John Locke's Theory on Personal Identity and Criticism from Thomas Reid

John Locke’s Theory of Personal Identity
Introduction
John Locke’s Memory Theory of Personal Identity argues that personal identity is an issue that is based on psychological continuity. Locke spoke about personal identity and how the consciousness of an individual tends to survive even after death. He developed a notion of personal identity that is founded on the basis of consciousness or memory, and not simply on the basis of the body or soul. However, Locke’s memory theory was criticized by Thomas Reid who argued that operations cannot be used to determine personal identity since identity is indivisible. He added that Locke tended to confuse evidence of an issue with the thing itself. This paper analyzes John Locke’s theory on personal identity and criticism from Thomas Reid.
John Locke’s Memory Theory of Personal Identity
John Locke argued that ‘personhood’ is a forensic term, where people’s personal identity is made up of sameness of consciousness. Locke presented a paradigm of ‘personhood’ arguing that a person is an intelligent being that has the capacity to reflect, think and reason. Personhood is a term that has been ill-defined since there is a gray area between a person and an animal since its original conception. Locke proposed that there are rules that constitute personhood, which include a thinking intelligent human being who can reflect and reason. Consciousness cannot be separated from thinking. Locke argued that to clearly understand personhood, one should be able to understand what separates him from what he was in the past and who he is at the moment. This also includes issues that separate humans from animals, and the time when personhood begins. Therefore, animals such as Apes that have human capabilities may qualify as persons, while brain-dead bodies may not appear as people.
Locke argued that personal identity can be described as an issue that is concern with psychological continuity. This implies that personal identity is founded on consciousness and not necessarily on the body or soul. He argued that an “empty” mind which is also known as tabula rasa is usually shaped and influenced by experience, while reflections and sensations are the two main sources of people’s ideas. He developed a third term that is different from the body and the soul, arguing that thought is usually meditated individuals who adhere to the scientist ideology and link consciousness with the brain. Personal identity is usually faced with problem when it comes to discussing immortality or life after death. This is because for an individual to exist after death there must be the same individual before death who is the same one as the one who died.
According to the psychological continuity argument, for an individual X to exist after a certain occurrence, it is sufficient and necessary that there is, after the occurrence, an individual Y who evolved psychologically from X. this implies that there must be overlapping chains of psychological connections that are directly related, such as the cognitive and causal connections between intentions, desires, character traits, experiential memories, and so on. The Locke’s theory is closely related to tho...