Psychological Continuity

Classification

Position level

specific

Domains

Philosophy of Mind

Overview

Locke located personal identity not in an underlying substance but in the continuity of consciousness reaching back through memory. Later Lockeans, refining his account against the objection that memory fades, recast it as overlapping chains of psychological connection: two person-stages are the same person when enough such connection links them, even where no single memory spans the whole life. The chain must also not branch: if one person divided into two, each continuous with the original, both cannot be that one person, so the account counts only continuity that does not branch.

Position on

• Persistence of the Self

Held by traditions

• British Empiricism

  This is Locke's view, not Hume's: a person reaches as far back as consciousness can extend to past thoughts and actions, whether or not the same substance underlies them.

  Question scope: Persistence of the Self

References

• John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II.xxvii (Of Identity and Diversity)
• Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford University Press, 1984), Part Three