PERSONAL IDENTITY

1
PERSONAL IDENTITY

• The problem of personal identitydf. The problem
  of explaining what makes the identity of a single
  person at a time or through time, especially when
  there is a change in the person in time.
• Just what is it that makes you the person you are
  now, and what is it that makes you the same
  person now as you were in the past?

2
PHYSICAL AND MENTAL CHANGE

• Humans undergo physical and mental changes, and
  yet these changes are attributable to the same
  person. For instance, your body is not the same
  size as it was when you were a child, but we say
  that you are the same person in spite of this
  physical change. And you are more developed
  mentally than you were when you were a child, but
  we also say that you are the same person in spite
  of this mental change.
• How can this be accounted for, that you remain
  the same in spite of changes to your mind and
  body? Can it be accounted for?

3
LOCKES DEFINITION OF PERSON

• Locke person df. a thinking intelligent
  being, that has reason and reflection, and can
  consider itself as itself, the same thinking
  thing, in different times and places. (Whose
  language does thinking thing sound like?)
• For Locke, a person knows that he or she is the
  same thinking thing in different times and places
  only through the consciousness which is
  inseparable from thinking and from mental
  operations in general. Thus, if I am thinking,
  then I know that I am thinking - am conscious
  that I am thinking. And when we see, hear,
  smell, taste, feel, meditate, or will anything,
  we know that we do so. (Who does this sound
  like?)

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CONSCIOUSNESS AND PERSONAL IDENTITY I

• Locke says that it is consciousness on which the
  notion of self or personal identity is dependent.
  And he says that personal identity consists in
  consciousness and memory. This means that we are
  not to be identified essentially with our bodies,
  and so there is a division here between mind and
  body which reflects the dualism of Descartes, and
  which goes back to Plato.
• For Locke, a person distinguishes himself from
  things which are not himself in the present
  through consciousness. In addition, a persons
  identity extends as far back in the past as a
  person can be conscious of any past action,
  thought, or event as being his or hers. As I am
  conscious of a past thought or action being my
  past thought or action, so I am conscious of
  myself as extending beyond the present into the
  past. This consciousness of the past is memory,
  and, for Locke, memory is essential to personal
  identity through time.

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CONSCIOUSNESS AND PERSONAL IDENTITY II

• Thus for Locke, personal identity - our sense of
  ourselves as being the same over time - is
  guaranteed by consciousness. However, we are
  talking about beings not just with a history in
  fact - with lives which truthfully extend beyond
  the present into the past. Rather, we are
  talking about beings who are aware of having
  lived through the past. Accordingly, we are
  talking about both consciousness of the present
  and consciousness of the past, or memory, and so
  consciousness is referred to each of these parts
  of time.
• Memory is essential to the notion of a temporally
  extended self. This is the case since all
  consciousness occurs in the present. If we had
  no memory, but only awareness of the present,
  then we could not know that we had a past even if
  it were true that we had lived through part of
  the past.

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THE SELF IS NOT THE SAME IDENTICAL MENTAL
SUBSTANCE

• Locke points out that we are not continuously
  conscious of being the same thinking thing or
  mental substance. This is because consciousness
  is interrupted by sleep and forgetfulness.
• Locke says that, for a self to be the same
  identical substance, all of its past and present
  thoughts and experiences would have to appear to
  its consciousness at each moment. If that were
  the case, then the same thinking thing would be
  always consciously present, and, as would be
  thought, evidently the same to itself.
• The problem for this is the interruption of
  consciousness by sleep and forgetfulness, and
  this then casts doubt on whether the self can be
  said to be the same mental substance through
  time.

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CONSCIOUSNESS AGAIN

• Locke It being the same consciousness that
  makes a man be himself to himself, personal
  identity depends on that consciousness only.
• Locke As far as any intelligent being can
  repeat the idea of any past action with the same
  consciousness it had of it at first, and with the
  same consciousness it has of any present action,
  so far it is the same personal self.
• Locke It is by the consciousness which any
  intelligent being has of its present thoughts
  and actions that it is self to itself now, and
  will be the same self as far as the same
  consciousness can extend to action past or to
  come.

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SELVES AND MENTAL SUBSTANCES

• For Locke, mental substance does not decide the
  issue of personal identity. Rather, personal
  identity is defined by consciousness.
• It is conceivable that a persons consciousness
  could go from her mind (a mental substance) to
  the mind of another. And if it did, it would be
  same person who went from mind to mind.
• This is because the mind, treated as a mental
  substance of which things like thoughts and
  perceptions are predicated, does not determine
  the sameness of a person, consciousness does.
• I see my present and past actions as mine through
  my consciousness. Accordingly, I would no more
  lose my identity by going from one mind to
  another - mind treated as an immaterial substance
  - than I would by going from one room to another.

