Locke on Persons and Personal Identity 0198846754, 9780198846758

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Locke on Persons and Personal Identity

Locke on Persons and Personal Identity RU T H B O E K E R Assistant Professor in Philosophy University College Dublin, Ireland

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1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Ruth Boeker 2021 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2021 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2020945995 ISBN 978–0–19–884675–8 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198846758.001.0001 Printed and bound in the UK by TJ Books Limited Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

For my mother

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 17/01/21, SPi

Table of Contents Acknowledgements  Preface  Abbreviations 

1. Introduction  1.1 Locke’s Innovative Approach to Debates about Persons and Personal Identity  1.2 Aims and Scope of the Book  1.3 Summary of Chapters  2. Locke’s Kind-­dependent Approach to Identity  2.1 The Principium Individuationis  2.2 Identity 

2.2.1 Names and Ideas of Kind F  2.2.2 Specifying Persistence Conditions for Members of Kind F 

2.3 Identity and Individuation 

ix xiii xvii

1 1 7 8

13 14 18

22 25

28

3. Problems with Other Interpretations of Locke’s Account of Identity  3.1 Relative Identity, Coincidence, and Absolute Identity  3.2 Human Beings, Persons, and Locke’s Metaphysical Agnosticism  3.3 Different Senses of Distinctness  3.4 Lessons from the Controversy  3.5 Other Interpretive Options 

29 30 38 40 46 48

4. Moral Personhood and Personal Identity  4.1 Locke’s Moral Account of Personhood  4.2 From Personhood to Personal Identity  4.3 Further Reflections on the Moral Dimension 

54 54 70 75

5. Consciousness and Same Consciousness  5.1 Locke on Consciousness  5.2 Locke on Sameness of Consciousness 

77 78 87

5.2.1 5.2.2 5.2.3 5.2.4 5.2.5

Revival of Past Experiences through Memory  Mineness and Appropriation  Unity  Temporality  Locke’s Multiple Aspects Account of Same Consciousness 

6. Circularity and Insufficiency Worries  6.1 Different Versions of Circularity  6.2 Butler’s Circularity Objection  6.3 Insufficiency Worries 

88 92 103 111 121

124 124 126 128

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viii  Table of Contents

7. Locke’s Response to the Problems of his Predecessors  7.1 Locke’s Predecessors  7.2 Epistemological Problems  7.3 Materialism and the Afterlife  7.4 Cartesian Views of the Soul  7.5 Non-­Cartesian Immaterial Views of the Soul  7.6 Human Beings as Unions of Immaterial Souls and Material Bodies  7.7 Locke’s Response 

147 148 150 152 160 163

8. Personal Identity, Transitivity, and Divine Justice  8.1 The Traditional Transitivity Objection  8.2 Non-­transitive Interpretations  8.3 The Religious Context  8.4 Consciousness and Transitivity  8.5 Divine Justice and Repentance 

172 173 175 182 188 195

9. Locke’s Underlying Background Beliefs 

201

10. Locke and his Early Critics and Defenders: Metaphysical and Epistemic Differences  10.1 Locke’s Early Critics and Defenders on Perpetually Thinking Souls  10.1.1 Disagreement about Innate Ideas  10.1.2 Different Accounts of Consciousness  10.1.3 Worry about Individuation 

165 167

207 211 215 217 221

10.2 Locke’s Early Critics and Defenders on the Thinking Matter Hypothesis 

224

10.3 Final Reflections on Metaphysical and Epistemic Differences 

244

10.2.1 Disagreement about Essences  10.2.2 Disagreement Whether Matter Can Be Active  10.2.3 Disagreement about Unity, Simplicity, and Composition 

226 231 235

11. Locke and his Early Critics and Defenders: Moral and Religious Differences  246 11.1 Criticism of Locke’s Psychological Approach to Personal Identity  249 11.1.1 Shaftesbury’s Criticism  11.1.2 Hume’s Criticism 

249 253

11.2 Moral Personhood 

259

Concluding Remarks 

279

11.2.1 Shaftesbury on Virtue and Character Development  11.2.2 Hume on Selves, Passions, and Sociability  11.2.3 Alternatives to Divine Law 

Bibliography  Index 

259 268 277

281 297

Acknowledgements My research on Locke on persons and personal identity started at the University of St Andrews where I wrote my PhD dissertation on this topic and since then has accompanied me as I continued my work on three different continents. I would not have been able to complete this book project without the support and encouragement of my teachers, mentors, colleagues, friends, and family. I owe special thanks to my PhD supervisors Sarah Broadie and James Harris for their guidance, support, and feedback on multiple drafts, which helped me to sharpen my philo­ soph­ic­al and historical views. Kenneth Winkler has been a wonderful mentor and interlocutor ever since I first met him during a research visit at Yale in 2010. I have learned much from his detailed knowledge of Locke and the early modern period. I am deeply grateful for all his support and encouragement. I have also greatly benefited from conversations with Michael Della Rocca at Yale. Martha Bolton has been very generous with her time and given me many in-­depth comments on drafts of my work during a research visit at Rutgers in 2011 and I am enormously grateful for all her support since then. My PhD research was supported by a Carnegie Scholarship from the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, which I gratefully acknowledge. Additionally, I wish to thank the Thomas and Margaret Roddan Trust for supporting my research visit at Yale in the spring of 2010. I am also grateful to the Journal of the History of Philosophy for supporting library and manuscript research at the University of Oxford with a Kristeller-­Popkin Travel Fellowship in 2015. I held positions at Bowling Green State University, SUNY Albany, the University of Melbourne, and University College Dublin while I worked on this book project. The collegiality of my colleagues has been enormously valuable and I wish to thank my students and colleagues for many insightful discussions. I owe special thanks to my department chairs Greg Restall and Francois Schroeter at the University of Melbourne and my Heads of School Jim O’Shea, Maria Baghramian, and Brian O’Connor at University College Dublin for supporting my career development and for enabling me to pursue my research activities in recent years. Kathryn Tabb deserves particular mention. She has not only given me very valuable feedback on my work on several occasions, but also she has helped organize a workshop at Columbia University where we discussed an earlier version of this book project. Her wonderful hospitality greatly contributed to the success of the event. I am deeply grateful to the participants Patrick Connolly,

x Acknowledgements Matthew Leisinger, Jorge Morales, Kathryn Tabb, Kenneth Winkler, Joshua Wood, and Phil Yaure for very stimulating discussions and for their in-­depth feedback that enormously helped me advance my interpretation of Locke. I have also greatly benefited from conversations with Patrick Connolly and Matthew Leisinger at various other early modern conferences and workshops. Earlier versions of my work have been presented at seminars, workshops, and conferences hosted at Brown University, CUNY John Jay College, Deakin University, Eötvös Loránd University, Fordham University, Ghent University, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, King’s College London, Monash University, Radboud University, Skidmore College, SUNY Albany, Texas A&M University, University College Dublin, University of Aberdeen, University of Cambridge, University of East Anglia, University of Exeter, University of Graz, University of Groningen, University of Massachusetts Amherst, University of Melbourne, University of Otago, University of Oxford, University of Sheffield, University of Sydney, University of the West of England, and Yale University. I wish to thank all my audience members for helpful comments. Many have helped and encouraged me to develop and advance my philo­soph­ ic­al views over the last couple of years. I especially like to thank Peter Anstey, Bihotz Barrenechea, Jacqueline Broad, Julia Borcherding, Artem Bourov, Yoon Choi, Rachel Cohon, Samuel Fleischacker, Jessica Gordon-­Roth, Karen Green, Katherine Hawley, Julia Jorati, Larry Jorgensen, Jia Kefang, Patricia Kitcher, Cheryl Koh, Allison Kuklok, Vili Lähteenmäki, Bruce Langtry, Michael LeBuffe, Martin Lenz, Antonia LoLordo, Christopher Macleod, Marzia Marconi, Edwin McCann, Daniel Moerner, Victor Nuovo, Katherine O’Donnell, Kenneth Pearce, Matthew Priselac, Ursula Renz, Samuel Rickless, Marleen Rozemond, Anat Schechtman, Kelley Schiffman, Ariane Schneck, Lisa Shapiro, Patricia Sheridan, Alex Silverman, Craig Smith, M.  A.  Stewart, Patrick Stokes, Galen Strawson, Matthew Stuart, Udo Thiel, Radka Tomeckova, Anik Waldow, Julie Walsh, Shelley Weinberg, Peter West, and Gideon Yaffe. I am also tremendously grateful to OUP’s anonymous readers for reading earl­ ier drafts of my book with great attention to detail and for making many very helpful and intelligent suggestions for revisions. The book is much better thanks to their feedback, but, of course, I do not expect all controversies in Locke scholarship to be settled and the views expressed in this final version are my own. Working with Peter Momtchiloff, April Peake, and Rachel Goldsworthy at OUP has been delightful and I thank them for their support and guidance. My work in this book builds on previously published journal articles. I am grateful for permission to reuse material from the following articles: ‘The Moral Dimension in Locke’s Account of Persons and Personal Identity’, History of Philosophy Quarterly 31 (2014): 229–47; ‘Locke and Hume on Personal Identity: Moral and Religious Differences’, Hume Studies 41 (2015): 105–35; ‘The Role of Appropriation in Locke’s Account of Persons and Personal Identity’, Locke Studies

Acknowledgements  xi 16 (2016): 3–39; ‘Locke on Personal Identity: A Response to the Problems of his Predecessors’, Journal of the History of Philosophy 55 (2017): 407–34 (copyright © 2017 Journal of the History of Philosophy, Inc., reprinted with permission by Johns Hopkins University Press); ‘Shaftesbury on Persons, Personal Identity and Character Development’, Philosophy Compass 13 (2018): e12471. Additionally, I am reusing some material from the following book chapter: ‘Locke on Being Self to my Self ’, in The Self: A History, Oxford Philosophical Concepts Series, edited by Patricia Kitcher. New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming. Dublin, May 2020

Preface For a long time Lockes Theorie der personalen Identität [Locke’s Theory of Personal Identity] by Udo Thiel, published in 1983,1 was the only book-­length study on the subject. In recent years there has been growing interest in Locke scholarship in general, and in Locke’s views on persons and personal identity in particular. Galen Strawson’s Locke on Personal Identity (2011)2 revived the interest in the topic. Udo Thiel’s The Early Modern Subject (2011)3 covers the early modern debates about self-­consciousness and personal identity from Descartes to Hume. It is an invaluable book for scholars, because it covers an impressive range of ­primary and secondary sources. Additional new book publications that make important contributions to the interpretation of Locke’s account of persons and personal identity followed, and include Antonia LoLordo’s Locke’s Moral Man (2012),4 Matthew Stuart’s Locke’s Metaphysics (2013),5 Nicholas Jolley’s Locke’s Touchy Subjects (2015),6 and Shelley Weinberg’s Consciousness in Locke (2016).7 All of these books have been important sources that helped me develop my own interpretation and have set high standards for Locke scholarship. What contributions can a new book on Locke on persons and personal identity make? My book will be significantly different from the existing book-­length studies on the topic. By understanding Locke’s account of persons and personal identity within the framework of his kind-­dependent approach to identity, I am in a position to distance my interpretation from other approaches to Locke’s account of personal identity that immediately turn to Locke’s account of personal identity without examining first his account of personhood. Neither Jolley, LoLordo, Thiel, nor Weinberg carefully distinguish Locke’s account of personhood from his account of personal identity over time. By distinguishing Locke’s account of personhood from his account of personal identity I can locate the moral dimension of Locke’s view in his account of personhood and take seriously both his claim

1  Udo Thiel, Lockes Theorie der personalen Identität (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1983). 2 Galen Strawson, Locke on Personal Identity: Consciousness and Concernment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011). 3  Udo Thiel, The Early Modern Subject: Self-­Consciousness and Personal Identity from Descartes to Hume (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 4  Antonia LoLordo, Locke’s Moral Man (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 5  Matthew Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2013). 6  Nicholas Jolley, Locke’s Touchy Subjects: Materialism and Immortality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 7  Shelley Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).

xiv Preface that ‘person’ is a forensic term and his claim that personal identity consists in same consciousness.8 LoLordo’s two major contributions to the interpretation of Locke’s account of persons and personal identity are, first, her proposal that Lockean persons are modes rather than substances, and, second her appropriation interpretation of Locke’s account of personal identity.9 I have reservations about both proposals. The proposal that Lockean persons are modes was first made by Edmund Law in his Defence of Mr Locke’s Opinion concerning Personal Identity,10 but has been challenged by interpreters who claim that Lockean persons are, or must be, ­substances.11 I will not take this route to distance my view from LoLordo’s mode interpretation. Rather I believe that Locke’s own silence about the question whether persons are modes or substances in his chapter ‘Of Identity and Diversity’ (II.xxvii) intimates that he did not regard it as relevant to decide whether persons are modes or substances in the context of this chapter where his main task is to specify persistence conditions for persons. LoLordo’s appropriation in­ter­pret­ ation is the proposal that the necessary and sufficient conditions for personal identity are to be understood in terms of appropriation. Appropriation certainly plays a role in Locke’s account of persons and personal identity. However, since Locke never claims that personal identity consists in appropriation, but rather argues repeatedly that personal identity consists in same consciousness, I am not convinced that LoLordo’s interpretation is well supported by Locke’s text.12 Strawson has done good work in emphasizing the forensic aspect of Locke’s account of personhood. However, my work differs from Strawson’s insofar as he does not consider Locke’s account of persons and personal identity within the framework of the kind-­dependent account of identity. Moreover, Strawson and I differ about the role that the religious context plays in Locke’s theory. This dis­ agree­ment finds expression in our different interpretations of the problem of 8  For instance, Thiel argues that ‘consciousness has priority’ (The Early Modern Subject, 128) over self-­concern and moral and legal notions. Thiel’s claim is vague and my framework offers resources for a more fine-­grained understanding of the relationship between morality and metaphysics or morality and a psychological account of personal identity. See Ruth Boeker, ‘The Moral Dimension in Locke’s Account of Persons and Personal Identity,’ History of Philosophy Quarterly 31 (2014): 241–3. 9  See LoLordo, Locke’s Moral Man, ch. 2. 10  See Edmund Law, A Defence of Mr. Locke’s Opinion Concerning Personal Identity; in Answer to the First Part of a Late Essay on That Subject (Cambridge: Printed by J. Archdeacon, 1769). 11  See Jessica Gordon-­Roth, ‘Locke on the Ontology of Persons,’ Southern Journal of Philosophy 53 (2015); Samuel  C.  Rickless, ‘Are Locke’s Persons Modes or Substances?’ in Locke and Leibniz on Substance, ed. Paul Lodge and Tom Stoneham (New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 2015); Kenneth  P.  Winkler, ‘Locke on Personal Identity,’ Journal of the History of Philosophy 29 (1991). Matthew  A.  Leisinger, ‘Locke on Persons and Other Kinds of Substances,’ Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 100 (2019), argues for an intermediate position, according to which the idea of a person is a substance idea that contains a mode idea. A third option is that Lockean persons are relations, as is argued by Marko Simendic, ‘Locke’s Person Is a Relation,’ Locke Studies 15 (2015). Simendic does not carefully distinguish between a person at a time and personal identity over time. 12 I offer a critical response to appropriation interpretations in Ruth Boeker, ‘The Role of Appropriation in Locke’s Account of Persons and Personal Identity,’ Locke Studies 16 (2016).

Preface  xv transitivity. While Strawson argues that Locke’s account of personal identity is non-­transitive, I argue that the religious context of the afterlife and a last judgement makes it more likely that Locke would give preference to a hybrid view that combines insights of transitive and non-­transitive interpretations. Stuart’s contributions are twofold: first, he defends a Relative Identity in­ter­pret­ ation of Locke’s account of identity;13 second, he argues that Locke endorses a simple memory theory of personal identity.14 If the simple memory theory offers a correct interpretation of Locke, it entails that his account of personal identity is non-­transitive, which Stuart believes is supported by his text. I believe that both proposals deserve serious consideration, but I am not convinced that Locke is committed to either of them. Due to Locke’s metaphysical agnosticism about the materiality or immateriality of thinking substances, he would be reluctant to endorse a Relative Identity interpretation. Although memory is certainly an important aspect of Locke’s same consciousness account, I believe that Stuart does not give sufficient consideration to other aspects of Locke’s same consciousness account such as unity and temporality. Moreover, I emphasize the im­port­ ance of the religious context of Locke’s theory more than Stuart. Nicholas Jolley discusses Locke’s account of personal identity in the context of metaphysical and religious views held by Locke, his contemporaries, and predecessors. I agree with Jolley that this context is significant. Jolley’s book defends the thesis that ‘[a] major concern of Locke’s philosophy is to show that at least a weak form of materialism is a reasonable position in the philosophy of mind.’15 I take Locke at his word when he claims that ‘the more probable Opinion is, that this consciousness is annexed to, and the Affection of one individual immaterial Substance’ (II.xxvii.25)16 and distance my interpretation from Jolley’s, because Jolley’s discussion of immaterial views of the mind focuses almost exclusively on Cartesian immaterial views and neglects non-­Cartesian immaterial views of the mind such as Platonist views. Shelley Weinberg has done important work to advance the interpretation of Locke’s notion of consciousness and its role throughout Locke’s Essay. I build on her insights, but distance my view from various details of her interpretation. For instance, I do not follow Weinberg in identifying Lockean consciousness with self-­consciousness.17 On my view, a subject that has a perception is not only conscious of oneself as perceiving subject, but also of the content of the perception. This reading, I believe, can better accommodate Locke’s view that persons are conscious of their thoughts and actions. 13  See Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, ch. 7. 14  See Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, ch. 8. 15 Jolley, Locke’s Touchy Subjects, 8. 16  See also Locke, Works, 4:33–7. This reading, namely that it is more likely that thinking substances are immaterial, is also defended by Michael Jacovides, Locke’s Image of the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 129–34. 17  See Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, xi–xiii, 27, 33, 45–7, 51.

xvi Preface My book offers a new perspective on Locke’s account of persons and personal identity by considering it within the context of his broader philosophical project and the philosophical debates of his day. I draw on a wider range of texts from Locke’s philosophical corpus than any other previous study on the topic. This enables me to argue that his account of personal identity is not psychological per se, but rather his particular moral, religious, metaphysical, and epistemic background beliefs explain why he links a moral account of personhood with a psychological account of personal identity. Moreover, my approach makes it possible both to show how Locke advances the debates of his predecessors and to explain why his early critics questioned or rejected his view.

Abbreviations References to seventeenth- and eighteenth-­century works follow common referencing conventions and are abbreviated and cited in the following formats.

Works by John Locke In-­text references with three numerals (Roman numeral, small Roman numeral, Arabic numeral) such as ‘II.xxvii.9’ are to Book, chapter, section number of Locke’s Essay. Correspondence The Correspondence of John Locke, edited by E. S. de Beer, 8 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976–1989, cited by letter number, followed by volume and page number. Drafts A and B Drafts for the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, and Other Philosophical Writings, edited by Peter H. Nidditch and G. A. J. Rogers, vol. 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990, cited by draft, paragraph, page number. Early Draft An Early Draft of Locke’s Essay, Together with Excerpts from His Journals, edited by R. I. Aaron and Jocelyn Gibb. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936. Education Some Thoughts concerning Education, edited by John  W.  Yolton and Jean S. Yolton. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989 [1693]. Essay An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, edited by Peter H. Nidditch. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975 [1690], cited by book, chapter, section number. Where rele­vant edition number is added in bold. Law of Nature Essays on the Law of Nature and Associated Writings, edited by W. von Leyden. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002. Paraphrase A Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistles of St. Paul to the Galatians, 1 and and Notes 2 Corinthians, Ephesians, edited by Arthur William Wainwright, 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987, cited by volume and page number. Political Essays Political Essays, edited by Peter Laslett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Reasonableness The Reasonableness of Christianity, as Delivered in the Scriptures, in Writings on Religion, edited by Victor Nuovo. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002 [1695]. Two Treatises Two Treatises of Government, edited by Peter Laslett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988 [1690], cited by Book, paragraph number. Works The Works of John Locke, new, corrected ed., 10 vols. London: Thomas Tegg, 1823, cited by volume and page number.

xviii Abbreviations Writings on Religion Writings on Religion, edited by Victor Nuovo. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002.

Works by René Descartes AT CSM

CSMK

René Descartes, Ouvres de Descartes, edited by Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, 12 vols. Paris: Vrin, 1996. René Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch, vols. 1 and 2 (out of 3 vols). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984–85, cited by volume and page number. René Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes: The Correspondence, translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch, and Anthony Kenny, vol. 3 (out of 3 vols). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, cited by volume and page number.

Works by Thomas Hobbes English Works

Leviathan

Thomas Hobbes, The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, edited by William Molesworth, 11 vols. London: J. Bohn, 1839–45, cited by volume and page number. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan: With Selected Variants from the Latin Edition of 1668, edited by Edwin Curley. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994 [1651], cited by part, chapter, section number, followed by and page number.

Anonymously published works Remarks Anon., Remarks Upon an Essay Concerning Humane Understanding in a Letter Address’d to the Author. London: Printed for M. Wotton, 1697. Second Remarks Anon., Second Remarks Upon an Essay Concerning Humane Understanding in a Letter Address’d to the Author, Being a Vindication of the First Remarks against the Answer of Mr. Lock, at the End of His Reply to the Lord Bishop of Worcester. London: Printed for M. Wotton, 1697. Third Remarks Anon., Third Remarks Upon an Essay Concerning Humane Understanding in a Letter Address’d to the Author. London: Printed for M. Wotton, 1699.

Works by Catharine Trotter Cockburn Defence

Catharine Trotter Cockburn, A Defence of Mr. Locke’s Essay of Human Understanding, wherein its Principles, with Reference to Morality,

Abbreviations  xix Revealed Religion, and the Immortality of the Soul, are considered and justified: In answer to some Remarks on that Essay. In Catharine Trotter Cockburn, Philosophical Writings, edited by Patricia Sheridan. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2006 [1702].

Works by Mary Astell Christian Religion

Mary Astell, The Christian Religion, as Professed by a Daughter of the Church of England, edited by Jacqueline Broad. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies and Iter Publishing, 2013 [1705], cited by paragraph number.

Clarke-­Collins Correspondence References to the Clarke-­Collins Correspondences are to the following edition of 1731: A Letter to Mr. Dodwell; Together with Defences and Replies

Samuel Clarke and Anthony Collins, A Letter to Mr. Dodwell; Wherein all the Arguments in his Epistolary Discourse against the Immortality of the Soul are particularly answered, and the Judgment of the Fathers concerning Matter truly represented. Together with A Defence of an Argument made use of in the above-­mentioned Letter to Mr. Dodwell, to prove the Immateriality and Natural Immortality of the Soul. In Four Letters to the Author of Some Remarks, &c. To which is added, Some Reflections on that Part of a Book called Amyntor, which relates to the Writings of the Primitive Fathers, and the Canon of the New Testament. The Sixth Edition. In this Edition are inserted The Remarks on Dr. Clarke’s Letter to Mr. Dodwell, and the several Replies to the Doctor’s Defences thereof. Printed for James and John Knapton, at the Crown in St. Paul’s Churchyard: London, 1731 [1706–08]. Individual works in the collection will be abbreviated as follows:

LD Clarke, A Letter to Mr. Dodwell (1706) LLD Collins, A Letter to the Learned Mr. Henry Dodwell (1707) D Clarke, A Defence of an Argument (1707) RD Collins, A Reply to Mr Clarke’s Defence of his Letter to Mr. Dodwell (1707) SD Clarke, A Second Defence of an Argument (1707) RSD Collins, Reflections on Mr. Clarke’s Second Defence (1707) TD Clarke, A Third Defence of an Argument (1708) ATD Collins, An Answer to Mr. Clarke’s Third Defence (1708) FD Clarke, A Fourth Defence of an Argument (1708) Additionally, references are given to The Correspondence of Samuel Clarke and Anthony Collins, 1707–08, edited by William L. Uzgalis. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2011, cited as ‘U,’ followed by page number.

xx Abbreviations

Works by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz New Essays

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, New Essays on Human Understanding, edited by Peter Remnant and Jonathan Bennett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, cited by Book, chapter, section number, followed by page number.

Works by the Third Earl of Shaftesbury Characteristicks Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, edited by Douglas  J.  den Uyl, 3 vols. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2001 [1711]. Individual works in the collection will be abbreviated as follows: A Letter Concerning Enthusiasm (in vol. 1 of the 1711 ed.) Sensus Communis, and Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour in a Letter to a Friend (in vol. 1 of the 1711 ed.) S Soliloquy, or Advice to an Author (in vol. 1 of the 1711 ed.) I An Inquiry concerning Virtue or Merit (in vol. 2 of the 1711 ed.) M The Moralists: A Philosophical Rhapsody (in vol. 2 of the 1711 ed.) MR Miscellaneous Reflections on the said Treatises, and other critical Subjects (in vol. 3 of the 1711 ed.) LE SC

Additionally, references are given to Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, edited by Lawrence E. Klein. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, cited as ‘C,’ followed by page number.

Works by Joseph Butler Analogy of Religion ‘Of Personal Identity’

Joseph Butler, The Analogy of Religion. In vol. 1 of The Works of Joseph Butler, edited by W. E. Gladstone. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1897 [1736]. Joseph Butler, ‘Of Personal Identity’, in vol. 1 of The Works of Joseph Butler, edited by W. E. Gladstone, 1:317–25. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1897 [1736].

Works by David Hume Treatise

David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, edited by David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007 [1739–40], cited by part, book, section, paragraph number; additionally, references are given to David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, edited by L. A. Selby-­Bigge and P. H. Nidditch, 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978 [1739–40], cited as ‘SBN’, followed by page number.

Abbreviations  xxi EHU

David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, edited by Tom L. Beauchamp. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000 [1748], cited by section, paragraph number; additionally, references are given to David Hume, Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, edited by L. A. Selby-­Bigge and P. H. Nidditch, 3rd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975, cited as ‘SBN’, followed by page number.

Works by Thomas Reid EAP

EIP

Animate Creation

Thomas Reid, Essays on the Active Powers of Man, edited by Knud Haakonssen and James  A.  Harris. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010 [1788], cited by essay, [part, if relevant,] chapter number, followed by page number. Thomas Reid, Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, edited by Derek R. Brookes. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2002 [1785], cited by essay, chapter number, followed by page number. Thomas Reid on the Animate Creation: Papers Relating to the Life Sciences, edited by Paul Wood. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1995.

1

Introduction 1.1  Locke’s Innovative Approach to Debates about Persons and Personal Identity John Locke develops an innovative account of persons and personal identity. Locke is interested in making sense of questions of moral accountability and argues that we need to distinguish the idea of a person from that of a man (or human being1 as we would say today) and that of a substance.2 For Locke, persons—rather than human beings or substances—will be held accountable and rewarded or punished for their actions in this life and in the life to come. Moral accountability presupposes personal identity. However, what makes a person the same over time? Locke not only aims to explain how a person continues to exist in this life, but as a Christian believer it is important for him to take seriously the possibility of an afterlife and thus he intends to offer an account of personal identity that can explain how a person can continue to exist in the afterlife. Locke argues repeatedly that personal identity consists in sameness of consciousness and his point is that personal identity does not have to coincide with identity of man or identity of substance.3 The significance of Locke’s distinction between the ideas of person and man becomes clear when we consider an individual in a coma. Locke would argue that a patient in a coma is the same man (or woman) as before falling into the coma, but not the same person, and it would be unjust to hold someone in a coma accountable for a past crime. Moreover, as we will see, philosophers who identify persons with human beings face problems in explaining the resurrection; these problems do not arise for Locke’s account of personal 1  Here and in the following I use Locke’s term ‘man’ interchangeably with ‘human being.’ 2  For Locke, the idea of a person stands for ‘a thinking intelligent Being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider it self as it self, the same thinking thing in different times and places’ (II. xxvii.9). Moreover, he holds that ‘Person . . . is a Forensick Term appropriating Actions and their Merit; and so belongs only to intelligent agents capable of a Law, and Happiness and Misery.’ (II.xxvii.26) Although Locke’s idea of man is often taken to stand for a human organism, this is only one way to understand what is meant by ‘man’ and Locke considers alternative meanings in II.xxvii.21, which I will discuss further in subsequent chapters. According to Locke, we use the idea of substance to denote an underlying substratum from which our various ideas associated with the substance under consideration result. We suppose the substratum to exist, since we cannot imagine how the various simple ideas subsist by themselves (see II.xxiii.1). Locke’s claim that we have to distinguish the idea of a person from that of a substance remains neutral on the further metaphysical question of whether a person at a time is a substance. 3  See II.xxvii.9–26. Locke’s distinction between the ideas of person, man, and substance can already be found in an early manuscript note. See John Locke, ‘Identy [sic] of Persons,’ (Bodleian Libraries MS Locke f.7, 5 June 1683), 107.

Locke on Persons and Personal Identity. Ruth Boeker, Oxford University Press (2021). © Ruth Boeker. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198846758.003.0001

2 Introduction identity. However, can Locke explain the resurrection and life after death without presupposing the continued existence of an immaterial substance? According to Locke, God ‘will restore us to the like state of Sensibility in another World’ (IV. iii.6) and the mere presence of an immaterial substance does not ensure that resurrected beings will be sensible beings that are capable of happiness or misery.4 Thus, Locke believes that ‘[a]ll the great Ends of Morality and Religion, are well enough secured, without philosophical Proofs of the Soul’s Immateriality’ (IV. iii.6). My study intends to show how Locke offers an account of persons and personal identity that is well suited for his moral and religious purposes. His views about persons and personal identity were widely discussed soon after their publication and continue to influence debates about personal identity. In present-­day debates Locke’s view is often seen as an early version of psychological accounts of personal identity.5 Since Locke argues repeatedly that personal identity consists in same consciousness, it is plausible to regard his account of personal identity as psychological. However, his account of persons and personal identity is richer. Locke not only argues that personal identity consists in same consciousness, but he also claims that ‘person’ is a forensic term,6 meaning that persons are moral and legal beings that are accountable for their actions. In the following I argue that both claims are central for understanding Locke’s position and show how they are intertwined. In order to understand how Locke links his forensic account of personhood with his psychological account of personal identity, it is helpful to understand his approach to persons and personal identity within the framework of his general approach to questions of identity, which I call kind-­dependent. By taking the kind-­dependent framework seriously we will see that it is important to consider Locke’s account of personhood separately from his account of personal identity. A close examination of Locke’s account of personhood will establish that Lockean persons are moral and legal beings, or, in other words, subjects of accountability. Moreover, I bring to light that he holds particular—and controversial—moral background beliefs, which explain why he regards sameness of consciousness as necessary for personal identity. I examine how Locke understands sameness of consciousness and show how my reading 4  Similar considerations can already be found in a manuscript note on immortality dating back to 1682. See Locke, Early Draft, 121–3. 5  For instance, see Michael Ayers, Locke: Epistemology and Ontology, 2 vols. (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), 2:278–92; Harold W. Noonan, Personal Identity, 2nd ed. (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 9–11; Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), 204–9; Jennifer Whiting, ‘Personal Identity: The Non-­Branching Form of “What Matters” ,’ in The Blackwell Guide to Metaphysics, ed. Richard M. Gale (Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2002). It is worth noting that neo-­Lockean accounts of personal identity are not the only way to develop Locke’s view. For instance, Carol Rovane regards Locke’s view as a source of inspiration for her own normative account of personal identity. See Carol Rovane, ‘From a Rational Point of View,’ Philosophical Topics 30 (2002); Carol Rovane, The Bounds of Agency: An Essay in Revisionary Metaphysics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998). 6  See II.xxvii.26.

Locke’s Innovative Approach  3 provides resources to respond to problems commonly associated with Locke’s account of personal identity such as the problems of circularity and transitivity. Furthermore, I argue that we can reveal the strengths of Locke’s same consciousness account if we consider it in the context of metaphysical and religious debates of his predecessors. Considering Locke’s views about persons and personal identity within his broader philosophical project brings to light how his moral, religious, metaphysical, and epistemic background beliefs shape his thinking about persons and personal identity. My interpretive approach is rooted in Locke’s position that human cognitive capacities are limited. This means that many metaphysical propositions remain unknown to us.7 The lesson for Locke is that we should use our capacities for enquiries that they are suited for and focus on morality and religion: From whence it is obvious to conclude, that since our Faculties are not fitted to penetrate into the internal Fabrick and real Essences of Bodies; but yet plainly discover to us the Being of a GOD, and the Knowledge of our selves, enough to lead us into a full and clear discovery of our Duty, and great Concernment, it will become us, as rational Creatures, to imploy those Faculties we have about what they are most adapted to, and follow the direction of Nature, where it seems to point us out the way. For ’tis rational to conclude, that our proper Imployment lies in those Enquiries, and in that sort of Knowledge, which is most suited to our natural Capacities, and carries in it our greatest interest, i.e. the Condition of our eternal Estate. Hence I think I may conclude, that Morality is the proper Science, and Business of Mankind in general. (IV.xii.11)

In addition to showing how Locke’s views about persons and personal identity are situated within his broader philosophical project, my work brings to light how Locke advances the debates of his predecessors by bringing together moral debates about personhood with metaphysical and religious debates about the afterlife and the resurrection in a unique and novel way. Locke is not the first philosopher to regard persons as moral and legal beings. He is familiar with the natural law tradition—a tradition that regards persons (or in Latin personae) as bearers of rights and duties.8 This moral and legal conception of a person can be 7  It is worth noting that Locke does not reject metaphysical knowledge entirely. For instance, he accepts that we can know that God exists (see IV.x), or that substances exist (see Locke, Works, 4:32–3). 8  Locke wrote Essays on the Law of Nature around 1663–64 and delivered them as lectures at Christ Church College, Oxford. Locke never published the essays during his lifetime, despite encouragement to do so. For the role of persons in natural law theory see, for instance, Samuel Pufendorf, Of the Law of Nature and Nations, ed. Jean Barbeyrac, trans. Basil Kennett and George Carew, The fourth edition, carefully corrected. (London: printed for J. Walthoe, R. Wilkin, J. and J. Bonwicke, S. Birt, T. Ward, and T. Osborne, 1729), especially I.i. For further discussion, see Stephen Buckle, Natural Law and the Theory of Property: Grotius to Hume (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), chs. 1–3; Knud Haakonssen,

4 Introduction further traced back to Roman law. Originally the Latin term ‘persona’ denoted a mask, role, or guise, and later it acquired a moral and legal meaning and started referring to bearers of rights and duties.9 Locke’s eighteenth-­century commentator Edmund Law emphasizes Locke’s claim that ‘person’ is a forensic term and additionally Law argues for the view that persons are modes rather than substances in his A Defence of Mr Locke’s Opinion concerning Personal Identity.10 In support of the latter he quotes Cicero, who in Pro Sulla regards a person [persona] as a role or guise imposed [imposuit] on a human being.11 This intimates that Law assumes that the original Latin meaning of persona as ‘standing for a certain guise, character, quality’12 is still present in Locke.13 Although a number of interpreters have revived Edmund Law’s in­ter­ pret­ation and argued that Locke’s conception of a person should be understood in the Ciceronian and Pufendorfian tradition,14 I believe that we cannot assume that Locke directly adopts a conception of a person as held by Roman authors or proponents of natural law theory, but rather he revises it so that it can be integrated into his philosophical project as a whole. This is not surprising, because Locke, in contrast to many of his predecessors, is more cautious to endorse metaphysical claims that exceed the boundaries of human understanding and remains agnostic about many metaphysical truths that we cannot know with certainty. Moreover, Locke intends to offer an account of personal identity that can make sense of the possibility of the afterlife, the resurrection, and a last judgement. His concern is to show that persons, rather than human beings or substances, can continue to exist Natural Law and Moral Philosophy: From Grotius to the Scottish Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), ch. 1; Knud Haakonssen, ‘Natural Law and Personhood: Samuel Pufendorf on Social Explanation,’ Max Weber Lecture Series, no. 2010/06, http://cadmus.eui.eu/ handle/1814/14934; Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, 77–81. 9  See Udo Thiel, ‘Personal Identity,’ in The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-­Century Philosophy, ed. Daniel Garber and Michael Ayers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 1:868–9; Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, 26–30, 76–81. Thomas Hobbes comments on the etymology of the term ‘person’ in Hobbes, Leviathan, I.xvi.3, 101. See also Maximilian Forschner, ‘Der Begriff Der Person in Der Stoa,’ in Person: Philosophiegeschichte, Theoretische Philosophie, Praktische Philosophie, ed. Dieter Sturma (Paderborn: Mentis, 2001). 10  See Law, A Defence of Mr Locke’s Opinion Concerning Personal Identity. 11  See Law, A Defence of Mr Locke’s Opinion Concerning Personal Identity, 39. 12 Law, A Defence of Mr Locke’s Opinion Concerning Personal Identity, 39. 13  A critical response to this reading can be found in Winkler, ‘Locke on Personal Identity.’ 14  See LoLordo, Locke’s Moral Man; Strawson, Locke on Personal Identity, 17–21; Kathryn Tabb, ‘Madness as Method: On Locke’s Thought Experiments about Personal Identity,’ British Journal for the History of Philosophy 26 (2018): 4. Additionally, Thiel acknowledges that the natural law tradition provides important background for Locke’s account of personhood. According to Thiel, ‘Locke’s position is that “man” and “person” denote different abstract ideas which may be applied to the human subject’ (The Early Modern Subject, 107). Thiel does not argue for the view that Lockean persons are modes, but rather Thiel’s reading seems motivated by a Relative Identity interpretation of Locke’s general approach to identity. I offer a critical discussion of Relative Identity interpretations in chapter 3. Since Locke does not introduce the idea of a human subject in addition to the ideas of person, man, and substance I do not adopt it either.

