Opposing Views On John Locke's Personal Identity
John Locke Personal Identity
John Locke first begins with the idea of identity. He believes that identity relies on the mind’s comparison and logic. He explains this by stating when we compare something to its present existence to its existence in another time. The main claim that he is making is that two things cannot exist at the same time in the same place, thus concluding that no two things can have the same beginning, therefore giving something or someone an identity. In the next two sections, he talks about the ideas of three substances: God, finite knowledge, and bodies. The next few sections talk about identity of vegetable and nature, animals how they are identified by their organization and function, and how man similarly gets their identity from their body and life. In section nine, he talks about personal identity. In this section, he claims that to establish personal identity, we must know what the meaning of person is. Therefore according to Locke a person is “thinking intelligent being that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same
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If a person were to get amnesia and after a while they remember themselves in the past, that wouldn’t make them their previous self. After losing their memory, they started on a clean slate and created new memories. These new memories would impact their identity, thus making it impossible for someone to forget the new memories and become exactly the way they were before the accident. Something that I can agree with Locke is how personal identity is based on consciousness. Though I don’t think conscious stays the same, I think our conscious changes through our experiences and memories. To me I think the most important things in personal identity are consciousness, experience, and memories; without them we would become the person who we are
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Rene Descartes And David Hume: The Problem Of Personal Identity
1582 Words | 7 PagesSome philosophers like John Locke, René Descartes and David Hume developed theories regarding personal identity to answer the questions asked above, and one answer stated by a British philosopher named Richard Swinburne included: “We are partless immaterial substances—souls—or compound things made up of an immaterial soul and a material body. ”(Swinburne, R., 1984, ‘Personal Identity: The Dualist Theory’: 21) Rene Descartes, as well, answers in a very similar manner by establishing his dualistic theory, also known as the mind/body dualism, which states that a human being is composed of two entities, namely a body and a mind. He further developed his theory to demonstrate that one’s personal identity is only found in the immaterial part of the human being – the mind, which can also be referred to as the soul. Descartes made a huge contribution to answer the questions asked above and was able to bring meaning into some people’s lives by telling them where to look for their true selves.
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The Influence Of John Locke On Personal Identity
959 Words | 4 Pages"One thing can’t have two beginnings of existence because it is impossible for one thing to be in different places at one time, and two things can’t have one beginning, because it is impossible for two things of the same type to exist at the same instant and place" (Locke, John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book II, pg.112). In addition, Locke speaks about humans having three substances for personal identity. He reveals theses three substances as "God, finite intelligences, and bodies, in which he in-depth look and states "God has no beginning, he is eternal, unalterable, and everywhere; and so there can be no doubt concerning his identity, each finite spirit had its determinate time and place of beginning to exist, so its relation to that time and place will always determine its identity for as long as it exists, finally the same holds for every particle of matter, which continues as the same as long as no matter is added to or removed from it" (Locke, John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book II, pg. 112-13). Locke used these three substances as a mean of defining identity, but he also outlines each individual element.
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John Locke Personal Identity Analysis
1970 Words | 8 PagesIn this paper, I will look at and criticize John Locke’s account of Personal Identity as well as put forward arguments of my own of what I consider to be the unreliability of that which Locke terms as consciousness in relation to and as a composition of ‘Personal Identity’. Before we can arrive at a discussion of consciousness it is essential to follow Locke’s thought process and see how he arrived at a differentiation between substance, person, self (an alternate term for person used in the latter half of the chapter) and consciousness. It is essential to realize that for Locke personal identity consists in the identity of consciousness. We know this because he says as much in the following passage: “[T]he same consciousness being preserv’d…the
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1423 Words | 6 PagesThe argument of whether or not a human has a soul has been argued throughout centuries. Derek Parfit discusses two separate theories of personal identity, Ego Theory and Bundle Theory. The argument of which present a more accurate account of personhood is very hard to determine. The Ego Theory has some flaws such the soul is separate from the body and is a immaterialist object within us. Bundle Theory is reinforced and proven by the split-brain case, however it can lead to the argument that there is no self.
Rene Descartes On Personal Identity
1801 Words | 8 PagesFor many years, the issue of self-identity has been a problem that philosophers and scholars have been to explain using different theories. The question on self –identity tries to explain the concept of how a person today is different from the one in the years to come. In philosophy, the theory of personal identity tries to solve the questions who we are, our existence, and life after death. To understand the concept of self-identity, it is important to analyze a person over a period under given conditions. Despite the numerous theories on personal identity, the paper narrows down the study to the personal theories of John Locke and Rene Descartes, and their points of view on personal identity.
John Locke Research Paper
1160 Words | 5 PagesJohn Locke is an English philosopher that believes that a person remains the same person from one time to another as a consequence of memory. To prove his point Locke explains his thesis in An essay concerning human understanding. John Locke’s strongly believed we remain the same person through our memory and the “extension of consciousness”. In other words an individual will continue to be the same person as they were throughout their time period due to their memory. My opposition to Locke’s theory comes in reach where he assumes a person that has brain damage will change their personality or character because they are no longer conscious of who they were.
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