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VICPhilosophyQuick questions
Unit 3: Minds, bodies and persons
Quick questions on Personal identity and Locke's memory theory: VCE Philosophy
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 reid's brave officer (the transitivity problem)?Show answer
Thomas Reid presses the decisive structural objection. Suppose a boy is flogged for robbing an orchard; as a young officer he storms a fort and at that moment remembers the flogging; as an old general he remembers storming the fort but has forgotten the flogging. By Locke's criterion the officer is the boy (he remembers the flogging) and the general is the officer (he remembers the fort), but the general is not the boy (he cannot remember the flogging). Yet identity is transitive: if A is B and B is C, then A is C.
What is butler's circularity objection?Show answer
Joseph Butler argues that memory cannot constitute personal identity because genuine memory presupposes it. To remember doing something just is to be aware that I, the very same person, did it. So we cannot explain what makes me the same person in terms of memory, because memory smuggles in the identity it was meant to analyse. The account is circular.
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