Locke’s Innovative Approach  5 in the afterlife. His religious convictions show that he would be reluctant to accept the Ciceronian meaning of persona as a role or quality imposed on a human being. On this view a person is dependent on a human being. However, according to Locke, we have to distinguish the ideas of person and man, and sameness of man (or human being) is neither necessary nor sufficient for personal identity. Although Edmund Law thought that Locke’s claim that ‘person’ is a forensic term is connected to the view that persons are modes rather than substances, these two positions do not have to come as a package. Thus, we cannot assume without convincing arguments that Lockean persons are modes. I offer an interpretation that takes seriously Locke’s claim that ‘person’ is a forensic term and ask how Locke intertwines it with his religious beliefs and his agnostic attitudes towards metaphysics in his account of persons and personal identity. To further illustrate Locke’s ingenuity, it can be helpful to contrast Locke’s approach to persons and personal identity with the views of Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes introduces a distinction between natural and artificial persons in Leviathan, Part I, chapter xvi: A person, is he, whose words or actions are considered, either as his own, or as representing the words or actions of another man, or of any other thing to whom they are attributed, whether truly or by fiction. When they are considered as his own, then is he called a natural person: and when they are considered as representing the words and actions of another, then is he a feigned or artificial person.  (I.xvi.1–2, 101)

Hobbes needs the notion of an artificial person in addition to a natural person to establish his political project. Locke does not engage with questions of political representation in the context of his discussion of persons and personal identity in the Essay and this explains why Locke does not consider artificial persons as Hobbes introduces them, but rather Locke’s notion of a person comes closer to Hobbes’s conception of a natural person.15 Although the details of Hobbes’s pos­ ition need not concern us here, Hobbes’s discussion of natural and artificial persons provides interesting background for the interpretation of Locke’s views about persons and personal identity. First, Hobbes’s distinction shows that the term ‘person’ can be defined in different ways and we can and should not take for granted that it is simply used interchangeably with the notion of a human being. Locke is well aware of the need to carefully spell out how we understand the idea

15  See Luc Foisneau, ‘Personal Identity and Human Mortality: Hobbes, Locke, Leibniz,’ in Studies on Locke: Sources, Contemporaries, and Legacy, ed. Sarah Hutton and Paul Schuurman (Dordrecht: Springer, 2008), 95; Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, 76–7.

6 Introduction of a person before we can engage with questions of personal identity over time.16 This makes it plausible that Locke not only distances his position from views that equate persons with human beings, but also from other definitions of the term ‘person’ of his day. Second, it is worth noting that questions of personal identity over time are absent in Hobbes’s discussion of persons in Leviathan. Nevertheless, Hobbes engages with questions of individuation and identity over time in his work De Corpore.17 In Part II of this treatise, Hobbes devotes a chapter to ‘Of Identity and Difference’. In this chapter Hobbes asks what makes an individual at one time the same as at another time: ‘For example, whether a man grown old be the same man he was whilst he was young, or another man; or whether a city be in different ages the same, or another city’ (English Works, II.xi.7, 1:135). These are exactly the kind of questions that Locke addresses in ‘Of Identity and Diversity’. The parallels between Hobbes’s and Locke’s general approach to questions of identity even go a step further. Hobbes writes: But we must consider by what name anything is called, when we inquire concerning the identity of it. For it is one thing to ask concerning Socrates, whether he be the same man, and another to ask whether he be the same body; for his body, when he is old, cannot be the same it was when he was an infant, by reason of the difference of magnitude; for one body has always one and the same magnitude; yet, nevertheless, he may be the same man.  (English Works, II.xi.7, 1:137)

Locke agrees that we need to clarify under which sortal18 name we are considering a thing if we want to address the question of what makes something identical over time. Like Hobbes, Locke distinguishes the term ‘mass of matter’ from the term ‘man’ and argues that a man can continue to exist despite changes of ma­ter­ ial particles.19 A comparison with Hobbes reveals that Locke makes significant philosophical advancements. Hobbes does not integrate his account of identity with his views about persons. This is a gap in Hobbes’s corpus. Locke’s chapter ‘Of Identity and Diversity’ can be seen as filling this gap by applying Locke’s general approach to identity over time to persons and personal identity.20 Locke is indebted, first, to the natural law tradition and moral and legal conceptions of personhood, second, to metaphysical debates about individuation and

16  See II.xxvii.7, 9, 15, 20. 17  See Hobbes, English Works, 1:132–8. De Corpore [Of Body], is volume 1 of English Works. 18  Locke introduces the term ‘sortal’ in III.iii.15 as the adjective deriving from ‘sort’ in analogy to the adjective ‘general’ and the noun ‘genus.’ He uses ‘sort’ and ‘kind’ interchangeably. This means that a sortal name is the name that we associate with a kind of being. 19  See II.xxvii.6–8, see also II.xxvii.1–4. 20  For further discussion see Foisneau, ‘Personal Identity and Human Mortality’.

Aims and Scope of the Book  7 identity, and, third, to metaphysical and religious debates about the state of a ­person or soul between death and resurrection and in the afterlife. Locke not only builds on the debates of his predecessors, but he also combines them in new and systematic ways by carefully distinguishing the ideas of a person from the ideas of a man and substance.

1.2  Aims and Scope of the Book Let me add a few remarks about the aims and scope of this book. First and foremost, this book studies Locke’s thinking about persons and personal identity in the philosophical and historical context of his day. My goal is to bring to light Locke’s intentions. In particular, I examine how his thinking about persons and personal identity is shaped by his underlying moral, religious, metaphysical, and epistemic views, and where relevant compare them with the views of other philo­ sophers of his day. In this sense my book is a work in the history of philosophy. Although interesting questions can be asked regarding the usefulness of Locke’s views for present-­day debates about personal identity, they exceed the scope of this project and will not be my concern here. I hope that by considering Locke’s account of persons and personal identity in its philosophical and historical context we can better appreciate the ingenuity and strengths of his view. Furthermore, I intend to offer a deeper explanation for why several of Locke’s early critics question or reject his account. It has become common to dismiss Locke’s account of personal identity on the basis of a few standard objections such as the famous and widely repeated circularity and transitivity objections. My approach makes it possible to show that Locke’s account cannot be as easily dismissed as those who reiterate the common objections tend to do. To illustrate this point, let me explain my approach to the problem of transitivity. Since the objection was not raised during Locke’s lifetime we have to speculate as to how he would respond. However, we have evidence that it is of great importance to Locke that his account of persons and personal identity takes seriously the possibility of the afterlife and a last judgement. Thus, ­I ­propose that Locke would most likely suggest that the problem of transitivity is best understood in the religious context of an afterlife and a last judgement. Once understood in this context, it is likely that Locke would give preference to a hybrid account of personal identity that involves both transitive and non-­transitive relations. The problem with purely non-­transitive interpretations is that they conflict with considerations of divine justice, because there is a risk that they involve multiple judgement for the same action, neglect actions, or neglect long-­term actions. Purely transitive interpretations neglect the first-­ personal dimension that is important for Locke. For these reasons, he may have been less worried about the  problem of transitivity than his critics who raised or reiterated it. My

8 Introduction in­ter­pret­ation of the problem of transitivity is merely one example to show how we can change the interpretation of Locke’s view by taking the philosophical and his­tor­ic­al context seriously. Although Locke’s chapter ‘Of Identity and Diversity’ (II.xxvii), which he added to the second edition of his An Essay concerning Human Understanding in 1694, is my most important source for this study, I draw on the Essay as a whole, as well as his other works and manuscripts whenever they shed light on Locke’s views about persons and personal identity. Since Locke contrasts his position with the views of his predecessors, I follow Locke and discuss the views of his predecessors where relevant. My aim is not to offer a comprehensive examination of their views, but rather I approach their works through Locke’s perspective with the aim of revealing the strengths of his position in its philosophical and historical context. Udo Thiel has done important and extensive work on the debates about consciousness and personal identity in the early modern period and I would like to refer readers who are interested in further background to his works.21

1.3  Summary of Chapters Chapter 2 offers a close analysis of Locke’s approach to questions of individuation and identity over time. I explain that Locke in his chapter ‘Of Identity and Diversity’ is primarily interested in questions of identity over time in a metaphysical sense. This means we can say that his main task is to specify persistence conditions. I examine how Locke distinguishes individuation from identity, and propose that Locke’s approach to identity is best understood as kind-­dependent. This chapter provides the framework for the subsequent discussion of Locke’s account of persons and personal identity. More precisely, when we apply the kind-­dependent approach to persons, it becomes clear that we have to distinguish Locke’s account of personhood from his account of personal identity, and examine his account of personhood first before we can specify the persistence conditions for persons in a further step. Chapter  3 offers further support for why Locke’s approach to questions of identity is best interpreted as kind-­dependent. In this chapter I turn to the debates that have dominated the secondary literature on Locke’s account of identity. I show that alternative interpretations are often based on metaphysical

21  See Thiel, The Early Modern Subject. See also Thiel, Lockes Theorie der personalen Identität; Thiel, ‘Individuation’; Thiel, ‘Personal Identity’; Udo Thiel, ‘Religion and Materialist Metaphysics: Some Aspects of the Debate about the Resurrection of the Body in Eighteenth-­ Century Britain,’ in Philosophy and Religion in Enlightenment Britain: New Case Studies, ed. Ruth Savage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Udo Thiel, ‘Self-­Consciousness and Personal Identity,’ in The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-­Century Philosophy, ed. Knud Haakonssen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

Summary of Chapters  9 assumptions that Locke would be reluctant to endorse. I pay particularly close attention to disputes between defenders of coincidence and Relative Identity in­ter­pret­ations of Locke. The disputes are commonly traced back to a disagreement about the question of how many things exist at a particular spatiotemporal location. For instance, consider a cat and the material particles that compose the cat. Do two distinct things—one a cat and the other a collection of material particles—exist at the same spatiotemporal location, as suggested by defenders of coincidence in­ter­pret­ations? Or is there just one thing that can be considered both as a cat and a collection of material particles, as defenders of Relative Identity interpretations propose? Rather than siding with one position, my strategy is to identify problems that arise for both types of interpretations, and to show how my kind-­dependent interpretation avoids them. Readers who are not interested in the details of the scholarly debates can skip the chapter and move immediately to chapter 4. In chapter 4 I apply Locke’s kind-­dependent account of identity to persons. The chapter begins by focusing on Locke’s account of personhood and I argue that persons, according to Locke, belong to a moral and legal kind of being: they are subjects of accountability. I establish this claim by showing with reference to his chapter ‘Of Power’ (II.xxi) and other writings that his moral and legal conception of a person is present throughout his chapter ‘Of Identity and Diversity’. The interpretation I offer gives full credit to Locke’s claim that ‘person’ is a forensic term, but it also shows that Locke’s arguments presuppose a particular conception of morality that is grounded in divine law and the power of a superior lawmaker to enforce morality by rewards and punishment. Next, I ask how Locke’s moral and legal account of personhood enables us to specify persistence conditions for persons. I shed further light on why it is plausible to regard Lockean persons as subjects of accountability and argue that examining Locke’s understanding of the conditions of just accountability provides a clue for answering the question of what makes a person, or subject of accountability, the same over time. I show that for Locke sameness of consciousness is a necessary condition for moral accountability. This makes it possible to establish that sameness of consciousness is a ne­ces­sary condition for personal identity. Moreover, I emphasize that Locke thinks about moral accountability in a particular and controversial way. Critical responses by his contemporaries William Molyneux and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz illustrate that it is possible to think about moral accountability differently. For instance, it is possible to agree with Locke that persons are subjects of moral accountability, but due to an alternative understanding of moral accountability one can reject Locke’s view that personal identity consists in same consciousness. The considerations in this chapter provide resources for a fine-­grained understanding of the relation between morality and metaphysics in Locke’s account of personal identity. I argue that moral considerations have explanatory priority, but  sameness of consciousness is ontologically prior to attributions of moral

10 Introduction accountability in particular instances when one intends to decide whether a person is accountable for an action. By the end of chapter 4, I establish that sameness of consciousness is necessary for personal identity. It remains to ask whether it is also sufficient. This question will be addressed in chapter 6. Before we are in a position to engage with it, it will be important to carefully examine Locke’s understanding of sameness of consciousness. This is the task of chapter 5. Chapter 5 begins by acknowledging a difference between consciousness that is built into individual mental states from a more complex notion of same consciousness, which additionally involves relations among several mental states. With regard to the former, I share the views of other interpreters that for Locke consciousness is not a higher order mental state and cannot be identified with reflection. However, in contrast to Weinberg, I believe that consciousness for Locke is not restricted to self-­consciousness,22 but also includes consciousness of the contents of one’s perceptions. In the existing secondary literature on Locke’s account of same consciousness we find a variety of different interpretations: For instance, it has been suggested that Locke understands same consciousness in terms of memory, appropriation, duration, or a metaphysical fact. Often these proposals are treated as exclusive rival views. I believe that it is a mistake to treat the proposals as exclusive, but rather many of them offer important insights into Locke’s understanding of same consciousness, yet they are incomplete on their own. On the basis of a close reading of Locke’s text, I show that revival of past thoughts and actions through memory, mineness, togetherness (or unity), and temporality are all important aspects of his same consciousness account. I conclude that Locke’s account of same consciousness is richer than commonly acknowledged and has multiple aspects. Chapter 6 addresses circularity and insufficiency worries that have been raised against Locke’s same consciousness account of personal identity. I begin by distinguishing different versions of circularity worries. Introducing these distinctions enables me to advance the debates in the literature, because the different types of circularity worries require different answers. I then show that Locke has resources to respond to Joseph Butler’s circularity objection. However, the more pressing worry concerns the question of whether sameness of consciousness is sufficient for personal identity, which is the so-­called insufficiency worry. The insufficiency worry can be presented as a circularity worry, but need not be. I show how Locke’s multiple aspects account of same consciousness introduced in chapter 5 provides resources for addressing the insufficiency worry. A response to the insufficiency worry calls for an examination of whether sameness of consciousness is onto­ logic­al­ly suitable to ground personal identity. Although the limitations of human

22  See Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, xi–xiii, 27, 33, 45–7, 51.

Summary of Chapters  11 understanding prevent us from knowing the exact metaphysical foundation of sameness of consciousness, Locke believes that we should engage in probable reason­ing in areas where we lack knowledge. I propose that Locke has resources to accept, on the basis of probable reasoning, that same consciousness that has a metaphysical foundation that most likely has relational structure. I believe that the advantage of this reading is that it brings to light that he not merely criticizes views that assume that persistence requires the continued existence of a substance, but also that he has resources for developing a plausible—though ­prob­able—alternative that avoids circularity and insufficiency. Chapter 7 situates Locke’s account of personal identity in the context of metaphysical and religious debates of his day, especially the debates concerning the possibility of the afterlife and the resurrection. I adopt Locke’s classifications of the views of his predecessors and examine metaphysical problems for material, Cartesian and non-­Cartesian immaterial views of the soul, and views that regard human beings as mind-­body unions. I show that Locke is well aware of these problems and argue that the strength of his account of personal identity in terms of sameness of consciousness is that it provides a response to the various problems that arise for the views of his predecessors. Furthermore, the advantage of his theory is that it does not require him to prove the views of his predecessors to be mistaken, and it is thereby consistent with their mutually exclusive views regarding the materiality and immateriality of thinking substances. In chapter 8 I offer a new look at the problem of transitivity by building on the insight of chapter 7 that it is of great importance for Locke to take seriously the possibility of the afterlife and a last judgement. My contributions are as follows: first, I give credit to Galen Strawson’s and Matthew Stuart’s non-­ transitive interpretations,23 who both emphasize that Locke’s account of personal identity fundamentally concerns questions of moral accountability. Based on the insights of their interpretations, I develop a list of constraints that any good interpretation of Locke’s view should satisfy. However, there are also shortcomings of Strawson’s and Stuart’s interpretations, which my own interpretation overcomes. I argue that a genuine question of transitivity arises in the context of the afterlife and a last judgement and that Locke would take the transitivity problem in this context seriously. I develop a hybrid interpretation that takes insights of transitive and non-­transitive interpretations seriously and show how it is grounded in Locke’s account of sameness of consciousness as introduced in chapter 5, how it can better accommodate the religious context than competing interpretations without neglecting the insights of Strawson’s and Stuart’s interpretations. Moreover, I show with reference to Locke’s writings on religion that my interpretation leaves room for repentance. 23  See Strawson, Locke on Personal Identity, 53–7, chs. 10–11; Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, ch. 8, especially 353–9, 378–85.

12 Introduction Chapter 9 brings together the results of the previous chapters and shows what role Locke’s moral, religious, metaphysical, and epistemic background beliefs play in his thinking about persons and personal identity. Instead of ending my study here, I believe it is important to ask why hardly any of Locke’s early critics understood him in the way I interpret his view. It is not uncommon that Locke’s distinctions between the ideas of person, man, and substance are neglected, or that his critics do not engage with the moral dimension of his view, let alone acknowledge his claim that ‘person’ is a forensic term. How can it be that considerations that are at the heart of my interpretation find little to no consideration in the views of his critics? I offer a few case studies to show that the disagreement between Locke and his early critics can be traced back to a dis­ agree­ment about underlying moral, religious, metaphysical, and/or epistemic views. Hence, the initial challenges that arise for my interpretation ultimately strengthen my thesis that Locke’s thinking about persons and personal identity is shaped by his underlying background beliefs. Many of Locke’s early critics reject Locke’s account of persons and personal identity on metaphysical and/or religious grounds. Chapter 10 focuses on a selection of these objections and thereby reveals metaphysical, religious, and epistemic differences between Locke’s view and the views of his early critics and defenders. I pay particular attention to two debates that lead several critics to reject Locke’s thinking about persons and personal identity, but also prompt others to defend his view, namely debates whether the soul always thinks and debates whether matter can think. With respect to each debate my aim is to identify factors why Locke’s early critics endorse metaphysical and epistemic views that differ from Locke’s view and how this leads them to reject Locke’s thinking about persons and personal identity. Chapter 11 focuses on Shaftesbury’s and Hume’s responses to Locke’s account of persons and personal identity. Both philosophers generally share Locke’s ­metaphysically agnostic views, but disagree with Locke on moral and religious grounds. By contrasting Locke’s, Shaftesbury’s, and Hume’s moral and religious views we can see how their different moral and religious views shape their thinking about persons and personal identity and understand why Shaftesbury and Hume develop views about persons and personal identity that differ not only from Locke’s view, but also from each other. I pay particular attention to how Shaftesbury and Hume each criticize psychological accounts of personal identity and explain how their underlying moral and religious views help understand the respective criticisms. Moreover, both philosophers reject moral theories grounded in divine law. Since Locke’s account of moral personhood can be separated from his psychological account of personal identity, it is interesting to ask how philosophers who do not share Locke’s moral views, which are grounded in divine law, approach or can approach moral personhood.

2

Locke’s Kind-­dependent Approach to Identity Locke added chapter xxvii of Book II, titled ‘Of Identity and Diversity’, to the ­second edition of his Essay in 1694 upon the suggestion of his friend William Molyneux to offer a more detailed treatment of the principium individuationis.1 Molyneux acknowledges that Locke already touched upon the principium individuationis in I.iv.4 and II.i.12. Both passages concern identity and reflect on how personal identity is preserved if souls can transmigrate from one body to another. It is worth noting that Locke in neither section explicitly uses the term ‘individuation’. This suggests that both Molyneux and Locke regard individuation and identity as closely connected. What, if anything, is the difference between individuation and identity? Traditionally, a principle of individuation provides a metaphysical condition of what it takes for one thing to be an individual and to be distinct from other things,2 while a principle of identity provides a condition of what it takes for a thing to be the same at a time and over time. However, not all philosophers of Locke’s day draw a distinction between individuation and identity.3 For example, Thomas Hobbes understands individuation in terms of identity over time: But the same body may at different times be compared with itself. And from hence springs the great controversy about the beginning of individuation [Principio individuationis], namely, in what sense it may be conceived that a body is at one time the same, at another time not the same it was formerly. (English Works, II.xi.7, 1:135)

The tendency to regard individuation and identity as closely connected, if not equivalent, helps explain why Locke, upon Molyneux’s suggestion to expand his discussion of the principle of individuation, writes a chapter that focuses on 1  See Locke, Correspondence, letter no 1609, 2 March 1693, 4:650. 2  For example, see Richard Burthogge, An Essay Upon Reason, and the Nature of Spirits (London: Printed for J. Dunton, 1694), 269–70. 3 See Robert Boyle, ‘Some Physico-­ Theological Considerations about the Possibility of the Resurrection,’ in Selected Philosophical Papers of Robert Boyle, ed. M.  A.  Stewart (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1979), 194; John Dunton, ‘Quest. 1 What Is Individuation? Or, Wherein Consits the Individuality of a Thing?,’ The Athenian Mercury 2 (1691); Hobbes, English Works, 1:132–8; Thiel, ‘Individuation’, 1:233–44.

Locke on Persons and Personal Identity. Ruth Boeker, Oxford University Press (2021). © Ruth Boeker. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198846758.003.0002

14 Locke ’ s Kind-dependent Approach to Identity identity over time. Yet we have to look closer at Locke’s text to see how exactly he conceives of individuation, identity, and diversity. Locke’s chapter ‘Of Identity and Diversity’ is part of a series of chapters on ideas of relations. According to Locke, we form ideas of relations when we compare two or more things under a particular respect.4 Turning to identity and diversity, he maintains that we form the ideas of identity and diversity ‘when considering any thing as existing at any determin’d time and place, we compare it with itself existing at another time’ (II.xxvii.1). While questions of identity and diversity arise both at a time and over time, it is clear that questions of identity over time are the focus of the chapter. Although Locke briefly mentions identity at a time in II.xxvii.1, he sees no need to elaborate on it, because it is trivial that a thing is identical with itself at every particular time of its existence. Rather questions of identity over time are genuine and interesting questions for Locke and include the following: What does it take for a collection of material particles to continue to exist over time? What does it take for a cat to continue to exist over time? In virtue of what does an oak tree continue to be the same oak tree despite its loss and gain of material particles? What does it take for a person to continue to exist? Is it possible for a person to continue to exist in a different human body? Is it possible that more than one person exists in the same substance over time? Is it possible that a person survives a change of substance? Before we consider these and similar questions that occupy major parts of II.xxvii more closely, it is worth returning to individuation for a moment.

2.1 The Principium Individuationis What, if any, role does individuation play in Locke’s account of identity? He briefly mentions the principium individuationis in II.xxvii.3 immediately after general reflections on identity in II.xxvii.1–2; it occurs just before he turns to examples, which examine what it takes for one atom, a collection of atoms, living organisms, artefacts, human beings, and persons to exist over time. Despite the brevity with which Locke comments on the principle of individuation, it is informative that he presents it at this stage. We can reflect at an abstract level about identity over time, but as soon as we want to apply any general principles in particular cases we need to have a means to uniquely pick out the individual whose identity over time is under consideration. Understood in this way, a prin­ ciple of individuation enables us to pick out a particular individual as distinct from various other individuals that exist. Once a particular individual a has been uniquely picked out by a principle of individuation, we can then trace a’s identity over time by means of the relevant principle of identity over time. This suggests 4  See II.xxv.

The Principium Individuationis  15 that individuation and identity play different roles and individuation is important in addition to principles of identity. Let us examine how Locke introduces the principle of individuation to further clarify its role in Locke’s account of identity: From what has been said, ’tis easy to discover, what is so much enquired after, the principium Individuationis, and that ’tis plain is Existence it self, which determines a Being of any sort to a particular time and place incommunicable to two Beings of the same kind.5 This though it seems easier to conceive in simple Substances or Modes; yet when reflected on, is not more difficult in compounded ones, if care be taken to what it is applied.  (II.xxvii.3)

How shall we interpret Locke’s version of the principium individuationis? At first sight, Locke’s claim that existence individuates seems to support the following reading:6 (PrI)  A thing is distinct from other things by existing at a particular time and place. However, the problem with this reading is that it conflicts with Locke’s observations in II.xxvii.2, which is the section that immediately precedes the section where he first introduces the principium individuationis. There he lists God, finite intelligences, and bodies as three sorts of substances and argues that finite intelligences and bodies exist at particular times and places. While it is impossible that two different finite intelligences or two different bodies exist at the same place and time, it is possible that a body and a finite spirit are co-­located. (PrI) does not accommodate the possibility that more than one thing exists at the same place and time such as a body and a finite spirit. Moreover, since Locke believes that his observations in II.xxvii.1–2 make it ‘easy to discover’ the principium individuationis, (PrI) needs refinement.7 If we return to his statement of the principium individuationis we can see that it concerns individuation of members of a kind of being. This makes it plausible to refine it as follows:

5  I follow Locke and use the terms ‘kind’, ‘sort’, and the Latin term ‘species’ interchangeably. See II.xxxii.6, III.iii.12, 14 17, III.vi.1–2, 4, 6–7; Locke, Works, 4:83–91. 6  Such a reading can be found in John Sergeant, Solid Philosophy Asserted, against the Fancies of the Ideists, or, the Method to Science Farther Illustrated with Reflexions on Mr Locke’s Essay concerning Human Understanding (London: Printed for Roger Clavil at the Peacock, Abel Roper at the Black Boy, both in Fleetstreet, and Thomas Metcalf, over against Earl’s-­Court in Drury-­Lane, 1697), 255–70. Thiel offers an interpretation close to this reading by stressing that, according to Locke, ‘Existence itself ’ individuates. See Thiel, ‘Individuation’, 1:233–5; Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, 102–3. 7  See Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 299–300; Gideon Yaffe, ‘Locke on Ideas of Identity and Diversity,’ in The Cambridge Companion to Locke’s ‘Essay Concerning Human Understanding’, ed. Lex Newman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 197.

16 Locke ’ s Kind-dependent Approach to Identity (PrI*)  A member of any kind is distinct from all other members of the same kind by existing at a particular time and place. There is, however, one further problem. According to (PrI*), it is not possible that a member of kind F can be identical at different times, because at an earlier time it exists at one spatiotemporal location and at a later time it exists at a different spatiotemporal location. According to (PrI*) they would be distinct, but Locke wants to leave open the possibility that they can be identical. Thus, (PrI*) conflicts with Locke’s views in II.xxvii. In II.xxvii.1 Locke argues that two things of the same kind cannot exist at the same place and time. This principle is often called ‘place-­time-­kind principle’.8 In light of the place-­time-­kind principle it is plausible to refine Locke’s principium individuationis as follows: (PrI**)  A member of any kind existing at time t is distinct from all other ­members of the same kind existing at time t by existing at a particular place at that time. Principle (PrI**) follows from Locke’s place-­time-­kind principle. Furthermore, the advantage of (PrI**) is that it leaves room for the possibility that a member of one kind is the same with itself at a different time, while (PrI*) excludes it. To assess (PrI**), let us turn to Locke’s comments on the principium individuationis in his correspondence with Edward Stillingfleet. There Locke argues that ‘the “principium individuationis” is the same in all the several species of creatures’ (Works, 4:439) and criticizes Stillingfleet’s view that the union of soul and body makes two human beings distinct, because it does not account for the distinctness of other kinds of being, such as two cherries, or two atoms of matter.9 (PrI**) is consistent with Locke’s remarks in the Stillingfleet correspondence, because (PrI**) is not restricted to one particular species. This means that the principle of individuation (PrI**) can be applied irrespective of whether one intends to individuate cherries, cats, or human beings. Furthermore, (PrI**) is consistent with II.xxvii.2, because it does not rule out co-­location of members of different kinds.10 Being a member of a kind involves having the characteristic features associated with the kind, which is the nominal essence of the kind. For a member of a kind F to exist at a spatiotemporal location means that the features that belong to the nominal essence of kind F are present at that location. (PrI**) does not rule out the existence of other qualities at the same place and time that are not associated with the kind under considerations. These other qualities can be part of the 8  For further discussion, see Jessica Gordon-­Roth, ‘Locke’s Place-­Time-­Kind Principle,’ Philosophy Compass 10 (2015); Yaffe, ‘Locke on Ideas of Identity and Diversity’, 195–7. 9  See Locke, Works, 4:438–9. 10  Although Thiel acknowledges the importance of II.xxvii.2, he does not clearly revise his reading of the principium individuationis (see Thiel, ‘Individuation’, 1:233–5; Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, 102–3). I believe that the advantage of my refined reading (PrI**) is that it is more precise and consistent with all the relevant texts.

The Principium Individuationis  17 characteristic features of another kind and for this reason (PrI**) is consistent with the possibility of co-­location of members of different kinds. However, one may worry that (PrI**) is restricted in another sense: it merely offers a principle of what it takes for members of the same kind that exist at the same time to be distinct, but it does not account for distinctness of members of different kinds or for members that exist at different times. Is this a genuine limitation of Locke’s principle? To address this question, I want to take a detour and draw attention to the treatment of individuation in The Athenian Mercury, a ­bi-­weekly magazine of the Athenian Society. Although we do not know this certainly, it is likely that Locke was familiar with the article on individuation that was published on 20 June 1691 in the Athenian Mercury and that it provided the structure for Locke’s discussion in II.xxvii.11 The author of the article begins with a general answer to the question of what individuation is: Individuation is—The Unity of a thing with it self, or that whereby any thing is what it is, which makes it little, if any thing clearer than ’twas before.

Since this answer is not very informative the article proceeds by explaining individuation for ‘different Orders of visible Being’: To begin with those Species of Body, which are not properly Organiz’d, which have neither Life nor Sence, or Stones, Metals, &c. In these Individuation seems to consist in nothing but greater or lesser; take the less part of a Stone away, you may still call it the same Stone; take an equal part with the remains, that Individuation ceases, and they are two new Individuals. Divide a Stone, & c. as long as you please, every part of it will be a Stone still, another individual Stone, as much as any in the Mountain or Quarry ’twas first cut out of, even thô reduced to the minutest Sand, or if possible a thousand times less . . . . Plants—their Individuation consists in that singular Form, Contexture and Order of their Parts, whereby they are disposed for those Uses to which Nature has design’d ’em, and by which they receive and maintain their Beings . . . meerly sensible Creatures . . . And here the Individuation consists in such a ­particular Contexture of their Essential Parts, and their relation one towards another, as enables ’em to exert the Operations of the sensible or animal Life . . . To ascend now to the highest Rank of visible Being, The Rational: The Individuation of Man appears to us to consist in the Union of that thinking Substance, which we call rational Soul, with any convenient Portion of fitly Organiz’d Matter. 11  See Peter R. Anstey, ‘John Locke and the Philosophy of Mind,’ Journal of the History of Philosophy 53 (2015): 237; Dunton, ‘Quest. 1 What Is Individuation? Or, Wherein Consits the Individuality of a Thing?’

18 Locke ’ s Kind-dependent Approach to Identity Although at first sight the view of individuation that is presented in the Athenian Mercury appears similar to Locke’s view, there is an important difference. I take it that Locke distinguishes questions of individuation from questions of identity and thus believes that a principle of individuation is to be distinguished from principles of identity, while the author of article in the Athenian Mercury uses ‘individuation’ to refer not only to individuation in Locke’s sense, but also to questions of identity. As a result, the view defended in the Athenian Mercury is that there are different principles of individuation for different kinds of being. However, since Locke rejects such a view in his correspondence with Stillingfleet, he cannot accept the view in the Athenian Mercury either. By distinguishing individuation from identity, Locke is able to offer a principle of individuation that holds across kinds. To return to the worry that (PrI**) is too restricted, Locke does not have to be troubled by this worry, because his main focus in the chapter ‘Of Identity and Diversity’ are questions of identity over time. Insofar as he aims to address questions of identity over time, he will always apply the principle of individuation in combination with a principle of identity over time. (PrI**) is sufficient for Locke’s purposes and it is plausible that it is restricted to members of a kind, because—as will become clearer in the next section—Locke believes that we have to decide what kind of being we are considering before we can engage with questions of identity over time.12

2.2 Identity It is time to examine the details of Locke’s approach to identity over time. Locke’s main interest in the chapter is to understand what it takes for things to exist over time. In present-­day metaphysical terminology we would say that his aim is to specify persistence conditions. I have chosen metaphysical terms here in light of the language Locke uses to present the issues: his discussion focuses on the question of wherein identity ‘consists’,13 or what ‘preserves’14 identity, or—as he also 12 In the literature we find additional interpretations of Locke’s principium individuationis. An alternative interpretation is offered by Christopher Hughes Conn, Locke on Essence and Identity, Philosophical Studies Series (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003). According to Conn’s interpretation of Locke’s principle of individuation, objects are individuated by the place and time when they first came into existence. I am not convinced by this interpretation, because Locke does not mention an object’s first beginning of existence when he introduces the principium individuationis in II.xxvii.3. More importantly, I believe that it is a superfluous and unnecessary restriction to formulate the principle of individuation in terms of the spatiotemporal location of an object’s first beginning of existence, because the principle of individuation will be combined with principles of identity over time. Once the principle of individuation and the relevant principle of identity are both applied, any spatiotemporal location of an object of a certain kind will stand in a unique relation to the first beginning of existence of the object of the relevant kind. 13  II.xxvii.6, 9, 19, 21. 14  II.xxvii.10, 12, 13, 25, 29.

