Franz Conde (T1684607) |1

Franz Conde (T1684607)

A222 Exploring Philosophy
TMA 01
October 2016

Question: Explain what role memory plays in John Locke’s account of personal

identity by referring to one or more thought experiments, and assess whether

Locke’s account is convincing.

In this essay I will summarize John Locke's contribution to the problem of

personal identity: the question of whether, and how, the same person can exist

over time. Firstly, in order to explain Locke's claims, I will clarify how Locke define

the terms ‘self’, 'man' and 'person', as their specific meanings constitute the

building blocks of his account. Secondly, I will explain what role memory plays in

Locke's account of personal identity by referring to two thought experiments -'the

prince and the cobbler' and 'Socrates awake and asleep'- used in the 'Essay

concerning Human Understanding' to illustrate how personal identity is can be

differentiated from physiological or soul identity. Thirdly, I will argue that Locke's

claim (the psychological continuity of the self) still represents a convincing account

of personal identity despite reasonable objections by Thomas Reid and David

Hume. I will also briefly mention some objections over the validity of thought

experiments as an investigative system and how these criticisms are applicable to

Locke's conclusions. Finally, I will suggest that Locke's view of personal identity,

first enunciated as a forensic concept related to religious accountability

on Judgment Day, might still have forensic validity when considering possible cases
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in a cybernetically advanced future, where human memories might

exist independently and made to interact in unusual ways with human bodies. 

In order to give a fair account of Locke's position on the problem of

personal identity it is crucial to understand that he proposes a separation between

what he terms the 'man' and what he terms the 'person'. The accepted view

before Locke's contribution to the subject, held by Plato, Descartes and the

Christian tradition, was that a person is an immaterial (that is, non-spatial) soul,

only contingently attached to a physical body (Garrett, 1998). While Locke does not

dispute the existence of a soul, he defines a different psychological concept: the

'person'. A person, Locke explains, is that same self, that same thinking thing in

different times and places (Locke, in Cottingham, 2009, p.275). Locke asserts that

we can find a ‘self’ through first person introspection, as 'When we see, hear, smell,

taste, feel, meditate, or will anything, we know that we do so' (Locke, in

Cottingham, 2009, p.275). 

What makes my ‘self’ today to be the same ‘self’ as yesterday? Or how can I

know that tomorrow I will find the same ‘self’ I found today? To answer these

questions Locke suggests that what makes a person to be the same person over

time is having a connection, through memory, between the present consciousness

and past or future consciousness. This connecting line of awareness, this chain of

memories that Mackie calls 'unity of consciousness' (Mackie, in Warburton, 2011,

p.113), is what defines personal identity. This notion of a psychological continuity

implies that talking about the same man is different from talking about the
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same person, as Locke will suggest with the 'prince and the cobbler' thought

experiment.P

In order to argue how personal sameness is distinct from sameness of body

or soul, Locke proposes different thought experiments where body, soul and

person are detached from each other. 

The first scenario that Locke illustrates is meant to isolate the variable of

memory continuity from that of body continuity. He invites us to consider the case

of two different human beings, a prince and a cobbler, with their own distinct

trinity of body, soul and consciousness. It happens one day that the soul and the

consciousness of the prince enter to inhabit the cobbler's body, whose own soul

and consciousness have already deserted his body. Locke considers that the

prince's person, now inhabiting the cobbler's body would still have a chain of

memories connecting him with his princely past and therefore would think of

himself as the prince, proving that personal identity does not reside on the body.P

         Although the 'prince and cobbler' scenario intuitively separates the notion of a

person from that of a man, it does not separate a person from its soul.P Locke then

proposes a different scenario where two personal identities are able to exist in one

body. The example this time is of Socrates waking up and not remembering any of

the thoughts he had while asleep. Arguably, Socrates's body and soul were never

separated while sleep and while awake (remember that in the 'prince and cobbler'

scenario body and soul are separated). Locke suggests in this case that as the

consciousness of Socrates-awake and Socrates-asleep is not connected through

memory, we have in fact the case of two distinct persons inhabiting the Socrates
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body and soul unity. Socrates-awake and Socrates-asleep are numerically identical,

yet qualitatively different persons.

Is John Locke's memory-dependent account of personal identity convincing?

Warburton explains that 'he made the case for a certain sort of psychological

continuity being the core of personal identity', and precisely this view of a mind-

based personal identity continues to be accepted nowadays by modern

philosophers like Derek Parfit (Warburton, 2011, p.99).

            Locke's argument nevertheless, despite remaining relevant at its core, has

been weakened by objections from different angles. Thomas Reid was the first to

notice that relying solely on memory as the link between the past, present and

future self was a problematic assumption. Reid illustrates that memory-based

identity is not a transitive relation by inviting us to think of a certain elderly person

(C), remembering being a middle-aged man (B), but not remembering being the

eight year-old child (A). If the middle-aged man (B) remembers being the child (A),

then we face the issue of the elderly (C) being the same person as middle-aged

man (B) but not the same person as child (A). If C and B are the same person and B

and A are also the same person, how it is possible that C is not the same person as

A? Despite philosophers like Paul Snowdon considering this objection devastating

for Locke's theory (The Open University, 2011)P, Locke is in fact comfortable with

the idea that several persons can inhabit the same man and would argue that

although the elderly C and the child A are the same 'man', they are not the same

'person' (Blackburn 2009, p.133). It seems that Reid and Locke

are referring to different types of identity. While transitivity is a feature of strict

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identity (when both numerical and qualitative identities coincide), the Lockean

notion of personal identity does not need to be transitive because it allows

numerical sameness (the man) and qualitative differences (the person).

