1 / 9

LOCKE 3: PERSONAL IDENTITY

LOCKE 3: PERSONAL IDENTITY. WHO YOU ARE IS DEFINED BY THE SCOPE OF YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS. John Locke (1632 – 1704). British Empiricist Primary-Secondary Quality Distinction Personal Identity Political Philosophy. [Background].

gavin
Download Presentation

LOCKE 3: PERSONAL IDENTITY

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  1. LOCKE 3: PERSONAL IDENTITY WHO YOU ARE IS DEFINED BY THE SCOPE OF YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS

  2. John Locke (1632 – 1704) British Empiricist Primary-Secondary Quality Distinction Personal Identity Political Philosophy

  3. [Background] Locke was pondering how a person could survive bodily death (religion). For Locke, Descartes, etc. (Christianity): (Same) man = (Same) body + soul. Body dies, but soul lives eternally. But all souls have same essence: thought/consciousness. So only accidental properties can distinguish one soul from another: contents of thought/consciousness

  4. Definition of “Person” “…thinking, intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places.” (366)

  5. Locke’s Concept of Personal ID “Consciousness always accompanies thinking.” (366) SO: sameness of thinking being [identity] reaches “as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought” (366)

  6. Implication 1 It is irrelevant whether a thinking being has samesubstance or not (366-7) [God is a functionalist? Or Locke?] Analogy: one life in a changing body is analogous to one person in a changing substance

  7. Implication 2 Resurrection is possible: same person in different body (367). Note: one will remain same person even without a body, that is, as a mere soul. Resurrection refers to the reassembly and perfection of one’s body —as a home for ones soul.

  8. Implication 3 Prince’s soul in body of Cobbler Locke’s thought experiment: A cobbler comes to have the same (qualitatively) memories (skills? passions? Vices?) as a prince. Locke’s conceptualization: The cobbler is the same (numerically) person as Prince, but different man. (367)

  9. Implication 4 What about memory loss? If your memory of a past action or event is wholly lost: then you are not same person who did that action or witnessed that event. Problem for Locke’s theory of personal ID? What about false memories?

More Related