Identity  19 puts it—what ‘makes’15 something the same F, where F denotes members of a kind such as birch tree, seal, cat, table, or person. Hence, it is plausible that Locke’s task goes beyond the mere psychological task of explaining how we acquire ideas of identity and diversity.16 Moreover, an alternative epistemic interpretation, according to which he addresses questions of what evidence we have for judging individuals to be identical, is not well supported by his terminology either.17 Therefore, I will argue that Locke’s aim in II.xxvii is to specify persistence conditions, although—as we will see—his approach to questions of identity is sensitive to his overall metaphysical caution not to transcend the boundaries of human understanding. Locke emphasizes the importance of carefully examining the ideas associated with the names that we give to kinds of beings. He argues that a problem with existing discussions of the relations of identity and diversity is lack of precise analysis of the ideas in question:18 That which has made the Difficulty about this Relation, has been the little care and attention used in having precise Notions19 of the things to which it is attributed. (II.xxvii.1)

According to Locke, we cannot properly engage with the question whether one thing is the same with itself at another time until we consider the thing under a particular concept or abstract idea. For example, let us assume that there is something grey and furry on the chair next to me. Locke believes that it is important to decide whether I consider the thing or stuff next to me as a cat or as a collection of material particles before I can engage with questions of identity over time. If I decide to focus on the idea of a cat, I can ask whether the cat sitting there today is 15  II.xxvii.4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 20, 21, 25. 16  Although Locke includes the chapter ‘Of Identity and Diversity’ in the context of his discussion how we form ideas of relations, and he begins II.xxvii.1 with introducing how we form ideas of identity and diversity, Locke soon turns from the ideas of relations to the relations themselves. This shift is noticeable in II.xxvii.2 where he regards identity and diversity as relations. 17  Although individual passages such as II.xxvii.7 can be read in support of an epistemic reading, many passages where Locke discusses identity in metaphysical terms are hard to reconcile with a purely epistemic reading. It is worth noting that Locke uses the term ‘judge’ only once throughout the entire chapter (see II.xxvii.7). Joseph Butler and Thomas Reid objected that Locke’s approach to identity is not suitable to provide metaphysical persistence conditions, but rather they claim that he offers epistemic evidence for identity. See Butler, ‘Of Personal Identity’; Reid, EIP, III.6, 275–9. Butler and Reid both assume that only immaterial substances can ground identity and, as we will see, Locke rejects this assumption. Epistemic interpretations of Locke’s account of personal identity have been given by Lex Newman, ‘Locke on Substance, Consciousness, and Personal Identity,’ in Locke and Leibniz on Substance, ed. Paul Lodge and Tom Stoneham (New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 2015); Sergeant, Solid Philosophy Asserted, 265–6. Epistemic interpretations of Locke’s account of identity have been rejected by among others Ruth Boeker, ‘Locke and Hume on Personal Identity: Moral and Religious Differences,’ Hume Studies 41 (2015); Conn, Locke on Essence and Identity, 72; Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, 164; Shelley Weinberg, ‘The Metaphysical Fact of Consciousness in Locke’s Theory of Personal Identity,’ Journal of the History of Philosophy 50 (2012): 404. 18  See II.xxvii.1, 7, 28. 19  In I.i.8 Locke introduces ‘notion’ as a synonym for idea.

20 Locke ’ s Kind-dependent Approach to Identity the same as the cat that sat there yesterday. If instead I focus on the idea of ma­ter­ ial particles, I can ask whether the collection of material particles that is there today is the same as yesterday. Since the number of hairs have changed, the collection of material particles is different, but—or so Locke would argue—the cat continued to exist. Locke’s point that we have to consider things under an abstract idea or concept, which stands for a kind of being, becomes even clearer when we turn to the following passages:20 ’Tis not therefore Unity of Substance that comprehends all sorts of Identity, or will determine it in every Case: But to conceive, and judge of it aright, we must consider what Idea the Word it is applied to stands for: It being one thing to be the same Substance, another the same Man, and a third the same Person, if Person, Man, and Substance, are three Names standing for three different Ideas; for such as is the Idea belonging to that Name, such must be the Identity. (II.xxvii.7) But yet when we will enquire, what makes the same Spirit, Man, or Person, we must fix the Ideas of Spirit, Man, or Person in our Minds; and having determined what we mean by them, it will not be hard to determine, in either of them, or the like, when it is the same, and when not.  (II.xxvii.15)

What do these passages reveal about Locke’s approach to questions of identity over time? I want to propose that his approach involves the following steps: (1a)  Select a kind F to be considered. This can be done by picking out a name ‘F’ associated with the kind.21 (1b) Fix22 the abstract idea (or nominal essence) associated with kind F, which means offering an account of the characteristic features of Fs. (2)  Specify the persistence conditions for members of kind F. Steps (1a) and (1b) are closely related, but (1b) goes beyond (1a). Step (1b) is needed additionally because it is possible that two people use the same name ‘F’, but define the term differently and signify different ideas with it. Step (1a) focuses on picking out the kind to be considered. For instance, one can decide to focus on 20  It is worth noting that Locke reiterates immediately after the passage from II.xxvii.7 quoted here that great confusion could have been prevented had others acknowledged the importance of approaching questions of identity under sortal concepts. Since II.xxvii.7 and 15 provide the remedy to the problem introduced in II.xxvii.1, these passages are at the centre of Locke’s approach to identity over time. 21  I assume here that language has already evolved and is so advanced that it includes names for many kinds of being. However, this does not prevent us from inventing new names for additional kinds. Whenever we invent new names, we first fix an abstract idea, or nominal essence, and then give a name to it. In such cases step (1b) can precede step (1a). 22  I use this term because Locke uses it in II.xxvii.15.

Identity  21 the kind that is referred to by the name ‘oak’, ‘horse’, ‘seagull’, ‘watch’, or ‘man’. Since such names are names for a kind or sort, Locke also calls them sortal names or terms.23 According to Locke, sortal terms are general terms signifying an abstract idea or ‘a sort of Things’ (III.iii.12). It is worth noting that they neither signify one particular thing, because then they would be a proper name and not a general term, nor do they signify a plurality, because then, for instance, there would be no difference between the abstract term ‘horse’ and the plural term ‘horses’.24 According to Locke, words have immediate significations, which are ideas in the mind of the user: Words in their primary or immediate Signification, stand for nothing, but the Ideas in the Mind of him that uses them, how imperfectly soever, or carelessly those Ideas are collected from the Things, which they are supposed to represent. (III.ii.2)

For Locke, it is possible that person A and person B both use a general term ‘F’, but that the ideas in person A’s mind that are immediately signified by ‘F’ differ from the ideas in person B’s mind. However, it would be too quick to infer from this that A and B talk about two distinct kinds, one F and the other F*.25 Although it is possible that A and B refer to two distinct kinds, this cannot be assumed merely due to the fact that in the present case the immediate significations of the name ‘F’ vary. For this reason, step (1b) is relevant, because it will offer a more careful and detailed account of all the characteristic features associated with a kind, namely the nominal essence of the kind, which for Locke is an abstract idea.26 The crucial step is the step from (1b) to (2) because, in this step, one turns from considerations of the relevant kind in the abstract to persistence conditions for individual members of the kind. In order to specify the persistence conditions, Locke has to go beyond steps (1a) and (1b) because the name and the nominal essence or abstract idea associated with it, namely the characteristic features of the kind, will be shared by all members of the kind. Thus, the nominal essence by itself will not be sufficient to explain why one member persists over time and is distinct from all other members of the kind. I will elaborate on steps (1a), (1b), and (2) shortly, but first a few more general considerations are in order. Most sections of II.xxvii are devoted to the discussion of particular examples of persisting individuals, including the persistence of one atom, a collection of atoms, living organisms, artefacts, men, and persons. In light of the restricted 23  See III.iii.15. 24  See III.iii.12. 25  I will explain below in section 2.2.1 what, according to Locke, it takes for two kinds to be distinct. 26  Locke introduces nominal essences in III.iii.12–16.

22 Locke ’ s Kind-dependent Approach to Identity number of cases that Locke considers, the question arises whether Locke’s theory is meant to extend beyond these examples to other sorts or kinds of being. II.xxvii.28 suggests that it does: For whatever makes the specifick Idea, to which the name is applied, if that Idea be steadily kept to, the distinction of any thing into the same, and divers will easily be conceived, and there can arise no doubt about it.

It is worth noting that Locke here speaks of the ‘specifick Idea’, by which he means ‘the idea pertaining to a certain species’. Since Locke uses the terms ‘species’— Latin for sort—interchangeably with ‘sort’ and ‘kind’, ‘specifick Idea’ is syn­onym­ ous with ‘sortal idea’. Thus, Locke’s approach to identity is not restricted to his examples, but rather extends to other sorts or kinds of being.27 Sortal terms and nominal essences are the workmanship of the understanding.28 However, are the members of all kinds candidates for persisting things? It is worth noting that it does not follow that every kind will have members that persist over time. In some cases, all members of a kind will have momentary existence. Locke maintains that in such cases there will be no identity over time, but only diversity.29 This means that Locke operates with a broad understanding of kinds and the names associated with them. Hence, we will have to ask in the step from (1b) to (2) whether the kind under consideration is a candidate for persistence. I call Locke’s account of identity over time kind-­dependent. By this I mean that the persistence conditions vary depending on the kind of being under con­sid­er­ ation. In other words, if the nominal essences of kind F and kind G are distinct, then it is likely that the persistence conditions for members of kind F will differ from the persistence conditions for members of kind G, and we have to examine the characteristic features of Fs (or Gs) in order to specify the persistence conditions for members of F (or G). Let us now examine the different steps of the kind-­dependent approach more closely.

2.2.1  Names and Ideas of Kind F Step (1a) focuses on selecting the kind to be considered. Commonly this can be done by picking out the sortal name associated with the kind. However, it will not be sufficient merely to pick a name among the many names for kinds such as ‘daffodil’, ‘apple tree’, ‘swan’, ‘rabbit’, ‘leopard’, or ‘watch’ and to decide that one intends to consider the kind ‘swan’, because sortal names are the workmanship of 27  See also Conn, Locke on Essence and Identity, 82–3. 28  See III.iii.11–15. 29  See II.xxvii.2.

Identity  23 the understanding30 and in principle names such as ‘swan’ can have different ­significations in different minds. Moreover, it is possible that a name ‘F’ for kind F has two (or more) different immediate significations and nevertheless, each immediate signification picks out the same members of the kind. To illustrate this point, let us turn to an example. A triangle can be defined as a closed flat figure with three sides. It is not part of this definition, or, in other words, the immediate signification of the term ‘triangle’, that the sum of the angles of the triangle is equal to two right angles. However, this is a characteristic feature of all triangles. Alternatively, a triangle can be defined as a polygon whose sum of the angles is equal to two right angles. If defined this way, the immediate signification of ‘triangle’ does not explicitly contain that a triangle has three sides. Yet this is a characteristic feature of all tri­ angles. Furthermore, it is not part of either definition that ‘the external Angle of all Triangles, is bigger than either of the opposite internal Angles’ (IV.viii.8), which is a further feature of all triangles. During step (1a), when one selects a name ‘F’ associated with the kind, the immediate signification of the term ‘F’ will be in focus. However, as the example of the triangle illustrates it is possible that names associated with a kind have different immediate significations and nevertheless stand for the same kind. This supports that it is important to move beyond the ideas immediately signified by a sortal name and to consider carefully all ideas included in a nominal essence of a kind, which can be more ideas than those that are immediately signified by a sortal term. Although Locke regards general names and nominal essences as the workmanship of the human understanding, it is worth noting that he does not intend to propose that our sorting of things into kinds or species is an entirely arbitrary act of the mind. Instead, he believes ‘that Nature in the Production of Things, makes several of them alike’ (III.iii.13) and that when we sort things we try to take the similarities found in nature into consideration, at least insofar as plants and animals are concerned.31 So far I proposed that it is possible that a sortal term ‘F’ can have different immediate significations and nevertheless stand for one kind. It is time to consider more closely whether and how this proposal is consistent with Locke’s text. Locke discusses what it means for two kinds to be distinct in the following passage: So that in truth every distinct abstract Idea, is a distinct Essence: and the names that stand for such distinct Ideas, are the names of Things essentially different. Thus a circle is as essentially different from an Oval, as a Sheep from a Goat: and Rain is as essentially different from Snow, as Water from Earth; that abstract

30  See III.iii.11–14.

31  See also Locke, Drafts A and B, Draft B, §§ 75–8, 181–5.

24 Locke ’ s Kind-dependent Approach to Identity Idea which is the Essence of one, being impossible to be communicated to the other. And thus any two abstract Ideas, that in any part vary one from another, with two distinct names annexed to them, constitute two distinct sorts, or, if you please, Species, as essentially different, as any two the most remote, or opposite in the World.  (III.iii.14)

As Locke makes clear in this passage, if two nominal essences are distinct then there will be two distinct kinds. Commonly a difference in immediate signification makes it likely that the nominal essences differ, but the crucial question is whether the ideas that are immediately signified are distinct ideas. In the cited passage Locke puts emphasis on abstract ideas, essences, and kinds being distinct. This provides resources for explaining how it is possible that despite a difference in immediate signification it is possible that only one kind is constituted. As I explain in a moment, one possibility is that the immediate signification is a confused, rather than a distinct, idea. In this case, further mental effort is required to arrive at a distinct nominal essence. Another option, illustrated by the triangle example, is that two different immediate significations are what I call ‘equivalent’. Let me elaborate on both options in turn. Locke defines ‘distinct idea’ in II.xxix.4 and contrasts it with a confused idea: a distinct Idea is that wherein the Mind perceives a difference from all other; and a confused Idea is such an one, as is not sufficiently distinguishable from another, from which it ought to be different.

For example, if one intends to group all leopards and associates the idea spotted beast with them, then one will have a confused idea of a leopard, because it not only includes leopards, but also other spotted beats such as those referred to by the names ‘lynx’ or ‘panther’.32 According to Locke, indeterminacy, uncertainty and vagueness can generate confused ideas.33 If the immediate signification of a sortal term ‘F’ is confused rather than distinct then during the step from (1a) to (1b) it will be important to make sure that the abstract idea associated with the kind becomes sufficiently distinguishable from other abstract ideas by spelling out the relevant characteristics of the kind under consideration so that as a result one can focus on one distinct abstract idea that is sufficiently determinate and does not suffer from uncertainty or vagueness. Such a distinct abstract idea or nominal essence stands for a distinct kind. Additionally, I believe—and illustrated this with the triangle example—that there can be cases where the immediate significations of a sortal term differ, but nevertheless they can stand for one distinct kind. In such cases, where two 32  See II.xxix.7.

33  See II.xxix.7–9.

Identity  25 different immediate significations are sufficiently determinate I propose that we say that the immediate significations of a sortal term are equivalent. I prefer this term, because other notions such as ‘co-­extensionality’ or ‘co-­intensionality’ do not capture Locke’s thinking about abstract general terms accurately. Co-­intensionality, or sameness of meaning, is not given, because the immediate significations differ. Although equivalent terms will ultimately be co-­extensive, or refer to the same things, general abstract terms do not directly refer to things in the world, namely the extension of the term. Rather for Locke general terms signify ideas, and only mediately things in the world. Thus, using the term ‘co-­extensionality’ would ignore Locke’s understanding of the signification of abstract general terms.34 Assume that two immediate significations differ. In order to decide whether they stand for one kind or two distinct kinds, it is important to move from step (1a) to step (1b). During this step features of the kind that are implicit in the immediate signification will be made explicit. Once all the relevant characteristic ­features of the kind have been identified in step (1b), the question is whether the two sets of characteristic features differ. If there is a difference, they constitute two distinct kinds; if not, the two different immediate significations are ­equivalent and constitute one kind. I will return to these issues in chapter  4 where I ask whether different characterizations that Locke gives of the term ‘person’ are equivalent.

2.2.2  Specifying Persistence Conditions for Members of Kind F Step (1b) offers a detailed account of all the characteristic features of the kind. The move from step (1a) to step (1b) can take place at an abstract level, meaning that one can examine the kind F without focusing on a particular member or all the multiple members that belong to the kind and exist at particular times and ­places.35 The task in step (2) is to specify persistence conditions for members of a kind. In this step the focus has to shift from the kind F in the abstract to members

34  He writes: ‘The next thing therefore to be considered, is, What kind of signification it is, that general Words have. For as it is evident, that they do not signify barely one particular thing; for then they would not be general Terms, but proper Names: so on the other side, ’tis as evident, they do not signify a plurality; for Man and Men would then signify the same; and the distinction of numbers (as Grammarians call them) would be superfluous and useless. That then which general Words signify, is a sort of Things; and each of them does that, by being a sign of an abstract Idea in the mind, to which Idea, as Things existing are found to agree, so they come to be ranked under that name; or, which is all one, be of that sort’ (III.iii.12). There is a further reason for why focusing on co-­extensionality can be problematic. If Relative Identity interpretations are correct, co-­extensionality will not be helpful for specifying persistence conditions. According to Relative Identity interpretations, it is possible that one thing x is both F and G and the same F as another thing y, but not the same G as y. I engage more closely with Relative Identity interpretations in chapter 3. 35  For further details concerning Locke’s account of how we form abstract general ideas of kinds see III.iii.

26 Locke ’ s Kind-dependent Approach to Identity of the kind, because it does not make sense to enquire about the persistence of an abstract idea that lacks a particular time and place of existence. Things that are capable of persisting will exist at particular times and places.36 Hence, when specifying persistence conditions we have to keep in mind that they are meant to apply to individual members of the kind that exist at particular times and places. How can we specify persistence conditions for members of a kind F? The nominal essence, namely the characteristic features of the kind, will not by themselves provide the persistence conditions, because they are shared by all members of the kind and will not sufficiently explain why one member is the same with itself at different times, but differs from other members. Even the refined proposal that persistence for members of kind F consists in spatiotemporal continuity of sortal characteristics of kind F will not be sufficient. To see why, consider a spatiotemporally continuous series of masses of matter. For instance, consider an apple tree over a year. At each time at which the apple tree exists there is also a mass of matter at that spatiotemporal location. However, the tree grows, blossoms, grows fruits, and loses leaves over the period of a year and the mass of matter that composes the tree changes. For this reason, it will not be the same mass of matter despite a spatiotemporally continuous series of masses of matter. To avoid this problem, it can be argued that not just any spatiotemporal series of masses of matter is sufficient for the persistence of a mass of matter, but rather it is im­port­ ant that this mass of matter continues to exist through space and time. Now, the question is pressing what makes this mass of matter at t1 the same as that mass of matter at t2, or what makes this apple tree at t1 the same as that apple tree at t2. Answers of the form that this mass of matter/apple tree has to be identical with that mass of matter/apple tree would be circular and question-­begging.37 Hence, a genuine further step is needed that will specify what the distinctive persistence conditions are for masses of matter, apple trees, or members of other kinds of being. Although it may be tempting to search for a general procedure by which persistence conditions for different kinds of being can be specified, I believe that this is an unfounded expectation. Taking seriously the kind-­dependent interpretation means acknowledging that persistence conditions commonly differ for different kinds of being. This further makes plausible that the way by which persistence conditions for kind F are specified can differ from the way persistence conditions 36  See II.xxvii.1. 37  One may accuse Locke of offering uninformative persistence conditions for an atom and for masses of matter. See William  P.  Alston and Jonathan Bennett, ‘Locke on People and Substances,’ Philosophical Review 97 (1988): 32–3; Conn, Locke on Essence and Identity, 76–80. Although one may regard Locke’s view that an atom persists as long as it continues to exist as uninformative, his understanding of the persistence conditions for several atoms or masses of matter is informative and not trivial. Locke argues that a mass of matter will cease to exist as soon as it gains or loses a part (see II.xxvii.3). This means that he endorses mereological essentialism with respect to the persistence of atoms or masses of matter.

Identity  27 for kind G are specified. Rather than providing one general procedure for ­specifying persistence conditions that is applicable to all kinds, I take it to be more promising to consider for each kind on a case by case basis how the persistence conditions for members of the kind can best be specified. Nevertheless, we can expect that a close examination of the nominal essence, namely the characteristic features of the kind, will offer guidance as to how persistence conditions for the kind under consideration can be specified.38 It is worth adding that, although spatiotemporal continuity is likely to be important for the persistence of members of many kinds, we cannot suppose that it is a requirement for all kinds. Locke’s theory is consistent with the possibility of gappy existence over time, meaning that a member of kind F can exist for a certain period of time, then cease to exist, and come back into existence at a later time.39 To explain why his theory can accommodate such cases, it is helpful to turn to the general principles that he formulates in II.xxvii.1. According to Locke, considerations concerning identity over time are constrained by the following four conditions: (1) Nothing can exist at more than one place at a time. (2) Two things of the same kind cannot exist at the same place at the same time. (3) One thing cannot have two beginnings of existence.40 (4) Two things (of the same kind) cannot have one beginning of existence.41 Locke notes that (3) and (4) follow from the preceding considerations, which intimates that they follow from (1) and/or (2).42 While these principles do not by themselves offer persistence conditions for members of a kind F, they formulate general constraints that persistence conditions have to meet. The third principle is particularly relevant with regard to the question of whether members of a kind can have gappy existence.

38 For further discussion, see Baruch Brody, ‘Locke on the Identity of Persons,’ American Philosophical Quarterly 9 (1972): 331–2; Nicholas Griffin, Relative Identity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 6–7. 39  See Martha Brandt Bolton, ‘Locke on Identity: The Scheme of Simple and Compounded Things,’ in Individuation and Identity in Early Modern Philosophy: Descartes to Kant, ed. Kenneth F. Barber and Jorge  J.  E.  Gracia (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 127 n. 21; Conn, Locke on Essence and Identity, 70–1; Joshua Hoffman, ‘Locke on Whether a Thing Can Have Two Beginnings of Existence,’ Ratio 22 (1980); Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 332, 340, 378–82. 40  As I explain in chapter  3, the context and logical consistency make plausible that Locke only endorses a refined version of (3), namely (3*) one thing cannot have two beginnings of existence at two different places at the same time. Since not all interpreters read the principle as (3*), I mention (3) here, because Locke literally states (3) in II.xxvii.1. 41  Although Locke does not explicitly state that the two things are to be two things of the same kind, the context implies that his principle applies to things of the same kind. I thank an anonymous referee for drawing my attention to this issue. 42  See II.xxvii.1.

28 Locke ’ s Kind-dependent Approach to Identity At first sight (3) seems to exclude the possibility of gappy existence. However, since Locke believes that (3) follows from the previous principles, (3) does not exclude gappy existence, but rather it rules out that one thing has two different beginnings at the same time.43 This means that Locke’s claims about a thing’s beginning of existence in (3) and (4) refer to the time when the thing first came into existence.44 So far we have acknowledged that Locke’s view leaves room for the possibility of gappy existence. However, it does not follow that the persistence conditions for all kinds will be gappy. Rather, if at all, it is more likely that the persistence conditions for members of particular kinds can have gaps. In such cases, it will be important to explain what it takes for a member of a certain kind to continue to exist after a period of non-­existence. While the conditions are likely to vary depending on the kind under consideration, there will have to be a unique relation to the first beginning of existence.

2.3  Identity and Individuation Having introduced Locke’s understanding of individuation and his kind-­dependent approach to questions of identity over time, it is worth reflecting further on how individuation and identity are intertwined in his view. Locke’s principle of ­individuation (PrI**) makes it possible to pick out a member of kind F at a place and time as distinct from other members of the same kind that exist at the same time. The different steps of the kind-­dependent approach to identity over time do not invoke Locke’s principle of individuation (PrI**). Steps (1a) and (1b) focus on kind F in the abstract, rather than on particular members of the kind. In order to specify persistence conditions for members of kind F, it is important to shift the focus from abstract considerations about kind F towards individual members of the kind, but this does not require the presence of a particular ­member at place p and time t or place p* and time t*. It is only when the persistence conditions are applied to concrete particular members that Locke’s principle of individuation is needed to supplement his kind-­dependent approach to identity. If we want to apply persistence conditions, say to find out, whether a particular cat continues to exist over time, (PrI**) makes it possible to uniquely pick out a cat at place p1 and time t1 if the ­features included in the nominal essence of a cat are present at that place and time. If (PrI**) has shown that a cat exists at place p1 and time t1 we can then apply the ­persistence conditions for cats and examine at what other times and places the same cat exists. In particular, this makes it possible to ask whether the cat at place p1 and time t1 is identical with a cat at place p2 and time t2.

43  See Bolton, ‘Locke on Identity’, 127 n. 21; Hoffman, ‘Locke on Whether a Thing Can Have Two Beginnings of Existence’. 44  See Hoffman, ‘Locke on Whether a Thing Can Have Two Beginnings of Existence’.

3

Problems with Other Interpretations of Locke’s Account of Identity So far my strategy has been to develop an interpretation of Locke’s approach to identity on the basis of his text. The aim of this chapter is to clarify how the kind-dependent interpretation differs from other prominent interpretations of Locke’s account of identity and to show why it should be preferred. In the literature, the question of whether Locke’s theory is a version of the Relative Identity1 theory has received major attention and a coincidence interpretation is often ­considered to be the main rival interpretation.2 My aim in this chapter is to show that the kind-­dependent interpretation is best suited to capture the core of Locke’s approach to identity over time and that defenders of other interpretations can easily accept it. The problem with other interpretations such as Relative Identity and coincidence interpretations is that they attribute metaphysical positions to Locke that are not well supported by his  text and thereby create problematic assumptions that do not arise for the kind-dependent interpretation. To explain how the dispute among defenders of Relative Identity and coincidence interpretations arises, let us turn to an example. Two years ago I planted a small lemon tree. Since then the tree has grown, blossomed, grown fruits, lost leaves, and grown new ones. It is plausible to say that the lemon tree today is still the same lemon tree as it was two years ago, yet the mass of matter composing the

1  Here and in the following I will indicate that I discuss the relative identity interpretations in the secondary literature on Locke by capitalizing ‘Relative Identity’. This will make it easier to distinguish them from other versions of relative identity. 2  The most detailed defence of why Locke endorses relative identity has been offered by Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, ch. 7. Other interpreters who ascribe a version of the relative identity theory to Locke include P.  T.  Geach, ‘Identity,’ The Review of Metaphysics 21 (1967): 11; Douglas Odegard, ‘Identity through Time,’ American Philosophical Quarterly 9 (1972); Thiel, ‘Individuation’, 1:420–1; Thiel, Lockes Theorie der personalen Identität, 40–2; Thiel, ‘Personal Identity’, 1:888–9; Gary Wedeking, ‘Locke on Personal Identity and the Trinity Controversy of the 1690s,’ Dialogue 29 (1990): 179–82. Odegard distinguishes Geach’s version of relativity from Locke’s. Interpreters who ascribe a coincidence interpretation to Locke include Vere Chappell, ‘Locke and Relative Identity,’ History of Philosophy Quarterly 6 (1989); Vere Chappell, ‘Locke on the Ontology of Matter, Living Things and Persons,’ Philosophical Studies 60 (1990); Dan Kaufman, ‘Locke on Individuation and the Corpuscular Basis of Kinds,’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 75 (2007); Yaffe, ‘Locke on Ideas of Identity and Diversity’. Griffin, Relative Identity, 17–19, argues that Locke’s text is not decisive and while some passages support the relative identity interpretation, others support the coincidence interpretation.

Locke on Persons and Personal Identity. Ruth Boeker, Oxford University Press (2021). © Ruth Boeker. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198846758.003.0003

30  Problems with Other Interpretations tree is not any longer the same mass of matter. Locke’s account of identity aims to explain examples such as this. However, defenders of Relative Identity and coincidence interpretations disagree about how Locke would understand such ex­amples. Defenders of Relative Identity argue that today there is one thing that is both a lemon tree and a mass of matter, even though over time it can be the same lemon tree, but not the same mass of matter, while defenders of a coincidence view argue that today there are two distinct things, one a lemon tree and one a mass of matter.3 More generally, the disagreement concerns the question whether at a particular place and time there exists one thing that is both F and G, where F and G are different kinds, or whether two distinct things exist at this place and time, one F and one G.4 I will pay particularly close attention to the debate between defenders of Relative Identity and coincidence interpretations, not only because it has dom­ in­ated the literature, but also because it is time to approach the debate in new ways. I situate the dispute among Locke scholars in the context of twentiethcentury debates about relative identity (section 3.1), show how Locke’s remarks about the relation between persons and human beings (or men, as he would say,) cannot easily be reconciled with Relative Identity and coincidence in­ter­pret­ ations (section  3.2), and ask in what sense defenders of Relative Identity and coincidence views understand distinctness (or oneness) when they dispute whether one thing or two distinct things exist at a particular spatiotemporal location (section 3.3). By putting pressure on interpreters on both sides to spell out in what sense they regard things to be distinct or one, the focus of the debate starts to shift and we can call into question the common assumption that both views are rival interpretations. After summarizing the lessons of the debate ­(section 3.4), I briefly turn to other interpretations in the secondary literature on Locke (section 3.5).

3.1  Relative Identity, Coincidence, and Absolute Identity Before I examine the debates among Locke scholars more closely, it is informative to trace the origin of Relative Identity interpretations of Locke. P. T. Geach introduced and developed the thesis that identity is relative during the second half of the twentieth century and then he and various other interpreters applied it to

3  This example is a variation of Locke’s example of the oak/mass of matter in II.xxvii.3–4. 4  There is a bit of variation as to how the Relative Identity thesis is formulated. I give this characterization, because both Matthew Stuart and Vere Chappell, who are respectively important defenders and opponents of Relative Identity, understand Relative Identity in these terms. Thiel offers a weaker formulation by stating that ‘different “specifick” or sortal ideas may be applied to the same individual a (at time t)’ or, as he also puts it ‘the same individual can be considered’ under different sortal ideas (Thiel, ‘Individuation’, 1:240–1).

Relative Identity, Coincidence, and Absolute Identity  31 Locke’s account of identity.5 In the debates in the twentieth century we find both linguistic and ontological theses regarding relative identity. On the one hand, the linguistic relative identity thesis says that identity predicates in a language are meaningless unless they are elliptical for sortal-­relative identity predicates. This means that a sentence of the form ‘a = b’ is meaningless, unless it is elliptical for ‘a is the same F as b.’ On the other hand, the ontological relative identity thesis says that the ontological relations that ground identity are sortal-­relative or depend on the sortal under consideration. Geach endorses both linguistic and ontological relative identity, because he assumes that there is a correspondence between language and ontology.6 However, linguistic and ontological relative identity need not be intertwined in this way and one can accept one thesis without accepting the other. The ontological relative identity thesis can be contrasted with the ontological view that identity is always ontologically grounded in the same relation or entity,7 irrespective of the kinds of being that are considered to be identical. Let us call this view ‘ontological absolute identity’.8 Several eighteenth-­ century thinkers argue for the view that identity has to be ‘strict’ or ‘perfect’ and only immaterial substances are said to ground identity, because they are indivisible and do not change.9 The view that immaterial substances and only immaterial substances ontologically ground identity offers an illustration of how ontological absolute identity can be understood. It is clear that Locke rejects ontological absolute identity, because he emphasizes that the persistence conditions or the relations that ground identity over time differ depending on the kind under consideration.10 For example, as we have 5  See Geach, ‘Identity’; P. T. Geach, Reference and Generality: An Examination of Some Medieval and Modern Theories, Contemporary Philosophy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1962), 38–40. Wiggins is a major critic of the relative identity thesis. See David Wiggins, Identity and Spatio-­ Temporal Continuity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967); David Wiggins, Sameness and Substance (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980); David Wiggins, Sameness and Substance Renewed (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 6  One of Geach’s early arguments for the relativity thesis appeals to considerations of language expansion and reference. According to Geach, there is a correspondence between language and ontology and the ontological distinctions that one can draw depend on the predicates of one’s language. For instance, let us consider a sublanguage L* of language L and assume that L contains predicates that are not contained in L*. Geach argues that in such a case it will be possible to make discriminations in the ontological theory T, which corresponds to L, that cannot be made in T*, which is the ontological theory corresponding to L*. See P. T. Geach, ‘Ontological Relativity and Relative Identity,’ in Logic and Ontology, ed. M. K. Munitz (New York: New York University Press, 1973), 298–302. See also Harold Noonan and Ben Curtis, ‘Identity’, ed. Edward  N.  Zalta, Spring 2017 ed., Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity/ section 3. 7  I say ‘relation or entity’ to leave open whether identity is grounded by a relation or by another entity such as a substance. In the historical debates immaterial substances are often thought to onto­ logic­al­ly ground identity over time. 8  See Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 299–300; Yaffe, ‘Locke on Ideas of Identity and Diversity’, 197. 9  See Butler, ‘Of Personal Identity’, 1:317–25, especially 1:319–20; Reid, EIP, III.iv, 264–7. Hume mentions it in Treatise 1.4.2.24, 33, 36 1.4.6.1, 6, 8–9; SBN 199, 203–204, 251, 254–6. 10  See II.xxvii.3–9, especially II.xxvii.7, 15.

