What Is Personal Identity?
A Deep Dive into Personal Identity
According to the philosopher John Locke, the self — or personal identity — is constituted by consciousness. A person’s existence, he claims, is marked by successive changes from the past to the present, and it is through consciousness and the mediation of memory that a person can cement together these different stages of existence to constitute personal identity.
In this article, I look to give a critical appraisal of this view of personal identity. I’ll begin by explaining the argument behind it then briefly consider how Locke does not explain what he means by ‘consciousness’. After this I’ll assess two arguments against Locke’s theory, showing it to be altogether weak.
Locke’s Argument
In his earlier, major work An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke writes: “a thinking intelligent being […] can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing at different times and places”¹.
One core idea is present here. We find a picture of the self as one continually thinking thing, defined by its capacity for introspection, to consider past conscious existences, beneath which lies a fundamental schema that a ‘person’ should be distinguished from ‘a man,’ or: a physical organism from a consciousness.
