The three main critics of Locke, around the time he wrote, were:
These philosophers all favored some version of the soul theory of personal identity, that we discussed as Proposal #1 in Perry’s dialogue.
We’re not reading any of Clarke’s writing in our class. I list him just because he was historically important, and criticized Locke before the others.
There are three common elements in Butler’s and Reid’s criticisms of Locke that they don’t provide much argument for, and so just reflect the perspective they’re starting from, rather than a reason-supported criticism of Locke.
The first of these unargued starting points is that neither Butler nor Reid think that ordinary objects like living plants and animals, or ships, or anything that’s regularly replacing its parts, can strictly speaking continue to exist numerically the same through such changes.
Butler distinguishes between sameness “in the strict philosophical sense of the word,” which is what we’re calling numerical identity, and sameness in a “loose and popular sense,” where things aren’t really continuing to exist numerically the same, but for some reason we commonly talk as though they do. He says that it’s impossible for a tree to remain “strictly the same” if all its particles of matter have been replaced (pp. 100-101; recall our discussion of the Ship of Theseus).
Reid uses the phrase “perfect identity” to express what we’re calling numerical identity. (See pp. 111–12; on p. 117 he further clarifies that this is “that sameness or identity which we ascribe to an individual,” rather than that “ascribed to many individuals of the same species,” which is what we’re calling qualitative identity.) He says bodies that are continually changing their parts, like an army regiment or a tree or a ship, cannot be “perfectly identical” over time, we just conveniently talk as though they may. (Reid does offer a brief argument for his view on pp. 111 and 112, namely that perfect identity should not admit of degrees and unclear cases; but if things can remain perfectly identical while changing their parts, then such cases could arise.)
Some contemporary philosophers agree with Butler’s and Reid’s views here, but most do not. In any case, we can set this part of their views aside, and focus on what they say about Locke’s theory of how persons continue to exist numerically the same.
The second of Butler’s and Reid’s starting points is that they think Locke is confusing how we know about our identity over time with what makes us be identical over time. In their view, it’s possible for our identities to extend beyond what we’re now able to know about them through memory/consciousness.
Butler makes this point here:
But though consciousness of what is past does thus ascertain our personal identity to ourselves, yet to say, that it makes personal identity, or is necessary to our being the same persons, is to say, that a person has not existed a single moment, nor done one action, but what he can remember; indeed none but what he reflects upon… This [is a] wonderful mistake… present consciousness of past actions or feelings is not necessary to our being the same persons who performed those actions, or had those feelings. (p. 100)
and here:
All these successive actions, enjoyments, and sufferings, are actions, enjoyments, and sufferings, of the same living being. And they are so, prior to all consideration of its remembering or forgetting: since remembering or forgetting can make no alteration in the truth of past matter of fact. (p. 104)
Reid makes the point here:
Although memory gives the most irresistible evidence of my being the identical person that did such a thing, at such a time, I may have other good evidence of things which befell me, and which I do not remember: I know who bore me and suckled me, but I do not remember these events. (p. 110)
and here:
[I]t is not my remembering any action of mine that makes me to be the person who did it. This remembrance makes me to know assuredly that I did it; but I might have done it though I did not remember it. That relation to me which is expressed by saying that I did it, would be the same though I had not the least remembrance of it. To say that my remembering that I did such a thing, or, as some choose to express it, my being conscious that I did it, makes me to have done it, appears to me [a great] absurdity… (p. 110)
and here:
It is very true that my remembrance that I did such a thing is the evidence I have that I am the identical person who did it… But, to say that my remembrance that I did such a thing, or my consciousness, makes me the person who did it, is, in my apprehension, an absurdity too gross to be entertained by any man who attends to the meaning of it; for it is to attribute to memory or consciousness a strange magical power of producing its object, though that object must have existed before the memory or consciousness which produced it.
