John Lock: "Of Identity and Diversity"

1: Wherein Identity Consists

2: Identity of Substances

34: "We have the ideas but of three sorts of substances: 1. God. 2. Finite intelligences. 3. Bodies."

3: Principium Individuationis

35: Material bodies identified with collections of atoms and "if one of these atoms be taken away, or one new own added, it is no longer the same mass or the same body."

35: "In the state of living creatures, their identity depends not on a mass of the same particles, but on something else. For in them the variation of great parcels of matter alters not the identity: an oak growing from a plant to a great tree, and then lopped, is still the same oak."

4: Identity of Vegetables

36: "one plant which has such an organization of parts in one coherent body, partaking in one common life, it continues to be the same plant as long as it partakes in the same life, thought that life be communicated to new particles of matter vitally united to the living plant."

5: Identity of Animals

36: Story very similar to that told for plants.

6. The Identity of Man

36-7: "the identity of the same man consists in nothing but a participation of the same continued life, by constantly fleeting particles of matter, in succession vitally united to the same organized body."

37: This is the only principle that can account for the same man being once an embryo, now old, sometimes drunk sometimes sober, sometimes mad, sometimes sane, etc.

37: Idea that 'same man' tied to immaterial sole implausibly suggests that Me, Socrates and Caesar could all be the same man, or that (should Socrates soul move into the body of a pig) that pig would be a (hu)man.

HJ: Throughout the text read "man" as "human" or "human being"

7: Identity suited to the Idea

37: "to conceive and judge aright, we must consider what idea the word it is applied to stands for: it being one thing to be the same substance, another the same man, and a third the same person, if person, man, and substance, are three names standing for three different ideas."

8: Same Man

38: "I think I may be confident, that, whoever should see a creature of his own shape or make, though it had no more reason all its life than a cat or a parrot, would call him still a man; or whoever should hear a cat or parrot discourse, reason, and philosophize, would call or think it noting but a cat or a parrot: and say, the one was a dull irrational man, and the other a very intelligent rational parrot."

39: "I presume it is no the idea of a thinking or rational being alone that makes the idea of a man in most people's sense, but of a body, so and so shaped, joined to it."

9. Personal Identity

39: "we must consider what person stands for; which, I think, is a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places, which it does only by that consciousness that is inseparable from thinking, and, as it seems to me, essential to it: it being impossible for any one to perceive without perceiving that the does perceive."

10. Consciousness makes personal identity

40: Some discussion of problems associated with our not being able to remember parts of our lives and with our inability to take past all in at once.

40-1: "For as far as any intelligent being can repeat the idea of a past action with the same consciousness it had of it at first, and with the sameness it has of any present action; so far it is the same personal self. For it is by the consciousness it has of its present thoughts and actions that it is self to itself now, and so will be the same self, as far as the same consciousness can extend to actions past or to come; and would be by distance of time, or change of substance, no more tow persons, than a man be two men by wearing other clothes today than he did yesterday."

11. Personal identity and Change of Substance.

41: "the substance whereof personal self consisted at one time may be varied at another, without the change of personal identity; there being no question about the same person, though the limbs which but now were a part of it, be cut off."

12: no title

13:no title

42: "it must be allowed, that, if the same consciousness (which, as has been shown, is quite a different thing from the same numerical figure or motion in body) can be transferred from one thinking substance to another, it will be possible that two thinking substances may make but one person. For the same consciousness being preserved, whether in the same or different substances, the personal identity is preserved."

14: no title

43: "so that personal identity reaching no further than consciousness reaches, a pre-existent spirit not having continued so many ages in a state of silence, must needs make different persons."

44: "the same immaterial substance, without the same consciousness, no more making the same person by being united to any body, than the same particles of matter, without consciousness united to any body, makes the same person. But let him once find himself consciousness of any of the actions of Nestor, he then finds himself the same person with Nestor."

15: no title

44: "For should the soul of a prince, carrying with it the consciousness of the prince's past life, enter and inform the body of a cobbler, as soon as deserted by his own soul, from the body of a cobbler, every one sees he would be the same person with the prince, accountable only for the prince's actions: but who would say it was the same man? The body too goes to the making the man, and would, I guess, to everybody determine the man in this case; wherein the soul, with all its princely thoughts about it, would not make another man."

