Personal Identity; Locke, Reid, and Hume - Mark Steen; 112 ...phil112.wikispaces.com/file/view/Locke,+Reid,+and+Hume+on+Person… · Personal Identity; Locke, Reid, and Hume - Mark

Personal Identity; Locke, Reid, and Hume

- Mark Steen; 112; Spring 2013

Q: What do we mean by 'personal identity', and what is the core problem of personal identity?

A: The main question of personal identity is—what makes a person the very same person over

time? This is related to the following questions—what is the essence of a person? What makes a

person the person they are?

Monday, March 25, 13

Identity—Qualitative

l Qualities, or, Properties− This is the notion of the features of things,

such as redness, roundness, irascibility, and so on.

l Qualitative Identity− This is the notion of similarity. Two things are perfectly

qualitatively identical if they are exactly similar. For example, two Chevy Cobalts are qualitatively identical in many respects. But, they are not exactly qualitatively identical, since they don't have the same exact micro-structure, one might have a paint chip missing, and so on.


Identity--Numerical

l Numerical identity is the unique relation everything has to itself and nothing else.

l X and y are numerically identical if they are one and the same thing. Everything is (numerically) identical to itself and nothing else. Whenever philosophers use the term 'identity' in an unqualified way, it means 'numerical identity'.

l Two distinct things can be qualitatively identical. God, for example, could make two distinct spheres which are exactly similar. So, qualitative identity does not entail numerical identity.

l But, numerical identity entails qualitative identity. Everything is qualitatively identical to itself.


Personal Identity

l The main question of personal identity is the following: What makes persons x and y numerically identical over time? Since qualitative identity does not entail numerical identity, it cannot be mere qualitative identity. God could make two distinct persons with exactly the same qualities.

l A satisfactory answer to the problem of personal identity will fill in the following template:

− Person x at time 1 is identical to person y at time 2 just in case _____________.


Some candidate answers:

l Some main answers to the problem of personal identity are the following: Persons x and y are identical just in case:

− X and y have the same (living) body. [The Body Account]

− X and y have the same (living) brain. [The Brain Account]

− X and y have the same soul. [The Dualist Account]− X and y are psychologically continuous with each

other in the right way. [The Psychological Continuity Account]

− Y remembers what x did. [The Memory Account]


Why the Body Account Won't Work

l The Body Account doesn't seem to work, for the following reasons.

− There is no reason to suppose that a brain transplant is impossible. Suppose my brain gets transferred to your body, and vice versa. I believe I now have your body, not that I now have your brain.

− This is because the brain is the seat of our memories, personality, and so on. We are not identical with our bodies, since we can lose hands, switch cells, etc. It seems more likely, if some kind of physicalism is true, that we are identical with our brains, not our bodies.


The Soul Account

l Suppose you are a (Substance) Dualist. If so, it makes sense to think that you are identical with your soul. Where your soul goes, you go. God could switch my soul with yours, and so I would have your body, and you mine. It would not be the case that I now have your soul, and you mine.

l If there is life after death then it seems the body/brain accounts are false as well. Since, if I am still around, and my body isn't, then I must not be identical to my body.


John Locke – The Prince and the Cobbler

l John Locke, most famed for inspiring our Constitution, wrote much on metaphysics and epistemology. Your reading is an excerpt from his famous Essay Concerning Human Understanding.

l In this work he criticizes both the Body Account and the Soul Account, and proposes the Memory Account. (Although he calls beings with the same memory the same 'consciousness'.)


Problems with the Body Account

l The Common idea of a man (at Locke's time) was that of a human body, conjoined with an immaterial spirit. He criticizes this conjunctive idea both separately and together.

l Locke challenges the idea that same body matters.l For starters, couldn't a person die, an old man, and

God resurrect this person as (we all hope) a 30 year old? If these two bodies are not identical, then we are not identical with our bodies.


Locke – Problems with the Body Account Continued

l The Prince and the Cobbler− In this story, suppose upon waking that God 'switched

souls,' along with ‘switching memories’, so to speak, so that the human being who was the Cobbler wants to start making royal proclamations, remembers when he was married to the Princess of Denmark, whereas the human being with the Prince's body wants to finish re-soleing those shoes, and so on.

l If this could happen, then a person must not be identical with their body, since, by hypothesis, the souls or memories switched, but the Cobbler is the very same human being as before, since human beings, if not persons, are identical with their bodies. In this case, thinks Locke, the Cobbler's body is the very same human being as before, but is now a different person.


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Locke – Problems with the Soul Account

l Locke, in places other than our excerpt, challenges the idea that same soul accounts for personal identity.

l The soul is what does the thinking, and presumably, when we were young, we had the same soul, but none of the same experiences. And, we could in fact have had different experiences than we in fact had, had a different personality if raised differently, and so on.


Problems with the Soul Account cont.

l If all this is so, then one can have the very same soul while having completely different experiences, life histories, and so on. In this case, our souls are separate from these experiences, and so we could have the same soul while having a completely different mental life.

l Now, if this is the case, then God could 'switch souls', so to speak, with me and you, while leaving my memories with my body, and yours with you, and so on.

l In this case, soul-swapping could occur and yet there would be no difference whatsoever! So, it must be a distinction without a difference. Souls do not track persons.