[T]o say that the testimony is the cause of the thing testified, this surely is absurd, if anything be…
When a horse that was stolen is found and claimed by the owner, the only evidence he can have, or that a judge or witnesses can have, that this is the very identical horse which was his property, is similitude. But would it not be ridiculous from this to infer that the identity of a horse consists in similitude only? The only evidence I have that I am the identical person who did such actions is, that I remember distinctly I did them, or as Mr. Locke expresses it, I am conscious I did them. To infer from this, that personal identity consists in consciousness, is an argument which, if it had any force, would prove the identity of a stolen horse to consist solely in similitude. (p. 116)
Butler and Reid give somewhat more justification for this point than for the other ones I’m calling their “unargued starting points.” But still, essentially here they are just telling Locke they disagree with his proposal. They think we can be identical to persons who did things we can’t now have any memory/consciousness of. (See also the discussion of Reid’s Brave Officer example, below.) And they think our identity has to be some fact independent of memory/consciousness, that memory/consciousness is only a window onto. Locke denies that.
The third of Butler’s and Reid’s starting points — again one they provide little argument for — is that they can’t take seriously, or maybe even comprehend, Locke’s idea that persons are not substances. (I noted at the end of the Locke notes that some scholars doubt that Locke meant to deny that persons were substances; but this is the most natural way to read him, and it is how these critics read him.)
First, let’s get clear on how Locke talks. In sections 9 and 10 he uses “intelligent being” and “rational being” to refer to persons, whatever they may turn out to be. In section 24 he talks in the same way about “the same conscious being”; and in section 25 about “thinking beings” and (again) “intelligent beings.” If he doesn’t want us to be assuming that persons as substances, then we shouldn’t understand these phrases in his mouth as necessarily meaning substances. By contrast, in sections 14 and 24, he also talks about “immaterial beings,” and by this he does mean souls (immaterial substances, which Locke calls “spirits”).
Notice how Butler refuses to interpret Locke charitably. He assumes that “being” does always have to refer to a substance:
[Locke’s] question then is, whether the same rational being is the same substance: which needs no answer, because being and substance, in this place, stand for the same idea. (p. 101)
Reid starts off apparently honoring Locke’s usage of taking “person” and “intelligent being” to designate the same things:
[Locke] defines a person to be an intelligent being endowed with reason and with consciousness, which last he thinks inseparable from thought.
From this definition of a person it must necessarily follow that, while the intelligent being continues to exist and to be intelligent, it must be the same person. To say that the intelligent being is the person, and yet that the person ceases to exist, while the intelligent being continues, or that the person continues while the intelligent being ceases to exist, is to my apprehension a manifest contradiction. (pp. 113–14)
But notice a few lines later we see he’s really also assuming that “intelligent being” has to refer to thinking substances (souls):
[Locke’s] doctrine has some strange consequences, which the author was aware of, such as that, if the same consciousness can be transferred from one intelligent being to another, which he thinks we cannot show to be impossible, then two or twenty intelligent beings may be the same person. And if the intelligent being may lose the consciousness of the actions done by him, which surely is possible, then he is not the person that did those actions; so that one intelligent being may be two or twenty different persons, if he shall so often lose the consciousness of his former actions. (p. 114)
Reid’s own view is that persons have to be substances that are “indivisible” or “have no parts,” and thus have to be immaterial souls, which he thinks meet that condition (see p. 109 and p. 111). He also thinks that a stream of consciousness doesn’t have the right kind of continued existence to be a person. (We’ll discuss this further in point #4, below.)
Now we turn to other objections/criticisms of Locke that Butler and Reid provide more argument for.
One idea that appears in both of their responses is they think consciousness is not the kind of thing that can continue to exist numerically the same over time. So it’s problematic for Locke to say that a person is a continuing consciousness. (I’d prefer to say “stream of consciousness,” but none of these authors use that language.)
Keep in mind that we’re talking about numerical identity or sameness for an individual consciousness, not the kind of qualitative sameness or similarity that could exist between different persons’ consciousness. Nobody is raising challenges to the latter.
