In defining "the identity of a being", Locke distinguishes between the idea of ​​"the same man" and that of "the same person". While he acknowledges that the words are often used interchangeably, he states that "person" is actually representative of personal identity, which is defined only by consciousness, and is completely separate from the material body. Each individual has a personal identity defined by his or her unique movements or thoughts; although two people may make the "same" movement, or have the "same" thought, each thought or movement is actually distinct because it occurs at a different time and/or in a different place. Each person is distinguished from the other by his diversity of experiences; as such, a person can be identified based on the experiences of which he or she is aware. Locke's account of personal identity is open to several criticisms: the first is that it violates transitivity and the second is that it is a circular argument. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Every person, according to Locke, is "a thinking intelligent being who has reason and reflection and can regard himself as himself, the same thinking thing at different times and places" (Ariew & Watkins 321). Every person is able to do this because they possess consciousness, which goes hand in hand with thought. When a person perceives something, he is aware that he perceives it, and therefore Locke argues that one cannot think without being aware of it. It is through this consciousness that man knows that he is effectively himself: "With this everyone is for himself what he calls himself" (AW 322). He is therefore able to distinguish himself from all other thinking beings. In this way, a person can both define his personal identity as distinct, and also use it to determine the identity of his personal identity over time, regardless of changes that occur in the body in which his consciousness currently resides. In defining identity, there are two types of philosophers: absolute identity theorists, who believe that for a person to be themselves, every aspect of themselves, including the people around them, must remain the same, and relative identity theorists, who allow a more lenient view of identity. As a theorist of relative identity, Locke argues that not all aspects of a man need be immutable for his identity to remain the same. It states that if there exists some X that is both F and G, and there exists some Y that is also F and G, then it is possible for F of of Y. Take, for example, a man who at a given moment possesses all his limbs. Let X represent the composite of his mind and body at this moment. Now imagine at a later point in time, when this man has lost an arm and now only has one. Allow Y to represent the composition of his mind and body at the second moment. If one takes F to be man's mind and G to be his body (as defined by his set of physical simples), one can say that X and Y are the same F, but not the same G. Therefore, although man is having become a different substance, he remains the same person as long as his remaining parts are united by the same consciousness that once united all his parts. The proof of this identity, Locke reasons, lies in memory. Just as man can know at any given moment that he is himself, based on what his consciousness identifies as "himself," he can also claim that his identity goes back as far as his consciousness can remember. That is, if it remembers being itself in the past, and exists now with the same consciousness as before, the self that now reflects on the past person is, in effect, the sameperson. Locke points out a problem in his argument: that throughout a man's life, his consciousness is regularly interrupted by forgetfulness, and he is not always able to reflect on the past. In these moments, when a man loses sight of his past self, Locke recognizes that it is doubtful whether the man retains a sense of self. He identifies it with substance, however, and argues that it has no effect on personal identity, which he believes is a question of "what constitutes the same person, and not whether it is the same exact substance that always thinks in the same person." (AW 323). According to Locke, as long as a man maintains the same mental life, he is the same person. If he acts now with the same consciousness with which he acted in the past, his identity is preserved by the unity of continuous life, regardless of his present substance. The two main objections to Locke's account of personal identity are the problems of transitivity and circularity. I will deal with the first first. According to the law of transitivity, it would seem that if X is the same F as Y, and Y is the same F as Z, then X should be the same F as Z. The problem, however, is that Locke's idea of ​​memory it is not correct. they don't seem to obey this law. For example, let's say a little boy steals a candy bar. He later becomes an honest and law-abiding young man, but still remembers being a young candy thief. Even later, the young man becomes a retired old man who remembers that he was the young man, but not the child thief. The common sense transitivity view would hold that the old man is the same person as the boy because, although he does not remember being the boy, it is enough that he remembers being the young man who remembers being the boy. If Locke is taken literally, however, the boy and the young man are the same person, and the old man and the young man are the same person, but the old man is not the