John Locke's Argument Of Personal Identity

On Personal Identity:

The issue of personal identity and its determents has been always an issue of concern for a lot of philosophers.
John Locke was one of the philosophers who were against the Cartesian theory that soul accounts for personal identity. He stated that if the soul is the determinant of personal identity then what if two people share the same soul, and wondered if in this case they will be the same person. Locke used the example of Caster and Pollux who share the same soul to proof that soul can't be used to determine personal identity. Then he states that also the body can't be used to account for personal identity claiming a person will remain the same person even if his body changes. As a result, he concluded that personal
identity is determined by ones consciousness and defined personal identity as unity of self consciousness tied together with memory. Locke believes that consciousness of the present as well as past through memory enables a person to distinguish himself from others.
There are several philosophers who criticized the Locken memory theory, and stated that it is circular and illogical. Among those philosophers was Thomas Reid. Reid was against Locke's memory theory and tried to reduce it to absurdity. He criticized his theories for several reasons. Firstly, Reid believed that personal identity is something that cannot be determined by operations, and that personal identity should be determined by something indivisible. Also, he states that Locke's main problem is confusing evidence of something with the thing itself. Finally Reid introduces the officer paradox in an attempt to reduce Locke's Memory theory to Absurdity.
Reid criticizes Locke by arguing that what Locke does is confuses evidence of the thing with the thing itself, or in other words, he confuses evidence for personal identity with personal identity itself.
Locke believes that memory is the best evidence for identity, if a person remembers what he does then he knows that he is the same person, and as result assuming that ones memory determines personal identity. Yet, Reid is against this theory, and believes that the evidence of something doesn't prove its existence or it constituents. He argued that ones belief that the world is created doesn't create the world and similarly ones remembrance of doing something, is not the thing that makes the person be the same one who did this thing. Actually Reid is not completely against the idea that memory is relevant to personal identity, rather he believes that it a source of evidence for ones existence over time but not the determinant of who a person is. Thus, Reid tries to highlight that Locke's memory theories of identity are circular and illogical, actually, he concludes that memory presupposes personal identity rather than creating
it. Reid was successful in reducing the Locken memory theory the most through his famous brave officer paradox.
He takes the story of man in three different stages of his life. In his childhood, as a boy he was flogged for robbing an orchard then in his mid life he served in the war and was promoted to a general for his services, and then in a later stage he was promoted to an officer. When he was a general he remembered the flogging he witnessed while being a child, while in his old age he remembered being an officer and being promoted for serving his country in the war but couldn't remember being flogged as a boy. According to Locke the general is the officer, and the officer is the person who was flogged, yet the general is the not the same person who was flogged as his consciousness can't go back to the time he was flogged. Yet Reid believes that logically speaking the general is the
same person who was flogged.
Moreover, Reid highlighted a further problem in Locke's theory. He stated that Consciousness, memory and operations of the mind are never constant and are always changing, and described them as water in the flowing river and they don't have continued existence. So how can we determine identity which should be constant by something that is continuously changing all the time? Reid confirms that if personal identity is determined by consciousness and memory then it would be impossible to ever punish or reward someone as their identity is always changing and they are continuously different people.

Reid's officer paradox was successful in undermining Locke's theory of memory as it was able to highlight the theories contradictions and absurdity through reasoning and a logical example. He starts of by assuming that the memory theory is true and that what determines personal identity, and sees the consequences from this. Yet, using based on this theory, the officer, child and solider won't be the same person since they don't remember. By coming to that conclusion Reid shows that there must be something wrong with the assumption from the start (personal identity is constituted by memory), as this implies that identity extends only as long as memory extends. This excludes the fact that it is normal for people to forget stuff, yet this doesn't make them different people. By using the assumption in first place and trying to see its consequences, Reid was able to provide logical & valid reasoning for his argument unlike Locke who has previously used this method of reasoning but was much unsuccessful. In an attempt to undermine the Cartesian notion of the soul, Locke used a similar method in his Socrates asleep and awake example. He started off by using Descartes assumption that the soul is always thinking and it determines personal identity, then he stated that when if the soul is always thinking then people will be aware of what they were thinking during the time they were sleeping as the soul will be continuously operating, then he claims that since Socrates can't remember what he was thinking of when he was sleeping and he sometimes doesn't dream then Socrates asleep and awake are 2 different persons, and the fact that they are not 2 persons proofs that the soul is not always thinking. Locke's argument was not as successful as Reid's one, his absurd consequence was not a logical contradiction but rather it is somehow derived by common sense that Socrates asleep and awake are 2 different persons. Reid's brave officer paradox could be solved in a number of ways. As a result of undermining Locke's theory and proving that it is absurd & contradictory, some people could claim that personal identity is determined by body & mind; the officer, solider and child all shared the same mind and body which accounts for their identity. Another possible solution would be to account for Reid's argument that personal identity should be determined by a Leibnzian monad; an indivisible, spiritual substance that remains the same thorough out our lives. And since the soul has uninterrupted existence over time then it should be the determinant of personal identity. Another possible way to solve the paradox would be the idea introduced by the modern philosopher Grise. Grise reconstructed Locke's account of personal identity by trying to make it consistent and by overcoming all the problems Reid throw over them. Grise stated that each stage in the general's life is considered a total temporary state on its own and that those temporary states are being connected to each other. He said that all that matters is that there is a series of total temporary states that connect to each other.