John Locke's Argument Of Personal Identity
On Personal Identity:
The issue of personal identity and its determents has been always an issue of concern for a lot of philosophers.
John Locke was one of the philosophers who were against the Cartesian theory that soul accounts for personal identity. He stated that if the soul is the determinant of personal identity then what if two people share the same soul, and wondered if in this case they will be the same person. Locke used the example of Caster and Pollux who share the same soul to proof that soul can't be used to determine personal identity. Then he states that also the body can't be used to account for personal identity claiming a person will remain the same person even if his body changes. As a result, he concluded that personal …show more content…
Locke believes that memory is the best evidence for identity, if a person remembers what he does then he knows that he is the same person, and as result assuming that ones memory determines personal identity. Yet, Reid is against this theory, and believes that the evidence of something doesn't prove its existence or it constituents. He argued that ones belief that the world is created doesn't create the world and similarly ones remembrance of doing something, is not the thing that makes the person be the same one who did this thing. Actually Reid is not completely against the idea that memory is relevant to personal identity, rather he believes that it a source of evidence for ones existence over time but not the determinant of who a person is. Thus, Reid tries to highlight that Locke's memory theories of identity are circular and illogical, actually, he concludes that memory presupposes personal identity rather than creating …show more content…
He takes the story of man in three different stages of his life. In his childhood, as a boy he was flogged for robbing an orchard then in his mid life he served in the war and was promoted to a general for his services, and then in a later stage he was promoted to an officer. When he was a general he remembered the flogging he witnessed while being a child, while in his old age he remembered being an officer and being promoted for serving his country in the war but couldn't remember being flogged as a boy. According to Locke the general is the officer, and the officer is the person who was flogged, yet the general is the not the same person who was flogged as his consciousness can't go back to the time he was flogged. Yet Reid believes that logically speaking the general is the
The issue of personal identity and its determents has been always an issue of concern for a lot of philosophers.
John Locke was one of the philosophers who were against the Cartesian theory that soul accounts for personal identity. He stated that if the soul is the determinant of personal identity then what if two people share the same soul, and wondered if in this case they will be the same person. Locke used the example of Caster and Pollux who share the same soul to proof that soul can't be used to determine personal identity. Then he states that also the body can't be used to account for personal identity claiming a person will remain the same person even if his body changes. As a result, he concluded that personal …show more content…
Locke believes that memory is the best evidence for identity, if a person remembers what he does then he knows that he is the same person, and as result assuming that ones memory determines personal identity. Yet, Reid is against this theory, and believes that the evidence of something doesn't prove its existence or it constituents. He argued that ones belief that the world is created doesn't create the world and similarly ones remembrance of doing something, is not the thing that makes the person be the same one who did this thing. Actually Reid is not completely against the idea that memory is relevant to personal identity, rather he believes that it a source of evidence for ones existence over time but not the determinant of who a person is. Thus, Reid tries to highlight that Locke's memory theories of identity are circular and illogical, actually, he concludes that memory presupposes personal identity rather than creating …show more content…
He takes the story of man in three different stages of his life. In his childhood, as a boy he was flogged for robbing an orchard then in his mid life he served in the war and was promoted to a general for his services, and then in a later stage he was promoted to an officer. When he was a general he remembered the flogging he witnessed while being a child, while in his old age he remembered being an officer and being promoted for serving his country in the war but couldn't remember being flogged as a boy. According to Locke the general is the officer, and the officer is the person who was flogged, yet the general is the not the same person who was flogged as his consciousness can't go back to the time he was flogged. Yet Reid believes that logically speaking the general is the