same person as the young boy. How can this be possible? It seems that Locke is trapped by this argument, and may have to admit that his account of personal identity violates transitivity. However, I find that it is possible to overcome the transitivity problem. For starters, if transitivity is used to prosecute a crime, it is nearly impossible to prove. Locke argues that a person cannot be punished for something of which he is not aware. In this case, the elderly man cannot be prosecuted for stealing the chocolate bar, since he does not remember that he was the boy who committed the crime. An argument for transitivity holds that since the old man remembers that he is the young man, and the young man remembers that he is the boy, the old man is guilty. However, since there is no way to prove that the young man remembered being the boy, or even that the old man remembered being the young man, this argument is useless. There is no way to prove the old man's guilt. Furthermore, the transitivity argument becomes useless if its fundamental principles are undermined. That is, transitivity is based on the fact that the old remembers that he is the young. Much of the young man, however, was the memory of existing and possessing the same consciousness as the boy. If the old man does not remember that he was the boy, then he cannot be said to truly possess the same consciousness as the young man. Therefore, the old is not the same person as the young, and the transitivity ends there. If, however, the old man remembers that he is the little boy, but has simply forgotten the event of the theft of the chocolate bar, he can still be considered the same person as the little boy: he possesses the same consciousness, despite the fact that it was interrupted by forgetfulness. In this case, I would argue that the man can, in fact, be punished for the boy's crime, even if Lockecould argue the opposite. This brings us to the second, more extreme objection to Locke's argument: circularity. The circularity problem lies in the question of whether the statement “remembers that” is true, just as “knows that” is true. For a statement to be true, it must be based on the truth of what is stated. For example, if a person says that he "knows that it is raining", we can be sure that it is actually raining. This is a necessary truth for his statement to count as knowledge. The question is whether the same can be said of the statement "remember that". If a person says he "remembers that it rained last Monday," is it necessarily true that it rained at that time? On the one hand, if "remember that" is not factual, Locke's explanation is too permissive, allowing that any subsequent person can be made the same as any previous person. In this example, if it appears to a later person that it was the previous person, then it was, but this obviously cannot be true. This argument is reasonable but irrelevant; I believe “remember that” is factual, although it is often used incorrectly in cases where the appropriate phrase would perhaps be “think he remembers that.” As such, it still seems permissive, in the sense that it can be difficult to know the truth of a given situation; therefore, a later person may appear to be the same as an earlier person, even if he or she is not actually the same. However, "being" and "seeming to be" are two distinct ideas, and despite the possibility that a man may not be able to determine which is truly the case, the reality of things does not change. The truth may never be known, but there is still a truth. Locke argues that this truth is known to God, who saw everything that actually happened. Therefore, although "remember that" can be used incorrectly, when stated correctly it is actually factual. Whereas "remember that" is indeed factual, Joseph Butler charges in "The Analogy of Religion" (1997): One should really think it is evident that consciousness of personal identity presupposes, and therefore cannot constitute, personal identity, just as knowledge, in any other case, cannot constitute the truth, which it presupposes. (__) Simply put, Butler attempts to shatter Locke's notion of identity by arguing that if "remember that" is to be taken as a factual statement, memory cannot be used to define identity, since it presupposes l 'existence of the identity that is reflected upon. If a man remembers having performed a specific action, and the memory is actual, then he has actually performed that action, in which case he must have already possessed an identity before he can reflect on it. This objection, although seemingly logical, is however not applicable to the question at hand. While it is true that to reflect on a prior identity, that identity must have existed from the beginning, and therefore cannot be based solely on memory, this does not disprove Locke's account of the sameness of identity over time. Although original identity must be based on something more than simple memory, Locke's explanation of the identity of identity says nothing about identity itself. The original identity need not be rooted in memory, for that is not all that Locke relies on in his definition of personal identity as a whole (of which more later). The question of identity simply asks whether a man at Time A has the same personal identity as a man at Time B. Regardless of what this original identity was based on (Locke argues that it is consciousness), the subsequent memory of this self and the retention of the same consciousness possessed when the action was performed.