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Metaphysics
Quick questions on Personal Identity Over Time - TCE Philosophy (Tasmania)
2short Q&A pairs drawn directly from our worked dot-point answer. For full context and worked exam questions, read the parent dot-point page.
What is locke's psychological theory?Show answer
John Locke argued that personal identity consists in continuity of consciousness, especially memory. You are the same person as someone in the past if you can remember their experiences from the inside. This neatly explains why we hold people responsible only for what they did as the same conscious self. Thomas Reid objected with the brave officer paradox: a general remembers being a brave officer who remembers being a boy who stole apples, but the general does not remember the apple theft.
What is the no-self view?Show answer
Buddhist philosophy, through the doctrine of anatta, denies there is any enduring self underlying experience. What we call a self is a bundle of constantly changing physical and mental processes, an idea strikingly echoed by David Hume, who reported that when he looked inward he found only particular perceptions and never a self. On this view the search for a criterion of identity rests on a mistake, since there is no single persisting thing to track.
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