What then is the subject of persons?

Lockes Official Answer: probably an immaterial

soul/spirit
I argue that he is actually skeptical of that answer:
1) Thinking matter: God could have superadded
consciousness directly to the brain
2) And this is the simpler option since souls are not required
for immortality
3) Other animals are exemplars of thinking matter
4) Physician Locke recognizes that consciousness appears to
depend on the brain

Fusion
Unlike fission where one person becomes two, fusion is
where two persons become one
Suppose we could backup all the information that is in one
cerebral cortex onto the other
Suppose two different persons (A and B) have undergone this
back-up procedure
Suppose both A and Bs bodies are dying and that a third
person (C) has a healthy body but is brain dead
What would happen if the right hemisphere of A and the left
hemisphere of B were transplanted in Cs head?
How many persons would there be?

Fusion Spock and Bones Become One

Before Spock dies at the end of Star Trek II, he transfers
his mind / soul / essence into Bones

Fusion Jadzia Dax

A combination of Jadzia and the Dax symbiont Jadzia
is the 8th host of Dax with all Daxs memories

Strengths
1) Provides

for personal identity

Objective (public) criteria for PI are not conclusive

But one (seems to) know
one is the same person over time

that

Recall Descartess Cogito: Descartes is certain that he,

Descartes, exists

Suppose: during a car crash, your companion dies and

you wake up in his/her body.
You would know it is you, even if no one else did
We are conscious of ourselves as ourselves, and memory
plays an important role in this

Strengths
2) Lockes focus on a
certain plausibility

has a

Again as in strength #1, we seem to know

that we are who we are now, yesterday, and tomorrow

does seem like an indispensable part

of the story of personal identity

We do seem to be
own self though

conscious of our
will challenge this

Consciousness of past actions does seem to

the
different time slices of our life

Though

will challenge this

Strengths
2) Lockes focus on a
certain plausibility

has a

Connecting PI up with
heart of the importance of PI
And psychological

does seem to get at the

does seem to be essential to

over time:

This is why we were

for her murder of the doctor

to absolve the woman

She might only be a copy of the perpetrator, but being

, is still
guilty
For Locke, likewise for everyone after resurrection

Strengths
3) debate over nature of
The obscure idea of substance is not an obstacle to his
account of PI
Debate over whether we have immaterial souls is
to his account of PI
According to Udo Thiel, one reason that Lockes
consciousness-based account of personal identity was so
influential in the eighteenth century was precisely because it
remains neutral with respect to the debate between
materialist and immaterialist philosophers of mind
effectively making ones view about the nature of the
thinking substance irrelevant (Thiel 2011, 144).

Problems
1) Both
are a prima facie problem
for Locke and psychological accounts in general

: two duplicates of me, at the instant of duplication,

are psychological identical to me and each other

But the can be only one Liam!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqcLjcSloXs
To put it in Lockean terms: what if God were to resurrect two
Lockes?

: if Dax kills a person before joining Jadzia, is

Jadzia Dax responsible?

Problems
2) Thomas Reids (1710-1796) objection
A boy who gets caught stealing apples becomes a brave
officer and eventually a general
The officer remembers stealing the apples and the general
remembers being the brave officer
But the general does not remember stealing the apples
So on Lockes view: the general = the officer, the officer =
the boy, but the

And this violates the

and b = c, then necessarily a = c

: if a = b,

Problems
Replies to Reid:
1) What matters most to Locke is responsibility and the general
is no longer
for the theft
Nor would we hold the general

for the left

Even though they are the same human being, they are not the
same person qua
2) Perhaps personal identity is based in a
consciousness or psychological or causal

of

I may not remember when I was 5, but I do remember when I

was 15, and when I was 15 I could remember when I was 5
Even though I cannot directly remember being 5, there is a
of consciousness/psychology over time

Problems
3)

in consciousness
Are my baby pictures of a different person? Locke might
very well say yes

: serial killers who develop amnesia?

Spouse develops amnesia; is the marriage void?

If Hitler survived suicide attempt but had permanently lost

all memory of his crimes, then he isnt the same person
But if not the same person, how can we hold him
responsible for the crimes of another person?

Problems
3)

in consciousness
What about being
defense?

as a legal

Locke: no because courts cannot be sure you are not lying

[T]he drunkard perhaps be not conscious of what he did, yet
human judicatures justly punish him; because the fact is
proved against him, but want of consciousness cannot be
proved for him. 2.27.22 See handout
But notice: Locke does accept both drunkenness and
sleepwalking as in principle good defences

Problems
Other reasons to think drunkenness is not a good
defence?
One could argue that you are responsible for drunken acts
b/c: you
too much!
And otherwise people would
crime to absolve them of responsibility

before a

Problems
Replies to

But in the Great Day, wherein the secrets of all hearts shall
be laid open no one shall be made to answer for what he
knows nothing of, but shall receive his doom, his conscience
accusing or excusing him. 2.27.22
When resurrected, God will
all actions for which we should be held responsible
While the drunkard or sleepwalker may be punished by
earthly courts, they
be punished by God

of

Problems
3) Memories can be

and appeals to it,

My memory of high school graduation is only true if I am the

same person
True memories
that I am the same person so
memory does
constitute PI
Rather memory seems, at most,
for PI (if the
memory is true!)
Appealing to memory to define PI appears to be

Problems
David Hume: Who can tell me, for instance, what were his
thoughts and actions on the 11th of March 1719 Will he
affirm, because he has entirely forgot the incidents that the
present self is not the same person with the self of that time; and
by that means overturn all the most establishd notions of
personal identity? In this view, therefore, memory does not so
much produce as discover personal identity. ... Twill be
incumbent on those, who affirm that memory produces entirely
our personal identity, to give reason why we can thus extend our
identity beyond our memory.
(etc.) can fill in gaps in memory
Reply:
Locke does not say that memory produces PI but
As we will see Hume also
that is, consciousness of a self

consciousness