The second noticeable and enduring objection came from David Hume on

the issue of whether there is a self at all. While Locke hinges on the notion that

there is a self to be found through introspection, or as Charles Taylor puts it: 'for

Locke (the self) has this peculiarity that it essentially appears to itself' (Taylor in

Cottingham 2009, p.305). Hume expressed doubts over the reliance of

introspection in identifying a self at all, rather than just a bundle of perceptions. If

there isn't a self, be it material or immaterial, what we are referring to is nothing

but a grammatical concept rather than a philosophical one (Hume in Cottingham

2009, p.290), a notion that would render Locke's definition of personal identity into

a narrative choice. In defense of Locke, Simon Blackburn (referring to a Kant’s idea)

suggests that experiences are adjectival on persons who have them (Blackburn,

1999), implying that there must be a subject having that 'bundle of perceptions'. Is

not that subject what Locke calls the self?

A third objection to Locke's account would be on his reliance of thought

experiments as an investigative tool. While thought experiments can be useful

mechanisms to isolate and manipulate variables, allowing us to focus on the key

points at issue (Warburton, 2011, p.15), Locke's thought experiments might be

‘pushing language too far’ (Warburton, 2011, p.92) and asking us to consider

'unprecedented circumstances (suggesting) that words have some logical force

beyond what our logical needs have invested them with' (Quine, in Warburton,

2011, p.92). How can we know for sure how Locke's prince will act, feel and be
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perceived by a third person should his consciousness migrate from his body? In

such an impossible-to-test event it remains an issue of faith to conclude the prince

will or will not be himself at all. In another thought experiment, Locke argues that if

a limb is cut off from the body, and the unity of consciousness remains attached to

the severed limb, then the mutilated man would not be the previous person. How

would the severed limb 'substance' support thinking? Can we accept

Locke's feasibility of this thought experiment without accepting some sort of

panpsychism?  As an additional objection to Locke's conclusions, we might suggest

that his thought experiments have a different explanation to the one he puts

forward. For example Locke's explanation of different persons inhabiting Socrates-

awake and Socrates-asleep would be interpreted by Sigmund Freud not as a case of

multiple person-hood but as evidence of a hidden self, not visible to the conscious

self (Cottingham, 2008 pp.290-91).

After having mentioned some of the objections to Locke's account of

personal identity, it is crucial to note that Locke's account was meant to be a

forensic account that dealt with issues of punishment and praise. It is in that

forensic sense that it might prove useful in a technologically advanced future

where personal memories, either in isolation or bundled together as an 'unity of

consciousness', could be digitalized, stored, transferred and eventually implanted

on people or robots. Should technology advance to this extent, Locke's far-

fetched thought experiments where body and mind can be decoupled and

rearranged, as in 'the prince and the cobbler', could present us with real cases in

future societies. Not having to go so much further into the future, I claim that the

world of competitive chess offers a contemporary example of a Lockean thesis of

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personal identity: chess software 'remember' past matches, past mistakes and

avoid repeating them in the future. The software acts like a 'unity of consciousness'

that operates independently from the hardware where they are installed in. If

chess software was to be implanted on the world's chess champion, we would

readily accept that the champion would be the software and not the man.

Similarly, although in present times courts of law do not judge the Lockean person

but the Lockean man, this might be subject to review in a cybernetically advanced

future where man could just be a biological empty shell (even a non-biological

entity) with a choice of pret-a-porter personal identity software.

As a conclusion I will restate that Locke was the first to champion an

argument that defines personal identity in psychological terms, rather than in

physiological or religious terms. He defined the term 'person' as the conscious

thinking part of our identity and proposed that memory is the connective link

between our different qualitative identities and throughout the different stages of

our existence. Although his account of personal identity was attacked by Thomas

Reid and David Hume, there are solid responses to be held in defense of Locke's

account. Additional doubts over the relevancy of Locke's thought experiments in

investigating personal identity have been casted, but the far-fetched scenarios he

once described remain a future possibility. Finally, Locke's psychological definition

of personal identity represents in some aspects a convincing forensic concept that

might still be of further validity in the future. P

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Word Count: 1896

Bibliography

Ayers, M. (1998). Locke, John (1632–1704). In Routledge Encyclopedia of

Philosophy. London, Routledge [web]. Available at:
https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/locke-john-1632-1704/v-1/personal-
identity. doi:10.4324/9780415249126-DA054-1 (Accessed 8 October 2016).

Blackburn, S. (1999) Think, Oxford, Oxford University Press

Cottingham, J. (ed) (2008) Western Philosophy: an anthology, 2nd edn, Oxford,

Blackwell Publishing 

Garret, B. (1998) 'Criteria of personal identity In: Personal identity'. In Routledge

Encyclopedia of Philosophy [web]. Available at: https://www-rep-routledge-
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The Open University (2011) 'Locke on persons' [Audio] A222 Exploring Philosophy,

available
at: https://learn2.open.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/1723579/mod_resource/content/1/a2
22_2011j_b1_aud003.mp3 (accessed 26 October 2016)

Warburton, N.  (2011) The Self, Milton Keynes, The Open University