What Is John Locke's Theory Of Psychological Continuity

Select one position on personal identity and one criticism of that position. Explain both and then explain whether you find the criticism convincing or not. The position focused on in this essay will be the theory of psychological continuity. This falls under the psychological criterion of which many, including and especially John Locke have attempted to theorize. ‘It is only by consciousness that we able to be persons at all and therefore our consciousness distinguishes us from other persons’ (Lacewing, 2003). So it is through our consciousness that we remain the same person over time. This is the main premise for psychological continuity. If it is our consciousness that defines us and gives us our personal identity, then if swapped, our
Thomas Reid took a direct realist theory of memory known as the memory criterion. He argued that it was plainly impossible to remember everything in one’s life. He disagreed that a person of age who clearly fails to recollect actions as an infant is not the same person. One prominent thought experiment to support this was his analogy of a young boy that has stolen some apples. Later on, when this boy becomes a soldier, the soldier can remember stealing the apples yet when he ages into an old man he cannot. According to Locke’s theory, the boy and the old man are no longer numerically identical beings. (Macmillan 2012). Therefore ‘according to the memory criterion’ it is necessary as well sufficient for them to be the same person’, however this is no longer the case because as the young boy ages they no longer ‘have a connection via memory’. Concluding the young boy isn’t the old man. But this is a far fetched statement and also impossible as identity is transitive. The transitivity theory states that if a is identical to b, and b identical to c, c must be identical to a. Therefore if the old man is identical to the soldier and the soldier identical to the young boy, the old man and young boy are in fact numerically identical. However, memory changes over time and therefore does not always concede to this transitive result therefore there must be another explanation for personal
For example: Transitivity cannot be applied to all concepts. Yes, in a practical sense such as measurements for example if side A is larger than side B and side B is larger than side C, A must be larger than side C. However, this may not be relevant to psychological concepts which re imperitive when looking at psychological continuity such as love. If Bill falls in love with Susan and Susan falls in love with Brian, this does not mean that Bill is in love with Brian. Therefore, I think that the transivity theory has low content validity as it does not represent all elements of the construct. Therefore, when deciding upon the best theory of personal identity, other theories should be considered such as the spatio temporal continuous