Locke's Positive Account – The Memory Account

l Locke says that person x and person y are identical just in case x can remember what y did, or y can remember what x did. (Although his actual usage is to say that they have the same consciousness).

l With the soul-swapping but no memory switching case, the person-body pairs remain exactly the same.

l With the Prince and Cobbler soul-swapping, but memory-preserving case, the Prince now has the Cobbler's body, and vice versa. But, this isn't because their souls are the same—it's because their memories are.


Thomas Reid

l Thomas Reid, champion of Scottish 'Common Sense Philosophy', severely criticizes the memory account.

l It is actually pretty easy to criticize the memory account with an even simpler problem than Reid's ingenious problem.

l One immediate problem is this—if the Memory Account is right, no one could ever suffer total amnesia. This is because the person which results after the amnesia can't be the same person as that before the amnesia, since the person after the amensia can't remember anything the pre-amnesia person did. So, no one can suffer amnesia, since to do so, one would have to be around both before and after amnesia, but the Memory Account entails that losing your memory kills you. But surely it doesn't.


Reid's Criticism

l Suppose that an old man, call him 'The General', remembers a valorous deed he did when younger, that of his younger self, which we could call 'The Soldier'. And suppose that the Soldier could remember being whipped as a youth (call him 'The Youth') for some bad behavior.

l Now, further suppose that the General cannot remember what the Youth did or experienced.


Reid's Criticisms continued

l According to the memory account, the General must be identical to the Soldier, and the Soldier to the Youth, but the General must not be identical to the Youth.

l Logically (I'll show you how soon) this entails that the Youth is not identical to himself! This comes about because 'identity' is transitive, but 'remembers' is not. If a relation R is transitive, it means that if xRy, and yRz, then xRz. (So, for example, if x=y, and y=z, then x=z).


1. The General = The Soldier (because the General can remember what the Soldier experienced)

2. The Soldier = The Youth (because the Soldier can remember what the Youth experienced)

3. The General ≠ The Youth(because the General cannot remember what the Youth experienced)

4. So, The Soldier ≠ The Youth ( The Soldier is identical with the General we can substitute ‘The Soldier’ for ‘The General’ in premise 3)

5. So, The Youth ≠ The Youth! (since in premise 2 the soldier is identical with the youth, then we can substitute ‘the youth’ for ‘the soldier’ in (4).)


Another way of looking at it

l Let's distinguish between 'real memory' versus 'quasi-memory'. If y has a real memory of what x did, then y is identical with x.

l Y quasi-remembers what x did just in case it seems to y that y remembers what x did. Someone can have 'false memories', and just appear to remember what someone else did or experienced.


A dilemma for Lockel Let's look at Locke's account again:

− Locke says that person x and person y are identical just in case x can remember what y did, or y can remember what x did.

− Now, does 'remember' in the above mean 'really remember' or 'quasi-remember'?

− If it means 'quasi-remember', then the Memory Account (MA) must be wrong, since, by hypothesis, something can quasi-remember doing what someone else did.

− But, if it means 'really remember', then the MA actually presupposes personal identity (PI), not analyze it. That's because x 'really remembers' what y did just in case x=y. So, by analyzing PI as real memory, the account would be circular.

− So, in neither case can the memory account work.


Reid

l In any case, Reid rightly points out that memory is merely evidence of personal identity, but does not constitute it. That I remember getting married in Quail Gardens, Encinitas is good evidence that I am identical with a person who got married there, but it does not make it true that I am that person, since someone else could 'remember' this as well.

l So, we've seen so far that the Brain, Body, Soul, and Memory Accounts are all lacking. What about a Psychological Account? We'll look at Parfit for just such an account.


David Hume’s Views on Self and Personal Identity

“There are some philosophers who imagine we are every moment intimately conscious of what we call our self; that we feel its existence and its continuance in existence; and are certain, beyond the evidence of a demonstration, both of its perfect identity and simplicity.”

“For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception. ... If any one, upon serious and unprejudiced reflection, thinks he has a different notion of himself, I must confess I can reason no longer with him.”Hume, Treatise 1.4.6

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“The mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, repass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations. There is properly no simplicity in it at one time, nor identity in different, whatever natural propension we may have to imagine that simplicity and identity.”

Hume, Treatise, 1.4.6.423


The Bundle View of the Self

•We can think of Hume’s view of the self/mind/soul as a ‘bundle view,’ where there is no unified, basic, fundamental, and simple self which is the haver of all experiences. There is just a cluster of experiences, or an ongoing event (like a football game, not like a thing such as a football) and the notion of the self is an (often useful) fiction.•The Buddha seemed to think the same.•We’ll look at Parfit’s somewhat similar view later.

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Personal Identity; Locke, Reid, and Hume - Mark Steen; 112 ...phil112.wikispaces.com/file/view/Locke,+Reid,+and+Hume+on+Person… · Personal Identity; Locke, Reid, and Hume - Mark