The ambiguous nature of self
How is it that we can identify someone to be the same person at one time, as she is at some other time?
That’s the question that John Locke attempts to answer in his theory of identity. For Locke, identity is predicated on psychological continuity, and this continuity is established by our ability to recall memories of actions and events to which we were present.
The dichotomy of human being and person is a crucial distinction in Locke’s thesis: one can be the same human being over time, occupying the same body, but their personality is solely contingent on the mind and the integrity of its memory of events. Importantly, Locke does not assert that we must each have perfect recall to claim a persistent identity, but if we can be prompted somehow to recall memories of some previous time, then we can be said to be the same person as when those separate events took place (Law, 301–2).
Edmund Law defends Locke’s theory of personal identity as a coherent method of approaching identity (Law, 301–2). However, the concept of personal identity that Locke offers is punctate with problems of indeterminacy and intermittence, undermined by later studies of how the mind processes memory, and ultimately fails to produce a cogent lens through which we can understand personal identity.
Locke’s theory of personal identity is motivated by a shift away from the study of essences, a pursuit that he argues has been arrested by a larger esoteric discussion. To wrest the conversation away from this philosophical impasse, Locke admonishes the essentialist tradition of meditation and pure reasoning, appealing to an empirical understanding of self — explaining what he observes in the forensic application of identity — that is, to do with the punishment and reward of moral agents (Law, 301–2).
Locke claims that moral agency within civil society is the necessary context in which identity exists (Law, 305), and contrasts this with theories of identity that are bound to a bodily person, along with theories that deal in imaginary essences; regarding them as either too mercurial to be constituents of identity or fundamentally obscured in metaphysics (Law, 313). He is also dubious of the confusion inherent to common language in the discussion of self, prescribing the philosophically relevant concepts of identity to the term ‘person’, and isolating it from the incidental properties of human beings (Law, 310).
The problems with Locke’s theory surface when we examine the consequences of consigning psychological continuity to the faculties of our memory. The consequence of naturally fading memories over time for given person, as Thomas Reid argues, reveals the incoherence of Locke’s approach to identity (Reid, 235). Reid’s argument is as follows: suppose you have a person who at present time A is able to recall their actions at some previous time B. According to Locke, the subject’s ability to recall their actions at the previous time B deems them to be the same person as at present time A. Suppose further that at the previous time B, the subject is able to recall their events at some further past moment C. Once again, by a Lockean account, we can establish that the subject is the same person at points B and C; and thus, we are able to identify them as the same person in moments A, B and C through the principle of transitivity. Plausibility, our subject at the present moment A may have lost their ability to recall the events of some now faraway past moment C. With such a lack of recollection, Locke would have to conclude that person at time A is different to the person at time C. Reid summarises this inconsistency:
There is … [a] consequence of this doctrine … Mr. Locke probably did not see. It is, that a man may be, and at the same time not be, the same person that did a particular action. (Reid, 235)
The intermittent nature of consciousness is another issue that is problematic in a Lockean understanding of personality. This is a phenomenon that people routinely visit during sleep. Law addresses the implications of Locke’s identity theory to sleep, insofar as staying faithful to Locke’s scepticism of essence. To Locke’s mind, there’s no guarantee that the soul inhabiting some human being before they sleep would be the same soul they wake up with (the details of which are lost in metaphysics), which would be problematic for a concept of identity that was anchored to a material body. It is on this token that Law considers Locke’s theory of self as superior (Law, 313). What happens to our identity as we enter a state of sleep? For Locke, it vanishes beyond recourse, as we cannot be made to recall the events that take place during our slumber.
In Locke’s view, identity only has relevance in situations that have moral implications (Law, 301). Law stresses that personality is “properly a forensic term, and here to be used in a strict forensic sense”. Criminal prosecution is central to Locke’s argument about the identity. According to Locke, to mete out punishment is to deter potential future acts of immorality, and such deterrents are only sensible if the person has a conscious recollection of committing such an act (Law, 307). But not all actions performed by moral agents have a moral quality to them. Human beings are capable of performing actions that are amoral; and indeed many of our day-to-day actions are devoid of moral implication, revealing Locke’s concept of personality may be fragmented along a given timeline.
Since Locke’s theory of personal identity was first introduced, research on how human beings process memories has begun to encroach on some of the assumptions that Locke harbours about the storage and recall of memory. In The Truth About Memory, Marya Schechtman writes:
Some autobiographical memories do present themselves as simple reproductions of past experiences, and these memories fit nicely into the structure of psychological continuity theories. A few moment’s introspection, however, will show that many autobiographical memories do not take this form. (Schechtman, 7)
Schechtman reviews contemporary research on memory, the findings of which reveal a general affinity towards summarised event memories over simple event recall. Summarised event memories are a type of memory recall that ignore the distinctness of events over time, where instead of recounting discrete events, subjects recall events which are conflated with other kinds of information that may or may not be incidental, and often coalesced with memories of other events that bear extrinsic similarities (Schechtman, 8). If memory is, as Schechtman’s research suggests, an imprecise tool for recollecting events, it makes a poor carriage for the persistence of identity.
Locke’s theory of personal identity sought to promote the concept of identity from the mysticism that shrouded it, resting on empiricism instead. On this goal Locke succeeds. He also makes a strong argument for a just society; claiming that in order for punishment to be effective, the imputed party must have recollection of his or her actions, lest the punishment be rendered senseless to the convicted (Law, 307). This concept of justice is often defeated however in cases where the damage that an immoral agent inflicts upon society exceeds the moral obligations that the society owes to the individual. Justice aside, Locke’s approach to identity presents a quagmire that reduces identity to an artefact of legislature, and inscribes our personality on the fickle ledger of our internal memories.
As Derek Parfait suggests, there are ways that we can enhance the Lockean theory of identity to better fit with our intuitions about identity. Introducing gradations to the sameness of personality may resolve the problem of incoherence over time (Parfit, 206). Forsaking the role of body in the concept of identity however is a little more offensive to one’s sensibilities.
References
Edmund, L., 1794. A Defence of Mr. Locke’s Opinion Concerning Personal Identity. In: The works of John Locke, in nine volumes. 12th Edition ed. London: Cambridge, pp. 301–319.
Parfit, D., 1984. What We Believe Ourselves to Be. In: O. C. Press, ed. Reasons and Persons. s.l.:Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 199–209.
Reid, T., 1850. Essay III. Of memory. In: J. Walker, ed. Essays on the intellectual powers of man, with notes and illustrations from Sir William Hamilton and others. Cambridge(MA): John Bartlett, pp. 200–239.
Schechtman, M., 1994. The Truth About Memory. Philosophical Psychology, 7(1), pp. 3–18.
