Personal Identity Essay

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By claiming that it does not necessarily belong to any one mind in particular is inferring then that the self is not in fact a property. Then how can it be said to exist? Thomas Reid (Macquarie, lecture 17) also raises an important objection to Locke’s theory of personal identity that seems fairly self-evident to me. We can consider a man as: a child, then in middle age and at old age.

If the man in middle age can remember occurrences when he was a young boy, but now that he is an old man can’t, then can he be considered a different person from the young boy?

Of Personal Identity Hume

According to Locke the old man is the same as the middle aged one, and the middle aged is the same as the child.

Yet there is no continuity of consciousness between the three, any break in memory would render them a ‘non-person’ if we follow Locke’s argument-clearly it is logically inconsistent. David Hume’s ‘bundle theory’ of the self seems to me rather more logically coherent. He claimed that humans tend to think of themselves as the same person as they were, say, 10 years ago; that we believed that although one had evolved over the period in a number of ways that the self had endured.

According to Hume however, this was a mistake, and when examined empirically no more than a practical habit: “I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never observe anything but the perception”(TI, vi, p.

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251). It is clear, posits Hume, our thoughts and perceptions flow from one idea to the next; so we encounter a ‘bundle’, or grouping, of perceptions throughout our life but no actual continuous and enduring underlying self– or “I” –as a ‘unity of consciousness’.

While there is a stability of perceptions over the short term, and some loose association of experiences, there is no overarching continuity of “I” in reality. Hume agrees that we extend over time in actions, we begin a job and finish it some time later, and that our desires also extend in some sort of continuity over time. Furthermore our physical bodies endure reasonably consistently; we age gradually. This according to Hume is what ultimately defines our sense of personal identity. While Hume’s theory of the self is attractive in my view, if anything it doesn’t go far enough toward demonstrating the illusory nature of the “I”.

According to many in the Eastern metaphysical traditions, particularly Buddhism, if we accept everything must be causal in nature, a position that empiricists such as Locke and Hume would agree, then phenomena must arrive in a mutually interdependent web. No ‘thing’ can arise in and of itself intrinsically, but rather needs external causes to arise. This fundamental axiom can be found within the logical ‘law of identity’ A=A. Or expressed another way A= not -A. For something to be said to exist, to have identity, we have to be able to contrast it with everything that it is not.

In this way all things depend on others for existence; known in the Buddhist tradition variously as “dependent origination” or “co-dependent arising”, among other terms. Consciousness is what demarcates objects, phenomena etc, from what it is not . We, as conscious beings are constantly drawing boundaries-with our perceptions, concepts and so forth-defining the “A”, and always in an arbitrary fashion. For where can a boundary be objectively said to exist ‘out there’ to any particular thing? It must ultimately reside within our minds.

So too, in my opinion, can it be said the “I” itself. If we are indeed a collection of experiences, desires, and an embodied being over time, then that bundle we designate the self is also a construct created by consciousness; rather than an objective, inherently existent “thing-in-itself”. The account by Sacks (1985) of William Thompson whom has lost his memory due to Korsakov’s syndrome also points to this reality, in my view. For if a personal identity relies on a sense of continuity through memory, as Locke would have it.

And therefore can be effectively erased– or “pithed” as Sacks puts it –through damage to the brain, then how was the self ever an objectively existing thing in the first place? Surely then it is just another object of consciousness in Thompson’s mind-what has been erased or damaged is a brain’s memory, not an “personal identity-in-itself”. Moreover that Thompson has to confabulate stories, in order to give himself some sense, or illusion, of continuity, points in my view to the fact that that’s what we all do in our minds to some degree constantly.

I may remember myself as being a top footballer as a teenager many years ago, but is it empirically, and more importantly, objectively true? Even the best memories can be deceptive, especially over longer periods. Thus like Thompson all we ultimately have is a self-narrative, at this moment, contained within our consciousness. Our self, while seemingly illusory, is ultimately what we define it to be in any given moment. In the Buddhist tradition this is known as the “middle way”.

So, while Hume’s bundle theory of the self points us in the right direction by drawing into question Locke’s ‘unity of consciousness’ as a means of defining identity. And instead posits we understand our selves as a composition of many different and related yet constantly changing elements, it seems to me he still is reluctant to totally dispose of the idea that there can be an objectively– or inherently existent “I” A self that ultimately perceives the unity of these various states and processes within ‘us’.

In the tradition of the sceptic Hume himself, I remain dubious that such a unifier self can be said to objectively exist.

References Hume, David. “Of personal identity” in A Treatise of Human Nature, Hume, David; Selby-Bigge, L. A. , 1972 , 251-253 . Locke, John. “Of identity and diversity – extract” in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke, John; Nidditch, Peter H. , 1975 , 328-347. Macquarie University PHI130SP3 Mind, Meaning and Metaphysics: Week 9 Unit content.

Parfit, Derek. “Why our identity is not what matters – extracts” in Reasons and Persons, Parfit, Derek, 1984, 245-249, 253. Sacks, Oliver, “A matter of identity” in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Sacks, Oliver, 1985, 103-110. Shoemaker, David. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Personal Identity and Ethics. First published Tue Dec 20, 2005; substantive revision Wed Mar 5, 2008