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What Are The Arguments Against John Locke's Memory Theory

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Refutation against Locke’s Memory Theory of Personal Identity The philosopher John Locke in his 17th century masterpiece, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, specified that personal identity could only be determined through consciousness or memory. This means that as far as one can remember, that is only as far as his personal identity exists. Beyond his memory and consciousness, the personal identity must be a different self. However, this theory has problems when it comes to legal considerations.
Exposition
John Locke’s Memory Theory rests upon the belief that a human being is a conscious being, and that “what enables [a thinking intelligent being] to think of itself is its consciousness, which is inseparable from thinking and (it seems to me) essential to it” (Locke 1690/2007, 9). This means that as human beings determine the world and all their knowledge only through consciousness, then consciousness must be the basis of personal identity and of its permanence. …show more content…

Locke explained the side of the courts or the present justice system. According to Locke, “the courts justly punish him, because his bad actions are proved against him, and his lack of consciousness of them can’t be proved for him” (Locke 1690/2007, 22). Nonetheless, by admitting that “his lack of consciousness…can’t be proved for him” it means that Locke’s Memory Theory lacks any practical usefulness in real life. It may actually be real or true but there is no way to prove it in objective terms, and so it is therefore practically useless. In fact, the case of Billy’s drunkenness is similar to claims of demonic possession and similar cases where it is just very unfortunate to inflict harm and pain on the person whose body is said to be used by a malevolent force. Nonetheless, since objectivity must determine the practical usefulness of a theory in human terms, there is no way that this problem can be

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Introduction “Of what use is the memory of facts, if not to serve as an example of good or of evil?” (Alfred de Vigny). Memory encodes various pieces of information that can be utilized in an enormous amount of situations to benefit people. However, memory is also fallible. It alters and creates new memories, changing the original encoded data for unknown reasons.

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In conclusion, Leibniz’s arguments disprove Locke’s philosophy of life. “Leibniz does a masterful job of turning Locke’s arguments against him”(Chaffee 290). Leibniz theory that we all have internal instincts in our souls adeptly repudiates Locke’s arguments. Although Locke’s work helped to develop the Declaration of Independence, his theory about experience was not accurate. John Locke is a great philosopher who helped us in many ways become who we are as a country with his many different philosophical theory’s and writings.

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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.

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Indeed, Descartes and Locke had their personal views on identity. Locke viewed identity as something that could not be doubled or cloned per say. For instance, a person

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As we have learned from our previous discussions, John Locke believed that personal identity was a matter of psychological continuity. He believed that the “self”, or personal identity was not founded on substance of body, or soul, but rather consciousness. Schechtman agrees with Locke’s perspective with regards to the notion that a person’s identity is not that of physical substance, but sameness of consciousness. Not only are we human beings, but persons as well. However, Schechtman feels the understanding of persistence is unsatisfactory.

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Every moment of our lives that we witness within the external world is taken in by our perception of the world, and into our minds. To John Locke, in accordance to his text An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, the mind is a blank sheet that is filled by the many experiences that humans witness as they live. The two main aspects that is included in making marks on this mental sheet are sensation, the initial absorption of information, and reflection, the mental process to analyze the information. In terms of sensory experiences, sensation is when our sensory organs receives the external information and reflection is when our minds process what this information indicates. However what about an episodic experience, and can Locke’s explanation be applied to current knowledge?

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Much of the work done to support the theory of personal identity has been through thought experiment and illusory scenarios. The psychological approach to personal identity discusses the theory of memory and the importance of our mind and brain in personal identity and creating who we are as an individual. Likewise, the psychological approach to personal identity addresses the role of our brain in creating what we’ve become through our past experiences. John Locke, the key theorist in the theory of memory believed consciousness and personal identity were strongly related. However, this theory fails to acknowledge a person’s beliefs, desires or characteristics through which they express themselves through.

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According to Joseph Butler, Locke makes a serious mistake of not clearly differentiating between consciousness and identity. He argues that although memory can make one remember events of the past, there is no connection between those events and the person. Therefore, despite most scholars agreeing with most of his opinions, some say it does not explain the gap between memory and experience. On the other hand, Descartes focuses on meditations in trying to explain the concept of personal identity.

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Locke also asserted that humans are blank states at birth. According to him, “All ideas come from sensation or reflection. Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas” (Locke, 1690, p. 96). However, Baillargeon’s research described earlier in the paper showed that infants possess certain knowledge from birth, such as the principle of persistence. Also, Locke’s claim fell into contradiction later in his paper.

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