32  Problems with Other Interpretations seen he makes very clear that the persistence conditions for masses of matter differ from the persistence conditions for oak trees. This means that Locke accepts the view that the ontological relations that ground identity are sortal-­relative or kind-­dependent. However, it remains to examine whether any other stronger version of relative identity can be ascribed to him. The ontological claim that the relations that ground identity vary depending on the kind under consideration is not by itself a position that would be labelled ‘relative identity’, because it does not have to lead to genuinely interesting cases of relative identity. This becomes clearer if we turn from considerations of one kind of being to more than one kind of being and the relations that ground identity for members of these kinds. Let us focus on kinds F and G. There can be cases where things are F-identical, but not G-identical, because the things that are F-identical are not Gs at any time of their existence. Such cases are trivial and do not establish any interesting version of relative identity. We will exclude them in the following. The interesting cases concern cases where things are F-identical but not G-identical,11 and the things that are F-identical are Gs, at least, at one time of their existence. Such cases are commonly the focus in the literature on relative identity. On this basis let us return to the interpretations that we find in the secondary literature on Locke and spell out how the Relative Identity view can be distinguished from the coincidence view. In the following a and a’ refer to things that exist at time t1 and place p1 and b and b’ to things that exist at a different time t2 and place p2. The ontological descriptions that can be given of cases where things are the same F, but not the same G include the following: (R)  a =F b & a ≠G b & F(a) & F(b) & [G(a) v G(b)] (C)  a =F b & a’ ≠G b’ & F(a) & F(b) & [G(a’) v G(b’)] & a ≠ a’ & b ≠ b’ It is also not uncommon that the disjunct in (R) and (C) is replaced by a conjunct. This yields the following stronger theses: (R*)  a =F b & a ≠G b & F(a) & F(b) & G(a) & G(b) (C*)  a =F b & a’ ≠G b’ & F(a) & F(b) & G(a’) & G(b’) & a ≠ a’ & b ≠ b’ Relative Identity is commonly characterized as (R) or (R*) and contrasted with coincidence views (C) or (C*).12 The reason why some defenders of Relative 11 Wiggins, for example, introduces the question concerning relative identity as the question ‘whether a can be the same f as b without being the same g as b. Better and more precisely, the question is whether a can be the same f as b, and not the same g as b, even though a or b is itself a g.’ (Wiggins, Sameness and Substance Renewed, 22.) 12 Relative identity has been characterized as thesis (R) by Bruce Langtry, ‘Locke and the Relativisation of Identity,’ Philosophical Studies 27 (1975); Wiggins, Sameness and Substance Renewed,

Relative Identity, Coincidence, and Absolute Identity  33 Identity focus on (R*) instead of (R) is that they believe that instances of (R*) are genuine cases of Relative Identity, while (R) can be too easily satisfied. The weaker version (R) includes cases like the following, which (R*) excludes: Assume that there is a seagull and a mass of matter at time t1, at time t2 the seagull dies, and at time t3 there is the same mass of matter as at t1, but no seagull.13 Whether one regards Relative Identity as (R) or (R*) depends further on the dialectic of one’s argument: on the one hand, if one intends to argue for Relative Identity, then one escapes the charge of triviality by establishing (R*). On the other hand, if one intends to reject Relative Identity or to show that one is not committed to Relative Identity, then the argument will have greater force if it focuses on the weaker version (R). Why is the coincidence view formulated in terms of a =F b & a’ ≠G b’ rather than a = b & a’ ≠ b’? This formulation acknowledges that for Locke persistence conditions are kind-­dependent, which means that the persistence conditions differ, say, for masses of matter, lemon trees, cats, human beings, or persons. However, it is useful to reflect on this point, because it marks an important difference between defenders of coincidence views and the view that ontological identity is absolute. To bring the difference to light, let us also formalize the latter. Defenders of onto­ logic­al absolute identity maintain that identity for all kinds is ontologically grounded in the same way. For instance, various defenders of this position hold that only immaterial substances ground ontological absolute identity. Let us focus on this proposal for a moment and assume for the sake of argument that only immaterial substances ontologically ground identity. It is helpful to distinguish cases where an immaterial substance coexists with a material thing, such as immaterial souls and human material bodies. Cases where two material things coexist, such as in the example of the lemon tree and the mass of matter, will never be instances of identity over time, because, as stipulated only immaterial substances ground identity. Hence, examples of purely material beings such as the mass of matter and the lemon tree can be excluded. For present purposes, it is sufficient to focus on cases where a material entity coexists with an immaterial substance. I will use subscripts ‘m’ and ‘i’ to indicate whether the things are ma­ter­ial or immaterial respectively. (Ai/m) ai = bi & a’m ≠ b’m & F(ai) & F(bi) & [G(a’m) v G(b’m)] & ai ≠ a’m & bi ≠ b’m (Ai/m*) ai = bi & a’m ≠ b’m & F(ai) & F(bi) & G(a’m) & G(b’m) & ai ≠ a’m & bi ≠ b’m 28–9; Yaffe, ‘Locke on Ideas of Identity and Diversity’, 198. It has been characterized as thesis (R*) by Chappell, ‘Locke and Relative Identity’, 71; Conn, Locke on Essence and Identity, 87; Odegard, ‘Identity through Time’; Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 307; Thiel, ‘Individuation’, 1:240; William  L.  Uzgalis, ‘Relative Identity and Locke’s Principle of Individuation,’ History of Philosophy Quarterly 7 (1990): 284; Wiggins, Sameness and Substance Renewed, 33. 13  For further discussion see Harry Deutsch, ‘Relative Identity,’ ed. Edward N. Zalta, Winter 2008 ed., Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-­relative/; Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 330–4.

34  Problems with Other Interpretations The difference between (C) or (C*), on the one hand, and (Ai/m) or (Ai/m*), on the other hand, concerns the question of whether the relations that ground identity are kind-­dependent, as is assumed in (C) or (C*), or whether identity is onto­ logic­al­ly grounded in only one way—namely by immaterial substances as currently assumed—and does not vary for different kinds. (C) or (C*) endorse the view that the persistence conditions for members of kind F differ from the per­ sist­ence conditions for kind G (formalized as ‘=F’ or ‘=G’), while if (Ai/m) or (Ai/m*) hold the metaphysical constitution of the thing under consideration will be important, which can be an immaterial substance or a material thing, and this metaphysical constitution decides whether the thing is a candidate for per­sist­ ence. If the thing under consideration is immaterial then its identity over time consists in the continued existence of the immaterial substance, while if it is material it is not capable of persisting. Ontological absolute identity, as formulated here, captures how absolute, or—as it is also called—perfect or strict, identity is commonly understood in historical debates. This helps to show how Locke’s view differs from other accounts of identity in the early modern period. However, the early modern debates concerning perfect or strict identity differ from the disputes concerning relative and absolute identity in twentieth-­century debates. In twentieth-­century analytic philosophy the concern is not whether identity is grounded by one metaphysical entity such as an immaterial substance, but rather whether one or multiple identity-­predicates are needed in our language. In this context, ontological descriptions such as (C) or (C*) do not receive much consideration, and presumably due to their violation of the principle of ontological parsimony they would not have been very attractive positions. Interestingly Vere Chappell, who introduced the coincidence view and ascribes it to Locke, does not engage with the dispute whether identity is relative or absolute; instead his aim is to argue that Locke’s examples have the form (C*).14 This means that in the secondary literature on Locke it is common to accept that the relations that ground identity, or in other words the persistence conditions, are sortal-­relative or kind-­dependent and the real dispute focuses on the question how many things exist at time t1 at place p1 and at time t2 at place p2. It is plausible to accept that Locke regards persistence conditions as kind-­dependent, because, for example, he makes very clear that the persistence conditions for masses of matter differ from the persistence conditions for living organisms.15 However, it remains to be examined whether Locke has to take a stance on the question whether an F and a G existing at the same spatiotemporal location are one thing 14  See Chappell, ‘Locke and Relative Identity’, 72, 76–8. See also Chappell, ‘Locke on the Ontology of Matter, Living Things and Persons’. It is worth noting that Chappell did not use the term ‘coincidence interpretation’. This term has been coined by Kaufman, ‘Locke on Individuation and the Corpuscular Basis of Kinds’. It is now widely used by other interpreters, including Stuart. Chappell refers to the view as the ‘doctrine of double existence’ and others refer to it as ‘co-­location interpretation’. 15  See II.xxvii.3–4.

Relative Identity, Coincidence, and Absolute Identity  35 or two distinct things. For instance, are the mass of matter and the lemon tree that exist at a certain spatiotemporal location one thing or two things, or can Locke remain neutral on this issue? Chappell ascribes a coincidence view to Locke, because he regards it as a consequence of Locke’s principle that ‘one thing cannot have two beginnings of Existence’ (II.xxvii.1).16 If (R) or (R*) is correct and there is one thing that is both an oak and a mass of matter, then the oak will come into existence at a different time than the mass of matter. Since Chappell takes this result to be inconsistent with Locke’s principle, he rejects a Relative Identity interpretation. However, Stuart and other interpreters have pointed out that it is questionable to interpret and apply the principle that one thing cannot have two beginnings of existence in this way.17 In II.xxvii.1 Locke states that it follows from the previous principles, since the principle in question is preceded by the phrase ‘[f]rom whence it follows’. The principles that Locke introduces earlier in the section include the following: (1)  Nothing can exist at more than one place at a time. (2)  Two things of the same kind cannot exist at the same place at the same time. This means that we have to consider whether and how principle (3), which Chappell invokes in support of a coincidence interpretation, follows from (1) and (2). Here again is the principle: (3)  One thing cannot have two beginnings of existence. It may be helpful to consider the relevant passage, where Locke formulates (3) in full: From whence it follows, that one thing cannot have two beginnings of Existence, nor two things one beginning, it being impossible for two things of the same kind, to be or exist in the same instant, in the very same place; or one and the same thing in different places.  (II.xxvii.1)

Read in context, it becomes plausible to interpret (3) as (3*): (3*)  One thing cannot have two beginnings of existence at two different places at the same time.

16  See Chappell, ‘Locke and Relative Identity’, 73. 17  See Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 315–16. See also Bolton, ‘Locke on Identity’, 127 n. 21; Hoffman, ‘Locke on Whether a Thing Can Have Two Beginnings of Existence’.

36  Problems with Other Interpretations This means that the principle states that one thing cannot simultaneously have two beginnings at two different places. As Joshua Hoffman, and following him Stuart, have argued a further reason for preferring interpretation (3*) over (3) is that (3*) follows from the previous principles, while (3) does not.18 In light of (1), Locke accepts that it is not possible for one thing to exist at two different places simultaneously. This entails that a thing cannot exist at two different places simultaneously at the time when it begins to exist. Thus, (3*) follows from (1). Chappell, as a critic of Relative Identity, assumes that he can show that Locke’s principles rule out the possibility that there is one thing at a particular spatiotemporal location that is both F and G, such as an oak and a mass of matter, and that F began to exist at time t1, while G began to exist at a different time t2. (3) seems to entail that one thing cannot be both F and G and yet have two different beginnings of existence. However, if (3) is replaced by (3*) this inference is blocked. Hence, one cannot reject (R) or (R*) by means of (3*).19 Both defenders of Relative Identity and of the coincidence view tend to cite the following passage in support of their interpretations:20 An Oak, growing from a Plant to a great Tree, and then lopp’d, is still the same Oak: And a Colt grown up to a Horse, sometimes fat, sometimes lean, is all the while the same Horse: though, in both these Cases, there may be a manifest change of parts: So that truly they are not either of them the same Masses of Matter, though they be truly one of them the same Oak, and the other the same Horse. The reason whereof is, that in these two cases of a Mass of Matter, and a living Body, Identity is not applied to the same thing.  (II.xxvii.3)

Stuart offers a clever reading of the first full sentence in support of (R*). According to Stuart, ‘[w]hat is crucial is Locke’s claim that “they are not either of them the same Masses of Matter, though they be truly one of them the same Oak, and the other the same Horse” .’21 Stuart argues that ‘they’ must refer to two different things, one of them is an oak and one a horse. Let us assume with Stuart that ‘they’ refers to the oak at time t2 and the horse at t2.22 Since Locke claims that ‘they are not either of them the same masses of matter’, rather than ‘they are not either of them a mass of matter’, Stuart argues that the one thing at t2 is both an oak and 18  See Hoffman, ‘Locke on Whether a Thing Can Have Two Beginnings of Existence’; Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 315–16. 19  There may be other reasons why Locke does not merely accept (3*), but also the stronger prin­ ciple (3). Yet this would require additional arguments. For further discussion, see Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 322–6. 20 See Griffin, Relative Identity, 17; Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 326–8; Thiel, ‘Individuation’, 1:240–1. Chappell, ‘Locke and Relative Identity’, 72, notes that the passage is not decisive. 21 Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 327. 22  For the purpose of the argument it is irrelevant whether ‘they’ refers to the oak and horse at t2 or t1.

Relative Identity, Coincidence, and Absolute Identity  37 a mass of matter, and the other both a horse and a mass of matter, but the former is not the same mass of matter as the mass of matter that composes the oak at t1 and the latter not the same mass of matter as the mass of matter that composes the horse at t1. A defender of the coincidence interpretation has to postulate the existence of at least six different things—an oak, a horse, and four different masses of matter—and would have to admit that the referents of ‘they’ and ‘them’ change in the passage. Yet Stuart admits that the following sentence, where Locke states that ‘in these two cases of a Mass of Matter, and a living Body, Identity is not applied to the same thing’ can be read in support of the coincidence interpretation.23 If ‘thing’ is interpreted to refer to the metaphysical entities in the ultimate nature of reality, then this sentence supports the coincidence interpretation.24 Locke’s use of the term ‘thing’ varies and, while it can refer to metaphysical entities, he also uses it to refer to ideas. Stuart points out that Locke ‘speaks of identity as being “attributed” or “applied” to ideas (II.xxvii.1, l.11), to things (II.xxvii.1, ll.27–30), and to names (II.xxvii.7, ll.25–6).’25 According to Stuart, Locke may be carelessly shifting among these different uses: ‘When he says that “Identity is not applied to the same thing” in these “two cases of a Mass of Matter, and a living Body”, this may mean no more than that these are different identity judgments.’26 Why would Locke be speaking loosely in one sentence if he has chosen the grammar most carefully in the immediately preceding sentence? Contrary to Stuart, I believe that it is important to acknowledge that Locke’s kind-­dependent approach to identity involves several steps—as outlined in chapter 2, section 2.2— and these steps can help explain the shifts concerning identity being applied to names, ideas, and things. Locke argues that we first have to select a kind to be considered, clarify the meaning of the relevant sortal name and account for the characteristic features of the kind under consideration. These steps, namely (1a) and (1b), concern names and ideas. After we have completed these tasks, we are in a position to specify the persistence conditions for members of a kind. In this next step, which I called step (2), we turn to things or particular members of a kind that exist in the world. On this basis, I believe that it makes sense that the passage in II.xxvii.7, which outlines Locke’s approach to questions of identity, concerns names and ideas. Here he focuses on steps (1a) and (1b) of his kinddependent approach to identity. It is important to note that this passage addresses different issues from the passage in II.xxvii.3, which concerns Locke’s examples of the oak and the mass of matter and the horse and the mass of matter, where Locke talks about identity being applied to things. There he focuses on things, because

23  See Griffin, Relative Identity, 17; Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 327–8. 24  Chappell, ‘Locke and Relative Identity’, 72, who is a defender of the coincidence interpretation, does not regard this sentence to be decisive. 25 Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 328. 26 Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 328.

38  Problems with Other Interpretations in these examples the names and ideas associated with the relevant kinds have already been fixed, and there the issue is how persistence conditions for members of a kind can be specified. In contrast to Stuart’s interpretation, ‘they’ and ‘them’ in the passage from II.xxvii.3 can be read as referring to the stuff at place p2 at t2 (oak/mass of matter example) and to the stuff at place q2 at t2 (horse/mass of matter example), in a meta­ phys­ic­ally uncommitted way that leaves open whether ultimately one or two things exist at that spatiotemporal location. Understood this way, the sentence in question becomes: ‘So that truly they [i.e. the stuff a p2 at t2 and the stuff at q2 at t2] are not either of them the same Masses of Matter, though they be truly one of them [i.e. the stuff at p2 at t2] the same Oak [as the stuff at p1 at t1], and the other [i.e. the stuff at q2 at t2] the same Horse [as the stuff at q1 at t1].’ This reading better accommodates Locke’s metaphysical agnosticism regarding the ultimate carving of reality. In the final sentence of the passage quoted above from II.xxvii.3 Locke could have different identity judgements in mind—as Stuart suggests—but, alternatively, he could be using ‘thing’ to refer to things conceived under sortal ideas and understand oaks and masses of matter as well as horses and masses of matter as conceptually distinct. The upshot is that Locke’s examples of the oak/mass of matter and the horse/ mass of matter do not provide decisive support for either Relative Identity or a coincidence view. Instead, Locke’s text can be read in a metaphysically less demanding way that requires that the sortal ideas F and G be conceptually distinct, but does not require an answer to the question how many things exist in the ultimate nature of reality at a particular place and time. The kind-­dependent interpretation, introduced in the previous chapter, accommodates this meta­phys­ ic­ally less demanding reading and does not require an answer to the question whether an F and a G existing at the same spatiotemporal location be one thing or two distinct things. I will elaborate on this point in the next two sections.

3.2  Human Beings, Persons, and Locke’s Metaphysical Agnosticism So far the discussion of the oak/mass of matter and horse/mass of matter ex­amples has shown that there is no clear and decisive textual evidence in support for either a Relative Identity or a coincidence interpretation. In this section, I examine Locke’s remarks about the relation between persons and human beings and will reach a stronger conclusion, namely, that both views conflict with his agnostic attitude towards metaphysics. Although Locke is aware that we often do not distinguish the term ‘person’ from ‘man’ in everyday speech, he emphasizes that they are distinct sortal terms and believes that the continued existence of a person does not have to coincide with the continued existence of a human being.

Human Beings, Persons, and Locke’s Metaphysical Agnosticism  39 As can be expected, defenders of Relative Identity argue that at a time there is just one individual that is both a person and a human being, while defenders of a coincidence view argue that a person is distinct from a human being, though co-­located.27 However, there is an important difference between this case and ex­amples of plants and trees. While Locke is willing to accept that plants are material living organisms, he wants to leave open the possibility that human beings have immaterial souls or are immaterial substances as becomes clear in II.xxvii.21. There he asks what the term ‘man’ can refer to and lists three options: first, it can refer to a purely immaterial thinking substance; second, it can refer to a purely material human animal; third, it can refer to the union of an immaterial substance and a material body. Locke sees no need to decide among these meanings, because he believes that his account of persons and personal identity holds irrespective of the particular meaning of the term ‘man’.28 We can explain why he does not settle in II.xxvii.21 whether human beings are material animals, purely immaterial substances such as Cartesian egos29 or Platonic immaterial substances, or unions of immaterial souls and bodies,30 if we understand this passage in the context of his agnostic views regarding the onto­ logic­al constitution of substances. Locke remains agnostic about whether thinking takes place in material or immaterial substance.31 If thinking takes place in material substances, then it is plausible that human beings are purely material beings, as suggested by the second meaning of ‘man’ in II.xxvii.21. However, if thinking takes place in immaterial substance, then the first or third meaning of ‘man’ is preferable. Due to Locke’s agnosticism concerning the materiality or immateriality of thinking substance—and hence his agnosticism about the ontological constitution of human beings—it is likely that he would doubt that the metaphysical disputes among defenders of Relative Identity and coincidence views can be settled and are worthwhile having. In II.xxvii.21 Locke takes seriously the possibility that human beings are unions of immaterial substances and material bodies. This option cannot easily be reconciled with the proposal held by defenders of Relative Identity, namely, that at a time there is one thing that is both a person and a 27  See Chappell, ‘Locke and Relative Identity’, 76–81; Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 322–6; Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, 107–9. 28  Chappell, ‘Locke and Relative Identity’, 76, acknowledges this passages and admits that it creates complications for a coincidence interpretation. Chappell argues that there is no indication that Locke is inclined to accept the first option throughout the rest of the chapter, but rather he switches between the second and third option. Given this amendment, Chappell believes that Locke’s examples of men and persons support the coincidence view. 29  Locke engages with a Cartesian view in II.i.9–19 and argues that it is extremely unlikely, because it leads to problematic consequences. Nevertheless, he never claims that it is mistaken and his account of personal identity is consistent with it. 30 Locke’s friend Robert Boyle, for example, endorses such a view in Boyle, ‘Some Physico-­ Theological Considerations’, 205–6. 31  See II.xxiii.28–32, 37, IV.iii.6, Works 4:33–7.

40  Problems with Other Interpretations human being. If human beings are mind-­body unions, then it is plausible to say that at a spatiotemporal location there will be two things that are united, rather than just one thing. Moreover, since Locke introduces persons as thinking intelligent beings,32 it is not clear that a person at a time is to be identified with the entire mind-­body union rather than just with the mental substance or parts of it. One could try to escape this problem by endorsing a coincidence view instead. However, the challenge for defenders of a coincidence interpretation is to take seriously Locke’s proposal that ‘man’ can refer to a purely immaterial substance. If human beings are immaterial substances, it will be pressing to explain in what sense a human being can be distinct from a person, because Locke rules out that two different finite immaterial substances can exist at the same spatiotemporal location.33 These problems bring to light that implicitly the disputes between defenders of Relative Identity and coincidence views favour the option that human beings are purely material human animals. This underlying assumption is problematic, because it restricts Locke’s position, while he wants to leave open other metaphysical possibilities. Hence I believe that the more promising interpretation is that Locke remains deliberately neutral about the metaphysical constitution of human beings and does not worry about the exact relationship between persons and human beings. Of course, it does not follow that all options are equally probable, but rather that none can be excluded with certainty. Perhaps the result of these considerations is that the debate concerning Relative Identity and coincidence views is best restricted to purely material individuals. Even if we make this restriction, a further question should be addressed, namely in what sense interpreters on both sides of the debate understand ‘distinctness’ or ‘oneness’ when they claim that an F and a G existing at the same spatiotemporal location are one thing or two distinct things. As far as I am aware, this question has not yet been properly addressed in the secondary literature and it is the task to which I turn now.

3.3  Different Senses of Distinctness As I have argued the central dispute in the secondary literature between defenders of Relative Identity and coincidence interpretations of Locke concerns the question whether at a particular spatiotemporal location there is one thing that is both F and G or whether there are two distinct things, one F and one G. Defenders of the coincidence view often try to establish their view that the F and G are two 32  See II.xxvii.9. 33  One may argue that persons are modes of immaterial substances, but this is not a route that a defender of a coincidence interpretation would take.

Different Senses of Distinctness  41 distinct things by rejecting the assumption by defenders of Relative Identity ­in­ter­pret­ations that there is just one thing at the spatiotemporal location that is both F and G, and vice versa. This means that the different positions tend to be treated as rival positions and it is assumed that by rejecting one side of the debate, the other position gains support. I intend to show that the assumption that Relative Identity and coincidence interpretations are rival positions is not well supported, because this assumption presupposes that defenders of Relative Identity and coincidence interpretations understand distinctness (or oneness) in the same sense when they dispute whether one or two distinct things exist at a spatiotemporal location. As I argue in the following, it is difficult to identify a shared understanding of distinctness that defenders of both positions would be willing to endorse. For this reason we cannot take for granted that Relative Identity and coincidence views are rival positions. The fact that it turns out to be difficult to identify in what sense defenders of Relative Identity and coincidence interpretations understand distinctness (or oneness) weakens the plausibility of these interpretations, but it does not undermine Locke’s approach to identity. Indeed, it brings to light the strengths of the kind-­dependent approach to identity, because it remains focused on Locke’s main task of specifying persistence conditions for members of a kind and does not get side-­tracked by questions of how many things exist at a particular spatiotemporal location, which Locke does not have to settle, according to the kind-dependent interpretation. However, before this can be established let us consider in what, if any, sense two things can be said to be distinct and which of the proposed senses of distinctness defenders of Relative Identity and coincidence in­ter­pret­ations would be willing to adopt. Prima facie the view that there is one thing at a particular spatiotemporal location, as defenders of Relative Identity maintain, seems to capture our ordinary way of speaking. However, Locke would not be impressed by such an argument, because he makes clear that ordinary language can lack philosophical precision.34 This leads to the first sense in which things can be said to be distinct, namely they can be conceptually distinct. Since for Locke identity applies to members of a kind F or a kind G it can be suggested that rather than considering things sim­ plici­ter they should be considered qua F or G, which means that they are con­ sidered under the relevant sortal idea. On this basis it can be proposed to define conceptual distinctness as follows: a thing considered qua F is conceptually distinct from a thing considered qua G if and only if F and G denote two distinct kinds, which means that their nominal essences are distinct. Such claims about conceptual distinctness are consistent with the kind-­ dependent interpretation. A defender of a coincidence interpretation will certainly accept that there are two conceptually distinct things in the relevant cases. However, it is hard to deny that 34  For example, in II.xxvii.20 Locke notes that we tend not to distinguish the terms ‘man’ and ‘person’ in ordinary speech.

42  Problems with Other Interpretations a thing considered qua F is conceptually distinct from a thing considered qua G, if F and G stand for distinct kinds. In particular, defenders of Relative Identity can also accept it, because it is undeniable that the nominal essences of kinds F and G differ. Defenders of Relative Identity must base their claim that there is one thing at a spatiotemporal location that is both F and G on a different sense of distinctness. One candidate is to account for distinctness in terms of spatiotemporal location. The proposal is that only things that exist at different spatiotemporal locations can be spatiotemporally distinct, while things that exist at the same spatiotemporal location cannot be spatiotemporally distinct. This notion of distinctness fits the Relative Identity interpretation. However, it begs the question against the coincidence view. Furthermore, it is a trivial notion of distinctness, meaning that it does not leave room for disputes whether things that exist at a spatiotemporal location are distinct or not. Moreover, and importantly, it fails to acknowledge Locke’s view that three simple kinds of substances, God, finite intelligences, and matter, can co-­exist at the same spatiotemporal location.35 Because he will not accept that these three simple substances are one thing if they are co-­located, spatiotemporal distinctness is not a suitable candidate for understanding distinctness in Locke’s discussion of identity and diversity. Instead it is more plausible that defenders of Relative Identity operate with a notion of ontological distinctness. As we will see in a moment, there are different ways to flesh out the details. The common aspect of the different versions is to understand ontological distinctness of things in terms of the ontological boundaries of things in the ultimate nature of reality. Given this proposal, a defender of Relative Identity will maintain that there are ontological boundaries that explain why there is one thing at the relevant spatiotemporal location that is both F and G, while a defender of the coincidence view rejects that claim and holds that in light of ontological boundaries there are two ontologically distinct things at the same spatiotemporal location. So far this is the most promising proposal, as it captures the motivations that underlie Relative Identity in­ter­pret­ ations and has the potential to leave scope for genuine dispute between defenders of Relative Identity and coincidence views. The next task is to examine different ways of understanding ontological boundaries of things. This exam­in­ ation will have to show whether we can identify a notion of ontological distinctness that is consistent with Locke’s philosophical project. Moreover, it remains to be seen whether defenders of Relative Identity and coincidence views can agree on a shared notion of ontological distinctness, which would allow for genuine dispute, or whether their views are based on different notions of distinctness.

35  See II.xxvii.2.

Different Senses of Distinctness  43 Locke speaks of ‘distinct particular things’ in II.xii.6 when he introduces ideas of substances. He writes: ‘The Ideas of Substances are such combinations of ­simple Ideas, as are taken to represent distinct particular things, subsisting by themselves.’ The notion of ontological distinctness that he invokes here is similar to Descartes’s notion of a real distinction.36 According to Descartes, two things x and y are really distinct if and only if x can exist without y and y can exist without x. However, the dispute among defenders of Relative Identity and a coincidence view cannot concern really distinct substances in the Cartesian sense, because the oak tree cannot subsist without the mass of matter. This shows that it is not possible to establish the coincidence view if distinctness is understood in terms of really distinct substances. Even if Locke invoked a Cartesian notion of really distinct substances to decide whether at a time one or two things exists, it would have very limited relevance for his main task in the chapter ‘Of Identity and Diversity’, which is to specify persistence conditions. This is because plants, animals, persons, and human beings, at least if they are purely material organisms, do not continue to exist in virtue of the continued existence of substance. Another option is to understand ontological boundaries in terms of the real essences of things.37 This proposal is motivated by the thought that real essences carve nature and thereby create ontological boundaries. According to Locke, real essences are the internal, but unknown constitutions of things from which the observable qualities of things flow.38 Given this notion of distinctness, a defender of Relative Identity would maintain that Fs and Gs that exist at the same spatiotemporal location have the same real essence and this explains why there is one thing at that spatiotemporal location, while a defender of a coincidence view would hold that the real essences of Fs and Gs differ and therefore there are two things at the place and time under consideration. If this version of the coincidence view was correct, the boundaries of members of a species could be identified with real essences. Yet this proposal cannot easily be reconciled with Locke’s text, because he argues repeatedly that we cannot assume that our species concepts pick out real essences in nature.39 He writes: Wherein then, would I gladly know, consists the precise and unmovable Boundaries of that Species? ’Tis plain, if we examine, there is no such thing made by Nature, and established by Her amongst Men. The real Essence of that, or any 36  See Descartes, Principles, I.60, AT VIIIA:28–29; CSM I:213, Meditations: Second Set of Replies, AT VII:162; CSM II:114. 37  Chappell, ‘Locke on the Ontology of Matter, Living Things and Persons’, 19–21, mentions that it seems attractive to understand boundaries in terms of real essences. However, real essences are unknown, according to Locke, and thus he does not pursue a more detailed discussion of real essences and instead examines Locke’s understanding of compounded things. 38  See III.iii.15, 17, 19, III.vi.6, 8–9. 39 See II.xxxi.6–8, 13, II.xxxii.24 III.iii.13–14, 17, III.vi.2–3, 8–9, 13–20, 23–24, 26–27, 30, 32, 36–37, III.x.18–21, IV.iv.13, IV.vi.4–5, 8.

44  Problems with Other Interpretations other sort of Substances, ’tis evident we know not; and therefore are so undetermined in our nominal Essences, which we make our selves, that if several Men were to be asked, concerning some oddly-­shaped Foetus, as soon as born, whether it were a Man, or no, ’tis past doubt, one should meet with different Answers. Which could not happen, if the nominal Essences, whereby we limit and distinguish the Species of Substances, were not made by Man, with some liberty; but were exactly copied from precise Boundaries set by Nature, where it distinguish’d all Substances into certain Species. (III.vi.27)

There are a number of reasons for why Locke questions the proposal that the boundaries of a species, which is created by our nominal essences or our species concepts, can be identified with real essences. First, real essences are unknown by us. Second, the existence of unusually shaped individuals is hard to explain, if one assumes that our species concepts pick out real essences in nature. In other passages he further argues that there are many cases where one member of a kind has certain qualities that another member of the same kind lacks.40 Although these texts undermine an attempt to understand ontological distinctness in terms of real essences—at least, as far as the coincidence interpretation is concerned—there is scope for further refinements. Locke scholarship has shown that his understanding of the relationship between real and nominal essences is complex.41 In some passages Locke seems to argue that real essences depend on nominal essences.42 To make sense of this claim some interpreters have introduced a distinction between ‘nominal-­essences-­relative real essences’, which we will for short call ‘n-­relative real essences’, and ‘individual real essences’, also called ‘total real essences’.43 The n-­relative real essence is the internal microstructure 40  See III.vi.8. 41  See Paul Guyer, ‘Locke’s Philosophy of Language,’ in The Cambridge Companion to Locke, ed. Vere Chappell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 133–4; Jan-­Erik Jones, ‘Locke on Real Essence,’ ed. Edward N. Zalta, Summer 2016 ed., Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2016), https:// plato.stanford.edu/entries/real-­ essence/; Kaufman, ‘Locke on Individuation and the Corpuscular Basis of Kinds’; David Owen, ‘Locke on Real Essence,’ History of Philosophy Quarterly 8 (1991); Pauline Phemister, ‘Real Essences in Particular,’ The Locke Newsletter 21 (1990); Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, ch. 4; Kenneth P. Winkler, ‘Locke on Essence and the Social Construction of Kinds,’ in A Companion to Locke, ed. Matthew Stuart (Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2016). 42  Locke writes: ‘’Tis true, I have often mentioned a real Essence, distinct in Substances, from those abstract Ideas of them, which I call their nominal Essence. By this real Essence, I mean, that real constitution of any Thing, which is the foundation of all those Properties, that are combined in, and are constantly found to co-­exist with the nominal Essence; that particular constitution, which every Thing has within it self, without any relation to any thing without it. But Essence, even in this sense, relates to a Sort, and supposes a Species: For being that real Constitution, on which the Properties depend, it necessarily supposes a sort of Things, Properties belonging only to Species, and not to Individuals’ (III.vi.6). 43  See Jones, ‘Locke on Real Essence’; Kaufman, ‘Locke on Individuation and the Corpuscular Basis of Kinds’, 514–21; Owen, ‘Locke on Real Essence’; Phemister, ‘Real Essences in Particular’; Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 148–54. A critical discussion of nominal-­essences-­relative real essences can be found in Peter  R.  Anstey, John Locke and Natural Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), ch. 11.

Different Senses of Distinctness  45 that is responsible for the qualities that belong to the nominal essence of the kind to which the individual belongs, while the individual real essence is the total internal microstructure that is responsible for all observable qualities of the individual. If we accept the distinction between n-­relative and total real essences, defenders of Relative Identity can aim to ground ontological distinctness in total real essences. A defender of a coincidence view cannot appeal to total real essences to explain why two distinct things exist at a particular spatiotemporal location, but instead they can try to argue that ontological distinctness is grounded in n-­relative real essences. Although n-­relative real essences are ontological in so far as they pick out microstructures in objects external to the mind, we cannot assume that they pick out genuine boundaries in natures. Rather they can be seen as conceptually useful in singling out a set of microstructures that is part of the total real essence and responsible for producing those qualities that are characteristic features of every member of the kind under consideration. If it is correct that defenders of Relative Identity explain distinctness with appeal to total real essences, while defenders of a coincidence view appeal to n-­relative real essences, then they do not adopt a shared notion of distinctness and both positions need not be exclusive. So far this search for the meaning of distinctness in the debate between defenders of Relative Identity and coincidence interpretations has shown that the most promising proposal is to operate with a notion of ontological distinctness, but we have not been able to identify a univocal meaning of distinctness that is shared by interpreters on both sides. Rather defenders of Relative Identity can explain it in terms of total real essences and defenders of coincidence in terms of n-­relative real essences. If this is correct, then the interesting result is that Relative Identity and coincidence views need not be exclusive, contrary to commonly made assumptions. It remains to ask whether Locke would welcome this interpretation. I do not see a reason why he would reject it as impossible.44 Nevertheless, Locke repeatedly emphasizes that we lack knowledge of real essences.45 Hence any in­ter­pret­ ation that explains ontological distinctness in terms of real essences, whether total or n-­ relative, faces difficulties in capturing Locke’s own philosophical intentions. Despite these difficulties, let us reflect further on the option that defenders of a coincidence interpretation have, namely to explain ontological boundaries in terms of n-­relative real essences. In addition to the epistemic challenges, which

44  Yet I acknowledge Anstey’s doubts that Locke’s notion of real essences can be adequately interpreted in terms of n-­relative real essences. See Anstey, John Locke and Natural Philosophy, ch. 11. 45  See II.xxxi.6–9, 13, II.xxxii.24, III.iii.13, 17–18, III.vi.6, 9, 18–19, 21, 27, 33, 49, III.viii.2, III. ix.12, III.x.17–18, IV.v.4, IV.vi.4–5, 11–12, IV.xii.9, 11–12.

