Locke: Identity

John Locke accepts that every perception gives me immediate and intuitive knowledge of my own existence. However, this knowledge is limited to the present moment when I have the perception. If I want to understand the necessary and sufficient conditions of my continued existence over time, Locke argues that it is important to clarify what ‘I’ refers to. While we often do not distinguish the concept of a person from that of a human being in ordinary language, Locke emphasizes that (...) this distinction is important if we want to engage with questions of identity over time. According to Locke, persons are thinking intelligent beings who can consider themselves as extended into the past and future and who are concerned for their happiness and accountable for their actions. Moreover, for Locke a self is a person, considered from a first-personal point of view. I show that the concept of self that he develops in the context of his discussion of persons and personal identity is richer and more complex than the I-concept that he invokes in his version of the cogito. I further argue that Locke’s moral and religious views explain why he emphasizes the need for a conceptual distinction between persons and human beings. In the final section I turn to the reception of Locke’s view by some of his early critics and defenders, including Elizabeth Berkeley Burnet, an anonymous author, and Catharine Trotter Cockburn. (shrink)

William Molyneux (1656–1698) was an Irish experimental philosopher and politician, who played a major role in the intellectual life in seventeenth-century Dublin. He became Locke’s friend and correspondent in 1692 and was probably Locke’s philosophically most significant correspondent. Locke approached Molyneux for advice for revising his Essay concerning Human Understanding as he was preparing the second and subsequent editions. Locke made several changes in response to Molyneux’s suggestions; they include major revisions of the chapter ‘Of Power’ (2.21), the addition of (...) the chapter ‘Of Identity and Diversity’ (2.27), and the addition of the so-called Molyneux Problem (2.9.8). Molyneux repeatedly requested that Locke develops his views on morality. Additionally, their correspondence turned to questions concerning education and Molyneux’s keen interest in the topic likely prompted Locke to publish Some Thoughts Concerning Education in 1693. Moreover, Molyneux drew on Locke’s anonymously published Two Treatises of Government in his The Case of Ireland’s Being Bound by Acts of Parliament in England, Stated, which was first published in the spring of 1698. Molyneux revealed Locke’s authorship of Two Treatises against Locke’s will, yet their friendship continued until Molyneux’s untimely death in October 1698. (shrink)

Ruth Boeker offers a new perspective on Locke’s account of persons and personal identity by considering it within the context of his broader philosophical project and the philosophical debates of his day. Her interpretation emphasizes the importance of the moral and religious dimensions of his view. By taking seriously Locke’s general approach to questions of identity, Boeker shows that we should consider his account of personhood separately from his account of personal identity over time. On this basis, she argues that (...) Locke endorses a moral account of personhood, according to which persons are subjects of accountability, and that his particular thinking about moral accountability explains why he regards sameness of consciousness as necessary for personal identity over time. In contrast to some Neo-Lockean views about personal identity, Boeker argues that Locke’s account of personal identity is not psychological per se, but rather his underlying moral, religious, metaphysical, and epistemic background beliefs are relevant for understanding why he argues for a consciousness-based account of personal identity. Taking his underlying background beliefs into consideration not only sheds light on why many of his early critics do not adopt Locke’s view, but also shows why his view cannot be as easily dismissed as some of his critics assume. -/- . (shrink)

When does a human being cease to exist? For millennia, the answer to this question had remained largely unchanged: death had been diagnosed when heartbeat and breathing were permanently absent. Only comparatively recently, in the 1950s, rapid developments in intensive-care medicine called into question this widely accepted criterion. What had previously been deemed a permanent cessation of vital functions suddenly became reversible. -/- A new criterion of death was needed. It was suggested that the destruction of the brain could indicate (...) the death of the organism in the presence of external life support. Soon the so-called brain death became the new worldwide standard. In recent years, however, doubts about this neurological criterion have been growing. Is brain death really our death? -/- This is the question that this thesis seeks to answer. To this end, we shall connect the medical debate about the definition of death to the philosophical debate about personal identity. While we will find that the destruction of its brain does in fact not correspond to an organism’s death, we shall also ask whether the assumption that we are essentially organisms is correct. May brain death be the ceasing to exist of a different entity? -/- Substituting clinical case reports and considerations about human physiology for the use of thought experiments, the thesis takes a novel and philosophically unconventional approach to the problem of what we essentially are. We shall analyse various pathological conditions and their respective effects on the bodily and mental characteristics of our existence. We will conclude that brain death is indeed our death – but for reasons entirely different from those cited in the original justification of this criterion. (shrink)

