PHIL 126 Personal Identity and Locke

8/14/2019 PHIL 126 Personal Identity and Locke

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Nathaniel Kan

Phil 126

TA: Gerd Groenewold

Locke and Personal Identity

Explain Locke's account of personal identity over time: Under what conditions is

someone existing at a time one and the same person as someone who existed at an earlier

time, according to Locke? What is/are the one or two most serious objection(s) facing

Locke's account? Critically assess Locke's account in light of the objection(s) you

choose.

The question of personal identity is a major area of modern philosophical

exploration. Personal identity is an intriguing subject of study because in many ways it is

a question of immortality: will I exist in the future? Will I be the same person were I to

be put in a coma? Or cloned? Or frozen? Locke was one of the first modern philosophers

to address the issue of personal identity, attempting to answer these questions with a

relatively simple basic theory. However, several scenarios reveal Locke’s account to be

in conflict with common understanding of personal identity.

The underlying theory behind Locke’s address of identity over time is

straightforward. Whether two objects at two times are identical depends largely on the

idea of the object. When we ask if a mass of particles is the same at time A and time B,

the answer depends on whether the mass has lost or changed any of its parts. For more

complex things, however, such as plants or animals, identity relies on the idea of the

subject. A maple tree is the same tree when it is just a sapling as it is years later, even



though it has lost and gained many atoms. Similarly for the different states throughout the

life of a single dog or cat. What is important for identity in the case of organisms is that

they are comprised of the same organization of parts: a tree has the same vascular system,

collection of leaves, etc that are composed of collections of particles that can over time

gain or lose some of their members.

When we examine whether a man is the same at different times, Locke claims

man is no different from an animal in this evaluation: identity relies on form, because our

idea of man is dependent on form. A brain-dead man in a coma we still consider a man,

and a talking and reasoning cat we would still think of as a cat.

Personal identity is a different case. When Locke considers personal identity, he

argues we need to consider what our meaning of 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, which it does only by that consciousness which is inseparable

from thinking…” (Locke 322). Thus, because consciousness is forever conjoined with

thinking and distinguishes one thinking thing from another, Locke claims that

consciousness is equivalent to personal identity. Two persons are then identical if a chain

of consciousness can be traced between them.

One issue that can be raised is that there seem to be gaps in our consciousness: we

forget things, and sometimes our consciousness is interrupted, by sleep or a coma. A

young child may grow up into a very old man who remembers nothing from his youth

and is of an entirely different disposition, by Locke’s theory the consciousnesses would

be different and thus the old man and child would be not personally identical. In

addressing this, Locke sticks to his basic theory: same consciousness equals personal



identity. A man is the same person when he goes to sleep as he is when he wakes,

because his consciousnesses are identical, and by the same token the young child and the

man who remembers nothing of his youth are not personally identical, because they are

not the same consciousness.

Locke further argues that materialists still perceive personal identity as something

besides the physical matter; otherwise, there would be no concept of personal identity, as

the matter throughout our body (including that affecting our brain and therefore our

thoughts) is constantly changing. Locke extends his argument to ontological systems that

posit immaterial substances: whatever the substance in which thought occurs, be it

material or immaterial, “the same consciousness being preserved, whether in the same of

different substances, the personal identity is preserved” (Locke 324). If there is a method

of transferring consciousness, it is also maintains personal identity.

Furthermore, Locke equates a lack of equality in consciousnesses with a lack of

personal identity between two persons. In a world with reincarnation of immaterial souls,

one cannot say that they are personally identical with someone who existed previously if

they have no memory of actions, thoughts or perceptions and have no reason to identify

with that specific person of history more than any other. It would make no more sense to

say “because I have some part of Isaac Newton’s immaterial thinking substance, I am

personally identical to Isaac Newton” than “because I have some atoms in me that were

in Isaac Newton, I am personally identical to Isaac Newton.”

One major problem with Locke’s account is an apparent lack of transitivity.

Personal identity (along with all identity) should be transitive: if I at t 0 am personally

identical to myself one second later at t 1, and myself at t 1 is personally identical to myself



two seconds after t 0 at t 2, then my t 0 state should be personally identical to my t 2 state.

This is not the case in Locke’s theory: a young boy may be personally identical to a

middle-age salesman who remembers his youth, and the salesman may be personally

identical to an old man who remembers being a salesman, but because the old man

remembers nothing about his youth, the old man and the youth are not personally

identical.

There are several areas with Locke’s account tends to conflict with the common

understanding of personal identity. While Locke’s theory of identity of man is transitive,

it doesn’t matter that the two are the same man (in Locke’s sense) because personal

identity is only dependent on identity of consciousness. This is a problem in any modern

theory that attempts to claim personal identity is only dependent on similarity between

states of consciousness, because in any chain of psychological states that extends through

time, the beginning and end states are bound to be much different.

There are further difficulties with Locke’s theory. By Locke’s account, as a

consequence of the fact that consciousness makes personal identity, we can imagine a

situation in which Locke’s personal identity would be conserved but we would not want

to claim that it was. For example, if we had a machine that could in an instant assemble a

collection of random atoms into an exact duplicate of a person. This duplicate has the

same thoughts as the original, with a completely replicated set of memories of past

actions and perceptions. Locke’s theory says then that this duplicate is personally

identical with the original, as personal identity follows from sameness of consciousness.

This seems wrong. Our common understanding of personal identity is that it

requires some form of psychological continuity and physical connectedness. It makes



sense to us that I am personally identical with the man I was ten minutes ago because

there is a chain of men with very similar psychological states at every instant in between.

An example can be helpful in demonstrating our need for psychological

continuity. Imagine that the universe was cyclical, and repeated itself on an infinite loop,

so my present self and experiences all occur on some cycle A, and in a later cycle B there

is another man who is composed of particles in the exact same configuration as me and

experiences all the same experiences and has all the same thoughts. Between my present

situation in cycle A and the situation of the second man in cycle B, I live my life and

grow old and die, the universe somehow resets (maybe matter collapses in on itself and

there is another Big Bang), and a new world is formed in which an identical environment

to cycle A is created.

We would not claim that the two men are personally identical, even though they

have identical consciousnesses (same thoughts and memories), because of a lack of

physical connectedness and psychological continuity. By my actions I cannot affect the

man in cycle B, my memories and experiences are due to perceptions that occur in an

entirely different time period, and there are no psychological states that bridge the gap

between my own mind and the mind of that man.

If this example seems farfetched, we can imagine another that illustrates the same

point. Imagine a child raised in a very simple environment where all his experiences were

recorded electronically. Five years after his birth, the child was cloned and the clone’s

developing brain was plugged into a system that fed his senses the recorded perceptions

from the first child. It seems then that it would be possible under Locke’s system that at



any time the clone would be personally identical to the child five years previous1. Once

again this seems wrong: the two children are completely separate: we wouldn’t say the

two are personally identical any more than we would say I was personally identical to a

robot who was programmed with my memories and thought patterns and thus had an

identical consciousness.

Locke’s theory’s lack of requirements for psychological continuity or

connectedness is its main weakness. Without these adding some provision for these

things, Locke can never truly reflect our own understanding of what it means for personal

identity to persist through time. Locke’s attempt to solve the personal identity problem

comes very close to mirroring our own beliefs. That personal identity does not depend on

particular matter is critical, as is the idea that in considering identity we need to consider

what kind of identity we are examining. However, there is still much work to be done.

1 It does not matter if the universe is deterministic or indeterministic or allows for free will: assume the

clone makes all the same choices either because he has to, because of chance or because he chooses to.

PHIL 126 Personal Identity and Locke

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