46  Problems with Other Interpretations arise because Locke is explicit that the real essences of species are unknown, they face a further question, namely whether we can assume that every kind has a real essence. Martha Brandt Bolton draws attention to the fact that Locke does not mention real essences of masses of matter.46 If Locke’s notion of a mass of matter is understood in the context of mechanist philosophy, then, so Bolton argues, there is a good explanation for why masses of matter do not have real essences: ‘Solidity and extension are common to all bodies; according to Locke, they do not constitute the essence of matter but they are the sole basis on which we conceive of matter.’47 Bolton’s observation creates a challenge for defenders of a coincidence interpretation who aim to explain the distinctness between a mass of matter and an oak tree, or between a mass of matter and a horse with appeal to n-­relative real essences. If masses of matter do not have a real essence, which entails that they do not have a n-­relative real essence, then defenders of a coincidence interpretation have to identify another notion of distinctness to explain their supposition that the oak and the mass of matter or the horse and the mass of matter are distinct. What might Locke say about the proposal that defenders of Relative Identity could hold, namely that the boundaries of things are grounded in the total real essence of the individual? Locke’s main task in his chapter ‘Of Identity and Diversity’ is to specify persistence conditions for members of various kinds and we should ask whether appeal to real essences helps advance his main task. Let us assume that a duck continues to exist over time. The duck at time t1 and the duck at a later time t2 are members of the kind duck, but some of the qualities of the duck have changed. The duck will have lost some of its feathers and some new feathers will have grown, it will have eaten and digested food, and thereby its size, weight, or colours may have changed. These changes in qualities require that the total real essence that brought about the new qualities at t2 differs from the total real essence that brought about the qualities at t1. It follows that persistence cannot be explained in terms of the continued existence of a total real essence. Consequently, appeal to total real essences does not help Locke with his task of specifying persistence conditions.

3.4  Lessons from the Controversy Relative Identity and coincidence interpretations both accept the core of the kind-­dependent interpretation, namely that persistence conditions vary depending on the kind under consideration. At the surface the disagreement between 46  See Martha Brandt Bolton, ‘Locke’s Account of Substance in Light of his General Theory of Identity,’ in Locke and Leibniz on Substance, ed. Paul Lodge and Tom Stoneham (New York and Abingdon: Routlege, 2015), 71. 47  Bolton, ‘Locke’s Account of Substance in Light of His General Theory of Identity’, 71.

Lessons from the Controversy  47 Relative Identity and coincidence views seems to concern the question of how many things exist at a particular spatiotemporal location. However, in order to establish their positions defenders of Relative Identity and coincidence in­ter­pret­ ations each in their own way make metaphysical assumptions. These additional metaphysical assumptions are not built into the kind-­dependent in­ter­pret­ation. The kind-­dependent interpretation accepts that members of kind F are conceptually distinct from members of kind G, but remains neutral on whether they are ontologically distinct if they exist at the same spatiotemporal location. In light of the difficulties that arise for defenders of Relative Identity and coincidence in­ter­ pret­ations, the kind-­dependent interpretation has the strong advantage that it avoids these problems altogether. Let me briefly recap the difficulties that defenders of Relative Identity and coincidence views face. First, due to Locke’s metaphysical agnosticism with regard to the materiality or immateriality of thinking substances, his term ‘man’ deliberately leaves open whether human beings are purely material beings, immaterial substances, or mind-­body unions. The disputes between Relative Identity and coincidence in­ter­ pret­ations do not properly take Locke’s cautious attitude towards metaphysics into consideration and implicitly favour examples that involve purely material beings. However, even if we restrict the dispute to purely material cases, further challenges remain. A second difficulty is to identify in what sense interpreters on both sides understand ‘distinctness’—a notion that lies at the heart of the controversy. Insofar as arguments against Relative Identity are often presented as support for coincidence interpretations, and vice versa, interpreters on both sides should be expected to adopt a shared sense of distinctness (or oneness). However, as the discussion of the various possible meanings in the previous section has shown, it is not clear that a sense of distinctness can be found that interpreters of both positions would be willing to endorse. Until a shared understanding of distinctness has been identified, it is best to stop portraying these views as rival positions. Instead, the question whether or not the views are exclusive remains an open question. The burden falls onto defenders of Relative Identity and coincidence views to clarify in what sense they understand distinctness. Since Relative Identity views make the ontological claim that at a time there is one thing that is both F and G, the most promising option seems that they presuppose an ontological understanding of distinctness. However, irrespective of whether ontological distinctness is understood in terms of a real distinction among substances in the Cartesian sense or total real essences, the fact that only one thing exists at a spatiotemporal location, rather than two things, is not significant for Locke’s main task of specifying persistence conditions. With respect to the coincidence interpretation, we have not been able to identify a sense of ontological distinctness that is suitable to capture the motivations

48  Problems with Other Interpretations of the coincidence interpretation. This suggests that perhaps coincidence in­ter­ pret­ations should merely make a point about conceptual distinctness. This means they argue that the lemon tree and the mass of matter are conceptually distinct without making any further claims about their ontological distinctness. If understood this way, then the differences between the coincidence interpretation and the kind-­dependent interpretation vanish. I do not claim that the list of possible meanings of distinctness that I con­ sidered is exhaustive and perhaps a more promising way of understanding onto­ logic­al distinctness can be found. However, I believe to have shown that there is need to specify what defenders of a Relative Identity and a coincidence view mean by ‘distinctness’. If they want to continue the debate the burden falls onto them to identify a sense of distinctness that can plausibly be attributed to Locke, is relevant with regard to his project of specifying persistence conditions, and can be reconciled with his cautious approach to metaphysics. These difficulties reveal the strengths of the kind-­dependent interpretation. The kind-­dependent interpretation accepts that members of kind F and members of kind G are conceptually distinct, but does not engage with the question how many things exist at the spatiotemporal location where members of F and G exist. Since an answer to this question is not needed for Locke’s task of specifying per­ sist­ence conditions, the kind-­dependent interpretation focuses better on the issues that concern Locke in II.xxvii and does not get side-­tracked by meta­phys­ ic­al questions that fall outside the boundaries of human understanding.

3.5  Other Interpretive Options Although much of the secondary literature has been dominated by the dispute between defenders of Relative Identity and coincidence views, it is time to give credit to additional interpretive options. First, Christopher Conn advocates for a  four-­dimensionalist interpretation of Locke.48 He argues that the advantage of  four-­dimensionalism is that it is consistent with Locke’s anti-­essentialism about  essences without committing Locke to Relative Identity.49 According to 48  See Conn, Locke on Essence and Identity; Christopher Hughes Conn, ‘Locke’s Organismic Theory of Personal Identity,’ Locke Studies 2 (2002); Christopher Hughes Conn, ‘Two Arguments for Lockean Four-­Dimensionalism,’ British Journal for the History of Philosophy 7 (1999). Critical responses to his interpretation can be found in Kaufman, ‘Locke on Individuation and the Corpuscular Basis of Kinds’, 509–10, 532; LoLordo, Locke’s Moral Man, 86–8; E. J. Lowe, ‘Review of Locke on Essence and Identity, by Christopher Hughes Conn,’ Locke Studies 4 (2004); Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 306–13; Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, 125–6 n. 18. 49  According to Conn, the Relative Identity interpretation should be rejected because it is inconsistent with Locke’s principium individuationis. Conn’s argument against Relative Identity presupposes his questionable interpretation of Locke’s principle of individuation, which Conn understands as the principle that ‘each object which exists is set apart from every other object of the same kind by the time and place at which this object first began to exist, and indeed by every subsequent moment of its

Other Interpretive Options  49 four-­dimensionalism, things do not only have spatial parts, but additionally they have temporal parts. On this view material things are extended along three spatial dimensions and a fourth temporal dimension and, hence, four-­dimensional. Conn offers good textual support for why a four-­dimensional reading of Locke’s text is plausible. My concern here is not to dispute that Locke’s text leaves scope for a four-­dimensional reading, but rather I want to highlight some of the metaphysical assumptions that are built into Conn’s interpretation. Fourdimensionalism focuses on objects that have both spatial and temporal extent. Material objects satisfy these conditions, while purely immaterial objects can have temporal extent, but it is doubtful that they have spatial extent.50 An im­port­ ant part of Conn’s argument for a four-­dimensional interpretation of Locke is devoted to showing that Lockean organisms and persons have both temporal and spatial extent.51 Conn’s argument rests on II.xxvii.21—a passage that we discussed in section 3.2 above. To recall, there Locke introduces three different meanings of the term ‘man’: first, it can refer to a purely immaterial thinking substance; second, it can refer to a purely material human animal; third, it can refer to the union of an immaterial substance and a material body. Contrary to my interpretation, Conn claims that Locke must reject the first meaning.52 The strongest textual support for Conn’s reading stems from II.xxvii.8.53 In II.xxvii.8 Locke maintains ‘that the Idea in our Minds, of which the Sound Man in our Mouths is the Sign, is existence’ (Conn, Locke on Essence and Identity, 71). The anti-­essentialism that Conn ascribes to Locke is an extreme interpretation of Locke’s views on essence. For an alternative interpretation of Locke’s account of essence and species see Anstey, John Locke and Natural Philosophy, ch. 11. I do not share Conn’s claim that ‘each sortal concept will pick out a different set of persistence conditions’ (Conn, Locke on Essence and Identity, 98). First, it is possible that the members of some kinds are not capable of persistence. Second, we can form sortal concepts at different levels of generality. This issue has been acknowledged by Bolton, ‘Locke’s Account of Substance in Light of his General Theory of Identity’; Kaufman, ‘Locke on Individuation and the Corpuscular Basis of Kinds’. For example, huskies and shepherd dogs both fall under the sortal term ‘dog’. Similarly, dogs and cats both fall under the more general sortal terms ‘mammal’, and the even more general term ‘animal’. Although we will have to consider for each kind separately what the persistence conditions for members of the kind are, it is possible that, for example, different dog breeds, or even living organisms, will have the same per­sist­ ence conditions. Similarly, Lowe argues that ‘different sortal terms often—though by no means always—have different criteria of identity associated with them’ (E.  J.  Lowe, Locke on Human Understanding (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), 95). 50  Conn suggest that Locke regards immaterial substances as analogous to mathematical points (see Conn, Locke on Essence and Identity, 64–5). 51  See Conn, Locke on Essence and Identity, ch. 4. 52  See Conn, Locke on Essence and Identity, 119–22, 135–6. Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, 125–6 n. 18, is right to note that Conn does not properly adopt Locke’s distinction between the terms ‘person’ and ‘man’. II.xxvii.21 concerns the meaning of the term ‘man’ and, hence, it is questionable to interpret it as statements about ‘human persons’ as Conn does. 53  See Conn, Locke on Essence and Identity, 104, 112–15. Additionally, Conn believes that II.xxvii.11, 17 and 25 support his reading (see Conn, Locke on Essence and Identity, 119–21). The difficulty with these passages is that Locke in these passages does not consider men, but rather persons. Thus they can be seen as support that persons have bodies, but they do not directly engage with the question of the meaning of ‘man’ that Locke addresses in II.xxvii.21. Of course, if Locke is a four-dimensionalist, then at a time human beings and persons share temporal parts. However, it would be question-­begging to assume this.

50  Problems with Other Interpretations nothing else but of an Animal of such a certain Form.’ It is a widely shared opinion that human beings have bodies and this makes it very likely that the second or third option express the meaning of ‘man’. However, I want to question whether Conn is right to systematically reject the first meaning. First, it is worth noting that Locke in II.xxvii.8 speaks of ‘the Idea in our Minds’. He can very well accept that most people have an idea of man, according to which human beings have bodies, but nevertheless acknowledge that it is possible to form a different idea of man such that ‘man’ stands for a purely immaterial thinking substance. Although we do not interact with purely immaterial substances during our ordinary life, this proposal becomes more credible if we turn to the views held by Locke’s predecessors. It is informative to draw attention to Locke’s comment: For by the First of them, it must be allowed possible that a Man born of different Women, and in distant times, may be the same Man. A way of speaking, which whoever admits, must allow it possible, for the same Man to be two distinct Persons, as any two that have lived in different Ages without the knowledge of one anothers Thoughts.  (II.xxvii.21)

By including the first meaning of ‘man’ Locke is willing to acknowledge that some of his predecessors believed in pre-­existence. For instance, someone who claims to be the same man as Socrates must use ‘man’ to stand for an immaterial thinking substance.54 Another explanation for why Locke includes the first meaning can be found in the attempts of his predecessors to explain life after death.55 As we will see in more detail in chapter 7, one suggestion is that a body ceases to exist at bodily death and that only an immaterial substance exists between death and resurrection. In the absence of Locke’s distinctions between the terms ‘man’, ‘substance’, and ‘person’, some of Locke’s predecessors would have been willing to say that a human being, or man, is a purely immaterial substance, because this view offers a plausible explanation of life after death.56 Consequently, I believe that Locke has reasons to include the first meaning in II.xxvii.21. Rather than rejecting the first meaning, I take it that Locke regards it as a strength of his account of personal identity that it can accommodate various different meanings of the term ‘man’. The important result for Locke is that his view that personal identity consists in same consciousness is confirmed ir­re­spect­ ive of what the meaning of ‘man’ is. Or, in his words: ‘Now take which of these

54  It is plausible that II.xxvii.21 continues considerations that Locke has touched on in II.xxvii.14. 55  It is worth noting that Locke mentions the resurrection in II.xxvii.21. 56  A more detailed discussion of these issues can be found in chapter 7 and Ruth Boeker, ‘Locke on Personal Identity: A Response to the Problems of his Predecessors,’ Journal of the History of Philosophy 55 (2017).

Other Interpretive Options  51 Suppositions you please, it is impossible to make personal identity to consist in any thing but consciousness; or reach any farther than that does’ (II.xxvii.21). If my more agnostic reading of Locke is correct, then the support for Conn’s four-­dimensionalist interpretation crumbles, because it is possible that persons as well as human beings lack spatial extent. I do not think Locke found the first meaning attractive and I agree with Conn that most likely he favoured the third meaning. However, I believe that Locke wanted to leave open metaphysical options that are closed on Conn’s interpretation. Additionally we find three other types of interpretations that follow the spirit of coincidence interpretations insofar as they maintain that co-­located Fs and Gs are two things, but they reject that both of them are (simple) substances. These three types of interpretations propose that at least one of them is (i) a mode,57 (ii) a compounded substance,58 or (iii) a substance analogue.59 On the first reading a co-­located mass of matter and a lemon tree are not two co-­located substances, but rather the mass of matter is a substance and the lemon tree a mode, on the second reading the mass of matter is a simple substance and the lemon tree a compounded substance,60 and on the third reading the lemon tree is a substance ­analogue rather than a substance. Hence, they belong to different kinds. One motivation for Uzgalis’s mode interpretation stems from his assumption ‘that substance sortals (e.g., “atom”) require sameness of substance for identity to be preserved while mixed mode sortals (e.g., “man”) do not.’61 Since Locke argues that sameness of substance is neither necessary nor sufficient for identity of plants, animals and persons, Uzgalis’s assumption entails that they cannot be 57  See Uzgalis, ‘Relative Identity and Locke’s Principle of Individuation’. Lowe regards it as better supported by Locke’s text than Conn’s four-­dimensionalism. See Lowe, ‘Review of Locke on Essence and Identity, by Christopher Hughes Conn’. I am here using ‘mode interpretation’ as the view that all persisting things other than God, finite intelligences, and bodies, are modes. The expression ‘mode interpretation’ is sometimes used in a more restricted sense and refers to the view that Lockean persons are modes. The view that Lockean persons are modes can be traced back to Law, A Defence of Mr Locke’s Opinion Concerning Personal Identity. Most recently it has been defended by LoLordo, Locke’s Moral Man, ch. 2. Since Locke’s approach to identity in general, rather than his notion of persons and personal identity in particular, is the focus of this chapter, I will restrict the discussion here to Uzgalis’s mode interpretation. Critics of Uzgalis’s view include Bolton, ‘Locke’s Account of Substance in Light of his General Theory of Identity’; Kaufman, ‘Locke on Individuation and the Corpuscular Basis of Kinds’, 509–10, 532; Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 317. 58  See Bolton, ‘Locke on Identity’; Chappell, ‘Locke on the Ontology of Matter, Living Things and Persons’. 59  See Bolton, ‘Locke’s Account of Substance in Light of his General Theory of Identity’. According to Bolton, ‘[i]t is a mistake to suppose that for Locke everything that exists is either a substance or depends on a substance. The formula is true of everything basic but overlooks derivative compositions of several substances and one or more modes, the sensible material things with which the Essay is largely concerned’ (76). 60  According to Bolton, simple substances include the three sorts of substances that Locke lists in II.xxvii.2, namely God, finite intelligences, and bodies. Bolton argues further that simple bodily substances include not only individual atoms, but also aggregates of atoms, or masses of matter. See Bolton, ‘Locke on Identity’. 61  Uzgalis, ‘Relative Identity and Locke’s Principle of Individuation’, 288. A similar assumption can be found in Alston and Bennett, ‘Locke on People and Substances’.

52  Problems with Other Interpretations substances. However, the assumption is questionable. For instance, consider the sortal term ‘bird’. As we ordinarily understand the term, we associate having feathers with being a bird. However, it does not follow from this that a bird must continue to have the same feathers throughout its existence. A bird can lose some of its feathers and grow new ones, but we will continue to call it ‘bird’ as long as it has feathers. By the same token, if a sortal term is a substance sortal, this could simply entail that a member that falls under this sortal is a substance at each moment of its existence, but it is a further question whether the same substance must continue to exist. Hence, it appears that Uzgalis operates with a traditional substance account of persistence, rather than adopting Locke’s new approach to questions of identity over time. Another worrisome feature of the mode interpretation is that it suffers from textual inconsistency. As Uzgalis himself and others have noted, it presupposes that Locke’s understanding of substance in II.xxvii differs from the rest of the Essay where he clearly regards living beings as substances.62 Moreover, it conflicts with the first possible meaning of ‘man’ that Locke lists in II.xxvii.21. Although it is likely that Locke favours the other two options, he wants to leave open the possibility that ‘man’ refers to an immaterial substance. Consequently, even within II.xxvii we have textual support that intimates that Locke does not want to be committed to the view that human beings are modes. The compound substance and substance analogues interpretations are better grounded in Locke’s text, insofar as each interpretation acknowledges a distinction between the three substances that Locke lists in II.xxvii.2, namely God, finite intelligences, and bodies, on the one hand, and compound substances or substance analogues, on the other hand, which include plants, animals, human beings, and persons. However, both interpretive options have difficulties with accommodating the option that human beings are immaterial substances. This means they all close metaphysical options that remains open to Locke on my reading. To be clear, Martha Brandt Bolton makes explicit that her substance analogue in­ter­pret­ ation aims to explain Locke’s accounts of identity and substance within a mech­an­ ist metaphysical framework that takes seriously the corpuscularian hypothesis.63 She is explicit that corpuscularianism is a hypothesis—maybe the best available hypothesis. Her interpretation helps to see how the details of Locke’s account of identity can be understood if the underlying metaphysics is mechanistic. To sum up, all interpretations discussed in this chapter make metaphysical assumptions.64 Which of them is suitable to capture Locke’s thinking about 62  See Uzgalis, ‘Relative Identity and Locke’s Principle of Individuation’, 295. See also Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 317. Passages where Locke regards living beings as substances include II.xii.6, II.xxiii.3–6, 14, II.xxiv.1, III.vi.3–4, 7, 9; Works 4:17, 460. 63  See Bolton, ‘Locke’s Account of Substance in Light of his General Theory of Identity’. 64  It is possible to interpret the coincidence interpretation merely as making a claim about conceptual distinctness. In this case, it collapses into the kind-­dependent interpretation.

Other Interpretive Options  53 per­sist­ence, depends on the actual metaphysical constitution of reality. For example, are thinking substances material or immaterial? Answers to this and other questions will alter the relationship between persons and human beings and thereby close some of the interpretive options discussed in this chapter. Determining which metaphysical views are actual exceeds the boundaries of human understanding. Fortunately, this does not undermine Locke’s project in II.xxvii, because the kind-­dependent interpretation does not require Locke to decide the meta­ phys­ic­al issues that are the focus of the other interpretations. Given that all other interpretive options include metaphysical assumptions that are not clearly supported by Locke’s text and given that the kind-­dependent interpretation is well suited for Locke’s purposes in II.xxvii and avoids problems that arise for other interpretation, I conclude that it is the best available interpretation. Having examined Locke’s general approach to identity and the strengths of the kind-dependent interpretation by comparing it with other interpretations, we are now well equipped to apply his kind-­dependent approach to persons.

4

Moral Personhood and Personal Identity In chapter 2 I introduced Locke’s kind-­dependent approach to questions of identity over time. In this chapter I examine how Locke applies it to persons and personal identity. This means that I will clarify the meaning of the term ‘person’ and identify the characteristic features that all persons share qua being members of the kind person (section 4.1). Once his account of personhood has been spelled out, I turn to the next step and ask how Locke specifies persistence conditions for persons (section 4.2). The advantage of examining Locke’s account of personhood separately from his account of personal identity over time is that it makes pos­ sible to take seriously both Locke’s claim that ‘person’ is a forensic term1 and his claim that personal identity consists in sameness of consciousness. As I argue, Locke offers a moral account of personhood and due to his particular understanding of moral accountability he regards sameness of consciousness as necessary for personal identity. I end the chapter by offering more fine-­ grained distinctions to understand the relation between morality and metaphysics in Locke’s account of persons and personal identity (section 4.3).

4.1  Locke’s Moral Account of Personhood It is clear that Locke follows the procedure of the kind-­dependent account of identity when he turns to persons and personal identity in II.xxvii.9.2 He begins by spelling out the meaning of the term ‘person’: 1  See II.xxvii.26. 2  It is worth noting that Locke uses the term ‘self ’ in various passages in II.xxvii. For instance, in II.xxvii.26 he claims that ‘Person, as I take it, is the name for this self.’ The index to the Essay, which Locke prepared himself contains an entry ‘self, what makes it,’ which refers to II.xxvii.17, 20, 23–5. I follow the trend in Locke scholarship and regard Locke’s use of the terms ‘person’ and ‘self ’ as equivalent. Similar claims have been made, among others, by Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 342 n. 3; Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, 147 n. 7; Weinberg, ‘The Metaphysical Fact of Consciousness’, 388 n. 5. Weinberg suggests that ‘self ’ denotes a subjective or first-­personal point of view, while ‘person’ denotes an objective or third-­personal point of view. See also Ruth Boeker, ‘Locke on Being Self to my Self,’ in The Self: A History, ed. Patricia Kitcher (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming). Udo Thiel offers a different interpretation which is based upon his relative identity interpretation. See Thiel, ‘Personal Identity’, 1:888–9. According to Thiel, there is a human self that can be considered both under the abstract idea of a person or a man. In his later book The Early Modern Subject he uses the term ‘human subject’ in the sense in which he used the term ‘self ’ or ‘human self ’ in his earlier article ‘Personal Identity’ (see Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, 108–9). Since I do not think that Locke is committed to a relative identity interpretation, I put Thiel’s reading aside.

Locke on Persons and Personal Identity. Ruth Boeker, Oxford University Press (2021). © Ruth Boeker. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198846758.003.0004

Locke’s Moral Account of Personhood  55 This being premised to find wherein personal Identity consists, we must consider what Person stands for; which, I think, is a thinking intelligent Being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider it self as it self, the same thinking thing in different times and places.  (II.xxvii.9)

Although this passage is Locke’s official definition of the term ‘person’,3 it is not the only characterization4 that Locke gives of a person. It is worth comparing the section 9 definition with Locke’s characterization of a person in II.xxvii.26: Person . . . is a Forensick Term appropriating Actions and their Merit; and so belongs only to intelligent Agents capable of a Law, and Happiness and Misery. (II.xxvii.26)

Since section 26 mentions features that are not explicitly mentioned in section 9, it is important to ask whether the two characterizations, or immediate significations, are equivalent, as described in section  2.1. In principle, Locke’s ­kind-­dependent approach to identity allows that we can offer more than one characterization of ‘person’, because kinds are the workmanship of the human understanding. Assume A defines a person as Locke does in section 9. This means that for A the term ‘person’ immediately signifies (a) ‘a thinking intelligent being’, (b) a being that ‘has reason and reflection’, (c) a being that ‘can consider itself as itself ’, (d) a being that can consider it self as ‘the same thinking thing in different times and places’ (II.xxvii.9). However, assume further that for B the term ‘person’ immediately signifies (e) an ‘intelligent Agent’, (f) a being ‘capable of a Law’, and (g) a being capable of ‘Happiness and Misery’ (II.xxvii.26). Given that A and B both use the term ‘person’ with different immediate significations it is legitimate to ask whether section 9 persons and section 26 persons belong to one distinct kind or to two different kinds. Of course, it would be surprising if Locke used the term ‘person’ in II.xxvii to refer to more than one kind, but this requires ­argument. Therefore, I examine in the following whether section 26 persons are section 9 persons, and vice versa. It is worth noting that in order to show that section 26 persons are section 9 persons, and vice versa, it will be important to clarify how Locke understands the ideas that compose the two immediate significations. Since abstract ideas are the 3  Locke’s own index to the Essay contains the following entries under ‘person’: person, what, 335. §9. A Forensick term, 346. §26. The same Soul without the same Consciousness makes not the same P. 340–1. §15, etc. Reward and Punishment follow personal Identity, 341. The index supports that Locke’s definition of ‘person’ can be found in II.xxvii.9. It further shows that Locke takes seriously that ‘person’ is a forensic term. 4 I use the term ‘characterization’, rather than definition, to acknowledge that Locke does not regard the other passages that comment on characteristic features of persons as definitions.

56  Moral Personhood and Personal Identity workmanship of the human understanding, clarifying Locke’s use of the relevant ideas will involve some contingent stipulations. Thus, we should not expect that all of the following argumentative moves are conceptually necessary, but rather they are plausible if one shares Locke’s understanding of the relevant ideas. Once the ideas that compose Locke’s characterizations of a person in section 9 and section 26 are made sufficiently determinate, it can be shown that the two immediate significations are equivalent.5 First of all, let me show why, according to Locke, every individual that satisfies the characterization in section 26 also satisfies the characterization in section 9. According to section 26, the individual will be an intelligent agent, hence ‘a thinking intelligent Being’ (II.xxvii.9). Moreover, the intelligent agent in section 26 is ‘capable of a Law’. What does Locke mean by saying that someone is ‘capable of a Law’?6 It could mean, first, that one is capable of being governed or regulated by a law, second, that one is capable of knowing or that one has the capacities to understand a law, or, third, that one is capable of obeying a law. The first sense is passive, while the second and third are active. Money, for example, can be regulated by a law.7 However, Locke’s use of the expression ‘capable of a Law’ goes beyond the mere passive sense. The expression occurs only in one other passage in his Essay, namely, in I.iii.14.8 There Locke rejects innate practical principles, but argues that denying innate moral principles does not entail the denial of ‘all Moral Rules whatsoever’. He addresses the worry of defenders of innate practical principles, namely that, if innate practical principles are denied, moral agents will be bare machines, and thus lack freedom, which in their view undermines morality. Locke does not accept this inference, since it neglects other possibilities. One may attempt to reconcile morality and mechanism, though Locke admits that this is not an easy task, or one can deny that moral agents are bare machines without accepting innate practical principles. As he engages with the worries of his opponents, he acknowledges a close link between being ‘capable of a Law’ and free agency. This

5  See chapter 2, section 2.2.1, for further details of the approach that I follow here. 6  One relevant meaning of the term ‘capable,’ according to the OED, is receptive. In this sense, one is capable if and only if one is able to receive or be affected. Another relevant sense concerns cognitive capacities that enable one to take in or to understand and comprehend. 7  See ‘Some Considerations of the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest, and the Value of Raising Money’, in John Locke, Locke on Money, ed. P.  H.  Kelly, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 1:246–8. 8  The relevant passage states: ‘A plain evidence, that there are no such innate Truths. Nay, a great part of Men are so far from finding any such innate Moral Principles in themselves, that by denying freedom to Mankind; and thereby making Men no other than bare Machins, they take away not only innate, but all Moral Rules whatsoever, and leave not a possibility to believe any such, to those who cannot conceive, how any thing can be capable of a Law, that is not a free Agent: And upon that ground, they must necessarily reject all Principles of Vertue, who cannot put Morality and Mechanism together; which are not very easy to be reconciled, or made consistent’ (I.iii.14).

Locke’s Moral Account of Personhood  57 intimates that for Locke agents are proper subjects that are capable of a law and that being capable of a law presupposes freedom. Furthermore, in Two Treatises II.57–61 he elaborates on the link between freedom and laws. According to Locke, laws aim to ‘preserve and enlarge Freedom’ (Two Treatises, II.57). In this context he uses the expression ‘capable of laws’ (Two Treatises, II.57, 61) as well as the expression ‘capable to know that Law’ (Two Treatises, II.59, see also 60). This shows that Two Treatises employs the second sense of ‘capable of a Law’. Additionally, Locke’s claim that laws aim to enlarge freedom makes plausible the third sense, because in order to be capable of obeying a law one has to be able to act freely.9 In any case, if being ‘capable of a Law’ is understood in the third sense, the ability to obey a law presupposes that one has the capacity to know the law that one is supposed to obey.10 In order to be able to understand a law, one must have reason; hence, it follows that a being capable of a law has reason. Moreover, by being able to understand a law, one will be able to understand that a violation of the law will result in punishment, commonly at a later time. In order to be able to understand punishment, a self must be able ‘to consider it self as it self, the same thinking thing in different times and places’ (II.xxvii.9). Such an individual will have reflection, which means that she will be able to form ideas of her own mental operations.11 Consequently, a section 26 person will be a section 9 person. Whether the reverse holds is harder to see. To see that it does, we need to turn to other texts by Locke, including his chapter ‘Of Power’ (II.xxi)—a chapter that he substantially revised for the second edition of his Essay around the same time as he wrote the chapter ‘Of Identity and Diversity’ (II.xxvii).12 First of all, what does Locke mean by his claim that ‘person’ is a forensic term? A forensic term is a term of law and plays a significant role in courts of law. In II.xxviii.7–10 Locke distinguishes three kinds of laws: divine law, civil law, and the law of opinion and reputation.13 He regards divine law as ‘the only true touchstone of moral Rectitude’ (II.xxviii.8 2–5). This means that in order to decide whether an action is morally right or wrong it has to be compared with divine law. Since for Locke morality is not separate from laws, at least not from divine law, his claim that ‘Person . . . is a Forensick Term’ (II.xxvii.26) entails that persons

9  This is further supported by Locke’s statement in Two Treatises II.59: ‘When he has acquired that state [of maturity], he is presumed to know how far that Law is to be his Guide, and how far he may make use of his Freedom, and so comes to have it.’ 10  See also John Locke, ‘Of Ethic in General,’ in Political Essays, ed. Mark Goldie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997 [1686–8?]). 11  See II.i. 12  For further discussion of the similarities between Locke’s additions to II.xxi and II.xxvii see Jessica Spector, ‘The Grounds of Moral Agency: Locke’s Account of Personal Identity,’ Journal of Moral Philosophy 5 (2008): 256–60. 13  For helpful further discussion, see Susanne Sreedhar and Julie Walsh, ‘Locke, the Law of Nature, and Polygamy,’ Journal of the American Philosophical Association 2 (2016): 97–100.

58  Moral Personhood and Personal Identity are moral and legal beings, who are accountable for their actions. What constitutes moral accountability, according to Locke? To be accountable for an action, requires that the person regards it as her own, not merely in the sense that it happened to her, but rather that it is an action that she voluntarily performed, which means she appropriates it.14 Moreover she needs to understand as to why she is accountable, which requires that she be capable of understanding the relevant laws. Due to the forensicality of personhood it makes good sense that for Locke persons are ‘capable of a Law’ (II.xxvii.26).15 In order to establish that every section 9 person is also a section 26 person, we have to show that a section 9 person is (i) an ‘intelligent Agent’, (ii) ‘capable of a Law’, and (iii) capable of ‘Happiness and Misery’ (II.xxvii.26).16 For reasons that will shortly become apparent, I will consider these aspects in reverse order. Locke argues in his chapter ‘Of Power’ that every finite intelligent being desires happiness.17 He argues further that ‘the highest perfection of intellectual nature, lies in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness’ (II.xxi.51 2–5). Since Locke believes that God is a wise creator, we can assume that he accepts that God has constituted finite intelligent beings in such a way that they are capable of happiness, but let us examine his views more closely.18 Being capable of happiness could mean having the capacity to understand happiness or it could mean being capable of experiencing happiness. The former requires that one be able to have an idea of happiness and misery. But how do intelligent beings acquire the ideas of happiness and misery? According to Locke, ‘Happiness . . . in its full extent is the utmost Pleasure we are capable of, and Misery the utmost Pain’ (II.xxi.42). He argues that the idea of happiness arises from feeling pleasure and pain19 and that pleasure and pain accompany almost all our ideas: 14  I discuss Locke’s understanding of action appropriation at greater length in chapter 5. 15  A present-­day reader may be inclined to associate the term ‘forensic’ with criminal law. However, Locke’s use of the term is not restricted in this way, because his account of personal identity is ul­tim­ ate­ly directed towards a divine law court (see II.xxvii.22, 26) and thus divine law is his main focus in II.xxvii. I return to this point in chapter 8. 16  I focus on these characteristic features, because Locke states in II.xxvii.26 that being a person ‘belongs only to intelligent Agents capable of a Law, and Happiness and Misery’ (emphasis added). 17  See II.xxi.52, 62. Without loss of generality the following considerations can be restricted to finite intelligent beings. Locke briefly mentions at the beginning of his chapter ‘Of Identity and Diversity’ that ‘God is without beginning, eternal, unalterable, and every where; and therefore concerning his Identity, there can be no doubt’ (II.xxvii.2). Throughout the rest of the chapter Locke focuses on finite beings and thus when he claims that a person ‘is a thinking intelligent being’ (II. xxvii.9) there is no doubt that he is restricting this claim to finite intelligent beings. Nevertheless, happiness is not restricted to finite intelligent beings and Locke accepts that ‘God Almighty is under the necessity of being happy’ (II.xxi.49). 18  For instance, Locke asserts that ‘every Man is put under a necessity by his constitution, as an intelligent Being, to be determined in willing by his own Thought and Judgment, what is best for him to do’ (II.xxi.48). Although this statement is restricted to human intelligent beings, Locke accepts that God is a wise creator, which suggests that he also accepts the more general view that God has constituted his creatures in such a way that they are capable of reaching their ends. 19  See II.xx.

