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John Locke Personal Identity Analysis

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In 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 …show more content…

I would even go so far as to say that memory and the ability to recall accurately past actions is a key condition for personal identity. Once again, the unreliability exposed as such an accurate recollection of every detail is simply impossible. By basing our consciousness on something that is subject to several forces of change means that Locke claims that our consciousness is in itself unstable and constantly undergoing change. While this may be true, this means that we will have no stable personal identity thereby making consciousness unreliable.
Early on in the chapter, Locke says that if you add or remove a particle from a whole the whole is no longer the same. (xxvii.¶3) I argue, why should memories be treated any differently? Can it not be said with utmost certainty that a person acquires new memories over time and thus the set of memories we have is constantly undergoing change? How can the memories be the basis for this notion of consciousness and by extension, for personal identity if the set of memories do not remain the same through time? Looking at the …show more content…

Accordingly, we should say that the substance plays an important role in personal identity, but this is something that Locke does not do. Since consciousness plays the most important role in our being punished or rewarded at the final judgment for what we have done, and consciousness can be transferred from one soul to another, and we have no ability to re-identify the nature of souls over time, it becomes clear why consciousness despite its unreliability is Locke 's choice for the bearer of personal identity, and why he makes the hazy differentiation between the substance which thinks in us and consciousness. I think Locke is somewhat restrained in his thought by his religious perspective and therefore creates this reliance on consciousness in order to justify the notion of moral responsibility, punishment and reward and judgment. On his account, for example, memory must be completely accurate
— at least in the respects relevant for divine judicial purposes. This is an idealistic expression of what personal identity ought to be here is where consciousness is most unreliable because aside from questions regarding its very existence and even if we were to accept the notion that it exists it is contingent on memory which is as I have demonstrated earlier, itself

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