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