Locke’s Moral Account of Personhood  59 Delight, or Uneasiness, one or other of them join themselves to almost all our Ideas, both of Sensation and Reflection: And there is scarce any affection of our Senses from without, any retired thought of our Mind within, which is not able to produce in us pleasure or pain. By Pleasure and Pain, I would be understood to signifie, whatsoever delights or molests us; whether it arises from the thoughts of our Minds, or any thing operating on our Bodies.  (II.vii.2)

These considerations focus on human experience and support that human intelligent beings are able to acquire ideas of happiness and misery by feeling pleasure and pain. Hence, they are capable of both experiencing and understanding happiness and misery. Since humans first and foremost feel pleasure and pain in virtue of having a body that is united to their mind, it is plausible that these con­sid­er­ ations apply to finite corporeal intelligent beings more generally. However, it is less clear whether they extend to incorporeal finite intelligent beings such as angels. It is worth noting that Locke does not restrict pleasure or pain to bodily pleasures or pains such as hunger or thirst, but also acknowledges intellectual pleasures such as ‘the pleasure of Musick; Pain from captious uninstructive wrangling, and the pleasure of rational conversation with a Friend, or of well directed study in the search and discovery of Truth’ (II.xx.18).20 Although due to the limitations of human understanding we are not in a position to demonstrate that incorporeal finite intelligent beings are capable of experiencing intellectual pleasures, it is plausible that they do.21 Since Locke accepts that all finite intelligent beings desire happiness,22 it is likely that not only corporeal, but also incorporeal finite intelligent beings are capable of acquiring ideas of pleasure and pain, which enable them to experience and understand happiness and misery. Therefore, it is probable that not only human intelligent beings, but all finite intelligent beings are capable of happiness and misery. Next, let us consider whether and how a person characterized in section 9 is capable of a law. I have already argued that Locke’s expression ‘capable of a Law’ is best understood to mean being capable of understanding a law or being capable of obeying a law. Let us reflect further on what is involved in having the capacity to understand a law. One certainly needs to be able to grasp the content of a law, 20  See also John Locke, ‘Ethica A,’ in Political Essays, ed. Mark Goldie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997 [1692]), 318–19. In this manuscript Locke distinguishes ‘pleasures of the senses’ (318) from ‘pleasures of the soul’ (318) or ‘pleasure of the mind’ (319). 21  Similar considerations can be found in LoLordo, Locke’s Moral Man, 3–4. LoLordo examines whether moral agency requires corporeality. She acknowledges that moral agency may be restricted to corporeal beings, because corporeality can be said to be essential to moral agency or only corporeal beings can be said to be in need of morality. She questions both explanations and draws attention to intellectual pleasures and pains. LoLordo asserts that ‘if disembodied beings can feel pleasure and pain, then they too can be harmed and thus they too have need of morality’ (4). Although I am sympathetic to LoLordo’s considerations, the dialectic of my argument is different, because I cannot take for granted that section 9 persons are moral agents, but rather my aim is to show that they are. 22  See II.xxi.52, 62.

60  Moral Personhood and Personal Identity and for this the possession of reason and reflection is sufficient.23 However, it is plausible that having the capacity to understand a law involves further that one be able to see oneself bound by a law and to accept that one’s actions should conform to the law. At this stage it is worth turning to the closing paragraph of Locke’s essay ‘Of Ethic in General’: To establish morality, therefore, upon its proper basis, and such foundations as may carry an obligation with them, we must first prove a law, which always supposes a lawmaker: one that has a superiority and right to ordain, and also a power to reward and punish according to the tenor of the law established by him. This sovereign lawmaker who has set rules and bounds to the actions of men is God, their maker, whose existence we have already proved. The next thing then to show is, that there are certain rules, certain dictates, which it is his will all men should conform their actions to, and that this will of his is sufficiently promulgated and made known to all mankind.  (§12, 304)

This passage provides a basis for reconstructing a Lockean argument as to how finite intelligent beings with reason and reflection are able to see themselves bound by a law. The clue is that they have the capacity to carry out the relevant demonstrations. Those who actually carry out the demonstrations have to prove God’s existence first.24 Furthermore, they have to prove that God is a superior and righteous lawmaker who has the power to enforce laws by reward and punishment. This passage leaves unclear whether these are two separate proofs or whether the proof of God’s existence contains a proof of God being a superior lawmaker. Either way, Locke argues in his proof for the existence of God that ‘this eternal Being must also be most powerful’ (IV.x.4). This suggests that a proof of God’s existence provides the basis—if it does not already contain—a proof of God’s being a superior lawmaker. In understanding that God is a superior lawmaker, one will understand that God wants one’s actions to conform to his law and that God has the power to reward or punish actions depending on whether or not they conform to his law. This enables one to see oneself as bound by his law, since it affects one’s future happiness or misery.25 It follows that finite intelligent beings with reason and reflection are able to see themselves as bound by a law.26 23  Locke emphasizes that laws must be known or knowable in Law of Nature and ‘Of Ethic in General’. 24  See also IV.x. 25  Similar considerations concerning the bindingness of laws can be found in Locke, Law of Nature, especially VI and VII, 180–203. Locke delivered Law of Nature as lectures at Christ Church College, Oxford, and composed it around 1663–64, but never published it during his lifetime. 26  Although the considerations so far have focused on God’s superior power, I do not want to imply that divine sanctions are the only reason as to why finite intelligent beings see themselves as bound by divine law. For further discussion of the role of sanctions in Locke’s moral philosophy, see LoLordo, Locke’s Moral Man, 19–23; Patricia Sheridan, ‘Pirates, Kings and Reasons to Act: Moral Motivation

Locke’s Moral Account of Personhood  61 Although the considerations so far have focused on God’s superior power, it is worth noting that Locke’s moral philosophy may leave scope to establish the bindingness of divine law on grounds other than divine sanctions. Whether it does, depends on how finite created beings grasp the content of divine law. Locke’s texts do not settle whether the content of divine law is ‘promulgated . . . by the light of Nature [namely by reasoning], or the voice of Revelation’ (II.xxviii.8). Although Locke believes ‘that Morality is capable of Demonstration, as well as Mathematicks’ (III.xi.16),27 he never offers a demonstration of morality, despite being pressed by his friends to develop a more detailed moral theory.28 This in­tim­ates that Locke regards the demonstrability of morality as a theoretical possibility and is well aware of the practical difficulties of carrying out such a demonstration.29 However, Locke is not too troubled by the difficulties of demonstrating morality, because, as he explains to his friend William Molyneux, ‘the Gospel contains so perfect a body of Ethicks, that reason may be excused from that enquiry, since she may find man’s duty clearer and easier in revelation than in herself ’ (Correspondence, letter 2059, 5:595). For practical purposes, Locke believes, it is sufficient to follow the moral rules in the Bible. The absence of a demonstration of morality in Locke’s works has prompted scholars to attempt the task that Locke did not carry out and to sketch how a Lockean demonstration of morality may proceed. Thereby they provide insight as to how finite intelligent beings can come to know the content of divine law (or the law of nature). Susanne Sreedhar and Julie Walsh offer one such attempt; Elliot Rossiter offers another.30 Their starting points are similar, but they identify different fundamental moral laws. Sreedhar and Walsh draw attention to the orderliness of the created world,31 and Rossiter maintains that ‘[f]rom the idea of God as

and the Role of Sanctions in Locke’s Moral Theory,’ Canadian Journal of Philosophy 37 (2007); Sreedhar and Walsh, ‘Locke, the Law of Nature, and Polygamy’. 27  See also I.iii.1, IV.iii.17, 20, IV.iv.7–9, IV.xii.8. 28 See Locke, Correspondence, letters 1530, 1661, 1838, 2038, 4:508, 729, 5:255, 570; Edward Stillingfleet, The Bishop of Worcester’s Answer to Mr Locke’s Second Letter Wherein His Notion of Ideas Is Prov’d to Be Inconsistent with Itself, and with the Articles of the Christian Faith (London: Printed by I. H. for Henry Mortlock at the Phoenix in St. Paul’s Churchyard, 1698), 129–33. For further helpful discussion, see Patrick  J.  Connolly, ‘Locke’s Theory of Demonstration and Demonstrative Morality,’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 98 (2019). See also Ruth Boeker, ‘Locke and William Molyneux,’ in The Lockean Mind, ed. Jessica Gordon-­Roth and Shelley Weinberg (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, forthcoming). 29  As Connolly observes, Locke’s remarks about the demonstrability of morality ‘are usually very carefully qualified’ (‘Locke’s Theory of Demonstration’, 445). For instance, Locke writes that due consideration ‘might place Morality amongst the Sciences capable of Demonstration’ (IV.iii.18). 30  See Elliot Rossiter, ‘Hedonism and Natural Law in Locke’s Moral Philosophy,’ Journal of the History of Philosophy 54 (2016); Sreedhar and Walsh, ‘Locke, the Law of Nature, and Polygamy’. Additional helpful discussion on Locke’s view that morality is demonstrable can be found in John Colman, John Locke’s Moral Philosophy (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1983), ch. 6; Ruth  W.  Grant, John Locke’s Liberalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), ch. 1; Samuel C. Rickless, Locke (Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell, 2014), ch. 11. 31  See Sreedhar and Walsh, ‘Locke, the Law of Nature, and Polygamy’, 103.

62  Moral Personhood and Personal Identity a designer, we see that God designs the world for certain ends.’32 This suggests that created beings must have been designed with a particular purpose. Sreedhar and Walsh argue that reflecting on the purpose of human33 finite intelligent beings, enables us to see that they have been created ‘for the purpose of action’.34 They write: In the case of rational beings, Locke states that given our nature, our function is to use sense experience and reason in order to discover, contemplate, and praise God’s creation; to create a society with other people; and to work to preserve both ourselves and our communities. This function provides the content of the law of nature: to preserve one’s own being and to work to preserve the beings of the other people in our community.35

By contrast, Rossiter puts more emphasis on sociability and argues that the end of human intelligent beings is ‘to perform sociable actions’.36 This leads Rossiter to argue ‘that we have a duty to be sociable: this duty represents the natural laws that apply to interactions between human beings.’37 Our duty to be sociable is nothing other than the golden rule, namely the principle to love your neighbour as yourself.38 Does it make a difference as to whether we regard the golden rule as the supreme moral principle, or the fundamental law that Sreedhar and Walsh identify, namely the law that ‘[h]uman beings are obligated to maintain and preserve their society as well as themselves’?39 Both principles are meant to guide actions. Both principles can be used to make inferences about the rightness or wrongness of particular moral actions. For instance, it follows from both principles that murder is wrong.40 Thus, we can assume that as far as the practical consequences are concerned there is little difference. 32  Rossiter, ‘Hedonism and Natural Law’, 223. 33  At this stage, it makes sense to restrict the considerations to human intelligent beings, because non-­human finite intelligent beings will likely have different ends. 34  Sreedhar and Walsh, ‘Locke, the Law of Nature, and Polygamy’, 103. 35  Sreedhar and Walsh, ‘Locke, the Law of Nature, and Polygamy’, 98. 36  Rossiter, ‘Hedonism and Natural Law’, 223, see also 213. 37  Rossiter, ‘Hedonism and Natural Law’, 223. 38 See Rossiter, ‘Hedonism and Natural Law’, 223. Nuovo also regards the golden rule as the supreme law of nature. See Victor Nuovo, John Locke: The Philosopher as Christian Virtuoso (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 197. 39  Sreedhar and Walsh, ‘Locke, the Law of Nature, and Polygamy’, 104. For further discussion of the duty of self- and other-­preservation, see Rickless, Locke, 172–4. 40  See II.xxvii.14. Sreedhar and Walsh offer a useful explanation for how it is possible to establish whether a proposition agrees or disagrees with the fundamental law by means of Lockean reasoning. For instance, if one considers the proposition that duelling is wrong, we have to turn to the definition of duelling, which, according to Locke, is ‘the challenging, and fighting with a Man’ (II.xxviii.15). On this basis, it is possible to compare the proposition that duelling is wrong with the law that humans are obligated to maintain and preserve their society as well as themselves, which shows that there is an agreement among the ideas of the proposition, on the one hand, and that of the law, on the other hand. See Sreedhar and Walsh, ‘Locke, the Law of Nature, and Polygamy’, 104–5. Sreedhar and Walsh further note that Locke does not believe that all moral rules are universalizable. Although prima facie

Locke’s Moral Account of Personhood  63 Since Locke does not offer a demonstration of morality, we cannot be certain, which, if any, of these two principles he would acknowledge as a supreme prin­ ciple of morality. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the golden rule has an important status in his moral philosophy. For instance, in I.iii.4 he states that the principle ‘That one should do as he would be done unto’ is the ‘most unshaken Rule of Morality, and Foundation of all social Virtue.’ If we turn to Locke’s manuscript ‘Ethica A’, which he wrote in 1692, we see further that Locke believes that the golden rule provides the way to happiness: If then happiness be our interest, end, and business ’tis evident the way to it is to love our neighbour as ourself, for by that means we enlarge and secure our pleasures, since then all the good we do to them redoubles upon ourselves and gives us an undecaying and uninterrupted pleasure. Whoever spared a meal to save the life of a starving man, much more a friend, which all men are to us whom we love, but had more and much more lasting pleasure in it than he that eat it. The other’s pleasure died as he eat and ended with his meal. But to him that gave him ’tis a feast as often as he reflects on it.  (‘Ethica A’, 319) Happiness therefore is annexed to our loving others and to our doing our duty, to acts of love and charity, or he that will deny it be so here because everyone observes not this rule of universal love and charity, he brings in a necessity of another life (wherein God may put a distinction between those that did good and suffered and those who did evil and enjoyed by their different treatment there) and so enforces morality the stronger, laying a necessity on God’s justice by his rewards and punishments, to make the good the gainers, the wicked ­losers.  (‘Ethica A’, 319)

These passages clearly support that the golden rule plays a central role in Locke’s moral thinking. Moreover, Locke regards the Bible as an authoritative guide to moral action.41 Since the golden rule is revealed in Scripture, Locke would not dispute it. Thus, I am inclined to think that if Locke had to choose between the golden rule and the law that Sreedhar and Walsh identify, he would prioritize the golden rule as the supreme moral law.42

the proposition that stealing is wrong seems to be in agreement with the fundamental law, Locke argues that it is not always the case that stealing is wrong. For instance, if a madman is in possession of a sword it would be appropriate to take away his sword, despite the fact that it is an act of stealing, which Locke defines as ‘the taking from another what is his, without his Knowledge or Allowance’ (II. xxviii.16). This suggests that ultimately it is important to compare particular actions with the fundamental law. 41  See Locke, Correspondence, letter 2059, 5:595. 42  See also Locke, ‘Of Ethic in General’, §11, 303. As mentioned above, the differences between the golden rule and the fundamental law Sreedhar and Walsh identify may not be significant. Indeed, Sreedhar and Walsh regard the fundamental law as a secularized version of the golden rule (personal correspondence).

64  Moral Personhood and Personal Identity These attempts to sketch major steps of a Lockean moral demonstration suggest that created rational beings may be capable of grasping the content of divine law by means of reasoning. By reflecting on God’s wise design and by understanding that God has designed finite rational beings with a purpose, one will understand that it is best to act in accordance with the golden rule. This intimates that reflecting on God’s superior power and divine sanctions may not be the only way to see oneself bound by divine law, but additionally reflecting on God’s wise and good design can account for why finite intelligent beings see themselves bound by divine law. So far we have seen that finite rational beings are capable of understanding a law. It remains to be considered whether finite intelligent beings with reason and reflection will also be capable of obeying a law. In order to be capable of obeying a law they must be able to be free and must have sufficient reason to obey it. Freedom, according to Locke, consists in the power to act, or not to act, in accordance with one’s will, or choices. More precisely, an individual S is free with respect to action A if and only if (i) if S wills to do A, then S is able to do A; and (ii) if S wills not to do A, then S is able to not do A.43 The second condition is important because Locke distinguishes being free from acting voluntarily.44 Assume Philip is in a locked room and has the volition to stay, because he wants to continue reading a book.45 In this case his stay is voluntary, but it is not free due to the fact that the room is locked and he is unable to leave if he forms the volition not to stay. In order to be capable of obeying a law that commands action A, a finite intelligent being has to be free with respect to action A, and able to do or not do the action in accordance with her choices. My focus here is showing that section 9 persons are capable of being free. Since Locke argues that freedom belongs only to agents,46 showing that section 9 persons are capable of freedom will further establish that they are agents. It is worth noting that Locke distinguishes volition, or the act of willing, from desire: For he, that shall turn his thoughts inwards upon what passes in his mind, when he wills, shall see, that the will or power of Volition is conversant about nothing, but our own Actions; terminates there; and reaches no farther; and that Volition is nothing, but that particular determination of the mind, whereby, barely by a thought, the mind endeavours to give rise, continuation, or stop to any Action, which it takes to be in its power. This well considered plainly shews, that the Will is perfectly distinguished from Desire, which in the very same Action may have a quite contrary tendency from that which our Wills sets us upon. (II.xxi.30 2–5) 43  See II.xxi.8, 12, 15, 21, 27, II.xxi.56 5, 71 2–5. 45  Locke offers a similar example in II.xxi.10.

44  See II.xxi.5–11. 46  See II.xxi.16.

Locke’s Moral Account of Personhood  65 Desire may be better described as an act of wishing than an act of willing. According to Locke, desire is a state of uneasiness, namely pain,47 that arises due to ‘the absence of any thing, whose present enjoyment carries the Idea of Delight with it’ (II.xx.6). The satisfaction of desires is pleasant, and leads to happiness.48 Locke further observes that desires can be contrary to one’s volitions. For instance, I can desire to be at a sunny beach while at the same time forming the volition to go to my office for work. Finite thinking beings often have multiple desires, including conflicting desires. How does Locke understand the relation between desire, volition, and action? Locke argues that uneasiness determines49 the will.50 Since all desires involve uneasiness, desires can and do determine the will. However, which desires will determine the will, if there are multiple conflicting desires? According to Locke, unattainable desires can be put aside; they do not result in volitions, because it would be a waste of labour and contrary to the nature of rational beings to try to bring about something that it unattainable.51 As far as all other desires are concerned, he asserts, that commonly ‘[t]he greatest present uneasiness is the spur to action’ (II.xxi.40 2–5).52 However, it does not follow that actions are always the result of the strongest and most pressing feeling of pain, or uneasiness. Indeed, Locke acknowledges that this is not always the case, because in most cases the mind has ‘a power to suspend the execution and satisfaction of any of its desires’ (II.xxi.47 2–5). The ability to suspend desire makes it possible to examine the good or evil of the desired action and its alternatives, as well as the consequences of the action and its alternative consequences.53 As we have already seen, Locke believes that all finite intelligent beings desire happiness. However, due to their finiteness they are at risk of acting out of 47 Textual evidence makes plausible that Locke understands uneasiness in terms of pain. See II.vii.1–2, II.xx.15. See also Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, 186–7. 48  See II.xxi.41–2. 49  It may be tempting to read Locke’s use of the word ‘determine’ in terms of causal determination and to interpret Locke as a causal determinist. However, as LoLordo, Locke’s Moral Man, 53–62, points out he need not be read this way and may be better interpreted as agnostic with regard to determinism. According to LoLordo, in these contexts ‘[t]o determine the will’ means ‘to make it determinate’ (56). Her interpretation builds on James A. Harris, Of Liberty and Necessity: The Free Will Debate in Eighteenth-­Century British Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005), ch. 1. See also Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 467–73. For a critical response to LoLordo and a defence of the view that Locke endorses (causal) determinism and compatibilism, see Samuel C. Rickless, ‘Locke on Active Power, Freedom, and Moral Agency,’ Locke Studies 13 (2013). Rickless argues that Locke’s view ‘is compatible with necessitarianism’ (50). However, in order to show that Locke endorses determinism, one has to show that Locke rejects libertarian freedom, or better genuine agent causation. I say that it may be better to focus on genuine agent causation, because Locke holds that it does not make sense to ask whether the will is free (see II.xxi.16) and libertarian freedom is often understood in terms of freedom of the will. Since Rickless does not offer sufficient arguments for why Locke’s position rules out genuine agent causation, agnosticism remains a viable option. 50  See II.xxi.29, 31, 33–9 2–5. 51  See II.xxi.40 2–5. 52  In the same vein, he claims in II.xxi.47 2–5: ‘There being in us a great many uneasinesses always soliciting and ready to determine the will, it is natural, as I have said, that the greatest, and most pressing should determine the will to the next action; and so it does for most part, but not always.’ 53  See II.xxi.47 2–5, 50 2–5, 52 2–5.

66  Moral Personhood and Personal Identity i­g­nor­ance and short-­sightedness and mistaking true happiness.54 To overcome these limitations, Locke asserts, finite ‘short-­sighted Creatures . . . are endowed with a power to suspend any particular desire, and keep it from determining the will, and engaging us in action.’ (II.xxi.50 2–5) This suggests that finite intelligent created beings have the power to suspend due to God’s providential design so that they can reach true happiness. Furthermore, Locke regards the power to suspend as ‘the source of all liberty’ (II.xxi.47 2–5).55 Since suspension is a central feature of Locke’s account of liberty, showing that section 9 persons are capable of freedom should include an argument for the claim that they are capable of suspending desire. On this basis, let us return to the question of whether section 9 persons are capable of being free. We have already seen that section 9 persons are capable of happiness and misery, which involves that they are capable of experiencing pleasure and pain. They learn on the basis of experience that some pleasures are momentary and others lasting. This is illustrated, for instance, by Locke’s example of sharing a meal: eating a meal merely gives momentary pleasure, but sharing a meal gives lasting pleasure.56 Moreover, section 9 persons can consider themselves as themselves in different times and places. This enables them to consider themselves in the future and to enquire about future happiness. Although in prin­ ciple it is possible that someone can enquire about future happiness without being able to reach future happiness, Locke’s teleological considerations support that a wise and good creator would prevent this.57 At this stage we can take for granted that God exists, because, as we have seen above, God’s existence is foundational in Locke’s moral thinking. Since Locke believes that all finite intelligent beings desire happiness and that ‘careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness’ is ‘the highest perfection of intellectual nature’ (II.xxi.51 2–5), they must be capable

54  See II.xxi.50 2–5. 55  It is a matter of ongoing controversy among Locke scholars whether the power to suspend is just a special case of Locke’s account of freedom with regard to particular actions, or whether it is an additional feature. The former view is defended by Rickless, Locke, ch. 7; Rickless, ‘Locke on Active Power, Freedom, and Moral Agency’. By contrast, LoLordo, Locke’s Moral Man, 46–9, argues that freedom with respect to particular actions should be distinguished from ‘full-­fledged’ free agency, which requires the ability to suspend desires and to deliberate. Gideon Yaffe, Liberty Worth the Name: Locke on Free Agency (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), offers another proposal in support of the latter view. See also Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 473–6. Although this is an important debate, I do not intend to settle the dispute here, because for my purposes it is sufficient to show that section 9 persons are capable of being free. I will show both that they are capable of suspending desires and being free with regard to particular actions. Thus, my interpretation does not depend on taking a particular stance with regard to these interpretive controversies. 56  See Locke, ‘Ethica A’, 319. 57  For further discussion of the role of teleological arguments in Locke’s philosophy, see Martha Brandt Bolton, ‘Intellectual Virtue and Moral Law in Locke’s Ethics,’ in Contemporary Perspectives on Early Modern Philosophy: Essays in Honor of Vere Chappell, ed. Paul Hoffman, David Owen, and Gideon Yaffe (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2008), 266–70.

Locke’s Moral Account of Personhood  67 of reaching future happiness, and for this reason they have been endowed with a capacity to suspend desires.58 Moreover, IV.xvii.4 provides additional evidence that Locke believes that it can be demonstrated that section 9 persons are capable of freedom. The con­sid­er­ ations so far have established that section 9 persons are able to see themselves as bound by a law. This involves that they understand that they can be rewarded and punished for their actions in accordance with divine law. In the context of a discussion of syllogistic arguments, Locke offers the following example of a demonstrative chain: Men shall be punished,—God the punisher,—just Punishment,—the Punished guilty—could have done otherwise—Freedom—self-­determination, by which Chain of Ideas thus visibly link’d together in train, i.e. each intermediate Idea agreeing on each side with those two it is immediately placed between, the Ideas of Men and self-­determination appear to be connected, i.e. this Proposition Men can determine themselves is drawn in, or inferr’d from this that they shall be punished in the other World. For here the Mind seeing the connexion there is between the Idea of Men’s Punishment in the other World, and the Idea of God punishing, between God punishing, and the Justice of the Punishment; between Justice of Punishment and Guilt, between Guilt and a Power to do otherwise, between a Power to do otherwise and Freedom, and between Freedom and self-­determination, sees the connexion between Men, and self-­determination. (IV.xvii.4 4–5)

According to Locke, each step in a demonstration is intuitive59 and thus he believes that the mind immediately perceives each link in the chain. On this basis, Locke infers that a being that is capable of punishment has freedom and freedom for Locke requires that one have a power to do otherwise, and having a power to do otherwise requires self-­determination, or the power to suspend desire.60 Since section 9 persons are capable of reward and punishment, it follows not only that section 9 persons are capable of freedom and have a power to suspend desire, but also that they are agents.61 It remains to examine whether section 9 persons have a sufficient reason to obey a law. We already know that they are able to understand a law and this en­ables them to understand that failing to act in accordance with divine law can 58  See II.xxi.50 2–5. 59  See IV.ii.7. 60  I agree with LoLordo, Locke’s Moral Man, 50–3, that it is more plausible to understand the power to suspend desires in terms of self-­determination than in terms of self-­transcendence as Yaffe, Liberty Worth the Name, proposes. See also Stephen Darwall, The British Moralists and the Internal ‘Ought’: 1640–1740 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 160–71. 61  According to LoLordo, Locke’s Moral Man, to be a moral agent means to be rational, capable of acting freely, and a person. My analysis above brings to light that all these conditions are implicit in Locke’s section 9 characterization of a person.

68  Moral Personhood and Personal Identity lead to future punishment and misery. However, understanding the content of a law does not entail that one is sufficiently motivated to act accordingly.62 For instance, grasping the content of the golden rule and understanding that it follows from the golden rule that in normal circumstances stealing is wrong, does not guarantee that one will refrain from stealing. What, if anything, would give a rational being a sufficient reason to refrain from stealing when she is very hungry and has forgotten to bring food and money? According to Locke, understanding that stealing is wrong does not sufficiently motivate to refrain from stealing. His 1693 journal article ‘Voluntas’ speaks to this point and makes clear that it is important to distinguish moral rectitude from moral motivation: That which has very much confounded men about the will and its de­ter­min­ ation has been the confounding of the notion of moral rectitude and giving it the name of moral good. The pleasure that a man takes in any action or expects as a consequence of it is indeed a good in itself able and proper to move the will. But the moral rectitude of it considered barely in itself is not good or evil nor [in] any way moves the will, but as pleasure and pain either accompanies the action itself or is looked on to be a consequence of it. Which is evident from the punishments and rewards which God has annexed to moral rectitude or pravity as proper motives to the will, which would be needless if moral rectitude were in itself good and moral pravity evil.  (‘Voluntas’, 321)

This note shows that moral rectitude does not motivate, but rather only pleasure and pain motivate, namely either pleasure or pain that accompanies an action, or pleasure or pain that one expects as a consequence of doing the action. In the second edition of the Essay Locke further specifies in his chapter ‘Of Power’ that only uneasiness, namely pain or absence of pleasure, can motivate.63 As we have seen, Locke believes that divine law can be enforced by divine sanctions. Thus, it can be argued that divine sanctions provide a sufficient motivation to act in accordance with divine law. We already know that section 9 persons are capable of happiness and misery. Since intelligent beings with reason and reflection desire happiness, they desire to avoid future punishment and are able to suspend momentary desires. Thus they have a reason to obey divine law. Locke argues: and he that will not be so far a rational Creature, as to reflect seriously upon infinite Happiness and Misery, must needs condemn himself, as not making that use of his Understanding he should. The Rewards and Punishments of another 62  Locke acknowledges this point in a manuscript note from 1693. See John Locke, ‘Ethica B,’ in Political Essays, ed. Mark Goldie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997 [1693]), 319–20. 63  See II.xxi.29, 31–40 2–5.

Locke’s Moral Account of Personhood  69 Life, which the Almighty has established, as the Enforcements of his Law, are of weight enough to determine the Choice, against whatever Pleasure or Pain this Life can shew, when the eternal State is considered but in its bare possibility, which no Body can make any doubt of.  (II.xxi.70)

However, one has to invest cognitive labour to enquire about one’s future happiness, since it is intellectually demanding to enquire about the contents of law and to prove God’s existence. In response to this concern, it is plausible that Locke would argue, first, that finite intelligent beings acquire the idea of future happiness on the basis of everyday experience by realizing that some pleasures last longer than others.64 Second, he claims that finite intelligent beings have a natural tendency to seek happiness. Hence, someone who has acquired the idea of future happiness and who desires happiness has a sufficient reason to enquire about future happiness and to carry out the relevant demonstrations.65 This concludes my argument that Locke regards his two characterizations of a person in sections 9 and 26 as equivalent. Section 26 makes moral and legal features of a person explicit that are not explicitly mentioned in his initial definition of a person in section 9. Yet, if my argument is correct, then persons will be legal and moral beings throughout his discussion of persons and personal identity and Locke’s claim that ‘person’ is a forensic term will be present in his thinking already in section 9.66 Since the account of personhood is the same in sections 9 and 26, Locke is justified in using the name ‘person’ to refer to one distinct kind of being in the different passages. However, the considerations also revealed that the link from section 9 to section 26 is based upon Locke’s particular understanding of laws and morality that presupposes a demonstration of God’s existence. Although these steps of the argument are deeply entrenched in Locke’s thinking, they can be questioned on philosophical grounds. Nevertheless, the examination illuminates Locke’s moral thinking and shows that persons are moral beings in virtue of being intelligent creatures with reason and reflection.

64  See Locke, ‘Ethica A’, 319. 65  See II.xxi.52, 62. For further discussion see Bolton, ‘Intellectual Virtue and Moral Law in Locke’s Ethics’. It is worth noting that although divine sanctions play an important role in Locke’s moral phil­ oso­phy, some Locke scholars believe that divine sanctions are not the only motivation to act morally. The view that only external sanctions motivate is attributed to Locke, for instance, by Darwall, British Moralists, 167–71. This view is challenged by Sheridan, ‘Pirates, Kings and Reasons to Act’; Patricia Sheridan, ‘Locke’s Latitudinarian Sympathies: An Exploration of Sentiment in Locke’s Moral Theory,’ Locke Studies 15 (2015). Sheridan’s interpretation does not create any difficulties for my arguments here, but rather it would make it easier to show that finite intelligent beings capable of happiness and misery are motivated to act morally. Moreover, Sheridan does not deny that divine sanctions play an important role in Locke’s moral philosophy. See also Boeker, ‘Locke’s Moral Psychology’. 66  Further support for the view that Locke’s moral and legal conception of a person is present throughout his chapter can be found in II.xxvii.13, 15–20, 22, 25–6, where Locke discusses ac­count­ abil­ity and just reward and punishment.

70  Moral Personhood and Personal Identity

4.2  From Personhood to Personal Identity Having established that Locke’s account of personhood is jointly given in sections 9 and 26, every person will have the characteristic features mentioned in ­sections 9 and 26: A person will be a thinking being, an intelligent being, have reason and reflection, be able to consider it self as it self, be able to consider it self as the same thinking thing in different times and places, be an intelligent agent, be capable of a law, and capable of happiness and misery. The next task is to consider as to how Locke’s moral account of personhood enables us to specify persistence conditions for persons. Locke emphasizes throughout II.xxvii.9–26 that personal identity over time consists in sameness of consciousness. However, given the characteristic features of persons, it is not obvious why thinking or consciousness stand out among the other features and provide the foundation of personal identity. To further illustrate this point, the following analogy is helpful: let us suppose that human beings are composed of a soul and a body. Merely accepting that human beings are composed of a soul and a body does not specify whether the identity of a human being consists in sameness of the soul, in bodily continuity, in the continuity of both body and soul, or in something else. In order to make the step from Locke’s account of personhood to his account of personal identity over time, one first has to establish that persons are the kind of beings that can exist over time. This is not difficult to show because persons can consider themselves as themselves in different times and places, which presupposes that they are able to exist over time. Otherwise, given we grant Locke’s view that all ideas have their origin in experience, they could not form the idea of themselves in different times and places. More precisely, persons who can consider themselves as themselves in different times and places must have acquired an idea of time, which presupposes that they have acquired the idea of succession. According to Locke, we acquire the idea of succession by observing the train of ideas in our own minds, which would not be possible if a person exists only for an instant.67 Next, we have to examine whether and how the characteristic features given in sections 9 and 26 help specify the relevant persistence conditions for persons. The characteristic features alone will not provide the persistence conditions because they are shared by all members of the kind person. In the following, I show that the immediate signification of Locke’s term ‘person’ is equivalent to the immediate signification of the term ‘subject of accountability’, if ‘subject of accountability’ signifies intelligent beings that are capable of being held accountable and capable of understanding just accountability. I deliberately speak of a subject—rather than object—of accountability, because being subject of accountability involves not only that one is able to understand as to why one is justly held accountable in particular circumstances, but also that one has the capacities for understanding 67  See II.xiv.

From Personhood to Personal Identity  71 the general idea of just accountability. By arguing for the equivalence of the significations of the terms ‘person’ and ‘subject of accountability’, I can establish that they stand for the same kind of being and therefore their members will be the same. This move is helpful because it provides a descriptive term for persons, which will guide us in specifying the persistence conditions for persons.68 First, let me argue for their equivalence. Since Lockean persons are ‘capable of a Law’, they will be subjects of accountability. Moreover, subjects of accountability have all the features that Locke mentions in sections 9 and 26: They are thinking, intelligent beings, have reason and reflection. Since accountability often arises for past actions, subjects of accountability must be able to consider themselves as themselves in different times and places. In light of the arguments given in the previous section for why the characterization of section 9 persons is equivalent with the characterization of section 26 persons, it follows that subjects of ac­count­ abil­ity are persons. Consequently, the the immediate significations of the terms ‘subject of accountability’ and ‘person’, understood in Locke’s sense, are equivalent.69 Now we can turn to the task of specifying persistence conditions for persons. Given that persons are subjects of accountability, the task can be understood as specifying the persistence conditions for subjects of accountability. To this end, it is worth examining the conditions of just accountability to see whether they help specify the persistence conditions for persons. To begin, let us clarify what is meant by conditions of just accountability. On one understanding, a condition of just accountability is the conformity or nonconformity of the relevant voluntary action to a law. The conformity or nonconformity will decide whether the action deserves reward or punishment. For present purposes, we can put this issue aside. Our focus here is the question of what makes someone the same subject of accountability over time. Locke does not offer a detailed analysis of the conditions of just accountability for past actions. The best way of capturing his views is to turn to his examples of sleep, drunkenness, and illness and to extract his understanding of accountability from the examples.70 In II.xxvii.19, Locke presents a hypothetical example concerning sleep. In the example, daytime Socrates remembers only earlier daytime events and night-­time Socrates remembers only earlier night-­time events. Locke 68  I acknowledge and show in the next paragraph that this move only makes ideas explicit that are already implicitly contained in Locke’s idea of a person. 69  The term ‘subject of accountability’ is not to be confounded with Galen Strawson’s notion of a subject of experience (see Strawson, Locke on Personal Identity, 8–11, 79, 121–2, 132–3). According to Strawson’s interpretation of Locke, there is a continuously existing subject of experience and a Lockean person stretches out to parts of this subject of experience. This means that persons and subjects of experience have different ontological boundaries. In contrast to Strawson’s interpretation, there is no ontological difference between subjects of accountability and persons, but rather both terms pick out the same individual members of the kind person. 70 Locke discusses examples of sleep and drunkenness in II.xxvii.10, 19–20, 22–3. In his ­cor­res­pond­ence with Molyneux he argues that there is no principled way of distinguishing actions caused by drunkenness from those caused by illness. See Locke, Correspondence, letter 1693, 4:785–6.

