Notes for 4/3/2026

 4/3/2026
[Philosophy Club every Monday, 4-5 pm, in the Buchtel College of Arts and Sciences room 436 ("The Cave")]
[Bioethics Club: Mondays from 5:30pm-6:30pm in Leigh Hall 408]

Have you ever (to your knowledge) had a false memory?
 
The “chain of stages” account of diachronic identity across changes:

The abstract idea of a single persisting thing is applied to a collection of material parts under a common “manner of organization” and where a minority of parts are replaced at each “stage” of the thing’s history.


For Locke, personal identity over time works the same way, but with conscious states instead of material parts.

Human body != person
Soul != person
Consciousness (conscious being) = person

Memory is especially important for Locke’s view.

Locke says that identity is preserved so long as one’s consciousness can be extended backwards. Most commentators interpret this as memory.

I am the same person today as yesterday because I can remember things from yesterday as having happened from a first-person point of view.

Why does Locke reject material theories of personal identity?

Body switch thought experiment

Why does Locke reject the soul theory of personal identity (dualism)?

a)    Souls (= mental substances) are not perceived (empiricist theory of knowledge)(substance as abstract idea of “a something I know not what” that has properties)(substance-property metaphysic)
b)    “Soul wipe” thought experiment

Objection to Locke by Thomas Reid

Boy > Officer > General
Boy || General
General = Officer
Officer = Boy
General != Boy




Student > Newlywed > Victim

Newlywed = Student
Victim = Student
Victim != Newlywed

Amnesia, Alzheimer’s, Brain damage, ….

“Ben King” case

Implicit vs explicit memory

Real vs false memories

Real = really happened to you
False = didn’t really happen to you

(The real/false distinction appears to presuppose identity and therefore can’t be the basis for the idea of identity.)

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