Catharine Trotter Cockburn (1679- 1749) fu poetessa, drammaturga e filosofa. La vivacità intellettuale e la forte determinazione le permisero di aggirare il pregiudizio di genere e di sottrarsi alle dinamiche di marginalizzazione femminile tipiche dell’età moderna. Pur celandosi dietro l’anonimato, Cockburn prese parte attiva al dibattito filosofico del tempo, intervenendo soprattutto in materia di morale. Le sue opere filosofiche, scritte in difesa di Locke o di Clarke, custodiscono, nonostante il dichiarato intento apologetico, tratti di originalità e indipendenza, particolarmente evidenti nella (...) teoria dell’obbligo morale, nell’interpretazione modale della dottrina lockeana d’identità personale, nell’ipotesi di una natura ontologica dello spazio. (shrink)

Shelley Weinberg’s Consciousness in Locke builds on her previous journal articles and makes significant contributions to John Locke scholarship by offering the first systematic study of consciousness throughout Locke’s Essay. According to Weinberg, consciousness for Locke is self-referential, non-evaluative awareness internal to every thought or perception. She argues that once we realize the complexity of any perception—namely that every perception involves, “at the very least, an act of perception, an idea perceived, and consciousness ” —we can see that Locke’s conception (...) of consciousness connects important themes in his philosophical psychology, namely his theory of... (shrink)

john locke argues that personal identity consists in sameness of consciousness, and he maintains that any other theory of personal identity would lead to "great Absurdities".1 This statement intimates that Locke thought carefully about alternative conceptions of personal identity and their problems. In this paper, I argue that, by understanding Locke's account of personal identity in the context of metaphysical and religious debates of his time, especially debates concerning the afterlife and the state of the soul between death and resurrection, (...) we can reveal the strengths of his view and show how his account of personal identity in terms of sameness of consciousness has the resources to avoid... (shrink)

According to Locke, appropriation is a precondition for moral responsibility and thus we can expect that it plays a distinctive role in his theory. Yet it is rare to find an interpretation of Locke’s account of appropriation that does not associate it with serious problems. To make room for a more satisfying understanding of Locke’s account of appropriation we have to analyse why it was so widely misunderstood. The aim of this paper is fourfold: First, I will show that Mackie’s (...) and Winkler’s interpretations that have shaped the subsequent discussion contain serious flaws. Second, I will argue that the so-called appropriation interpretation —that is the view that appropriation is meant to provide alternative persistence conditions for persons—lacks support. Third, I will re-examine Locke’s texts and argue that we can come to a better understanding of his notion of appropriation in the Essay if we interpret it in analogy to his account of appropriation in Two Treatises. Fourth, I will offer a more fine-grained interpretation of the role of appropriation in relation to persistence conditions for persons. I conclude by showing that the advantage of this proposal is that it reconciles interpretations that have commonly been thought to be inconsistent. (shrink)

Hume’s theory of personal identity is developed in response to Locke’s account of personal identity. Yet it is striking that Hume does not emphasize Locke’s distinction between persons and human beings. It seems even more striking that Hume’s account of the self in Books 2 and 3 of the Treatise has less scope for distinguishing persons from human beings than his account in Book 1. This is puzzling, because Locke originally introduced the distinction in order to answer questions of moral (...) accountability and Hume’s discussion of the self in Book 2 provides the foundation of his moral theory in Book 3. In response to the puzzle I show that Locke and Hume hold different moral and religious views and these differences are important to explain why their theories of personal identity differ. (shrink)

