Personal Identity:

Personal Identity is an ambiguous word to say the least. With most of my research, I had to keep
explicitly reminding myself what Personal Identity is in the strictest philosophical sense. The problem
was further complicated when different discourse seemed to address different problems of personal
identity, and thus, provide different answers. I have honed down on three fundamental problems with
Personal Identity—and thence, was able to clearly distinguish what personal identity means in its
‘everydayness’ and what it means in philosophy. It can be understood that there are three problems with
personal identity:

i. How is it possible to identify a person (myself and others) as an individual human being?
ii. How is it possible to distinguish between two individual persons?
iii. What guarantees the constancy and identity of an individual person over time?

Depending on the definition of personal identity, it obviously will raise different problems into the arena.
In this essay the two problems that will be focused on are how to identify a person as an individual human
being and what are the grounds for assuming there a Person is indeed, a person-over-time. In the domain
of western philosophy—there is either/or spectrum—whereby philosopher’s have argued that there is a
person-over-time, and others have argued, that it is completely fictitious. In order to establish if a person
has an individual and invariable aspect of it that is unchanging and indeed, distinct, thinkers have put
forward the notion of what actually constitutes a ‘Person’. In this essay it will be suggested that the
different arguments put forward for personal identity are not necessarily commensurable—that is to say,
that depending on what the writer is trying to address with the variety of problems that Personal Identity
creates, their answers will differ. So this essay will hope to present a historical diorama of western
philosophical discourse. I have my own reservations when it comes to the western traditions, and it will
be affirmed that any attempt to reach a ‘presuppositionless’ platform in addressing personal identity will
be almost impossible as this subject finds its discursive junctions in everything from psychology,
phenomenology, theology, neuroscience, empiricism, and existentialism—and thus, it will be almost
impossible to reconcile the myriad of problems that Personal Identity presents. We will run through in
this discourse, John Locke’s phenomenological approach, David Hume’s strict empiricist account,
Bernard Williams’ ‘mind-material’ account-amongst other writers.

John Locke is by definition an essentialist. He supposes that the human mind has a set of properties and
characteristic’s that can be accessed via phenomenology—and these properties will, in turn, show that
two problems can be solved qua personal identity thereby demonstrating that ever person is an individual,
and that every person is the same identical person in the present, as well as, in the past and the future.
There are two fundamental criteria of human beings that determine that the conditions, person-over-time,
considering yourself as yourself; they can be understood as memory and consciousness. Now before
delving further into these criteria, Locke stipulates the subject that is going to be inquired, because any
inquiry cannot be advanced without knowing what is it to be analysed, and so A person who is in Locke’s
gaze is a being which considers “itself as itself, the same thinking thing in different times and places”.
Itself as itself implies that we are indeed self conscious. This differs from awareness in one major respect,
for it can be said that I am presently looking at a chair, which demonstrates that I am thinking, but
consciousness gives me the ability to say that, indeed, I am aware of being aware that I am seeing a chair.
In this sense, consciousness than becomes the condition in which one person can claim that s/he is
knowingly present in any particular event—and than those experiences, become one’s own. It is this
uniqueness in Person’s that Locke would say, personal identity becomes valid, because the individual can
quite literally, appropriate those memories because that Person was aware of being aware in those
experiences—and in this way, personal identity is borne of consciousness. It follows here, that reflection,
becomes the second fundamental criteria; as memory is the criteria which enables you to access those past
experiences in which you remember yourself being aware that you were aware. So the Person than
becomes “a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection.”Memory becomes the predicate that
a person can claim an identity-of-time “can consider itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and
places”. Memory enables one to access past experiences, which a inclusive of self presence, and thus,
through these memories one can claim some sort of continuity of itself. But, it is perhaps consciousness is
the ‘realm’ where personal identity is found. It is important to note that this account disregards a possible
invariable soul, or physical body—but only requires consciousness. However, this is not the only problem
which is inherit with Locke’s account, as Josef Butler demonstrated in his devastating piece, Of Personal
Identity. Butler brings to the light a presupposition that is inherent in Locke’s account. Locke asserts that
consciousness creates personal identity because, “that consciousness which is inseparable from thinking
[…] it being impossible for anyone to perceive without perceiving that he does perceive.” However, there
is an inherit problem, wherein if consciousness of personal identity asserts personal identity itself,
assumes, that personal identity is presupposed and therefore cannot constitute personal identity, “anymore
than knowledge, can constitute truth, which is presupposes”. In this case, this argument is absurd as we
cannot assume, that by the same condition of consciousness, that a personal identity must exist in the first
place.