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MIND TRAVELING
My consciousness goes from Mind 1 to Mind 2
Mind 2
Mind 1
Mind 1 and Mind 2 are mental substances of which
conscious acts can be predicated. (Because it is
impossible to picture a mind, even as a substance
and not as a process, minds are pictured as
brains.) The point is that, for Locke, the
thinking that characterizes the thing that thinks
the mental substance could theoretically, as
a conscious process, leave that mind and go into
another. Since personal identity is dependent on
consciousness for Locke, if my consciousness goes
from Mind 1 to Mind 2, then I go from Mind 1 to
Mind 2.
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SELVES AND PHYSICAL SUBSTANCES

• A persons body is a kind of physical substance.
  Bodies have properties like being heavy and warm,
  but although we predicate properties like
  heaviness and warmth of bodies, we dont
  predicate bodies as a property of anything else.
  Thus I can properly say that my body is warm, but
  it seems improper, or at least odd, to say that
  my warmth is bodied.
• For Locke, bodies do not guarantee personal
  identity, present consciousness with memory does.
• I am not my body, I am my present consciousness
  with my memories of my past. If the little
  finger of my left hand falls from my body and my
  consciousness goes with my little finger, then I
  leave my body and go with my little finger.

11
BODY TRAVELING
Janes consciousness leaves her body to go into
Johns body
Janes body
Johns body
A persons identity for Locke consists in the
identity of his or her consciousness.
Accordingly, if Janes consciousness leaves the
body to which it was formerly attached, or to
which it was formerly related, and travels into
Johns body, then, since Jane is to be identified
with her consciousness, she goes where her
consciousness goes, and so she is now in Johns
body. Jane would only know that she had had a
change of body through being conscious of that
change. She would recollect that she had had a
different body in the past. If Johns
consciousness continues to be attached to his
body, then two different people now inhabit the
same body.
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SELVES AND SUBSTANCES

• For Locke, I am not the person I am because of my
  mind (a mental substance of which things like
  thoughts and feelings are predicated), and I am
  not the person that I am because of my body (a
  physical substance of which things like thirst
  and weariness are predicated). Rather my
  personal identity consists, not in the identity
  of substance of either kind, but in the
  identity of consciousness present awareness plus
  memory.
• Locke Self is that conscious thinking thing -
  whatever substance made up of (whether spiritual
  or material, simple or compounded, it matters
  not) - which is sensible or conscious of pleasure
  and pain, capable of happiness or misery, and so
  is concerned for itself, as far as that
  consciousness extends.

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MEN AND PERSONS I

• Locke draws a distinction between men and
  persons. A man is a human body, a certain
  biological entity, while a person is a thinking
  intelligent being, that has reason and
  reflection, and can consider itself as itself,
  the same thinking thing, in different times and
  places.
• Locke Whatever has the consciousness of present
  and past actions is the same person to whom they
  both belong. Thus, a person is to be identified
  with present consciousness and memory, and it is
  theoretically possible for more than one person
  to inhabit the same man. This is what Locke
  would have to say about multiple personality
  disorder.

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MEN AND PERSONS II

• Locke says that if you lose all of your memories
  then you lose your personal identity. We know
  that, for Locke, we have to make a distinction
  between Jane (her consciousness with memory) and
  her body (the man). Suppose that today Jane is
  struck by lightening and loses all of her
  memories, and cannot regain them. Jane would
  have no consciousness of her past existence
  (memory) and no consciousness of herself now as a
  particular person since she would not know who
  she is.
• Thus, although Janes body continues on, and her
  brain continues to function normally apart from
  the loss of her memories of her personal past,
  Jane herself does not.

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MEN AND PERSONS III

• Since Janes body remains healthy, a new person
  with a new set of experiences beginning where
  Janes left off can begin in Janes old body. If
  we call this new person Janet, we would say
  that Janets life begins in Janes old body. And
  we would also say that, even though the body to
  which Jane was attached continues on, Jane
  herself has died.
• This is what Locke means by saying that if it be
  possible for the same man to have distinct
  incommunicable consciousness at different times
  e.g. Janes consciousness and Janets
  consciousness, it is past doubt that the same
  man the body to which the different persons Jane
  and Janet are each attached would at different
  times make different persons.

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MEN AND PERSONS IV

• Notice that Lockes definition of person has
  relevance to things like Alzheimers disease. In
  any disease, such as this one, where all of a
  persons memories are lost, and they do not know
  who they are, then the person who was once
  attached to the man (the body) is already
  deceased. This would be true for Locke of
  someone like former President Reagan. The man
  continues on as long as the body lives, but the
  person - Reagan himself - is already dead.