The importance of John Locke's discussion of persons is undeniable. Locke never explicitly tells us whether he thinks persons are substances or modes, however. We are thus left in the dark about a fundamental aspect of Locke's view. Many commentators have recently claimed that Lockean persons are modes. In this paper I swim against the current tide in the secondary literature and argue that Lockean persons are substances. Specifically I argue that what Locke says about substance, power, and agency commits (...) him to the claim that persons are substances. I consider the passages mode interpreters cite and show why these passages do not imply that Lockean persons are modes. I also respond to two objections anyone who thinks Lockean persons are substances must address. I show that a substance reading of Locke on persons can be sympathetic and viable. I contend that with a clearer understanding of the ontological status of Lockean persons we can gain a firmer grasp of what Locke's picture of persons looks like. Finally, once we are armed with a better understanding of Locke on substance, mode, and personhood, we can pave the way toward a more nuanced description of the early modern debate over personal identity. (shrink)

John Locke discusses the notions of identity and diversity in Book 2, Chapter 27 of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. At the beginning of this much-discussed chapter, Locke posits the place-time-kind principle. According to this principle, no two things of the same kind can be in the same place at the same time . Just what Locke means by this is unclear, however. So too is whether this principle causes problems for Locke, and whether these problems can be resolved. This (...) is significant because the place-time-kind principle is foundational to Locke's discussion of identity. Moreover, the place-time-kind principle stands at the center of a number of lively and long-standing debates in Locke scholarship. These include the debates over the ontological status of Lockean persons, and whether Locke is a relative identity theorist, to name just two. In this paper, I offer a survey of how Locke's place-time-kind principle has been interpreted in the secondary literature. The aim of this taxonomy is to clarify where the differences between competing interpretations lie, and additionally show just how challenging it is to determine which reading is best. (shrink)

Locke and Leibniz on Substance gathers together papers by an international group of academic experts, examining the metaphysical concept of substance in the writings of these two towering philosophers of the early modern period. Each of these newly-commissioned essays considers important interpretative issues concerning the role that the notion of substance plays in the work of Locke and Leibniz, and its intersection with other key issues, such as personal identity. Contributors also consider the relationship between the two philosophers and contemporaries (...) such as Descartes and Hume. (shrink)

I offer an interpretation of John Locke’s account of persons and personal identity that gives full credit to Locke’s claim that “person” is a forensic term, sheds new light on the relation between Locke’s characterizations of a person in sections 9 and 26, and explains how Locke links his moral and legal account of personhood to his account of personal identity in terms of sameness of consciousness. I show that Locke’s claim that sameness of consciousness is necessary for personal identity (...) depends on two components: first, his particular moral and legal conception of a person and, second, his particular understanding of the conditions of just accountability for past actions. Had Locke given a different account of personhood, or thought differently about the conditions of just accountability, he might have given a nonpsychological account of personal identity. (shrink)

John Locke offered a very rich and influential account of persons and personal identity in “Of Identity and Diversity,” which is chapter 27 of Book 2 of his An Essay concerning Human Understanding. He added it to the second edition in 1694 upon the recommendation of his friend William Molyneux. Locke’s theory was soon after its publication discussed by his contemporaries and has influenced many present-day discussions of personal identity. Distinctive about Locke’s theory is that he argues that the notion (...) of a person is to be distinguished from that of a human organism, or “man” to use Locke’s term, and that of a substance. By distinguishing the notion of a person from the more traditional notions of a human organism and a substance, Locke is able to address moral questions of accountability without having to take a stance on the question of whether the underlying ontological constitution of a person is material or immaterial. The chapter can be divided into two parts: in the first he outlines his general account of identity, and in the second he applies his general account of identity to persons and personal identity. The discussion of Locke’s general account of identity in the secondary literature has focused on whether Locke’s account of identity can be regarded as a version of the thesis that identity is relative and on how Locke understands modes and substances in chapter 27. The secondary literature on Locke’s account of persons and personal identity often focuses on how Locke’s claim that personal identity consists in sameness of consciousness is to be understood. However, some interpreters also draw attention to the importance of the moral and legal dimension which Locke makes explicit in his claim that “person” is a forensic term (II.xxvii.26). Moreover, some scholars have argued that Locke’s theory is to be understood in its religious context. The objections which have repeatedly been raised against Locke include the problem of circularity and the problem of transitivity; Locke’s reference to “fatal error” in II.xxvii.13 has also been regarded as a serious problem for his view. In the 20th century, psychological accounts of personal identity were often called neo-Lockean theories. It is controversial whether neo-Lockean theories differ from Locke’s own theory, and it can be asked whether the moral and religious dimension of Locke’s theory constitutes an important difference. (shrink)

