HMP 3.02 (L) Locke, Personal Identity PDF

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History of Modern Philosophy 3.02.18 Lecture Notes – Locke, Personal Identity -

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Do we think that there are primary qualities? o Primary qualities are independent of perception – such as mass and extension Related to the question of real essence – internal micro-structure Locke rejects the idea that the essence of the soul is thinking because he thinks there are degrees of thought o We don’t always in fact think, such as in sleeping o Does not think that we can discover the real essence of something (in traditional metaphysics, substances have essences) o Locke believes that we can only know the nominal essence – that set of sensory qualities that we use to identify a thing as belonging to a certain kind  Not really what gives rise to the causal properties of the thing Modern day – we have the problem of actually locating the real essence in the investigation of the fundamental thing Knowledge is the perception of the connection and agreement, or disagreement and repugnancy of our ideas o Repugnancy – that two ideas are incompatible o Connection in terms of cause and effect o We have an idea of a certain cause and a certain effect – all these connections are contingent connections (contingent is the opposite of necessary) o All these connections could have been otherwise – for him, there is no necessary relationship between the cause of something and its effect Hume is going to explore this problem (the problem of induction)

Personal Identity - When it comes to general ideas (space, time, motion, body) - If empiricists are right, we have to give an account of how our mind is able to create these general ideas just from the input of the external world - How do our experiences form the concept of these general ideas? - Locke thinks about how our experiences form the idea of identity and diversity - We compare the thing are time1 and time2, and if they are the same, they are the same, and if they are different, then they are different o Plato gives the argument of knowledge are recollection - Section 3 – Locke develops an insight about metaphysics o Principle of individuation – idea that only a single thing can occupy a location at a given time, and it can only occupy a single location o General criterion of identity – the way we judge whether an object at one time is the same thing as an object at another time o Different sortal terms have different criteria of identity  Sortal term: any kind of term that tells you what kind of thing a thing is  To say something is a rock is a sortal term

To say something is taller than something else is not a sortal term because it is only telling you the relationship of that thing to another  Ex: mass and oak tree  Mass – lump or cluster of something o Criterion – all the same particles o If any one particle changes, it’s an object of a different kind o Criterion of identity is pretty strict  Oak tree o Partaking of the same life o Functional or organizational criterion o Some kind of continuity o Not so strict – can go through changes but still be the same tree  The identity of animals  Functional organizational properties  Replace parts  Still same  Life that persists over time o Criterion of identity for humans – continuity of consciousness  Participating over the same life  Specifically talking about consciousness, conscious experience Section 9 o Self-consciousness o Start of section 18 – personal identity is the foundation of reward and justice  Punishing/praising people for things they did in the past We can constantly experiencing breaks in consciousness o Locke says they are not relevant to personal identity o Divorced the substance (the man) from the person o Different criterion of identity for man and person (body and mind) Memory is critical – future person can reach back and recover memories of the former conscious experiences o In the case of amnesia, they are two different people The prince and the cobbler o The prince’s conscious experience transfers to the cobbler – would be the same person and a different man Section 19 – if the same Socrates waking and sleeping do not pertain to the same consciousness then they would be two different persons 

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