Why do Butler and Reid think that individual consciousnesses can’t exist numerically the same over time? They suggest a couple of reasons.
First, they think that if Locke’s persons aren’t substances, then they have to be something like properties of substances (ways that substances are modified or “wrinkled”). And while different substances can of course have the same properties, that’s just a matter of those substances being qualitatively the same. What would it be for an individual instance of some property — for example, the individual pain my soul is feeling right now — to continue numerically the same? One move both Butler and Reid make is to insist that an individual pain would have to essentially belong to the substance it modifies. A pain or any other property of one substance “cannot be transferred from one substance to another” (Butler p. 101, see also p. 104 and Reid p. 117). Thus if Locke’s persons aren’t substances, then Butler and Reid think they’d have to be properties that could never numerically migrate between substances.
To some extent, this is again just them insisting on a background metaphysics where Locke’s proposal makes no sense. So you might count this as an “unargued starting point” too, like the points discussed before. (“Unargued starting points” aren’t necessarily bad. Locke has them too. We’re not taking sides now on whose starting points are better. But if you want to criticize Locke, and all you do is reject his starting points and replace them with your own incompatible starting points, that’s not a very satisfying or illuminating criticism.)
But you could look at what Butler and Reid are doing here differently. You could think of them as presenting Locke with a challenge. Hey Locke, what would the difference be between my individual consciousness moving to a new body and/or new soul, on the one hand, and this individual consciousness stopping to exist and a new one qualitatively just like it beginning in that new body or soul. Not: how can we tell the difference? Maybe we can’t. But what would the difference consist in? It would be a drawback in Locke’s proposal if he couldn’t give any story about that. But no such story seems to be worked out in Locke’s text. This is a serious challenge that Locke and his followers ought to answer, and it’s one that we’ll be talking about in coming weeks.
Reid doesn’t limit himself to only the complaint that Locke’s consciousnesses can’t migrate between substances. He sometimes make the stronger claim that even within a single substance, consciousness is not the kind of thing that can exist numerically the same for more than a moment. (Butler also suggests something like this on pp. 101–102.)
Reid writes:
My thoughts, and actions, and feelings change every moment — they have no continued, but a successive existence… (p. 109)
At first it sounds like his point might be that what we’re thinking and feeling tends to constantly change. But that doesn’t have to be true. Perhaps a person could meditate in a quiet room for an hour, and have their thoughts and feelings remain constant throughout that period. If that were possible, would their consciousness at least in that case continue numerically the same? Does the difficulty arise only because our ordinary conciousnesses are changing so vigorously and chaotically? As Reid proceeds it emerges that he thinks there’d be a problem even with the consciousness of the quiet meditator.
The same may be said of every feeling and of every operation of mind: they are all successive in nature, like time itself, no two moments of which can be the same moment. (p. 109)
The operations of our minds are all successive and have no continued existence. (p. 111)
The consciousness I have this moment can no more be the same consciousness I had last moment, than this moment can be the last moment… Consciousness and every kind of thought is transient and momentary, and has no continued existence, and, therefore, if personal identity consisted in consciousness it would certainly follow that no man is the same person any two moments of his life… (p. 116)
If our personal identity consists in consciousness, as this consciousness cannot be the same individually any two moments, but only of the same kind, it would follow that we are not for any two moments the same individual persons, but the same kind of persons. (p. 117)
Reid insists that it only makes sense to speak of something being “the same individual,” or continuing to exist numerically the same over time, if it has a “continued existence,” rather than a “successive existence” (pp. 109, 111, 113, 116). I think his idea here is this: substances are the only kind of thing where it makes sense to talk about their existing numerically the same over time. For events in our mind, or properties of our soul, we can only have “successions” of some events or properties from moment to moment. The events or properties at one moment may qualitatively match ones at another moment, but it wouldn’t be numerically the same event or individual property. It would just be a sequence of events or properties that happens not to qualitatively vary. So even in the case of a quiet meditator, the thoughts and feelings they have at the start of the hour couldn’t be numerically the same individual thoughts and feelings at the end of the hour. Even if they were having qualitatively similar thoughts and feelings for the whole duration.
