Memory Maketh Man — John Locke

This essay will explain John Locke’s argument on the nature of persons and personal identity over time. I will first provide background information on certain terms Locke uses in his argument that needs to be understood. Next, I will present Locke’s view on how personal identity consists of memory links that connect one consciousness to another over time. I will then discuss two counter-examples raised in objection to Locke’s argument by explaining these stories and how they posed a challenge to Locke’s views.

Before one can adequately understand what Locke is truly arguing for regarding the nature of personal identity, one must comprehend what Locke means by ‘identical’ and what he considers to comprise a person’s identity. When Locke mentions that something ( in this argument) is identical, he claims that they are numerically identical. Numerically identical is what we mean when we use the equal(=) sign in math, meaning they are exactly identical, one and the same. This is not to be confused with qualitatively identical, which essentially entails exactly similar items. For example, you may be unable to discern a difference between the look, touch, or taste of two freshly bought pencils from the same case. Yet, they two are not numerically identical as they are not the exact same item.

Locke believes that it is not the atoms that make up our bodies, the body itself, nor our soul that contains our personal identity but individuals’ consciousness that gives humans our identity. When Locke discusses consciousness, he is discussing a collection of mental states of rational substance, inseparable from thought. It is a collection of individuals’ hopes, experiences, values and memories that add up to make you the individual that you are.

Locke then builds upon his claims on personal identity by explaining how personal identity over time consists of memory links connecting consciousness. Locke argues that the identity of oneself exists solely through the continuity of memory over time, such that a person is numerically identical with their past self if and only if they share at least one memory of their past self’s consciousness. Locke argues that even if your attitude, beliefs, hopes and dreams and values change drastically over time throughout your life, as long as you share one memory with your past self, you remain numerically identical. For example, if you were 7 and rode your bike for the first time and felt free and happy, then when you are 70 and still remember that experience every time you ride a bike, even if you forget everything else from your youth, you are the same person. However, this is where Locke takes a really hard line on his theory. He believes that if you end up in a situation that causes you to lose all memory of your past, you are no longer the same person. For example, imagine a drug that, when taken, unlocks your brain’s hidden potential and grants you incredible intellect and while under the influence of this drug, you create a cure for cancer. However, when you wake up the following day, you have no memory of taking the drug or what occurred during the ‘high’ and thus have no memories connected to the consciousness of the genius who cured cancer. While you may wake up in the same body as that genius be awarded money, awards and recognition for this achievement. In Locke’s view, some other individual entirely was responsible for this cure. Even if they no longer exist, they are the one deserving of the recognition, not the person who woke up in the same body ( you). One can summarize Locke’s argument on this matter into the phrase ‘you are only who you remember being’; however, this tagline had to be adjusted in response to two objections.

The first of these objections is the ‘Brave Colonel’ counter-example posed by Thomas Ried. In which, Ried presents a fictional story about an individual at 3 different stages of their life. When this individual was a child, they experienced a whipping by their father. Later in this individual’s life, they earn the rank of Colonel and when amid a battle, they remember the whipping and at the same time experience a feeling of courage. And even later on in their life, they earn the rank of General and can remember the bravery they exhibited during combat but have no recollection of being a kid or getting whipped. According to Locke’s argument, the General would be identical to the kid as they share memories, and the General is identical to the Colonel as they share the memory of bravery. Yet the General is not identical to the kid as they share no memories. However this cannot be the case, as identity is transitive ( i.e. if A=B and B=C, then A must = C). Therefore this objection poses a challenge to Locke’s view as it identifies the existence of a logical contradiction in Locke’s argument and, as such, is not a logically sound argument and thus cannot be true. This leads to a change in Locke’s argument to state that you are whoever you remember being or whoever a person you remember being, remembers being.

However, this theory is still imperfect, as Paul Grice illuminates through his ‘Senile General’ counter-example. In this example, Grice builds upon the previous objection, but in this story, the Colonel and General both remember the pain of the whipping they received as a youth. However, the General suffers from memory loss and has no memory of when he was a Colonel, and only remembers what occurred during their childhood. This is different from the previous example as the individual has no recollection of being a Colonel, since the kid has not lived it, and the General forgot about it. Thus presenting a situation in which the General does not remember being the Colonel, and does not remember a person who remembers being the Colonel, yet at some point in time, they were the Colonel. According to this example, the General is identical to the kid, and the Colonel is identical to the kid but the General is not identical to the Colonel. This once again poses a challenge to Locke’s view as it leads to a contradiction proving the argument is still logically unsound. This causes Locke’s argument to be further modified into the idea that you are whoever you remember being, whoever anyone you remember being remembers being or whoever remembers being someone you remember being.