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MEN AND PERSONS V

• Locke notes that his distinction between man and
  person has relevance to the ethics of punishment
  - we hold persons responsible, not men. This is
  what he means by saying that punishment is
  annexed to personality. And this is why we can
  have a verdict in a criminal case like not
  guilty by reason of insanity. The illness of
  insanity prevented the person from knowing what
  the out of control body did, and so we do not
  hold the person responsible.
• When Locke says that person is a forensic
  term, he means that persons are morally
  responsible agents. It is a person who we hold
  accountable for his or her actions, not a body
  (man). The concept of a person belongs only to
  intelligent agents capable of a law, and
  happiness, and misery.

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MEN AND PERSONS VI

• People are held responsible for their actions
  because it is characteristic of a person that he
  can recognize his present actions as his own, and
  can recall that his past actions were something
  that he did.
• Locke says that a deed which was done which
  cannot be recollected is no different for the
  person who cannot remember it from its never
  having been done at all. That is, what is the
  difference, for me, between something which I did
  and cannot remember, and something which I did
  not do at all?
• Further, if I am punished for something which I
  did and cannot remember doing, Locke wants to
  know what the difference is between that
  punishment and being created miserable?

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LOCKE AND DEATH I

• Since, for Locke, I am to be identified with my
  consciousness and memories, in order for me to
  survive the death of my body, my consciousness
  with its memories must continue on.
• If my body were to continue on without my
  consciousness, then, even though my body
  continues, I do not survive the extinction of my
  consciousness with its memories. (See Alzheimers
  example above.)
• However, if my body were to die, but my
  consciousness with its memories continued on,
  even if continuing to inhabit that dead body, I
  would not die but my self would continue to
  exist.

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LOCKE AND DEATH II

• If my mind as a mental substance continues to
  exist without my consciousness, then I cease to
  exist. On the other hand, if my mind were to
  cease to exist, but my consciousness with its
  memories continued to exist, then my self would
  continue to exist.
• If both my mind and my body were to continue to
  exist as mental and physical substances without
  my consciousness, I do not survive, but must be
  understood to have died. However, if both my mind
  and body cease to exist as mental and physical
  substances, but my consciousness with its
  memories continue on, then my self does not die,
  but continues to exist.
• If the human soul is not consciousness, then even
  if the entity called the soul survives, I do
  not survive. This would be to treat my soul as a
  kind of entity which lacks my consciousness.
  However, in lacking my consciousness it lacks me.

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TWO SENSES OF MEMORY

• A strong and a weak sense of memory can be
  distinguished. In the strong sense of memory, I
  have a mental event e in which I think that a
  certain different event x happened. This mental
  event e is a memory or recollection of x in the
  strong sense when it is true that x happened.
  Memory also occurs in the strong sense when I
  have a mental event f in which I think that I did
  a certain thing y (performed a certain action y)
  and it is true that I did y.
• In the weak sense of memory, I have a mental
  event e' of an event x' and e' has the same
  character as e - it seems exactly the same - but
  it is false that x' occurred. And memory occurs
  in the weak sense when I have a mental event f '
  that I did a certain thing y', and f ' appears to
  be the same as f, but it is false that I did the
  thing y'.

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PROBLEMS WITH MEMORY I

• In the weak sense of memory, I only seem to
  remember but do not really remember, where
  remember now means that my recollection is
  correct, that my mental event truthfully points
  to something that really happened or to something
  which I really did The problem is that, from the
  internal standpoint of my own awareness, I cannot
  tell whether a mental event is strong or weak,
  since they are mentally indistinguishable.
• Personal identity concerns a persons existence
  through time, and memory is our link to the past.
  But if memory has a strong and a weak sense, then
  how is a person to know that an event really
  happened or that he really did something when all
  he has to go on is an internal mental event which
  could point to something which did or did not
  happen?

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PROBLEMS WITH MEMORY II

• Suppose I say I remember being here last time.
  How do I know, based on my own internal mental
  event which remember apparently concerns,
  whether remember is being used in the strong or
  weak sense? That is, is the mental event which I
  think is a memory sufficient to establish that I
  was here last time, and that this was genuinely
  part of my past?
• Not if mental events can occur which are weak
  cases of memory (memory in the weak sense). It
  would seem that the truth of my having been here
  requires something more than a mental event. It
  requires something physical in addition to
  something mental, namely, that my body was
  actually in this room last time. Memory alone
  then will not tell me about the truth of my past.

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PROBLEMS WITH MEMORY III

• Locke bases personal identity through time on
  memory, and, if there are problems with memory,
  then there are problems with Lockes account of
  personal identity.
• If a persons identity is dependent on his or her
  memory, then does a persons identity extend
  beyond the present into the past only in virtue
  of what he or she can actually remember? Can I
  only say that I, a person, a self, only have as
  parts of my past those things which I can
  remember? This has seemed too stringent to some
  critics of Lockes view because people can and do
  forget things.

