Locke's Concept of Personal Identity

University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014 1972 Locke's concept of personal identity. Michelle Marguerite Maurer University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses Maurer, Michelle Marguerite, "Locke's concept of personal identity." (1972). Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014. 2561. https://doi.org/10.7275/0esd-ea44 This thesis is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 31EDbbD13fl01175 LOCKE’S CONCEPT OF PERSONAL IDENTITY A thesis presented By Michelle Marguerite Maurer Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts in decree of partial fulfillment of the reauire’nents for the MASTER OF ARTS September 1972 Philosophy LOCKE'S CONCEPT OF PERSONAL IDENTITY A Thesis By Michelle Marcuerite Maurer Approved ns to style and content by: (Chairman of Committee) (Head of Department) (Member) (Member) (month) (year) ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My deepest rrntitude and thanks is extended to Professor Robert P. Wolff whose assistance, renulne- ness and kindness has •node a lasting impression on me. Also, I thank Professor V. C. Chappell without whose encournjrncnt and understanding my '’philosophical experiment" would most surely have been short lived. To ray parents TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Pare I INTRODUCTION 1 II LOCKE »S CONCEPT OF A PERSON 9 A. Self and Person 9 B. Person and Man ^p C. Material and Inmnterial Substance 1** D. Person and Tnnaterinl Substance 20 E. Person and Consciousness 23 III LOCKE ON PERSONAL IDENTITY A. Ator.s, Arrrerates and Living Organisms B. The Identity of Man C. The identity of Mental Substance D. Personal Identity IV CONCLUDING COMMENTS AND CRITICISMS 55 BIBLIOGRAPHY 73 CHAPTER T INTRODUCTION In thin paper I shall examine the problem of personal Identity ns dealt with by John Locke. There are re- lated issues that set the groundwork for his discussion of the personal identity problem. These issues include 'person' in the technical sense ns distinct from ’man,' the relation of eta terial and immaterial substance, the nature of mind, and consciousness. The predominant world view at the time of Locke's writing has been conveniently labeled the Galilean-Cartesian- Newtonian world view. This period of time in which Locke was writing was characterized by the great rationalistic systems hand, and on of Descartes, Spinoza and Leibnitz, on the one broufht on in part the other hand, by the rise of empiricism science in renernl. by Locke's vork nnd the development of repnrded ns n vast The world of nature nt this time was with through mathe- physical machine capable of belnr dealt rationalists, the it.enl matics. For Descartes and the other deductive system established of science was an nll-embraclnc mathematical In nature nnd, for the by a method primarily established by a mathematical scientists, the ideal was to be interpreting the empirical method. The dominant ways of subrtnnca world remained the nbsolutlstic ones of antiquity, from Descartes and attribute. In renernl, what philosophers 1 2 to Locke had to say about substance, the mind-body relation- ship, individuation, causality and most other topics of philosophical interest vas to instirnte « momentous turn- in r point in philosophy. Locke's handling of the personal identity problem was a serious attempt to deal for the first ti-n© with on© of the most difficult problems. The world ns experienced was regarded ns a state or states of an experiencing subject. The realm of secondary qualities, which are subjective in nature, was sharply contrasted to their causes, the actual world of primary qualities and substances. For the most part, a basic dual- ism vas thought to exist with mind as one substance with its physical nature. Man was viewed as a complex entity comprised of both substances, mind and body. Physically, rann vas Just a small part in a vast world machine. As such, his body was governed by laws of mechanical nature Just as any other part of the world would be roverned. Mentally, man was a specta- tor and knower of the world of nature, in the sense that when his body vas stimulated tho primary qualities of ex- ternal bodies caused ideas in the mind of man. These ideas were then combined on the basis of various principles ( e.g., resemblance, cause and effect, or identity) with the result being knowledge. The details of this process were never either adequately explained or understood and the problem of how to explain the relation between the human mind and the human body led to a number of inadequate "solutions," e.g., 3 intemctionism, occasionalism and parallelism. The diffi- culty of this problem is shown in that after Locke , as Charles Morris points out, " it may be said that all suc- ceeding theories of mind, bas*d on the concepts of process, act, relation, substantive, and function, are at, one in their opposition to an explanation of mind in terms of substance.” 