What is it about?
Many think John Locke’s account of personal identity is inconsistent and circular. It’s neither of these things. The root causes of the misreading are [i] the mistake of thinking that Locke uses ‘consciousness’ to mean memory, [ii] failure to appreciate the importance of the ‘concernment’ that always accompanies ‘consciousness’ on Locke’s view, [iii] the tendency to take the term 'person', in Locke’s text, as if it were (only) some kind of fundamental sortal term like ‘human being’ or ‘thinking thing’, and to fail to take proper account of Locke’s use of it as a ‘forensic’ term (§26). It’s well known that Locke uses person as a forensic term, but the consequences of this have still not been fully worked out.
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Why is it important?
If this is right, it corrects centuries of misunderstanding
Perspectives
no special further perspective
Professor Galen Strawson
University of Texas at Austin
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: ‘The Secrets of All Hearts’: Locke on Personal Identity, Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, May 2015, Cambridge University Press,
DOI: 10.1017/s1358246115000144.
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