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In Locke’s mind, conscious awareness and memory of previous experiences are the keys to understanding the self. In other words, you have a coherent concept of your self as a personal identity because you are aware of your self when you are thinking, feeling, and willing.
Feb 11, 2019 · Locke on Personal Identity. First published Mon Feb 11, 2019. John Locke (1632–1704) added the chapter in which he treats persons and their persistence conditions (Book 2, Chapter 27) to the second edition of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding in 1694, only after being encouraged to do so by William Molyneux (1692–1693). [ 1] .
According to Locke, persons are thinking intelligent beings who can consider themselves as extended into the past and future and who are concerned for their happiness and accountable for their actions.
For Locke, it means that the self is defined by what we do—or, perhaps, can—self-attribute, through recollection and/or appropriation. Kant repudiates the basic strategy shared by Locke and Hume, for he denies that self-awareness reveals objective facts about personal identity.
This chapter discusses the fundamentals of Locke's revolutionary account of personal identity - the notion of identity in general, the notion of a person, and the notion of consciousness.
Another intuitively appealing view, championed by John Locke, holds that personal identity is a matter of psychological continuity. According to this view, in order for a person X to survive a particular adventure, it is necessary and sufficient that there exists, at a time after the adventure, a person Y who psychologically evolved out of X.
Contrary to what some commentators hold, Locke distinguishes between consciousness and memory, and he ascribes to both an essential role in the constitution of personal identity.
