).
8/16/2019 Phil 102 Personal Identity Locke and Reid
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Locke
• “Could we suppose two distinct incommunicable
consciousnesses acting the same body, the one
constantly by day, the other by night; and, on the
other side, the same consciousness, acting byintervals, two distinct bodies: I ask, in the first case,
whether the day and the night — man would not be
two as distinct persons as Socrates and Plato? And
whether, in the second case, there would not be oneperson in two distinct bodies, as much as one man is
the same in two distinct clothings?” (IP 275)
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Reid: Objection 3
• “There is another consequence of this
doctrine, which follows no less necessarily,
though Mr. Locke probably did not see it. It is,
that a man may be, and at the same time not
be, the person that did a particular action. . .”
8/16/2019 Phil 102 Personal Identity Locke and Reid
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• “Suppose a brave officer to have been flogged
when a boy at school for robbing an orchard,to have taken a standard from an enemy in his
first campaign, and to have been made a
general in advanced life; suppose, also, whichmust also be admitted as possible, that, when
he took the standard, he was conscious of
having been flogged at school, and that, when
he made a general, he was conscious of his
taking the standard, but had absolutely lost
consciousness of his flogging. . . ”
8/16/2019 Phil 102 Personal Identity Locke and Reid
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• “These things being supposed, it follows, from
Mr. Locke’s doctrine, that he who was flogged
at school is the same person who took the
standard, and that he who took the standardis the same person who was made a general.
Whence it follows, if there be any truth in
logic, that the general is the same person withhim who was flogged at school.”
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• “But the general’s consciousness does not
reach back so far as his flogging; therefore
according to Mr. Locke’s doctrine, he is not the
same person who was flogged. Therefore the
general is, and at the same time is not, the
same person with him who was flogged at
school. . . .” (IP 289)• A contradiction!
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A B C
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Hypothetical Syllogism
• A hypothetical syllogism is a deductiveargument consisting of two premises and one
conclusion having a conditional statement for
one or both of its premises.
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If A = B
and
If B = C
Then A = C
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Reid Against Locke
“It may here be observed (though the observationwould have been unnecessary, if some greatphilosophers had not contradicted it), that it is notmy remembering any action of mine that makes meto be the person who did it. This remembrance
makes me to know assuredly that I did it; but I mighthave done it, though I did not remember it. Thatrelation to me, which is expressed by saying that Idid it, would be the same, though I had not the leastremembrance of it. To say that my rememberingthat I did such a thing, or, as some choose to expressit, my being conscious that I did it, makes me tohave done it, appears to me as great an absurdity asit would be to say, that my belief that the world wascreated made it to be created.” (IP 287)
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Not Bodily Continuity
• “If [a person] has a leg or an arm cut off, he is
the same person as before” (IP 286).
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The Subject of Acts
• “I am not thought, I am not action, I
am not feeling; I am something that
thinks and acts and suffers” (IP 286).
• Reid defines the self as the one who
remembers, who thinks, who has
consciousness, who believes, who
desires
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Self
• “perfect identity” (IP 287) (i.e. it doesn’t
change)
•
“indivisible” (IP 286) (i.e., it cannot beseparated into any component parts)
• “foundation of all rights and obligations,
and of all accountableness” (IP 288).
• Is this true?