According to Locke’s Principle, material objects are identical if and only if they are of the same kind and once occupy the same place at the same time. There is disagreement about whether this principle is true, but what is seldom disputed is that, even if true, the principle fails to constitute an applicable criterion of identity. In this paper, I take issue with two arguments that have been offered in support of this claim by arguing (i) that we can (...) have knowledge of past whereabouts, and so verify the right hand side of Locke’s Principle, without having to assess concrete identity claims first; (ii) that even under conditions of incomplete knowledge of past whereabouts we can use Locke’s Principle to decide concrete identity problems. (shrink)

This article discusses Galen Strawson's Locke on Personal Identity: Consciousness and Concernment, and Udo Thiel's The Early Modern Subject.

Matthew Stuart offers a fresh interpretation of John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, arguing for the work's profound contribution to metaphysics. He presents new readings of Locke's accounts of personal identity and the primary/secondary quality distinction, and explores Locke's case against materialism and his philosophy of action.

Locke’s theory of personal identity was philosophically groundbreaking for its attempt to establish a non-substantial identity condition. Locke states, “For the same consciousness being preserv’d, whether in the same or different Substances, the personal Identity is preserv’d” (II.xxvii.13). Many have interpreted Locke to think that consciousness identifies a self both synchronically and diachronically by attributing thoughts and actions to a self. Thus, many have attributed to Locke either a memory theory or an appropriation theory of personal identity. But the former (...) stumble on circularity and the latter is insufficient for Locke’s moral theory insofar as he is committed to a theory of divine rectification. The common problem is that Locke’s theory seems to demand an objective, or metaphysical, fact of a continuing consciousness that does not appeal to a traditional notion of substance for the continuity. I’m suggesting something new. In II.xxvii of the Essay, we see an ambiguity in Locke’s use of the term ‘consciousness’. Locke seems to see consciousness as both a mental state by means of which we are aware of ourselves as perceiving and as the ongoing self we are aware of in these conscious states. First, I make the textual argument why we should read Locke as having a conception of a metaphysical fact of a continuing consciousness that does not appeal to thinking or bodily substance to establish its continuity. I then argue that the metaphysical fact of an enduring consciousness is revealed to us as a phenomenological fact of experience. Due to the nature of certain kinds of perceptual situations we have an experience of ourselves as temporally extended. Although the text bears out that Locke seemed to think there is a fact of an ongoing consciousness, I argue that it is consistent with his reluctance elsewhere that he makes no further epistemological or ontological claims about it. Finally, I provide an account of Locke’s understanding of memory and its relation to consciousness that supports the claim that consciousness is something ontologically distinct from either thinking or bodily substance. (shrink)

In line with the empiricist project, Locke tries to describe how unconscious encounters with environment yield to the emergence of consciousness. For Locke the self is identical with consciousness and consciousness is accessible empirically. As far as the identity of human is concerned, identity of the self depends on the consciousness of the person. The person is identical to himself to the extent that he is aware of his own perceptions and thinking. The range of the person’s memory sets the (...) limits of consciousness. According to Locke, consciousness is an element that accompanies all acts of thinking including act of recollection. Such accompanying consciousness constitutes the form of the identity of the self, whereas memory-ideas may be considered the content of consciousness. Therefore, it is this formal constitutive element that provides constancy of the idea of the self. If so, then it can be claimed that Locke’s approach to the question of the self results in admitting the truth of what he intends to reject and it is self-defeating; this is to say that, Locke’s methodology pushes him to adopt a Platonic-Aristotelian formal theory of identity in general and of personal identity in particular. (shrink)

This book argues that in fact it is Locke 's critics who are wrong, and that the famous objections to his theory are invalid.

British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Volume 19, Issue 4, Page 826-830, July 2011.

