John Locke vs Thomas Reid on Personal Identity
This information will explore the differences between the beliefs of Thomas Reid and John Locke concerning personal identity. Personal identity has been an important topic for philosophers for decades. Personal identity is the concept you develop about yourself that evolves over the course of your life. This may include aspects of your life that you have no control over, such as where you grew up or the color of your skin, as well as choices you make in life, such as how you spend your time and what you believe. Webster defines consciousness as "the quality or state of being aware especially of something within oneself, the state or fact of being conscious of an external object, state, or fact, Awareness especially a concern for some social or political cause". About personal identity, these philosophers disagree on several major areas. This paper will explore Reid's interpretation of Locke's views on personal identity. Reid believes that Locke means memory when he says conscious.
John Locke says that personal identity involves a person’s consciousness alone, which includes the consciousness that extends back to any past event or idea and it reaches to the current identity of the person. Consciousness is the nonphysical stuff, and this is what makes a person. A person is an intelligent being endowed with reason and with consciousness, which, he thinks is inseparable from thought. Counter to Reid who believes in multiple "people" residing in the same body, Locke believes that consciousness and thought are the same people. Personal Identity persists over time because you retain memories of yourself at different points, each memory connected to the one before. A person can sleep and wake up and remember who you are. Locke believes we are constantly the same person we already are.
Thomas Reid says a definition of person should align with the nature of personal identity, though it might still be a question of how we come to know and be assured of our personal identity. Reid believes in the same consciousness, which involves multiple memories inside the same body. In addition, Reid reports, if same consciousness can be transferred from one intelligent being to another, then 2 to 20 intelligent beings could be in the same person. If an intelligent person loses consciousness of their actions or those done to him (which is a possibility), then he is not the person that did those actions, if he shall lose consciousness of his former actions. A man may be, at the same time be not, the person that did a particular action.
First, Reid suggests that John Locke uses consciousness in describing personal identity, which he may mean as memory. Memory is the only ability that we have to obtain knowledge of our past events. Consciousness and memory are distinguished by, first the immediate knowledge of the present, second an immediate knowledge of our past. John Locke's statement of personal identity is that it consists in distant remembrance, for even in the popular sense, to say I am conscious of past action means nothing else than I remember that I did it.
Second, Reid thinks it odd that the sameness of identity of a person should consist in a thing that is changing all the time and there are not any 2 minutes the same. Reid thinks our consciousness, our memory, and every operation of the mind, are still flowing like water of a river, or like time itself. Each moment a person has a different conscious. This is in contrast to Locke who, in Reid's opinion, believes a person’s memory and consciousness is constant. Identity consciousness only can be confirmed by things that have continued existence.
Lastly, Thomas Reid says if personal identity consists of consciousness, as this cannot be the same individually any 2 moments, but only the same kind, it would follow, that we are not for any two moments the same individual persons, but the same kind of person. Our consciousness sometimes ceases to exist, as, in a sound sleep, our personal identity must cease with it. Mr. Lock allows, that the same thing cannot have 2 beginnings of existence so that our identity would be gone every time we cease to think if it was but for a moment.
Even though John Locke and Thomas Reid are well-known philosophers, they do disagree on some aspects of personal identity. This information has explored Reid's critique of Locke's version of personal identity. Reid's view of consciousness in personal identity is changing, were Locke's view it is constant. These different views are educational for people studying personal identity because it promotes critical thinking and discussions for philosophers.
Locke is nowadays widely regarded as a no-nonsense, common-sensical empiricist in search of the "originals" in our experience. Reid was a founder of the Scottish Common Sense School. But neither comes off sounding particularly common-sensical on this topic, in descriptions like: "Counter to Reid who believes in multiple "people" residing in the same body, Locke believes that consciousness and thought are the same people."
ReplyDeleteOne key to making more sense of them both is in the distinction between individuals and persons. See Nigel Warburton's summary, in the background post I shared:
https://cophilosophy.blogspot.com/2019/08/locke-reid-on-identity.html
On that distinction, for Locke, you may be the same INDIVIDUAL as the baby in the photo you don't remember, but not the same PERSON. Persons are constituted and sustained by continuous memories, in the absence of which personhood (but not human individuality) is lost - or should we just say dispersed? Reid's view, as I understand it, is that you can be the same person without such perfect continuity of memory, so long as enough overlapping episodes in the total narrative of your life would plausibly attach that baby to your present incarnation. Makes sense to me.
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