Locke on personal identity : consciousness and concernment

280 Pages·2014·12.172 MB·English

by  Galen Strawson, Galen Strawson

LOCKE ON PERSONAL IDENTITY
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PRINCETON MONOGRAPHS IN PHILOSOPHY
Harry G. Frankfurt, Editor
The Princeton Monographs in Philosophy series offers short
historical and systematic studies on a wide variety
of philosophical topics.
Justice Is Conflict by Stuart Hampshire
Liberty Worth the Name: Locke on Free Agency by Gideon Yaffe
Self-Deception Unmasked by Alfred R. Mele
Public Goods, Private Goods by Raymond Geuss
Welfare and Rational Care by Stephen Darwall
A Defense of Hume on Miracles by Robert J. Fogelin
Kierkegaard’s Concept of Despair by Michael Theunissen
Physicalism, or Something Near Enough by Jaegwon Kim
Philosophical Myths of the Fall by Stephen Mulhall
Fixing Frege by John P. Burgess
Kant and Skepticism by Michael N. Forster
Thinking of Others: On the Talent for Metaphor by Ted Cohen
The Apologetics of Evil: The Case of Iago by Richard Raatzsch
Social Conventions: From Language to Law by Andrei Marmor
Taking Wittgenstein at His Word: A Textual Study by Robert J. Fogelin
The Pathologies of Individual Freedom: Hegel’s Social Theory by Axel Honneth
Michael Oakeshott’s Skepticism by Aryeh Botwinick
Hegel on Self-Consciousness: Desire and Death in
Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit by Robert B. Pippin
Locke on Personal Identity: Consciousness and Concernment
by Galen Strawson
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LOCKE ON
PERSONAL IDENTITY
Consciousness and Concernment
Galen Strawson
princeton university press
princeton and oxford
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Copyright © 2011 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,
Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford
Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW
press.princeton.edu
All Rights Reserved
Revised edition, and first paperback printing, 2014
Paperback ISBN 978-0-691-16100-6
Library of Congress Control Number 2013957469
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
This book has been composed in Janson
Printed on acid-free paper. ∞
Printed in the United States of America
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
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I do not know how we may ever know, in retracing
the record of the past, where our responsibility lies,
and where we have merely undergone rather than
enacted, lived through rather than lived, an event,
unless by the sense we have of abiding identity with
that past self, or event, or action performed, for
better or for worse. I find, for myself, that this
sense of identity with past selves is by no means
continuous. It is rather as if at times i was present
in my life, at other times absent from it altogether;
especially after my childhood. The mind which wandered
among the structures of mosses and lycopodia
in the laboratories of downing street was certainly
mine; but not the Girton undergraduate whom
many of my contemporaries seem to remember better
than i remember myself; nor the neurotic bohemian
who so dishonourably prolonged her residence in
Cambridge, which she dared not leave because she
did not know where else to go, by the travesty
of a marriage.
—Kathleen Raine1
N’attendez pas le judgment dernier. Il a lieu tous les jours.
—Albert Camus2
1 1975: 74. Raine is referring to Downing St. in Cambridge. As far as I
know, she knew nothing of Locke’s views on personal identity.
2 1956: 111.
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Contents
Preface
xi
Chapter 1
Introduction
1
Chapter 2
“Person”
5
Chapter 3
“Person . . . is a forensic term”
17
Chapter 4
Concernment
22
Chapter 5
Consciousness
30
Chapter 6
“Consciousness . . . is inseparable from thinking”
42
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viii contents
Chapter 7
“From the inside”
50
Chapter 8
“Person”—Locke’s Definition
58
Chapter 9
Consciousness Is Not Memory
72
Chapter 10
Personal Identity
77
Chapter 11
Psychological Connectedness
88
Chapter 12
Transition (Butler Dismissed)
93
Chapter 13
“But next . . . ”: Personal Identity
without Substantial Continuity
97
Chapter 14
“And therefore . . . ”: [I]-transfers,
[Ag]-transfers, [P]-transfers
110
Chapter 15
“A fatal error of theirs”
119
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contents ix
Chapter 16
A Fatal Error of Locke’s?
125
Chapter 17
Circularity?
131
Chapter 18
The Distinction between [P] and [S]
135
Chapter 19
Concernment and Repentance
139
Chapter 20
Conclusion
150
Postface
157
Appendix 1
“Of Identity and Diversity” by John Locke
163
Appendix 2
A Defence of Mr. Locke’s Opinion Concerning
Personal Identity by Edmund Law
233
References
253
Index
259
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