Now the memory criterion has been more explicitly defined as psychological continuity. Psychological
continuity is the “ego-project”, which comes about because of the persistent urge of the “I” to almost
‘consolidate itself, because it sees being an identical person throughout time as fundamentally important.
The Neo-Lockian’s have championed psychological continuity to further demonstrate that there is
permanence to personal identity. This continuity aims to say that our memories thread together, as Person
1, experienced event(1), then event(2)… event(20) in a manner that was continuous—the same ‘observer’
was present at all instances. .So long as psychological continuity is not ruptured by, say, amnesia, than it
is sound to say that I have some sort of personal identity. However, in terms of memory or psychological
continuity, this idea still functions independent of an invariable substance behind the experience—as it
will be shown through the ‘Brave-soldier’ paradox. The hypothetical scenario goes something like this; a
soldier who remembers his first campaign where he killed an enemy, but no longer remember being
flogged in high school. However, when he killed the enemy, the soldier at that time, could still remember
the flogging incident. This scenario illuminates the inadequacy of the memory criterion in Locke’s
account, as there can only be one. However, there was an officer who killed a soldier and remembers
being flogged, and on the other, there is a soldier who remembers killing a soldier and not the flogging
incident. Therefore-personal identity in the essentialist paradigm cannot rely exclusively on memory to
suppose an invariable substance to stay the same. Furthermore, the idea of psychological continuity
reaffirming personal identity, to me, is paradoxical—they are incompatible concepts. If we understand
personal identity as something static and invariable which underlies our memory and contains our
essence, that I exist identically during event(1) and event(2), than why should psychological continuity,
which changes with experiences and is transient by nature(as demonstrated with Reid’s hypothetical),
then why should memory be invoked to reaffirm the notion of something invariable. This is why memory
can’t be seen as a reasonable criterion to suppose that there is something invariable, which, in my
opinion, is precisely the reason why thinkers like Locke, Descartes, and Plato invoke the ineffable soul.

David Hume’s ideas were quite subversive; as he seemed to undermine the Neoplatonist
tradition of supposing the invariable substance—by claiming that we were ‘non-entities’. His
understandings are based on a strict empiricist doctrine—and his arguments for knowledge vis-à-
vis experience seem to demonstrate that the notion of personal identity cannot be ascertained by
a priori knowledge—it has to come from experience. His construction of his arguments is based
upon empirically identifying the faculties of mind, thereby, demarcating them by their nature.
We have two major distinctions which lie in Impressions that can be understood as real time
experience’s — say when we hear, see, touch love and the like. Impressions are than contrasted
with Ideas, which are reflections of past impressions after they have happened i.e. memory of
hearing a song. Then it follows, if all our ‘knowledge’ is founded upon experience of
impressions—then what are the grounds for empirically identifying a consistent substance over
time when our impressions and ideas are transient—“personal identity is not the product of any
one impression—but a bundle of many varieties of impressions.” I have established before in my
critique of the Lockian tradition that personal identity is not necessary for psychological
continuity—as our memories can be easily accounted for in terms of a series of events that we
experienced and remembered irrespective of a single and static observer. Perhaps Hume is
alluding to this already—and he is then justified that [personal identity cannot by verified] by
any of these impressions [. . .] that the idea of the self is derived; and consequently there is no
such idea. . . [I am] a perfect non-entity.” Hume is not trying to find grounds for demarcating if a
person can be an individual and what not, but trying to demonstrate, that the grounds for
assuming that is a person-through-time is not compatible with how we acquire ‘knowledge’. As a
personal identity is not something that can be observed, and even if it could be, that perception
would have to be invariable throughout all our lives.

Bernard Williams illuminates the problems of dismissing the body as a constituent of personal identity.
This takes the argument to different realms. And what