The Early Modern Subject explores the understanding of self-consciousness and personal identity--two fundamental features of human subjectivity--as it developed in early modern philosophy. Udo Thiel presents a critical evaluation of these features as they were conceived in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He explains the arguments of thinkers such as Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, Wolff, and Hume, as well as their early critics, followers, and other philosophical contemporaries, and situates them within their historical contexts. Interest in the issues of self-consciousness and (...) personal identity is in many ways characteristic and even central to early modern thought, but Thiel argues here that this is an interest that continues to this day, in a form still strongly influenced by the conceptual frameworks of early modern thought. In this book he attempts to broaden the scope of the treatment of these issues considerably, covering more than a hundred years of philosophical debate in France, Britain, and Germany while remaining attentive to the details of the arguments under scrutiny and discussing alternative interpretations in many cases. (shrink)

Locke’s account of personal identity has been highly influential because of its emphasis on a psychological criterion. The same consciousness is required for being the same person. It is not so clear, however, exactly what Locke meant by ‘consciousness’ or by ‘having the same consciousness’. Interpretations vary: consciousness is seen as identical to memory, as identical to a first personal appropriation of mental states, and as identical to a first personal distinctive experience of the qualitative features of one’s own thinking. (...) There is wide agreement, however, that Locke’s theory of personal identity is meant to complement his moral and theological commitments to a system of divine punishment and reward in an afterlife. But these commitments seem to require also a metaphysical criterion, and Locke is insistent that it cannot be substance. The difficulty reconciling the psychological and metaphysical requirements of the theory has led, at worst, to charges of incoherence and, at best, to a slew of interpretations, none of which is widely accepted. (shrink)

Introduction -- John Locke and the problem of personal identity : the principium individuationis, personal immortality, and bodily resurrection -- On separation and immortality : Descartes and the nature of the soul -- On materialism and immortality or Hobbes' rejection of the natural argument for the immortality of the soul -- Henry More and John Locke on the dangers of materialism : immateriality, immortality, immorality, and identity -- Robert Boyle : on seeds, cannibalism, and the resurrection of the body -- (...) Locke's theory of personal identity in its context : a reassessment of classic objections. (shrink)

John Locke’s account of personal identity is usually thought to have been proved false by Thomas Reid’s simple ‘Gallant Officer’ argument. Locke is traditionally interpreted as holding that your having memories of a past person’s thoughts or actions is necessary and sufficient for your being identical to that person. This paper argues that the traditional memory interpretation of Locke’s account is mistaken and defends a memory continuity view according to which a sequence of overlapping memories is necessary and sufficient for (...) personal identity. On this view Locke is not vulnerable to the Gallant Officer argument. (shrink)

This paper gives three arguments for why Lockean persons must be modes rather than substances.

The correspondence between Samuel Clarke and Anthony Collins of 1706–8, while not well known, is a spectacularly good debate between a dualist and a materialist over the possibility of giving a materialist account of consciousness and personal identity. This article puts the Clarke Collins Correspondence in a broader context in which it can be better appreciated, noting that it is really a debate between John Locke and Anthony Collins on one hand, and Samuel Clarke and Joseph Butler on the other. (...) Anthony Collins argues on behalf of John Locke's claim that it would be as easy for God to superadd the power of thinking to matter as for him to connect a soul to a body. Locke did not believe that matter could naturally produce thought or consciousness, but it was in God's power to make matter think. To defend Locke's claim Collins must defend the claim that there are emergent properties in the world – properties of a whole that are not possessed by the parts. Collins also defends a materialist version of Locke's account of personal identity against a variety of charges. Because the topics of debate in the correspondence are of such great interest to us, it deserves to be rescued from the neglect into which it fell and from which intellectual historians and philosophers have only recently and partially removed it. (shrink)

The paper presents considerations that weigh against one or another version of the psychological continuity theory of personal identity over time. Such Locke-like theories frequently go wrong, it is argued, in not formulating precisely how the psychological states of an individual person are related diachronically, in failing to capture a truly appropriate causal connection between later and earlier psychological states, and in claiming support from particular cases. In addition, the paper offers examples and other considerations that support an alternative, biological (...) continuity theory according to which you and I are each identical with a human organism. (shrink)