72  Moral Personhood and Personal Identity uses the example to argue that it would be unjust to punish daytime Socrates for what night-­time Socrates did. He infers that justly rewarding or punishing daytime Socrates for past thoughts and actions of night-­time Socrates requires that they ‘partake of the same consciousness’ (II.xxvii.19). But what does Locke mean by ‘partaking of the same consciousness’? Locke makes clear that there will be two different persons if there are ‘two distinct incommunicable consciousnesses’ (II. xxvii.23).71 Moreover, Locke claims in II.xxvii.19 that a subject has to be able to know of an action to be justly rewarded or punished for it.72 Locke makes this claim because he believes that it is important that a person from the inside can understand the justice of reward and punishment. The ability to know of a past thought or action presupposes that one be able to remember having had the thought or having done the action.73 Memory, according to Locke, requires previous awareness.74 This means that, in order to remember a past thought or action, one must have been conscious of doing the action or having the thought when the action or thought first occurred. According to Locke, just accountability for a past action requires that one be able to remember the action as one’s own, and— assuming the action was voluntary—in remembering the previous voluntary performance of the action one appropriate it. Moreover, an action commonly does not occur in isolation, but tends to be related to other thoughts and actions of the person such as the planning process that leads to it. This makes plausible that Locke further accepts that the action must be unified with other thoughts and actions of the person to ‘partake of the same consciousness’.75 To return to the question in what sense Locke argues that just accountability requires sameness of consciousness, the considerations suggest that memory, appropriation, and unity are all relevant aspects for understanding Locke’s statement that in order to hold a person now accountable for a past action the person now must ‘partake in the same consciousness’ as the person who did the action.76 I return to the different aspects of Locke’s same consciousness account and examine them more closely in the next chapter. While many of Locke’s contemporaries are willing to accept that it is unjust to punish a sleepwalker, they are not willing to accept the implications with regard to drunkenness. As in the case of sleep, Locke argues that it is unjust to hold a 71  See also II.xxvii.20. 72  Further support for this view can be found in II.xxvii.16: ‘I being as much concern’d, and as justly accountable for any Action was done a thousand Years since, appropriated to me now by this self-­consciousness, as I am, for what I did the last moment.’ See also II.xxvii.17–18, 20, 24–6. 73  Note that Locke’s notion of consciousness is not restricted to memory, because it includes consciousness of the present and extends into the future. I offer a more detailed discussion of the relation between consciousness and memory in Locke in chapter 5. 74  See I.iv.20; II.x.2, 7. See also Don Garrett, ‘Locke on Personal Identity, Consciousness, and “Fatal Errors” ,’ Philosophical Topics 31 (2003). 75  I interpret Locke’s references to ‘a consciousness’ (see II.xxvii.19–20, 23, 25) as references to a unifying aspect of Locke’s same consciousness account, which I discuss in detail in chapters 5 and 6. 76  See II.xxvii.16–17, 19, 22, 26; Locke, Correspondence, letter 1693, 4:785–6.

From Personhood to Personal Identity  73 person accountable for a crime, committed by the same human body while in­toxi­cated, if she is unable to remember it afterwards.77 Locke’s view troubles his friend Molyneux, who writes to Locke: ‘Drunkennes is it self a Crime, and therefore no one shall alledge it in excuse of an other Crime’ (Correspondence, letter 1685, 4:767). However, Molyneux’s criticism does not move Locke to revise his view, but rather in response Locke asks Molyneux to consider a case where a drunkard gets a fever. For I ask you, if a man by intemperate drinking should get a fever, and in the frenzy of his disease (which lasted not perhaps above an hour) committed some crime, would you punish him for it? If you would not think this just, how can you think it just to punish him for any fact committed in a drunken frenzy, without a fever? Both had the same criminal cause, drunkenness, and both committed without consciousness.  (Correspondence, letter no 1693, 4:785–6)

Because there is no principled way to distinguish these two cases, Locke believes that in either case it is unjust to be held accountable for an action that was done without consciousness and that one is unable to remember. On this basis, Locke’s argument can be outlined as follows: (1) Persons are subjects of accountability. (2) Sameness of consciousness is a necessary condition for just accountability. (3) Sameness of consciousness is a necessary condition for being the same subject of accountability over time. (4) Sameness of consciousness is a necessary condition for personal identity. Premise (3) follows from (2), and (4) follows from (1) and (3). Although premise (2) can be questioned by those who do not share Locke’s thinking about accountability, Locke’s correspondence with Molyneux shows that he would insist on it.78 The real question at stake is whether it is important that a person from the inside understand the justice of reward and punishment, or—to use Locke’s words— that ‘his Conscience accus[e] or excus[e] him’ (II.xxvii.22). These con­sid­er­ations explain why Locke regards sameness of consciousness to be necessary for ­personal identity. In chapter 6 we will turn to the question of whether sameness of consciousness is also sufficient. Locke’s reasons for regarding sameness of consciousness as necessary for personal identity are deeply embedded in his moral thinking. The necessity claim is based on two components: first, Locke offers a moral and legal conception of a 77  See II.xxvii.22; Locke, Correspondence, letter 1693, 4:785–6. 78  See Locke, Correspondence, letter 1685, 4:767, letter 1712, 5:20–1.

74  Moral Personhood and Personal Identity person, according to which a person is a subject of accountability; and, second, he understands the conditions of just accountability in a particular way. Both components of his view are controversial and can be challenged: one can define the term ‘person’ differently, and/or one can disagree with Locke about the conditions of just accountability. As we have seen above, Molyneux’s criticism illustrates how controversial Locke’s view is.79 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz criticizes Locke on similar grounds.80 Leibniz, like Molyneux, argues that sleepwalking and drunkenness are not analogous: We punish drunkards because they could stay sober and may even retain some memory of the punishment while they are drunk. But a sleepwalker is less able to abstain from his nocturnal walk and from what he does during it. (New Essays, II.xxvii.22, 243)

Leibniz rejects Locke’s view that sameness of consciousness is necessary for personal identity and believes that: the testimony of others could fill in the gap in my recollection. I could even be punished on this testimony if I had done some deliberate wrong during an interval which this illness had made me forget a short time later. (New Essays, II.xxvii.9, 236)

The important point for present purposes is that Locke’s thinking about moral accountability was and remains controversial. Rather than trying to evaluate Locke’s views in light of Molyneux’s and Leibniz’s criticisms, I want to highlight that a different understanding of moral accountability can have implications for how personal identity over time is understood. If we assume, as Locke does, that persons are subjects of moral accountability, but agree with Molyneux’s or Leibniz’s understanding of moral accountability, then it will not be possible to give persistence conditions for persons in terms of sameness of consciousness. Rather, in order to maintain that a person now, who is unable to remember a criminal action, is the same person as an individual who committed a crime while drunk, persistence will have to be explained in terms of bodily continuity, the continued existence of an immaterial substance, or some other condition.81 The lesson is that anyone who rejects one or both components of Locke’s view will likely offer different persistence conditions for persons.

79  See Locke, Correspondence, letter 1685, 4:767, letter 1712, 5:20–1. 80  See Leibniz, New Essays, II.xxvii.9–26, 235–46. 81  For a related discussion see Jane L. McIntyre, ‘Personal Identity and the Passions,’ Journal of the History of Philosophy 27 (1989): 547–50.

Further Reflections on the Moral Dimension  75

4.3  Further Reflections on the Moral Dimension By understanding Locke’s account of persons and personal identity within the framework of the kind-­dependent account of identity, I was able to consider his account of personhood separately from his account of personal identity. I argued that Locke’s account of personhood is legal and moral and that persons for him are subjects of accountability. Furthermore, I proposed that Locke’s particular understanding of the conditions of just accountability explains why he argues that sameness of consciousness is necessary for personal identity. In light of these results, further reflection on the relation between metaphysics and morality in Locke’s account of persons and personal identity may prove ­illuminating. This question is discussed controversially in the secondary literature. Gideon Yaffe, for example, suggests that Locke endorses a s­ usceptibility-­to-­punishment interpretation of personal identity, according to which personal identity consists in relations of just reward and punishment. Yaffe maintains that Locke reverses ‘the assumed order of priority of the metaphysical and the moral’.82 Yaffe’s interpretation has been criticized by Udo Thiel (among others) who claims that ‘consciousness has priority’83 in Locke’s theory. Both Yaffe’s and Thiel’s claims concerning priority are vague, and I believe that my interpretation helps introduce more fine-­grained distinctions in response to this controversy. In the following, I consider separately conceptual priority, explanatory priority, and ontological priority and examine the respective priority claims. First of all, let us consider the general concept, or abstract idea, as Locke would say, of accountability (or reward and punishment) and the general concept of personal identity. It is not clear that a priority claim can be established at the conceptual level because, in order to grasp the concept of accountability, one has to have the concept of an individual that can be held accountable for her actions at a later time. This suggests that the concepts, or abstract ideas, of accountability and personal identity are intertwined, and neither may be conceptually prior to the other. It is worth noting that the considerations regarding conceptual priority invoke general concepts of accountability and personal identity, which are more abstract than Locke’s understanding of accountability and the account of personal identity that he develops in II.xxvii. As I have argued, he understands accountability in a particular way, and he specifies that personal identity consists in sameness of consciousness. I argued that Locke’s moral account of personhood and his particular understanding of accountability explain why sameness of consciousness is necessary for personal identity, rather than, for example, bodily continuity or the continued existence of a substance. For this reason, Locke’s moral considerations can

82  Yaffe, ‘Locke on Ideas of Identity and Diversity’, 228. 83 Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, 128.

76  Moral Personhood and Personal Identity be said to be explanatorily prior to his specific account of personal identity in terms of sameness of consciousness. Yet explanatory priority has to be distinguished from ontological priority. With respect to personal identity, something is ontologically prior if it grounds the persistence conditions for persons. In this sense, consciousness can be said to be ontologically prior to particular attributions of moral accountability. A defender of the view that morality is ontologically prior would have to show that moral relations ontologically ground personal identity—a view that I believe is not supported by Locke’s text.84 To further support this point, let me return to the distinction between the kind person and individual members of the kind. In order to specify the persistence conditions for persons, one cannot merely focus on the kind person, but rather one has to consider what makes individual members of the kind the same over time. Furthermore, to decide in a particular situation whether an individual is accountable for a particular action, one has to turn to consciousness, and only if the appropriate psychological relations exist can the individual person be justly held accountable. Consequently, consciousness is ontologically prior to attributions of moral accountability, if the focus turns to individual members of the kind person, and the question of whether this individual person is morally accountable for an action in the given situation. To return to Thiel’s claim, I agree with Thiel that consciousness has ontological priority insofar as attributions of moral accountability in particular situations are concerned. However, this result gives no reason to diminish the relevance of the moral dimension in Locke’s theory. On the contrary, my examination aimed to show that moral considerations are at the heart of his theory and have explanatory priority. The result of my interpretation is that Locke’s account of personhood is moral and legal and that for Locke persons are subjects of accountability. His moral account of personhood and his particular understanding of just accountability explain why he regards sameness of consciousness as necessary for personal identity over time. Having shown that Locke’s moral thinking has explanatory priority in his account of persons and personal identity, it remains now to examine more closely as to how Locke understands sameness of consciousness and whether it is suitable to ontologically ground personally identity. I turn to these tasks in the next two chapters. 84  Yaffe, ‘Locke on Ideas of Identity and Diversity’, 227–9, ascribes to Locke the view that morality is ontologically prior. Yaffe argues that Locke endorses a susceptibility-­to-­punishment theory of personal identity. According to this theory, personal identity consists in sameness of consciousness, and sameness of consciousness consists in moral relations of just reward and punishment. Although Locke does not say much to explain what he means by sameness of consciousness, there is no strong textual evidence for ascribing to Locke the view that sameness of consciousness consists in moral relations of just reward and punishment, as Yaffe proposes. Moreover, Yaffe calls the susceptibility-­to-­punishment theory ‘a dodge’ (228), which suggests that he admits that the theory is not convincing on philo­soph­ ic­al grounds.

5

Consciousness and Same Consciousness It is not easy to find out what Locke means by ‘consciousness’. The notion plays a central role in Locke’s account of personal identity, but he rarely uses the term ‘consciousness’ or its cognates explicitly in other parts of the Essay. As regards Book II, besides its frequent use in chapter xxvii it only occurs twenty-­three times in chapter i in the context of Locke’s critical discussion of Cartesian views of the soul. In Book I we find ten occurrences, of which seven are in I.iv.20 where Locke discusses memory. It is mentioned twice in Book III and twice in Book IV. Locke gives a first characterization in II.i.19: ‘Consciousness is the perception of what passes in a Man’s own mind.’ Other than that we have to rely primarily on II.xxvii.9–26 to gain insight into his understanding of consciousness. Throughout II.xxvii.9–26 Locke frequently uses the terms ‘consciousness’ and ‘same consciousness’. Although these expressions are not sharply distinguished within Locke’s writings, I believe that it is helpful to acknowledge a difference between them. Within the Essay the expression ‘same consciousness’ only occurs in the context of Locke’s account of personal identity. There he claims repeatedly that personal identity consists in same consciousness.1 While ‘consciousness’ refers in the first instance to awareness that is built into individual mental states,2 ‘same consciousness’—as I argue in the following—has a more complex structure insofar as it involves several mental states at a time and over time as well as the relational structures among them. When Locke speaks of same consciousness he not only means that a subject can be aware of the same contents of mental states at different times, which is made possible by memory. Furthermore, Locke also not merely makes a point about the mineness of mental states, which one may explain in virtue of the fact that self-­consciousness is part of every perception. Although same consciousness involves same contents at different times, which have been revived by memory and a subject being self-­conscious of having these experiences in the present and having had them in the past, Locke’s notion of 1  See II.xxvii.10, 13–16, 19, 21, 23–5. 2  Here and in the following I use the expression ‘mental state’ interchangeably with Locke’s broad usage of ‘perception’ or ‘thought’. It is possible to distinguish the content of perception, thought, or a mental state, on the one hand, from the mental act of perceiving, thinking, or the mental act or activity of the mental state, on the other hand. Although Locke does not explicitly make these distinctions and sometimes switches between them, when I speak of ‘mental states’ I use the term to include both the content and the mental act.

Locke on Persons and Personal Identity. Ruth Boeker, Oxford University Press (2021). © Ruth Boeker. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198846758.003.0005

78  Consciousness and Same Consciousness same consciousness further accounts for the togetherness of different mental states and the temporal order of different experiences. I believe that the clue to understanding Locke’s account of personal identity lies in realizing that his notion of sameness of consciousness is richer than commonly acknowledged. In the literature it is common to explain Locke’s account of sameness of consciousness with particular focus on either memory, appropriation, unity, or duration.3 Often same consciousness is reduced to one, or sometimes more, of these aspects. While many of the existing interpretations provide important insight into Locke’s understanding of same consciousness, they often neglect important other aspects of his view and are incomplete on their own. Instead of reducing Locke’s account of same consciousness to one aspect such as memory, my interpretation aims to show that his account is richer and more complex. Same consciousness, according to Locke, does not just involve the contents of different experiences, but also structural relations among them. This means that same consciousness has a complex structure and involves revival of past thoughts and actions through memory, mineness, togetherness, and temporality. As I will show in the following, these are all important intertwined aspects of same consciousness for Locke. I will first outline Locke’s understanding of consciousness that is built into individual mental states (section 5.1) and then offer a detailed discussion of his account of same consciousness (section 5.2).

5.1  Locke on Consciousness In the secondary literature concerning Locke’s notion of consciousness, much debate has focused on the question of whether Locke equates consciousness and reflection,4 and on whether he endorses a higher order or a same order theory of 3  Margaret Atherton, ‘Locke’s Theory of Personal Identity,’ Midwest Studies in Philosophy 8 (1983), rejects phenomenalist interpretations in terms of memory and emphasizes that consciousness rather than memory is the important notion in Locke’s account of personal identity and is best interpreted as playing an analogous role to life for an organism. Since such a reading focuses on the structural relations that same consciousness provides, I call this feature of same consciousness the unifying aspect of consciousness. Yaffe, ‘Locke on Ideas of Identity and Diversity’, introduces different interpretations of Locke’s same consciousness account, including simple memory and appropriation interpretations, and presents them as rival theories. In a different article Yaffe rejects the simple memory theory in favour of an interpretation in terms of duration. See Gideon Yaffe, ‘Locke on Consciousness, Personal Identity and the Idea of Duration,’ Noûs 45 (2011). Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, ch. 4; Weinberg, ‘The Metaphysical Fact of Consciousness’, distances her interpretation from both memory and ap­pro­ pri­ation interpretations and argues that personal identity is constituted by a metaphysical fact of consciousness. Her analysis of the metaphysical fact emphasizes passages where Locke mentions unity and duration. 4  This view has been ascribed to Locke by Henry Lee, Anti-­Scepticism: Or, Notes Upon each Chapter of Mr Lock’s Essay concerning Humane Understanding. With an Explication of all the Particulars or which he Treats, and in the same Order (London: Printed for R. Clavel and C. Harper, at the Peacock in S.  Paul’s Church-­yard, and at the Flower-­de-­luce over against S.  Dunstan’s Church in Fleetstreet, 1702), Preface b, II.i, 40–1; Leibniz, New Essays, II.i.19, 118; Reid, EAP, I.3, 21–2; Reid, EIP, I.5, 58, III.5, 268–9, VI.1, 421. According to Kulstad, Locke is confused about the relation between

Locke on Consciousness  79 consciousness.5 According to higher order theories, a mental state is conscious if and only if there is a higher order state about this mental state. Reflection is a higher order state, but not every higher order state is a reflection. In the following I argue that Locke’s account of consciousness is not a higher order theory and this will at the same time show that his notion of consciousness cannot be identified with reflection. Angela Coventry and Uriah Kriegel, Udo Thiel, and Shelley Weinberg offer convincing arguments that higher order interpretations conflict with Locke’s text.6 Locke is committed to the view that ‘consciousness . . . is inseparable from thinking, and, as it seems to me, essential to it: It being impossible for any one to perceive, without perceiving that he does perceive’ (II.xxvii.9). According to higher order theories, the higher order perception is an additional mental state. Higher order views are in tension with Locke’s claim that consciousness is in­sep­ ar­able from thinking. This problem does not arise for present-­day defenders of higher order theories of consciousness, because they do not endorse the claim that every mental state is conscious. In order to rescue Locke’s view that all mental states are conscious, a defender of a higher order interpretation would have to admit that the view leads to an infinite regress. Assume I perceive a blossoming tree. According to higher order theories, this perception is conscious in virtue of

consciousness and reflection. See Mark Kulstad, Leibniz on Apperception, Consciousness and Reflection (Munich: Philosophia, 1991), ch. 3, especially 113–15. A critical response to Kulstad and other interpreters who understand Locke’s notion of consciousness in terms of reflection can be found in Vili Lähteenmäki, ‘The Sphere of Experience in Locke: The Relations between Reflection, Consciousness, and Ideas,’ Locke Studies 8 (2008); Vili Lähteenmäki, ‘Locke on Consciousness and What It Is About,’ Studia Leibnitiana 43 (2011); Kevin Scharp, ‘Locke’s Theory of Reflection,’ British Journal for the History of Philosophy 16 (2008); Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, 109–18; Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, 29–31; Shelley Weinberg, ‘The Coherence of Consciousness in Locke’s Essay,’ History of Philosophy Quarterly 25 (2008): 23–5. For a critical response to Weinberg, see Matthew Priselac, ‘Review of Consciousness in Locke,’ Locke Studies 19 (2019): 2–5. 5  Interpreters who ascribe a higher order theory to Locke include William Lycan, ‘Consciousness as Internal Monitoring,’ in The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical Debates, ed. Ned Joel Block, Owen J. Flanagan, and Güven Güzeldere (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), 751; Noonan, Personal Identity, 43; Rickless, Locke, 120–1. Interpreters who ascribe a same order theory to Locke include Angela Coventry and Uriah Kriegel, ‘Locke on Consciousness,’ History of Philosophy Quarterly 25 (2008); Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, 111–18; Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, ch. 2; Weinberg, ‘Coherence of Consciousness.’ In present-­day debates it is common to distinguish higher order perception (HOP) from higher order thought (HOT) theories. For example, see David  M.  Rosenthal, ‘Explaining Consciousness,’ in Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings, ed. David J. Chalmers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). This distinction does not fit Locke’s theory easily, because Locke uses ‘thought’ and ‘perception’ interchangeably. However, since Locke does not endorse higher order theories, as I show in a moment, we do not need to worry about the distinction between HOP and HOT theories. Lähteenmäki, ‘Locke on Consciousness’, rejects a higher order interpretation of Locke’s theory, but argues that ‘insofar as a same-­order theory requires consciousness to be treated as an act, he is not a same-­order theorist either’ (43). Instead Lähteenmäki proposes that it is more helpful to acknowledge that all perception involves a perceiver, a mental act of perceiving, and the content perceived. He asks whether we are conscious of mental acts and/or contents and argues that we can be conscious of both, but in order to be conscious of mental acts we need to have a (re­flect­ive) idea of the mental act. 6  See Coventry and Kriegel, ‘Locke on Consciousness’; Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, 111–18; Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, ch. 2; Weinberg, ‘Coherence of Consciousness’.

80  Consciousness and Same Consciousness the presence of a second order perception of this perception of the tree. If we accept Locke’s view that all perceptions are conscious, then the second order perception can only be conscious in virtue of the presence of a third order perception of the second order perception, and so on ad infinitum.7 In light of the regress problem and the conflicting textual evidence, it is unlikely that Locke would endorse a higher order theory of consciousness. This issue is related to the question of whether Locke’s notion of consciousness can be equated with reflection. Reflection, according to Locke, ‘is the Perception of the Operations of our own Minds within us’ (II.i.4). This means that it is a higher order perception. Since we have already argued that it is problematic to ascribe higher order theories of consciousness to Locke, it is just as problematic to equate Locke’s notion of consciousness with reflection. Furthermore, it is worth noting that consciousness and reflection play different roles in Locke’s philosophy. Reflection is one of the two sources of our ideas; the other being sensation.8 Consciousness is part of all our perceptions, but it is not itself a source of ideas. Hence, it is problematic to equate Locke’s notion of consciousness with reflection.9 In light of these considerations, it is plausible to assume that consciousness is not a mental state separate from perception. Weinberg raises the further question of whether consciousness is simply identical with perception, or whether it is a proper part of perception and built into every perception without being identical to it.10 There is no doubt an intimate relation between consciousness and perception or thinking. For instance, in II.i.19 Locke states that ‘thinking consists in being conscious that one thinks’. In II.xxvii.9 he asserts that ‘consciousness . . . is inseparable from thinking, and as it seems to me essential to it’ and that ‘consciousness always accompanies thinking.’ However, neither of these statements commit him to the view that consciousness is identical to perception, nor do they rule it out. On the basis of Locke’s characterizations of consciousness, consciousness can be understood as awareness or experience of thinking. As we examine the relation between consciousness and perception, it is helpful to distinguish two kinds of questions. On the one hand, we can ask what consciousness is metaphysically speaking. This means that one can ask whether the metaphysical constitution of consciousness is identical to the metaphysical constitution of perception. On the other hand, one can ask what a perceiver is conscious of; or, as Lähteenmäki puts 7 This problem is discussed by Leibniz, New Essays, II.i.19, 118. For further discussion, see Coventry and Kriegel, ‘Locke on Consciousness’; Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, 111–15. 8  See II.i.3–4. 9 For a more detailed discussion, see Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, 109–18; Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, 29–31; Weinberg, ‘Coherence of Consciousness’, 23–5. 10  The view that Locke identifies consciousness with perception in general is held by Vere Chappell, ‘Locke’s Theory of Ideas,’ in The Cambridge Companion to Locke, ed. Vere Chappell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 27–8. It is criticized by Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, ch. 2; Weinberg, ‘Coherence of Consciousness’.

Locke on Consciousness  81 it, this question concerns what consciousness is about.11 Given Locke’s philosophical project, it makes sense to begin with the latter, because this question can be answered on the basis of experience and observation, and afterwards we can consider what, if anything, Locke may say in response to the former question. We have already seen that Locke maintains that a perceiving subject is conscious of thinking.12 Although this is undeniably true, this answer is vague, because it does not specify which elements of perception, the subject is conscious of. Following Lähteenmäki, we can reach a more informative answer, if we distinguish the elements of thought or perception.13 Every perception involves, at least, a perceiving subject, a mental act of perception, and the content of perception, namely an idea perceived.14 Locke is not very explicit about these distinctions and the difficulty interpreters face is that he sometimes uses ‘perception’ to refer to the idea perceived,15 while in other places ‘perception’ denotes the mental act of perceiving,16 and sometimes it is unclear whether it denotes the idea perceived, the mental act, or both.17 Given these distinctions, it is possible to ask whether a subject is conscious of the mental act of perceiving, the content of the perception, and/or the subject that has the perception. First of all, is it plausible that a perceiver is always conscious of the mental act of perception? Although one can be conscious of mental acts, there is good text­ ual support that one not always is. According to Locke, ‘that which [the] Mind is employ’d about whilst thinking, being the Ideas’ (II.i.1).18 This suggests that in order to be conscious of x one must have an idea of x. Thus, to be conscious of the mental act of thinking, requires that one has an idea of the relevant mental act, which is an idea acquired by reflection.19 However, Locke is clear that ‘’tis pretty late, before most Children get the Ideas of the Operations of their own Minds; and some have not any very clear, or perfect Ideas of the greatest part of them all their Lives’ (II.i.8). This suggests that consciousness of mental acts starts to occur as soon as one begins reflecting on one’s mental operations and that one is conscious of mental acts by having ideas of them.20 Since not every perception

11  Lähteenmäki, ‘Locke on Consciousness’, proposes that the latter question, namely of what consciousness is about, should be central in interpretations of Locke’s account of consciousness. 12  See II.i.19. 13  Lähteenmäki, ‘Locke on Consciousness’, does good work to advance the debates. Although I am generally sympathetic to the view that Lähteenmäki develops in this paper, I do not share his view that we are always conscious both of our ideas and mental acts (by virtue of reflective ideas). While I agree that we are conscious of mental acts by means of reflective ideas, I do not believe that consciousness always involves consciousness of mental acts (see II.i.8). More on this later. 14 See Lähteenmäki, ‘Locke on Consciousness’; Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, xi, 23, 27, 43, 226. 15  See II.i.9. 16  See II.i.4, II.vi.2, II.ix.1. 17  See I.iv.20, II.i.3, II.viii.1, II.ix.3–4. These ambiguities prompted Thomas Reid to criticize Locke’s theory of perception. See Reid, EIP, I.1, 26–32, II.9, 127–37, II.14, 174–5. 18  See also I.i.8, IV.i.1. 19  For details of Locke’s understanding of reflection, see II.i.4. 20  See Lähteenmäki, ‘Locke on Consciousness’, 165–8.

82  Consciousness and Same Consciousness involves reflection, there can be perceptions which do not involve consciousness of the mental act of perceiving.21 It is worth commenting on Locke’s claim that ‘Consciousness is the perception of what passes in a Man’s own mind’ (II.i.19). Although at first sight this statement may seem similar to Locke’s characterization of reflection as ‘the Perception of the Operations of our own Minds within us’ (II.i.4), the crucial difference is that ‘what passes in a Man’s own mind’ are first and foremost ideas. While ideas include ideas of mental operations acquired by reflection, not all ideas are acquired by reflection. This further supports that there can be consciousness without reflection, and that consciousness does not always involve awareness of the mental act. Next, let us consider whether a perceiving subject is always conscious of the content of perception, or the idea perceived. Since having an idea requires that one be aware of it, a perceiver will be conscious of the idea perceived.22 Moreover, Locke’s discussion of personal identity in II.xxvii offers strong textual support for this reading, since in this chapter he repeatedly speaks of consciousness of actions or thoughts.23 Yet there is also good evidence that a perceiving subject is not merely conscious of the content of perception, or the idea perceived, but also of oneself as the perceiving subject. In this vein, Locke claims in II.xxvii.9 that ‘[i]t being impossible for any one to perceive, without perceiving, that he does perceive.’ Moreover,

21  A similar interpretation has been given by Scharp, ‘Locke’s Theory of Reflection’, 30. Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, 115–16, criticizes interpretations that hold that we can be conscious of mental operations only by means of reflective ideas of the mental operations. Thiel writes: ‘But does [Locke] say anywhere that mental operations and states become conscious only via ideas of reflection? On the contrary, we saw that for him consciousness is inseparable from thinking and is essential to it (not just the idea of thinking acquired through reflection). Thinking—not just the idea of thinking—consists in being conscious that one thinks (II.i.19). The relation of consciousness to thought is not mediated through ideas, but is immediate in the sense that consciousness belongs to thought itself ’ (116). However, Thiel’s objection fails to properly engage with the view under consideration, because Thiel does not sufficiently distinguish the different elements of perception or thinking and equates the mental operation or act of thinking, which is an element of thinking, with thinking in general when citing II.i.19. Of course, Locke is not clear either whether his claim that ‘thinking consists in being conscious that one thinks’ (II.i.19) concerns the mental operation of thinking, the content of thinking, or both. Thiel’s objection vanishes if thinking in the relevant passages is understood in the narrower sense that focuses on the content of perception, or the idea perceived, rather than thinking in general. Understood this way, the claim becomes ‘having ideas consists in being conscious that one has ideas’, which Locke would not hesitate to endorse. Yet it remains to ask whether this restriction is supported by Locke’s text. Just a few sections above, Locke states that ‘having Ideas, and Perception being the same thing’ (II.i.9). Since section 19 concludes a series of arguments that Locke begins in section 9 of the chapter, it is plausible that he continues to understand perception and thinking in the narrow sense of having ideas. Furthermore, this reading is compatible with Locke’s claim in II.xxvii.9 that consciousness is inseparable from thinking. Note that the claim that consciousness is essential to thinking does not require that one be conscious of every element of thinking, but rather being conscious of the content of perception is sufficient. 22  On this point, I depart from Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, who argues that consciousness for Locke is self-­consciousness. More on this later. 23  See II.xxvii.9–10, 13, 16, 25–6. See also Lähteenmäki, ‘Locke on Consciousness’.

Locke on Consciousness  83 Locke argues in Book IV that every instance of thinking gives us intuitive ­know­ledge of our own existence: For nothing can be more evident to us, than our own Existence. I think, I reason, I feel Pleasure and Pain; Can any of these be more evident to me, than my own Existence? If I doubt of all other Things, that very doubt makes me perceive my own Existence, and will not suffer me to doubt of that. For if I know I feel Pain, it is evident, I have as certain a Perception of my own Existence, as of the Existence of the Pain I feel: Or if I know I doubt, I have as certain a Perception of the Existence of the thing doubting, as of that Thought, which I call doubt. Experience then convinces us, that we have an intuitive Knowledge of our own Existence, and an internal infallible Perception that we are. In every Act of Sensation, Reasoning, or Thinking, we are conscious to our selves of our own Being; and, in this Matter, come not short of the highest degree of Certainty. (IV.ix.3)

This shows that for Locke every perception involves self-­consciousness, namely awareness of oneself as perceiving subject. Self-­consciousness is an inherent reflexive element of every perception. However, in contrast to Weinberg, I do not think that consciousness for Locke is merely self-­consciousness.24 Rather a perceiving subject is always conscious both of the idea perceived and of oneself as having the perception. Weinberg’s interpretation emphasizes that for Locke consciousness is not identical to perception and that consciousness plays a special role in every perception. For Weinberg ‘perceiving an idea is a complex mental state, which includes not only an act of perception and an idea perceived but also the consciousness that I  am perceiving the idea.’25 This means that Weinberg regards consciousness, understood as self-­consciousness, as an additional element of every perception; or, as she puts it ‘consciousness adds something to ordinary perception.’26 She argues that the advantage of her reading—in contrast to views that regard consciousness as identical with perception in general—is that it can explain the role that consciousness plays in Locke’s accounts of memory, personal identity, sensitive knowledge, and in his version of Descartes’s cogito argument.27 I take it that Weinberg’s arguments target views, according to which consciousness is identical with perception and which regard the mental act of perceiving and the idea perceived as the only elements of perception. I am in agreement with Weinberg that every perception additionally involves self-­consciousness. However, I question

24 For further details of Weinberg’s interpretation that for Locke consciousness is self-­ consciousness, see Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, xi–xiii, 27, 33, 45–7, 51. 25 Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, 27. 26 Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, 28. 27  See Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, 28–9, 47–51.

84  Consciousness and Same Consciousness that consciousness for Locke is restricted to self-­consciousness. Instead my proposal is that a perceiving subject is not only conscious of oneself, but also of the content of the perception. To be fair, for Weinberg self-­consciousness is ‘consciousness that I am perceiving the idea’. Thus, there is a sense in which the perceived content is built into self-­consciousness. Yet my point is that a perceiving subject can be conscious of the content, not merely via self-­consciousness, but by perceiving it. Of course, whenever a subject is perceiving a certain idea, there is also self-­consciousness, but I argue that there is consciousness of the perceived idea in addition to self-­consciousness. As I show below, I believe that the advantage of this reading is not only that it is well supported by Locke’s text, but also that it provides better resources for addressing the regress problem. To assess as to whether my interpretation can accommodate the insights of Weinberg’s interpretation, let us consider whether my interpretation can make sense of the role that consciousness plays in Locke’s accounts of memory, personal identity, and in his version of Descartes’s cogito argument.28 I will begin with Locke’s version of the cogito, since I just cited the relevant passage above. A close look at the passage provides strong support for my proposal. The crucial part is the following: For if I know I feel Pain, it is evident, I have as certain a Perception of my own Existence, as of the Existence of the Pain I feel: Or if I know I doubt, I have as certain a Perception of the Existence of the thing doubting, as of that Thought, which I call doubt. (IV.ix.3)

Here Locke suggests that a perceiving subject is both conscious of feeling pain, or of doubting, and of one’s own existence. This intimates that consciousness for Locke is not restricted to self-­consciousness, but always also involves consciousness of the perceived idea. Similarly, in Locke’s account of personal identity a person is not just conscious of oneself as perceiving subject, but also of actions and thoughts, which are contents of perception.29 Furthermore, my reading can perfectly account for Locke’s claims about mem­ ory. Memory, according to Locke, is a power ‘to revive Perceptions, which [the mind] once had, with this additional perception annexed to them, that it has had them before’ (II.x.2). He further claims that ‘[t]his consciousness of its having been in the mind before, being that, which distinguishes Remembring from all other ways of Thinking’ (I.iv.20). To show how my reading makes sense of the role that consciousness plays in Locke’s account of memory, it is helpful to distinguish 28  The following arguments offer a critical response to Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, 47–50. Weinberg additionally considers the role that consciousness plays in Locke’s account of sensitive knowledge. I bracket it here, since it is less relevant for my study of Locke’s account of personal identity, but I believe that the view that I develop here easily extends to sensitive knowledge. 29  See II.xxvii.9–10, 13, 16, 25–6.

