Self and Identity

Question 1

Explain John Locke’s “tabula rasa”

Answer 1

• ‘Blank Slate’
• Argues that humans are born as blank slates, a “person” is an intelligent, thinking being that can identify itself as itself through different places.
• Continuity of conciseness : memory, rational capacity, self - awareness

Question 2

What is Thomas Reid’s response to Locke?

Answer 2

• A general can remember what he did as a Lieutenant, Lieutenant can remember what he did as a child, General cannot remember himself as a child.
• A=B B=C A=/=C, logical contradiction

Question 3

What is an objection to Thomas Reid?

Answer 3

• Peter Millican
• Memory can be continuous through ancestral relation.
• A is connected to C through B

Question 4

What are the flaws of consciousness?

Answer 4

• not continuous, brain activity can halt however people can still have the same memories, rational capacity and self awareness as before.
• memories are not perfect and can be false, basing personal identity on memory is flawed

Question 5

What is bodily continuity? Explain in context of The Ship of Theseus.

Answer 5

• Boards get rotten and need replacing, they get replaced plank by plank, is the new ship made of new planks, still Theseus’ ship? If we make a new ship out of old planks, which is Theseus’ ship?
• Humans develop mentally as they are subject to external influences causing a change in perspective, there are fixed aspects of physicality such as fingerprints and DNA.
• Do objects have to be numerically similar or qualitatively similar for them to be the same?

Question 6

What is David Hume’s perspective on consciousness?

Answer 6

• Bundle theory - conciseness is nothing but a bundle of ideas and impressions, there is no such thing as the self.
• Cannot conceive the idea of anything without physical properties, no underlying essence.
• Properties of a person change in the space of 5 years, ideas/ impressions not the same therefore personal identity does not exist

Question 7

What can be used to criticise Hume?

Answer 7

• He is an empiricist but provides no evidence
• How do properties come together to form something if there is no underlying essence?

Question 8

What is the scientific perspective?

Answer 8

• ## We are ‘nothing but a pack of neutrons’