16: Consciousness makes the same person

45: "But though the same immaterial soul does not alone make the same man; yet it is plain, consciousness, as far as ever it can be extended unites existences and actions, very remote in time into the same person so that whoever has the consciousness of present and past actions, is the same person to whom they both belong."

17: Self Depends on Consciousness

45: "Self is that conscious thinking thing, whatever substance made up of (whether spiritual or material, simple or compounded, it matters not), which is sensible or conscious of pleasure and pain, capable of happiness or misery, and so is concerned for itself, as far as that consciousness extends."

45: "Upon separation of this little finger, should this consciousness go along with the little finger, and leave the rest of the body, it is evident the little finger would be the person, the same person, and the self would then have nothing to do with the rest of the body."

18: Objects of Reward and Punishment

46: "In this personal identity is founded all the right and justice of reward and punishment; happiness and misery being that for which every one is concerned for himself, and not mattering what becomes of any substance not joined to, or affect with that consciousness."

19: no title

46: "if the same Socrates waking and sleeping do not partake of the same consciousness, Socrates waking and sleeping is not the same person. And to punish Socrates waking for what sleeping Socrates thought, and waking Socrates was never conscious of, would be no more of right, than to punish one twin for what his brother twin did, whereof he knew nothing, because their outsides were so like."

20: no title

46: "But yet possibly it will still be objected, suppose I wholly lose the memory of some parts of my life, beyond a possibility of retrieving them, so that perhaps I shall never be conscious of them again; yet am I not the same person that did those actions, had those thought I once was conscious of, thou I have now forgot them? To which I answer, that we much here take notice what the word I is applied to; which in this case, is the man only. And the same man being presumed to be the same person, I is easily here supposed to stand also for the same person."

47: "if it be possible for the same man to have distinct incommunicable consciousness at different times, it is past doubt the same man would at different times make different persons."

47: "human laws do not punish the mad man for the sober man's actions, nor the sober man for the what the mad man did, thereby making them two persons. which is somewhat explained by our way of speaking in English, when we say such as one is not himself, or is beside himself.

21: Difference between Identity of Man and Person

47: "it is impossible to make personal identity to consist in anything but consciousness, or reach any further than it does."

22: no title

48: "But is not a man drunk and sober the same person? Why else is he punished for the fact he commits when drunk, though he be never afterwards conscious of it. Though punishment be annexed to personality, and personality to consciousness, and the drunkard perhaps be not conscious of what he did, yet human judicatures justly punish him, because the fact is proved against him, but want of consciousness cannot be proved for him. But in the great day wherein the secrets of all hearts shall be laid open, it maybe reasonable to think, no one shall be made to answer for what he knows nothing of."

23 Consciousness alone makes self

49: "Make these intervals of memory and forgetfulness to take their turns regularly by day and night, and you have two persons with the same immaterial spirit, as much as the former instance two persons with the same body. So the self is not determined by identity or diversity of substance, which it cannot be sure of, but only by identity of consciousness."

24: no title

49: Just as any part of my material body that becomes separated from my consciousness ceases to be part of me, any part of my immaterial substance that gets separated from consciousness ceases to be me."

25: no title

50: "Could we suppose any spirit wholly stripped of all its memory or consciousness of past actions the union or separation of such a spiritual substance would make no variation of personal identity."

26: Person a Forensic Term

50-1: "Person is a forensic term, appropriating actions and their merit; and so belongs only to intelligent agents capable of a law, and happiness, and misery. This personality extends itself beyond present existence to what is past, only by consciousness, whereby it becomes concerned and accountable, owns and imputes to itself past actions, just upon the same ground and for the same reason that it does at present."

51: "for supposing a man punished now for what he had done in another life, whereof he could be made to have no consciousness at all, what difference is there between that punishment, and being created miserable."

27: no title

28: The difficulty from ill use of names

52: "the difficulty or obscurity that has been about this matter rather rises from the names ill used than from any obscurity in the things themselves. For whatever makes the specific idea to which the name is applied, if that idea be steadily kept to, the distinction of anything into the same, and diverse, will easily be conceived, and there can arise no doubt about it."

29: Continued existence makes identity.