1 Althourh Locke accepted much of this view of things he partially withdrew from the substantialist view since he refused to concern himself with the basic nature of either mind or body. But his withdrawal was not all a shift in emphasis. Rather, it was an implicit acceptance of the dominant substance view coupled with a hesitation to say anything about the essence of a substance because we cannot know anything about it. He was the first philosopher of his age to regard philosophy not ns a super-science, essentially simi- lar to other special sciences, but as a critical discipline of unique status nnd with special problems of its own. Not the least of these problems was to give adequate account of the identity conditions for such things as ’persons.' ironi- cally, Locke’s thought can in some ways still be rernrded as an instance of the contemporary world vi*v. His empiricism has not carried him that far away from the Cartesian rationalism and serves, according to Morris, ” to bridge the gap i. University C. W. , Thenri e Mind . Morris, Sis ^ 9l of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1932, p. 2^. r . 2 4 b*tvft*n thourht and sense that Is found In Desenrtes." Yet, Ivocke leaves the inquiry into the nature of mind nnd body nside and r says that the essence o substance is unknowable It could be that in these matters Locke was subject to the influence of the past more than he realized or admit- ted. He can be seen, however, as a transitional firure from Cartesian rationalism to the empiricism of Berkeley and Hume. We tend to repard his philosophy as the point of departure for his empiricist successors. The empiricists that followed Locke were confronted with a traditional body of beliefs with which they intensly disagreed. Locke was not a total re- former since he was ready to do battle with only specific traditional beliefs. But he beran a movement toward critical analysis which tried to uncover what was thought to be many of the irrational origins of those beliefs to which the empiricist philosophers were opposed. The notion of substance was not the least objectionable. The reneral purpose of Locke's M E ssay Concerning Huma n Under standing was, as he tells us, to inquire into the oririn of those idea s « notions, or what- ever else you please to call them which a man ob- serves, and is conscious to himself he has in his mind; nnd the ways whereby ..the understand Inp: comes to be r urnished with them.* 2. Morris, p. 39. 3. Locke, John, An, Essay Cone? relax: Hu inn Under;tand- Vol. i lea t ions , New York, 19^9, n . ed. A. C. Eraser, Dover BubL I, p. 23, Hereafter referred to as Eg_S&y . 5 I-ocke attempted to show how nil our ideas can be explained on the hypothesis that they originate either in sense-perception , introspection or reflection. Even though Locke affirmed the ultimately experiential origin of nil ideas, he did not restrict knowledge to the immediate data of experience. On the contrary, he believed that there were complex ideas r which have objective re erence, constructed or framed out of simple ideas by the active power of our minds. The idea of substance which supports those primary qualities which in turn produce in the perceiving subject ideas of secondary qualities is such an idea. Locke was convinced that there had to be substances and even thourh we never perceive them it must be possible to frame ideas of such substances. The idea of n person and the idea of personal identity were also thought to be framed in this way by the mind. Since these complex ideas are framed by the mind and not riven di- rectly in perception we can put aside interest in their origin in favor of interest in their adequacy. Tt is in this perspective that we must find Locke's iden of person. Unfortunately he does not develop this idea systematically; rather, he puts forth by bits and pieces only what serves his purpose at the time. We are left to fill in details of this enigmatic notion. Because Locke's idea of person is inadequate his analysis of personal identity in Chapter 2.7 of the Essa y is incomplete. Locke's discussion of the problem of personal identi- 6 ty is e till ones of most original nnd important p*irts of the His hiumy- discussion constitutes an attack on the traditional Cartesian dormatism - as much an attack as his iden of substance did for he recomized the irrelevance of substance in answering questions of personal identity.

Load more