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PROBLEMS WITH MEMORY IV

• Lockes use of memory to establish personal
  identity has been criticized as circular by some
  philosophers, such as Joseph Butler. The idea is
  that, rather than being that which establishes a
  persons identity, a memory is a kind of thing
  which depends logically upon the person whose
  memory it is. If memory is used to establish
  personal identity, but memory in turn depends on
  the person whose identity it is supposed to
  account for, then we have returned to (come full
  circle) or assumed in our explanation the very
  notion of self which the use of memory was
  supposed to explain.
• For instance, when I have a memory of having been
  here last week, it is I (my self) who remember
  having been here last week If my mental event
  of recollecting were not already tied to my
  personal identity or my sense of my self through
  time, then it would not be the kind of mental
  event which could be said to constitute that
  identity.
• Thus if memories are linked to the person whose
  memories they are, then they do not establish the
  identity of that person, but presuppose it.

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THE IMPORTANCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND MEMORY TO
PERSONAL IDENTITY AND SURVIVAL OF DEATH

• Although philosophers have noted problems with
  Lockes theory, still it seems very plausible to
  suggest that a sense of ourselves in the present
  depends intimately on our consciousness, and that
  thinking of ourselves as extending beyond the
  present into the past depends on memory. If I
  had no memory, surely I could have no conception
  of my self.
• If I were to awaken tomorrow in a different body,
  how would I know that except in virtue of my
  present consciousness of having a different body
  which depends in turn on my memory of having had
  a different body? And if I do happen to survive
  the death of my body, which may or may not be the
  case, that would seem to require at minimum a
  continuation of my consciousness and memory.

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IDENTITY FROM INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL POINTS OF VIEW

• A person ps identity can be considered relative
  to two different points of view. One point of
  view from which ps identity comes is from the
  standpoint of p herself. This perspective of
  personal identity would be from the internal
  point of view of ps awareness, and so depends on
  her consciousness. The other point of view from
  which ps identity comes is from the standpoint
  of some person other than p. Although this too
  would depend on the consciousness of the other
  person, it would be an external point of view,
  since it would be perception of ps body, not a
  direct awareness of her thoughts or memories.

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IDENTITY AND IDENTIFICATION I

• These different points of view of personal
  identity have to do with personal identification.
  Only I can have my present thoughts, including
  the thought that I am now who I am. And only I
  can have the memories which give me my sense of
  myself as a being which continues as the same
  being through time. On the other hand, other
  people can only perceive me from an external
  point of view, and cannot experience my thoughts
  or memories. They identify me as the same person
  through time in terms of the similarity of my
  body and behavior over time - I look, sound, and
  act pretty much the same from day to day and from
  week to week.

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IDENTITY AND IDENTIFICATION II

• An Alzheimers patient like Ronald Reagan could
  then be said to lack a personal identity from the
  internal standpoint, since his memories are gone
  and he has no consciousness of himself. On the
  other hand, other people can continue to identify
  Reagan as Reagan through his body. Once again
  though, Locke would make the person-man
  distinction, and maintain that the person who was
  Ronald Reagan is gone. And this Locke would say
  is true both for Reagan himself and for everyone
  else. What other people can continue to identify
  as Reagan is the man, or body, to which the name
  Ronald Reagan - if that name is meant to single
  out the person - is incorrectly applied. This is
  done from the external point of view of others
  perceptions, not from the internal point of view
  of the body which lacks Reagans memories, and so
  lacks his self.

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LOCKES CONCLUSIONS

• My self is not my mind, construing my mind as a
  mental substance of which things such as thinking
  and feeling are predicated.
• My self is not my body, construing my body as a
  physical substance of which things such as
  height, weight, and position in space are
  predicated.
• My self is not my mind and my body together.
• My self, my personal identity, consists in my
  present consciousness and my memories of my past.
• Lockes account of personal identity is internal.
  And in that sense he continues the subjective
  tradition begun in modern philosophy by
  Descartes. Anyone who maintains that the person,
  and not just the man, Ronald Reagan continues to
  exist - albeit with greatly diminished
  intellectual capacity - argues against the
  internal perspective of identity defended by
  Locke.

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QUESTIONS I

• Recall that Locke defines person as a thinking
  intelligent being, that has reason and
  reflection, and can consider itself as itself,
  the same thinking thing, in different times and
  places.
• Could Lockes definition of person fail to apply
  to things with human bodies?
• Could Lockes definition of person apply or come
  to apply to things which lack human bodies -
  other animals, or objects such as computers?

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QUESTIONS II

• Given Lockes definition of person, what happens
  to the self when consciousness ceases for a time
  and is replaced by a dreamless sleep? What is the
  effect of a coma on the self? Drugs or alcohol?
• What happens if we accept Lockes definition of
  person and maintain, ethically, that persons and
  only persons have rights? Will this have the
  effect of removing some beings from moral
  consideration to whom we might want to give moral
  protection? How might this moral protection then
  be provided?