What do you think of this? Does it make sense to say that the quiet meditator has numerically the same individual thoughts and feelings that last for a duration (more than a moment)? Or a single individual stream of consciousness? (We do talk about internet sessions being not just qualitatively but numerically the same over time.) Could it still be numerically the same individual consciousness if it was interrupted midway by the meditator’s hearing someone’s cellphone, or by them falling asleep? What would the difference be between it being numerically the same consciousness at the start and the end, and it being two different consciousnesses, that happened to qualitatively match or “fit into” each other, and also were hosted in the same body and/or soul?
Some of Reid’s complaints specifically target what Locke would have to say about interruptions to consciousness, for example when someone falls asleep (without dreaming). Reid doesn’t think it makes sense for persons to have interrupted existences (see pp. 108–9 and 113), but he thinks this is what Locke would be forced to say. Or else that every time we fall asleep, one person would stop existing, to be replaced by a new person who wakes up:
As our consciousness sometimes ceases to exist, as in sound sleep, our personal identity must cease with it. Mr. Locke allows that the same thing cannot have two beginnings of existence; so that our identity would be irrecoverably gone every time we cease to think, if it was but for a moment. (p. 118)
We discussed this objection briefly in class, and how a fan of a Lockean view (like our Proposal #5) might want to reply to it.
Reid’s most famous criticism of Locke is his “Brave Officer” example:
Suppose a brave officer to have been flogged when a boy at school, for robbing an orchard, to have taken a standard from the enemy in his first campaign, and to have been made a general in advanced life: suppose also, which must be admitted to be possible, that, when he took the standard, he was conscious of his having been flogged at school, and that when made a general he was conscious of his taking the standard, but had absolutely lost the consciousness of his flogging.
These things being supposed, it follows, from Mr. Locke’s doctrine, that he who was flogged at school is the same person who took the standard, and that he who took the standard is the same person who was made a general. Whence it follows, if there be any truth in logic, that the general is the same person with him who was flogged at school. But the general’s consciousness does not reach so far back as his flogging — therefore, according to Mr. Locke’s doctrine, he is not the person who was flogged. Therefore the general is, and at the same time is not, the same person with him who was flogged at school. (pp. 114–15)
We’ve already discussed this objection in previous classes too. A Lockean can respond to it by saying that stages in a person’s life don’t need to be directly connected by (an ability to) remember, to count as part of numerically the same person. It’s enough if they’re part of a chain, where adjacent stages in the chain are so connected.
The other most famous objection to Locke starts with the observation that your memory always seems to tell you that it was you yourself who did what you’re remembering. Butler writes:
[W]hen any one reflects upon a past action of his own, he is just as certain of the person who did that action, namely, himself who now reflects upon it, as he is certain that the action was done at all. (p. 104)
Reid also says:
[M]y memory testifies not only that this was done, but that it was done by me who now remember it. If it was done by me, I must have existed at that time, and continued to exist from that time to the present… (p. 110, see also pp. 107–8)
But then this means that our memory is only a genuine memory — as opposed to a fake or fabricated memory –– if the events remembered were experienced by yourself, the very same person now doing to remembering. Butler saw that this is a problem for Locke. It means his theory is circular: Locke defines personal identity in in terms of memory (consciousness of past states), by which he means genuine memories, but genuine memory presupposes, or is defined in terms of personal identity — the notion of its being numerically the same person in the past who’s now doing the remembering:
And one should really think it self-evident, that consciousness of personal identity presupposes, and therefore cannot constitute, personal identity… (Butler p. 100)
We’re going to devote the next couple of classes to how a Lockean can answer Objection #7 — and their answer will start to address the challenge we described in Objection #4.
(As we said, Objections #5 and #6 are ones we’ve already talked about somewhat in class.)