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John Locke And Cockburn's View Of Personal Identity

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In this paper, my goal is to outline the key objections raised against John Locke’s view of personal identity and the soul, explain Catherine Trotter Cockburn’s response to those objections in defense of Locke, and demonstrate the adequacy of Cockburn’s defense of Locke while considering and addressing possible objections to that point. The primary objection raised against Locke is that he has failed to prove that the soul is immortal when under Reid’s view an immortal soul is necessary. Among the threats, within Locke’s arguments, to the immortality of the soul are the lack of constant thought and the assertion by Locke himself that we are indeed unable to know whether or not the soul is truly immortal in that sense. Locke admits of himself, “ I confess to have one of those dull souls, that doth not perceive itself always to contemplate ideas; nor can conceive it any more necessary for the soul always to think, than for the body always to move,” (Locke Book II, Ch. I). A parallel is explicitly drawn between the nature of the soul and the body, with the body not having to be in constant motion to exist and the soul not having to be in constant thought to exist as well. Within the same objection to whether or not …show more content…

Establishing the soul as being immortal and having that immortality being dependent upon its immaterial nature is not the argument that Locke was making. It is then wrong to think that the lack of establishment of a necessarily immaterial soul invalidates the immortal nature of the soul, a quality of the soul Locke indeed argues for. Cockburn explains this in her defense of Locke against this objection, and further solidifies the point by drawing from the omnipotence of God if the other line of reasoning was unsatisfying or

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In response to the long-standing philosophical question of immorality, many philosophers have posited the soul criterion, which asserts the soul constitutes personal identity and survives physical death. In The Myth of the Soul, Clarence Darrow rejects the existence of the soul in his case against the notion of immortality and an afterlife. His primary argument against the soul criterion is that no good explanation exists for how a soul enters a body, or when its beginning might occur. (Darrow 43) After first explicating Darrow 's view, I will present what I believe is its greatest shortcoming, an inconsistent use of the term soul, and argue that this weakness impacts the overall strength of his argument.

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In order to write the Declaration of Independence, the Second Continental Congress had used various sources, which include philosopher literatures, philosophers and history. In the second passage of the declaration, their lies that phrase that all men are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”. The unalienable rights, or the one’s natural rights, were part of John Locke’s philosophies. He stated in his writings that the privilege to life, liberty and property were bestowed upon one’s birth, and that a part of a functioning government's role was to protect its citizens’ natural rights. In addition to John Locke’s theory of the unalienable rights, the Spirit of Laws, by Charles Montesquieu, was used to help form and prove

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In Plato’s dialogue Phaedo, he explains the soul and comes to the conclusion that the soul is immortal. Through describing the last hours of Socrates life before his execution, he lays out three arguments in support of the idea that while the body may cease to exist the soul cannot perish. In this paper, I will explicate Socrates three arguments for the immortality of the soul and their objections. Then I will argue on the presupposition of the Law of Conservation of Mass, that the universe, entailing the soul, must be cyclical. The Law of Conservation of Mass

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In attempting to solve this problem, I hope to move beyond notions of hypocrisy and instead to investigate Locke’s personal contradictions from a theoretical level. This effort is motivated by the conviction that there is an inherent contradiction,

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The third argument is seen in the argument of our soul from scattering. (78b-84b) The soul is similar to other forms that do not scatter. If the soul is unlikely to scatter then it will most definitely survive death. " The soul is similar to the divine, and the body resembles the mortal" so it must be expected that the soul is everlasting.

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From my research I learned that everything in science did not just come from one person. It takes a ton of people to discover the tiniest of things. It takes lots of observations, team work, communication, theories, insights, testing, and the list could go on! William Herschel did not just one day see something and start to further explore it. William Herschel was looking at a paper written by someone else and then it was not until later that when hearing others theories that he reversed his original opinion of the essays information and further explored it.

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First I will introduce the topic with which I am discussing then continue to state my thesis. After, Goldie’s view will be explained in detail with an explanation of Locke’s philosophies following. Then, I will address concerns with narrative thinking in Locke and Goldie’s view. Next, counter arguments will be made including the issues of consciousness, the Matrix, and whether an individual whom is unconscious should be held accountable for their actions. Readers should suspect that I will conclude my argument with a concluding paragraph thus summarizing.

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When people follow their own truths, they are “safe at last” meaning they are living the way they are supposed to live (Emerson 31). In other parts of his essay, Emerson says that the soul is light, that the relation of the soul to the divine spirit is pure, and that the soul “becomes.” Emerson consistently provokes a positive connotation for the word soul because your soul is the most important part that makes you who you are, as it contains your

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This premise needs further justification for it to be correct. The term “bare nothing” does not cancel out that explanation that nature could have the power to produce another being. Locke responded explaining that nature is the first beginning and every beginning was produced by something else. An eternal being was the reason why the explosion of nature started our world and further produced all of

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In “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding,” John Locke defines a person’s identity by comparing the similarity between that person’s consciousness at two different times or stages. Specifically, Locke concludes for a person at a given time A to be considered the same person at a previous time B, it is both necessary and sufficient that the person at time A remembers his actions and thoughts at time B. Meanwhile, Thomas Reid criticizes Locke’s conclusion by emphasizing that if consciousness can be temporary, Locke’s identity definition is unstable. One example Reid uses to counter-argue Locke’s identity viewpoint is the brave officer. In this paper, I support Locke’s account of personal identity by explaining Locke’s viewpoint under my personal understanding, showing the weakness in his argument that is challenged by Reid’s brave officer example, and finally suggesting two ways in which Locke could respond to Reid’s counter-argument.

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John Locke disagrees with the Rationalist that the soul receives innate principles, and bring them into the world with them; Locke also that there are no ideas that all humans beings are aware, then how can all human beings have the same innate principles. Locke believes that the only argument that the Rationalist had was pertaining to “universal consent”, but even this argument according to Locke, does not provide evidence of the innate truth, because “there are no ideas that all human beings are aware… ”(Velasquez, Manuel Philosophy: A Text with Readings, 12e, 12th Edition (p.334)).

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In the Republic, Plato gives an argument saying the soul is immortal. In this paper I will present his argument and show that his argument is invalid. I will show why the conclusion is not true and restate the argument to make it valid to help with Socrates’ claim. Plato’s argument on why the soul is immortal: 1. Something can only be destroyed by the thing that is bad for it.

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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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A person has memories of itself existing at times in the past and is also able foresees itself existing in the future. This continuation of the same functional organism and the same life constitutes the sameness of the living thing. Therefore, ‘man’ refers to a living body of a particular shape. Locke distinguishes between man and person by using thought experiments and demonstrates that a man and person are not the same thing. If man is a living physical body – in other words, an animal of a certain kind – then a person must be something different.

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In contrast, Locke believes, that knowledge can only have a high degree of certainty but cannot be certain. Since he does not focus much on certainty in his works, he believes that perception can play a major part in the process of knowledge. He further reiterates that knowledge is based on observations and senses. According to his him, ideas come from reflection and sensation while knowledge is founded on experience In summary, I have covered the respective positions and views that both Locke and Descartes hold in respect with self-identity and consciousness.

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