For Locke, the personal identity problem was a moral problem from the beginning, an attempt to pin down the conditions for responsibility and accountability. This article discusses the implications of Locke's consciousness theory of personal identity for thought about the continuity of moral agency, arguing that Locke's treatment of personal identity is best understood in connection with his expanded discussion of liberty in the Essay and with his interest in the proper grounds for assessing responsibility for action. By grounding personal (...) identity in an agent's ability to recognize her actions as her own, Locke presents a picture of moral life compatible with skepticism about substance while not skeptical about morality. I argue that this description highlights some important features of self-awareness and personhood without resorting to any metaphysical suppositions such as soul, essence or spirit. (shrink)

Personal Identity theorists as diverse as Derek Parfit, Marya Schechtman and Galen Strawson have noted that the experiencing subject (the locus of present psychological experience) and the person (a human being with a career/narrative extended across time) are not necessarily coextensive. Accordingly, we can become psychologically alienated from, and fail to experience a sense of identity with, the person we once were or will be. This presents serious problems for Locke's original account of “sameness of consciousness” constituting personal identity, given (...) the distinctly normative (and indeed eschatological) focus of his discussion. To succeed, the Lockean project needs to identify some phenomenal property of experience that can constitute a sense of identity with the self figured in all moments to which consciousness can be extended. I draw upon key themes in Kierkegaard's phenomenology of moral imagination to show that Kierkegaard describes a phenomenal quality of experience that unites the experiencing subject with its past and future, regardless of facts about psychological change across time. Yet Kierkegaard's account is fully normative, recasting affective identification with past/future selves as a moral task rather than something merely psychologically desirable (Schechtman) or utterly contingent (Parfit, Strawson). (shrink)

In a well-known paper, Reginald Jackson expresses a sentiment not uncommon among readers of Locke: “Among the merits of Locke’s Essay…not even the friendliest critic would number consistency.”2 This unflattering opinion of Locke is reiterated by Maurice Mandelbaum: “Under no circumstances can [Locke] be counted among the clearest and most consistent of philosophers.”3 The now familiar story is that there are innumerable inconsistencies and internal problems contained in Locke’s Essay. In fact, it is probably safe to say that there is (...) not another canonical, well-respected, and seminal philosopher whose work is so widely thought to be swarming with inconsistencies. I, however, do not think that the common, unflattering view of Locke is accurate as a general view of the Essay. But despite my wishes to the contrary, I do believe that Locke’s chapter ‘Of Identity and Diversity’ (2.27)4 leads to (at least) one intractable problem, a problem that is the subject of this paper. (shrink)

Locke’s concepts of person and self as they first appeared in the 1694 essay were not original to him but had already appeared in the Trinitarian controversy in England in the early 1690s. In particular, William Sherlock, who in 1690 argued that the Trinity might be understood as composed of three distinct self-conscious minds or persons in one God, previously used not only concepts but also phrases that Locke used in his definition of person. Both Sherlock and Locke defined person (...) as a unity of mind or self that, in Sherlock’s terms, extends as far as consciousness reaches. (shrink)

In this paper, I compare John Locke’s “memory theory” of personal identity and Memento. I argue that the plot of Memento is ambiguous, in that the main character seems to have two histories. As such, Memento is but a series of puzzle cases that intend to illustrate that, although our memories may not be chronologically related to one another, and may even be fused with the memories of other persons, those memories still constitute personal identity. Just as Derek Parfit argues, (...) perhaps there is no personal identity as such, since only survival matters to us. In Memento, Leonard Shelby is not identity to his former self, but survives to some extent. (shrink)

Mentalistic (or Lockean) accounts of personal identity are normally formulated in terms of causal relations between psychological states such as beliefs, memories, and intentions. In this paper we develop an alternative (but still Lockean) account of personal identity, based on phenomenal relations between experiences. We begin by examining a notorious puzzle case due to Bernard Williams, and extract two lessons from it: first, that Williams's puzzle can be defused by distinguishing between the psychological and phenomenal approaches, second, that so far (...) as personal identity is concerned, it is phenomenal rather than psychological continuity that matters. We then consider different ways in which the phenomenal approach may be developed, and respond to a number of objections. That with which the consciousness of this present thinking thing can join itself, makes the same person, and is one self with it, and with nothing else; and so attributes to itself and owns all the actions of that thing, as its own, as far as that consciousness reaches, and no farther; as every one who reflects will perceive. Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding [II.xxvii.17]. (shrink)