John Locke Research Paper

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John 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.
Thomas Reid a philosopher who challenged Locke's Theory brought new understanding which …show more content…

We stay the same no matter if our surrounding or our physical self is different we will always have a small part of our early childhoods in ourselves no matter if we can not remember it. “It’s more like the whirlpool that stays there behind the rock and the stream no matter how much water runs by there is still that little whirlpool there and it has a certain identity even though the water is changing all the time.” So in this case we can picture our self being the whirlpool and the water is our surrounding. Us being the whirlpool we will always be changing throughout the time as the stream comes to the whirlpool but no matter if we change in some way we still remain being the same person we were in the beginning even if we have a small amount of connections. Also, Diotima an ancient philosopher suggested that “We speak of an individual as being …show more content…

Descartes has the same argument as Diotima. Descartes explains that a human is composed of two kinds of things; a material body and immaterial mind. Philosopher view this as “dualism” which claims that humans are made up of dual substance. Descartes mentioned that the mind and soul makes a person endure as the same person over time, meaning that if our physical body is damaged that doesn’t stop the mind from storing the memories. This can finalized by saying that even if we lose an arm or a part of our body we are still going to remain the same person, because we are still the same person we where with or without the