Locke on Consciousness  85 the original perception from its revival through memory. At the initial time when a subject has the original perception, the perceiving subject is conscious, at least, of the content of the perception and of oneself as perceiving subject. At the later time, when the subject revives the original perception, not only the content is revived, but also the original self-­consciousness. This means that the original ­self-­consciousness explains why the subject remembers that it has had the ­perception before, or why memory involves ‘consciousness of [the perception] having been in the mind before’ (I.iv.20).30 It is worth adding that actual memories involve self-­consciousness in a dual sense. The subject that is currently remembering a past experience is first of all conscious of the content of the memory that is revived in the present moment, which includes both the revived past experience and the revived original self-­consciousness. Additionally, the subject is conscious of oneself as presently thinking, which in this case is an act of remembering. On this basis, let us consider whether the present reading overcomes the regress problem that arises for higher order theories of consciousness. The regress problem arises for higher order views, because they regard consciousness as an additional mental state about the first-­order mental state. On the view that I have 30 This explanation differs from the view defended by Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, 48. Weinberg’s argument, as I understand it, can be analysed as follows: (1) Assume consciousness is identical to perception in general. (2) If (1) is correct, then either (i) the difference between memory and other ways of thinking cannot be explained, or (ii) ‘we must attribute to consciousness an idea as an object.’ (48) (3) If (ii) is the case, then ‘we would have to say that consciousness is a perception of the idea “had the idea before” ’. (48) (4) If consciousness is a perception of the idea ‘had the idea before’, then ‘Locke’s account of memory violates the empiricist principle’ (48), because ‘there is no explanation where that idea ori­ gin­ates consistent with Locke’s empiricism.’ (48) (5) In light of the problematic consequences of (i) and (ii), the assumption that consciousness is identical to perception in general should be rejected. On this basis, Weinberg concludes that ‘[o]n the view that consciousness is a special kind of awareness internal to ordinary perception we have an account that avoids these problems altogether. That is ­consciousness can be the awareness of the perception of an idea as a reviving (or as from memory) without having to say that that awareness is the result of perceiving an additional idea.’ (48) My first concern with Weinberg’s argument is that it could distinguish more clearly between perception in general, used as an umbrella term to include various modifications of thinking such as sensations, remembering, imagining, reasoning, and so on, on the one hand, and the different modifications of thinking, on the other hand. Since (1) focuses on the former and (i) on the latter, a more detailed defence of the step from (1) to (i) in proposition (2) would be desirable. At least prima facie, it is not obvious why the identification of consciousness with perception in general does not allow for a distinction between different modifications of perception such as sense perception, memory, im­agin­ation, and so on. Second, what I take to be unique about memory—and thus the feature that distinguishes mem­ory from other modifications of thinking—is that it not only involves consciousness, which includes ­self-­consciousness, namely awareness of oneself as remembering a former perception, but also that it revives the original self-­consciousness. Thus, there is a plausible explanation for why memory is accompanied by the additional perception that the mind has had it before. There is no mystery how this perception arises, since it can be traced back to the original self-­consciousness. However, on my view, the revival of the original self-­consciousness does not exhaust consciousness at the time when the subject remembers the former experience, but rather the subject is also conscious of the content remembered and conscious of oneself as presently thinking subject.

86  Consciousness and Same Consciousness outlined above perceiving a certain idea and being conscious of it are part and parcel of the perceptual process. This means that there is not a mental act of being conscious in addition to the mental act of perceiving, but rather perceiving an idea involves being conscious of it. However, consciousness is not restricted to perceiving an idea and additionally involves self-­consciousness, namely consciousness of oneself as perceiving subject. Thus, it remains to consider whether self-­consciousness, which is part of every perception, could give rise to a regress.31 This problem would arise if self-­consciousness involves a distinct mental act. For instance, let us assume that I perceive a tree. While I am perceiving the tree I am not only aware of the tree, but also of myself as perceiving the tree, or of myself as subject of this perception. Sometimes the self-­conscious aspect of perception is also described as consciousness that I am perceiving ideas.32 This formulation can  be read in at least two ways. One option is to read it as stating that ­self-­consciousness concerns awareness of oneself as perceiving subject. Another option is to regard consciousness that I am perceiving ideas as an additional mental act. If the latter reading is correct then a regress looms, because now it can be argued that I would also have to be consciousness that I am conscious that I am perceiving ideas, and so on. Although self-­consciousness for Locke is a special aspect of every perception, I believe that there is not sufficient evidence for attributing the latter reading to Locke, namely the view that self-­consciousness involves a mental act distinct from the act of perception. Indeed, Locke’s claims about intuitive knowledge of our own existence conflict with such a reading. As already mentioned above, he is convinced that ‘[i]n every Act of Sensation, Reasoning, or Thinking, we are conscious to our selves of our own Being; and, in this Matter, come not short of the highest degree of Certainty’ (IV.ix.3). By contrast, if ­self-­consciousness would trigger an infinite regress, then the certainty of our own existence would be diminished. Consequently, it is more plausible to regard ­self-­consciousness as an inherent part of every perception.33 So far the main focus has been the question of what a thinking subject is conscious of and we have seen that a thinking subject is, at least conscious of the content of the perception and of oneself as perceiving subject. It is time to return to the further question of whether metaphysically speaking consciousness is 31  This question is relevant, because it has been raised by Priselac, ‘Review of Consciousness in Locke’, against Weinberg’s view. According to Weinberg, consciousness is self-­consciousness and is an inherent part of every perception, but not identical to it. Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, 31, 33–4, believes that her view avoids the regress problem that arises for higher order theories of consciousness. However, Priselac challenges Weinberg’s view by arguing that there can be different types of regresses. While Weinberg’s view is meant to avoid the ‘upward’ higher order regress, Priselac claims that it is not clear that it can avoid a regress that is spiralling inward like the images of two mirrors that face each other (see Priselac, ‘Review of Consciousness in Locke’, 3–5). 32  For instance, Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, describes self-­consciousness as ‘the perception that I am perceiving an idea’ (xi) or speaks of ‘consciousness that I am perceiving the idea’ (27). 33  On this point, I am in agreement with Weinberg, but I do not restrict consciousness to self-­ consciousness as she does.

Locke on Sameness of Consciousness  87 identical to perception. Although the exact metaphysical constitution of consciousness lies outside the scope of human understanding, it is possible that the metaphysical constitution of consciousness and perception are identical. While a thinking subject is not always conscious of the act of perception, there has to be an act of perception in order for the subject to be conscious of the perceived ideas and of oneself as thinking subject. Since consciousness, like perception, presupposes a perceiving subject, a mental act of perception, and an idea perceived, it is possible that they are identical as far as the metaphysics of perception and consciousness is concerned. On this basis, let us turn to Locke’s understanding of ‘same consciousness’.

5.2  Locke on Sameness of Consciousness When Locke discusses personal identity he emphasizes that it consists in ‘same consciousness’ (II.xxvii.10–11, 13–16, 19, 21, 23–5), or the ‘identity of consciousness’ (II.xxvii.19, 23). He also speaks of personal identity extending by consciousness.34 In these contexts he appeals not only to the awareness that is built into individual mental states, but also to the connections among them. This becomes clear, for instance, when Locke maintains that same consciousness unites different thoughts and actions at a time and over time, and is even able to unite different substances and bodily parts into one person.35 While same consciousness presupposes consciousness that is built into individual mental states, same consciousness is more complex and has a richer structure. Same consciousness involves not only the contents, namely different thoughts and actions, of which a person is aware, but also the structural relations among them. Memory revives past experiences and is important insofar as it provides access to past thoughts and actions. The self-­conscious aspect of every perception, namely awareness of oneself as perceiving subject, can explain the mineness of individual conscious experiences, but further examination is needed to explain the togetherness of different conscious experiences. Furthermore, I propose that it is helpful to distinguish a minimal sense of mineness, which arises due to self-­consciousness, from appropriation, or a more robust sense of mineness. Consciousness of different thoughts and actions, which includes self-­consciousness, is insufficient to explain the togetherness and temporality of different conscious experiences. To explain togetherness and temporality, it is important to consider structural relations among different conscious experiences. In the following I argue that Locke’s account of same consciousness involves a unifying aspect. In virtue of this unifying aspect we are able to experience the togetherness, or ‘unity’, of different 34  See II.xxvii.9–10, 16–17, 26.

35  See II.xxvii.10–11, 14, 16, 23–5.

88  Consciousness and Same Consciousness thoughts and actions. Moreover, temporality is another aspect of same consciousness, which accounts for a person’s temporal extension into the past and future and her experience of this temporal extension. In the following I examine closely the different aspects of Locke’s same consciousness account, namely revival of past experiences by memory, mineness, as well as appropriation, unity, and tem­ por­al­ity, and consider how they are intertwined. In the secondary literature we find memory interpretations,36 and various other interpretations that are often introduced as alternatives to memory interpretations; the supposed alternatives include appropriation interpretations,37 interpretations that emphasize the (metaphysical) unity that consciousness provides,38 and duration interpretations.39 I  believe that memory, appropriation, unity, and duration do not exclude each other, as sometimes suggested. Instead I argue that Locke endorses a multiple aspects account of same consciousness.

5.2.1  Revival of Past Experiences through Memory At least since Thomas Reid accused Locke of confounding consciousness with memory, it has been common to interpret Locke’s notion of same consciousness in terms of memory.40 Throughout his discussion of personal identity Locke 36  The most recent and most detailed memory interpretation has been given by Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, ch. 8. 37  See LoLordo, Locke’s Moral Man, ch. 2, especially 65–6, 70–4, 82 n. 30, 98–9, 102. LoLordo attributes the view to Winkler, ‘Locke on Personal Identity’. However, it is not clear that Winkler intended appropriation to provide persistence conditions for persons. For a critical discussion, see Boeker, ‘The Role of Appropriation’. 38  There is a cluster of interpretations that differ in their ways of accounting for unity; they include Atherton, ‘Locke’s Theory of Personal Identity’; Garrett, ‘Locke on Personal Identity, Consciousness, and “Fatal Errors” ’; Jessica Gordon-­Roth, ‘Tracing Reid’s “Brave Officer” Objection Back to Berkeley— and Beyond,’ Berkeley Studies 28 (2019); J. L. Mackie, Problems from Locke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 175–7; Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, ch. 4; Weinberg, ‘The Metaphysical Fact of Consciousness’. Weinberg additionally draws on passages where Locke mentions duration. 39 See Yaffe, ‘Locke on Consciousness, Personal Identity and the Idea of Duration’. Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, ch. 4; Weinberg, ‘The Metaphysical Fact of Consciousness’, also draws attention to the passages where Locke mentions duration and integrates duration into her interpretation of same consciousness as a metaphysical fact. Additional proposals that I will not discuss in detail here include Yaffe’s susceptibility-­to-­pain and his susceptibility-­to-­punishment theory. See Yaffe, ‘Locke on Ideas of Identity and Diversity’, 223–30. For a critical discussion of Yaffe’s susceptibility-­to-­pain and his susceptibility-­to punishment theory, see Boeker, ‘The Moral Dimension in Locke’s Account of Persons and Personal Identity’, 241–3. See also David J. Anderson, ‘Susceptibility to Punishment: A Response to Yaffe,’ Locke Studies 8 (2008). 40  See Reid, EIP, III.6, 277. Other interpreters who ascribe a memory interpretation to Locke include Henry E. Allison, ‘Locke’s Theory of Personal Identity: A Re-­Examination,’ Journal of the History of Ideas 27 (1966); Brody, ‘Locke on the Identity of Persons’; Antony Flew, ‘Locke and the Problem of Personal Identity,’ Philosophy 26 (1951); Lowe, Locke on Human Understanding, 104, 108–14; John Perry, ‘The Problem of Personal Identity,’ in Personal Identity, ed. John Perry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008); Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, ch. 8; Bernard A. O. Williams, ‘Personal Identity and Individuation,’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 67 (1957): 232–3. Interpreters who discuss and reject memory interpretations of Locke’s theory

Locke on Sameness of Consciousness  89 frequently mentions consciousness of past thoughts and actions.41 This is a strong indication that revival of past thoughts and actions through memory plays an important role in his account of sameness of consciousness. However, Locke never claims that personal identity consists in memory.42 Had he meant that personal identity is to be understood in terms of memory, he could have said so, especially since he devotes chapter x of Book II to retention and offers a detailed discussion of memory there. Contrary to Reid, I believe that Locke really meant that personal identity consists in same consciousness.43 Same consciousness, according to Locke, extends into the past and thereby involves memory, but it cannot be reduced to it, because it includes consciousness of present thoughts and actions44 and can also extend into the future.45 In order to understand what role memory plays in Locke’s account of sameness of consciousness it is worth examining more closely how he understands memory. Memory, according to Locke, is a power of the mind to revive perceptions that one has had previously, accompanied by the consciousness that one has had the perception before.46 This means that memory is a disposition to remember rather than the actual act of remembrance. Locke acknowledges that memory could be regarded as a storehouse, or a repository, of ideas. However, since ideas cease to be ideas when they are not actually in the mind, he argues that the storehouse metaphor may be misleading and memory is best understood as a power to revive ideas.47 Remembrance, according to Locke, revives not only the content of a past experience, but also revives one’s initial self-­consciousness. This means that include Atherton, ‘Locke’s Theory of Personal Identity’; Conn, Locke on Essence and Identity, 120; Gordon-­Roth, ‘Tracing Reid’s “Brave Officer” Objection’, 15–21; Rickless, Locke, ch. 8; Strawson, Locke on Personal Identity, ch. 9; Galen Strawson, ‘ “The Secrets of All Hearts”: Locke on Personal Identity,’ Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 76 (2015): 111, 130–2; Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, ch. 4; Weinberg, ‘The Metaphysical Fact of Consciousness’; Yaffe, ‘Locke on Consciousness, Personal Identity and the Idea of Duration’; Yaffe, ‘Locke on Ideas of Identity and Diversity’. Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, 109, 121–6, rejects views that identify Locke’s notion of consciousness with memory, but argues that both consciousness and memory play a role in Locke’s theory. David P. Behan, ‘Locke on Persons and Personal Identity,’ Canadian Journal of Philosophy 9 (1979): 66–7, distinguishes memory from concerned consciousness. According to Paul Helm, ‘Locke’s Theory of Personal Identity,’ Philosophy 54 (1979), personal identity consists in consciousness and consciousness plays a metaphysical role, while memory plays an epistemic role and gives evidence of personal identity. 41  See II.xxvii.9–10, 13–14, 16, 23, 25–6. 42  Locke discusses memory in his chapter ‘Of Identity and Diversity’ in II.xxvii.10, 20, 23, 25, 27. In several of these passages he emphasizes the importance of distinguishing the ideas of a person, man, and substance. For instance, in II.xxvii.10 he argues that forgetfulness or loss of memory is a problem for same substance views. Additionally he uses the term ‘recollection’ in II.xxvii.24. See also Atherton, ‘Locke’s Theory of Personal Identity’, 277; Etienne Balibar, Identity and Difference: John Locke and the Invention of Consciousness, ed. Stella Sandford, trans. Warren Montag (London: Verso, 2013), 86–91. 43  Reid’s objection arises due to terminological differences. For Reid the notions of memory and consciousness are mutually exclusive, while for Locke memory is part of consciousness. For further details regarding Reid’s terminological distinctions, see Reid, EIP, I.1, 20–39, III.1, 253–5. 44  See II.xxvii.10, 16, 26. 45  See II.xxvii.10, 25. 46  See I.iv.20, II.x.2, 7. 47  See II.x.2.

90  Consciousness and Same Consciousness remembrance involves awareness that one has had the experience before. Let us call this the previous awareness condition of remembrance. Taking seriously the previous awareness condition shows that Locke’s understanding of remembrance excludes illusionary or seeming memories.48 Illusionary memories are current fabrications of past events that never happened. They fail to satisfy the previous awareness condition, because there has never been a perception of the event, which currently appears as a past event. If we adopt present-­day terminological distinctions, Locke’s account of remembrance can be classified as episodic memory. Episodic memory is memory from the inside and is distinguished from semantic memory, also called factual mem­ ory.49 To illustrate the difference, remembering falling into the lake is an instance of episodic memory, while remembering that I fell into the lake is an instance of semantic memory. In the former case, I remember the experience from the inside, while in the latter case I remember the fact, but may not remember the internal experience that I had at the time. Let us examine more closely what role memory plays in Locke’s account of same consciousness by turning to relevant passages in his text: And as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past Action or Thought, so far reaches the Identity of that Person; it is the same self now it was then; and ’tis by the same self with this present one that now reflects on it, that that Action was done.  (II.xxvii.9)

According to Locke ‘consciousness can be extended backwards’ (II.xxvii.9).50 In order to make sense of this talk, we have to assume that memory is involved and helps revive past thoughts and actions. Let us consider a second passage: For as far as any intelligent Being can repeat the Idea of any past Action with the same consciousness it had of it at first, and with the same consciousness it has of any present Action; so far it is the same personal self. (II.xxvii.10)

48  Flew, ‘Locke and the Problem of Personal Identity’, 58, interprets Locke’s account of personal identity in terms of memory and introduces a dilemma: on the one hand, if memory is understood in terms of seeming or phenomenal memory, then whatever I seem to remember was done by me. As a consequence Locke’s theory would not leave room for error. However, Locke mentions the possibility of ‘fatal Error’ in II.xxvii.13 and this conflicts with the phenomenal memory reading. On the other hand, if memory is genuine memory, then, Flew argues, personal identity cannot consist in sameness of consciousness, but rather presupposes, at least partially, an underlying thinking substance. By taking seriously the previous awareness condition of memory, it follows that the first horn of Flew’s dilemma is mistaken. By the same token, problems raised by Winkler, ‘Locke on Personal Identity’, 220–3, who follows Flew, vanish. For further discussion, see Boeker, ‘The Role of Appropriation’, 17–19. A critical response to the second horn of the dilemma can be found in chapter 6. 49  See Rebecca Copenhaver, ‘Thomas Reid’s Theory of Memory,’ History of Philosophy Quarterly 23 (2006): 175–7. 50  See also II.xxvii.10, 16–17, 26.

Locke on Sameness of Consciousness  91 If we compare this passage with Locke’s remarks about remembrance in I.iv.20, where he maintains that ‘to remember is to perceive any thing with memory, or with a consciousness, that it was known or perceived before’, it becomes clear that repeating an idea of a past action with the same consciousness is, at least in part, done by memory. One further observation is worth making: in the passages cited from II.xxvii.9 and 10 Locke uses dispositional, rather than actual terms. This means that Locke’s view does not require that a person be actually conscious, or actually remember the past thoughts or actions that are part of a person’s identity over time, but rather the ability to be conscious of them is sufficient.51 Memory enables us to revive the contents of past thoughts and actions as our own. Being able to recall one’s own past thoughts and actions is important in Locke’s project, because persons are subjects of accountability and are held accountable for particular thoughts and actions. In light of these considerations we have sufficient evidence that memory plays an important role in Locke’s account of same consciousness insofar as it makes revival of past experiences possible.52 Yet it does not follow from this that Locke’s account of sameness of consciousness can be reduced to memory. Indeed, there are shortcomings of interpretations that propose that Locke’s account of same consciousness is to be understood solely in terms of memory.53 First, such views neglect that same consciousness does not only extend into the past, but also includes consciousness of present thoughts and actions.54 Moreover, consciousness can extend into the future.55 Of course, there is an asymmetry between consciousness of past and present

51 See II.xxvii.9–10, 16–17, 24, 26. See also Perry, ‘The Problem of Personal Identity’, 12–15; Rickless, Locke, 121–4; Strawson, Locke on Personal Identity, 33–4. Here I distance my interpretation from interpreters who offer a memory interpretation that requires actual memory. They include Brody, ‘Locke on the Identity of Persons’; Lowe, Locke on Human Understanding, 104–5; Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 359–65, especially 364. 52  This reading accommodates Samuel Rickless’s point that many defenders of memory in­ter­ pret­ations tend ‘to overread the relevant passages’ (Locke, 120) and put too much emphasis on the mental act of remembering, though for Locke it is more important that a person at an earlier and at a later time have access to the same content. Rickless further accuses memory theories of violating the symmetry of identity, because memory theories that hold that ‘X is the same person as Y if and only if X remembers (or can remember) an action or thought of Y’ (Locke, 120) base personal identity on a non-­symmetrical relation. I am not sure whether Locke would push the symmetry considerations as far as Rickless does, because Locke wants his account of personal identity to extend into the future and it is harder to see how present and future persons can have access to the same content. 53 Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 388–90, identifies limitations of the simple memory theory. For example, Stuart argues that ‘Locke’s backward-­looking theory of personal identity is unable to do all that he needs it to do, and all that we want a theory of personal identity to do. He needs an account of personal identity on which the prospect of reward or punishment on judgment day can motivate me to behave well now. He needs an account on which I can now understand that the person who will be rewarded or punished will be me . . . The trouble is that Locke’s theory fails to give an adequate account of the sort of survival that we care about deeply’ (Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 389). These are problems for Stuart’s simple memory theory, but not for my interpretation of same consciousness. 54  See II.xxvii.10, 16, 26. 55  See II.xxvii.10, 25.

92  Consciousness and Same Consciousness thoughts and actions and consciousness that extends into the future, because I cannot be conscious of my future actions in the way in which I can be conscious of my present or past actions. Memory interpretations have limited resources to explain this asymmetry, but if we turn to Locke’s remarks about duration and acknowledge temporality as a further aspect of his same consciousness account, we will see that Locke not only is in a position to make sense of the asymmetry, but also is able to explain how ‘same consciousness can extend to Actions . . . to come’ (II.xxvii.10). Second, memory is not sufficient to explain the togetherness of different ex­peri­ences at a time and over time. Memory revives past experiences and thereby provides access to individual past experiences, but memory alone cannot explain why different past and present experiences all belong to one person and occur together at a time and over time. Memory interpretations often do not say much about the many passages in which Locke emphasizes the unifying role that same consciousness has.56 Unity—as I argue below—is another aspect of Locke’s account of same consciousness. Additionally, it is interesting to ask whether Locke’s theory gives equal weight to all thoughts and actions that one is able to remember, irrespective of the particular content or a person’s attitude towards the content. For example, should Jonathan’s current remembrance of the trees that he saw when he looked outside his window yesterday have the same significance as his remembrance of cooking dinner for his sick mother yesterday? To address these questions it is helpful to turn to the passages where Locke mentions appropriation.

5.2.2  Mineness and Appropriation So far we have seen that for Locke self-­consciousness is part of every perception. In light of self-­consciousness a perceiving subject is aware of oneself as perceiving subject. This means that self-­consciousness creates a sense of mineness that is an inherent part of every perception. Self-­consciousness is not only part of all present perceptions, but furthermore memory revives the original self-­consciousness of perceptions one had previously. In this section I want to examine whether Locke’s text additionally leaves scope for a more robust sense mineness that supplements the self-­conscious aspect of perception. My proposal is that ap­pro­pri­ ation provides a good candidate for a more robust account of mineness. Before I examine Locke’s account of appropriation more closely and outline how it can support such a reading, I want to acknowledge that it is possible to

56  See II.xxvii.10–11, 14, 16, 23–5.

Locke on Sameness of Consciousness  93 identify Locke’s notion of appropriation in Essay II.xvii with self-­consciousness.57 However, if appropriation is identical with self-­consciousness then Locke would have to accept that a thinking subject appropriates all their perceptions through self-­consciousness and would lack resources to differentiate among them, or to treat some as more significant than others. Thus, it is worth examining, whether his text supports an alternative interpretation of appropriation, which can provide the basis for a more robust understanding of mineness. This brings me to the question of what role appropriation plays in Locke’s account of same consciousness.58 For Locke, as will become clearer in a moment, ‘to appropriate something’ means to make it one’s own. Although the notion of appropriation may need explaining for present-­day readers, it is a relatively familiar term for Locke’s contemporaries, because it can be traced back to the natural law tradition. In natural law theory it is common to describe what belongs to a person with the term suum—one’s own.59 In the Essay Locke speaks of the appropriation of actions by consciousness in the following passages: For as to this point of being the same self, it matters not whether this present self be made up of the same or other Substances, I being as much concern’d, and as justly accountable for any Action was done a thousand Years since, appropriated to me now by this self-­consciousness, as I am, for what I did the last moment. (II.xxvii.16) Person . . . is a Forensick Term appropriating Actions and their Merit; and so belongs only to intelligent Agents capable of a Law, and Happiness and Misery. This personality extends it self beyond present Existence to what is past, only by consciousness, whereby it becomes concerned and accountable, owns and imputes to it self past Actions, just upon the same ground, and for the same reason, that it does the present. All which is founded in a concern for Happiness the unavoidable concomitant of consciousness, that which is conscious of Pleasure and Pain, desiring, that that self, that is conscious, should be happy. And 57  I take it that Garrett, ‘Locke on Personal Identity, Consciousness, and “Fatal Errors” ’, interprets Locke’s notion of appropriation in terms of self-­consciousness. A similar reading can be found in Sorana Coreanu, Knowledge, Selves, Virtues: Cross-­Disciplinary Studies in Early Modern Literature, Philosophy and Science (Bucharest: Editura Universitatii din Bucuresti, 2014), 209–11. Coreanu add­ ition­al­ly draws attention to a self ’s close union with soul and body and assumes that Locke’s term ‘man’ refers to the union of body and soul, which is one possible meaning of ‘man’ that Locke offers in II.xxvii.21, but not the only one. 58  The interpretation that I develop here differs from other interpretations of Locke’s account of appropriation such as those by Ayers, Locke, 2:266–8; LoLordo, Locke’s Moral Man, ch. 2; Winkler, ‘Locke on Personal Identity’. 59 See Buckle, Natural Law and the Theory of Property; Karl Olivecrona, ‘Locke’s Theory of Appropriation,’ Philosophical Quarterly 24 (1974); Naomi Zack, ‘Locke’s Identity Meaning of Ownership,’ The Locke Newsletter 23 (1992).

94  Consciousness and Same Consciousness therefore whatever past Actions it cannot reconcile or appropriate to that ­present self by consciousness, it can be no more concerned in, than if they had never been done.  (II.xxvii.26)

In these passages Locke speaks explicitly of the appropriation of past actions by consciousness, but his claim in II.xxvii.26 that a person ‘owns and imputes to it self past Actions, just upon the same ground, and for the same reason, that  it does the present’ suggests that appropriation extends also to present actions. However, how does he understand the appropriation of present and past actions? At this stage it is helpful to turn to Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, because appropriation is relevant in the chapter ‘Of Property’, which is chapter v of the Second Treatise. There are interesting terminological parallels between Locke’s discussion of persons and personal identity in Essay II.xxvii, which includes remarks about appropriation of actions by consciousness, and his discussion of property in Two Treatises, where Locke argues that external objects are appropriated by investing labour. However, we have, of course, to be cautious not to stretch the parallels too far, because the Essay is a philosophical work in which Locke aims for terminological precision, while in Two Treatises he follows or­din­ ary use of language and does not distinguish between the ideas of person and man.60 Moreover, Locke’s moral views in the Essay are based on divine law, while civil law is the focus of Two Treatises. In Two Treatises Locke discusses property in two respects: first, he speaks of ‘a property in [one’s] own person’ (Two Treatises, II.27); second he examines property in external goods.61 With regard to the latter, Locke maintains that by mixing one’s labour with common goods such as fruits, animals, or land they become one’s property; or, in other words, one makes them one’s own.62 As the following passages illustrate, in this context ‘to appropriate something’ means ‘to make it one’s own’: God, who has given the World to Men in common, hath also given them reason to make use of it to the best advantage of Life, and convenience. . . . yet being

60 For further discussion, see Ayers, Locke, 2:266–8; Kiyoshi Shimokawa, ‘Locke’s Concept of Property,’ in John Locke: Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers, Series II, ed. Peter Anstey (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006); Timothy Stanton, ‘Christian Foundations; or Some Loose Stones? Toleration and the Philosophy of Locke’s Politics,’ Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 14 (2011); Thiel, Lockes Theorie der personalen Identität, 116–17, especially n. 28. For further discussion of the relation of Locke’s Essay and Two Treatises, see also Grant, John Locke’s Liberalism, ch. 1. 61 See Two Treatises, II, chapter v. For helpful further discussion of these two types of property, see Shimokawa, ‘Locke’s Concept of Property’. 62 See Two Treatises, II.26–39.

Locke on Sameness of Consciousness  95 given for the use of Men, there must of necessity be a means to appropriate them [i.e. the fruits and beasts] some way or other before they can be of any use, or at all beneficial to any particular Man. The Fruit, or Venison, which nourishes the wild Indian, who knows no Inclosure, and is still a Tenant in common, must be his, i.e. a part of him, that another can no longer have any right to it, before it can do him any good for the support of his Life.  (Two Treatises, II.26) The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the State that Nature hath provided, and left in it, he hath mixed his Labour with, and joyned to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his Property. It being by him removed from the common state Nature placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other Men. For this Labour being the unquestionable property of the Labourer, no Man but he can have a right to what that is once joyned to, at least where there is enough, and as good left in common for others. (Two Treatises, II.27)

In these cases, the physical labour constitutes the act of appropriation, which gives the labourer an exclusive right to use the appropriated object at their disposal.63 However, Locke is also clear that humans are only entitled to appropriate common goods to the extent that they can use them to their advantage.64 For instance, if someone collects more fruits than he is able to use himself and if the fruits start to rot, he has invaded the rights of his neighbours to their share of the common goods and can be punished for wasting them. Thus, for Locke, ‘he had no Right, farther than his Use called for any of them, and they might serve to afford him Conveniences of Life’ (Two Treatises, II.37). This suggests that humans are entitled to appropriate common goods first and foremost to aid self-­preservation, but also to improve their lives.65 It is worth noting that Locke further claims that common goods become part of oneself by appropriation.66 To understand this claim, it is helpful to situate Locke’s view in the natural law tradition. In natural law theory it is common to describe what belongs to a person with the term suum—one’s own.67 Grotius, for example, argues that ‘[b]y nature, a man’s life is his own, not indeed to destroy, but to safeguard; also his own are his body, limbs, reputation, honour, and the

63  For helpful further discussion of the right of disposal in Locke’s philosophy, see Shimokawa, ‘Locke’s Concept of Property’, 179–92. 64 See Two Treatises, II.27, 31, 37. 65  For further discussion, see Buckle, Natural Law and the Theory of Property, 149–61. 66 See Two Treatises, II.26. 67 See Buckle, Natural Law and the Theory of Property; Olivecrona, ‘Locke’s Theory of Appropriation’; Zack, ‘Locke’s Identity Meaning of Ownership’.

96  Consciousness and Same Consciousness acts of his will’ (On the Law of War and Peace, 2.17.2.1).68 The suum can be regarded as the sphere of personality. It includes first of all one’s body, limbs, repu­ta­tion, honour, and actions, but it is often thought to extend to external objects. By making something one’s own one gains a special right to use the things one appropriated and one is entitled to expect reparation if others damage the things belonging to the suum.69 The term ‘suum’ was translated as ‘propriety’ and ‘property’ into seventeenth-­century English.70 Since for Locke property includes not only external objects, but also ‘a property in [one’s] own Person’ (Two Treatises, II.27) it is plausible to regard his account of property as developing debates in natural law theory concerning the suum.71 For Locke and his contemporaries a property in one’s own person is significant because it provides the basis of a person’s liberty and ensures that they have various rights relating to their body, movement, and actions, which protect a person, for instance, against sale and purchase of their body, slavery, torture, or arbitrary imprisonment. Having shown that in Two Treatises ‘to appropriate something’ means to make something one’s own, let us consider whether this meaning is also present in the Essay. In addition to the passages from II.xxvii.16 and 26 already cited, we find passages where he uses expressions such as ‘owning actions’, ‘making actions one’s own’, ‘owning actions as one’s own’, or ‘admitting actions as one’s own’.72 Although prima facie these passages can be understood as consistent with Locke’s account of appropriation in Two Treatises, Thomas Mautner has questioned this reading and argued that there are two senses of ‘own’: one is the familiar possessive sense, and the other is an older usage, according to which ‘to own’ means ‘to state, declare, admit, confess, acknowledge it’.73 Along similar lines, Kiyoshi Shimokawa argues further that Locke’s focus in the Essay is different. While in Two Treatises Locke examines how humans acquire property and how they gain a right of disposal, in Essay II.xxvii he is concerned with issues of moral responsibility, namely attributions of reward and punishment.74 Despite the differences in scope and 68  References are to Hugo Grotius, On the Law of War and Peace, ed. Stephen C. Neff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Similarly, Pufendorf lists ‘our Life, our Bodies, our Members, our Chastity, our Reputation, and our Liberty’ as ‘Things which we receive from the immediate Hand of Nature’ (Pufendorf, Of the Law of Nature and Nations, 3.1.1). 69  See Pufendorf, Of the Law of Nature and Nations, 4.3–5. 70  The terms ‘propriety’ and ‘property’ were often used interchangeably in the seventeenth century. Locke tended to use ‘propriety’ and changed it to ‘property’ in later versions of his works. See Buckle, Natural Law and the Theory of Property, 172–3. 71  For further discussion, see Buckle, Natural Law and the Theory of Property, 169–73; Olivecrona, ‘Locke’s Theory of Appropriation’; Shimokawa, ‘Locke’s Concept of Property’. 72  See II.xxvii.14, 17–18, 24, 26. 73 Thomas Mautner, ‘Locke’s Own,’ The Locke Newsletter 22 (1991): 74. See also Shimokawa, ‘Locke’s Concept of Property’, 198. For a critical response, see Zack, ‘Locke’s Identity Meaning of Ownership’. I believe that it is difficult to understand Locke’s use of ‘own’ in II.xxvii in a purely declarative sense. For example, the expression ‘as its own’, which is part of the statement ‘and owns all the Actions of that thing, as its own, as far as that consciousness reaches’ (II.xxvii.17) can hardly be interpreted in the declarative sense, but rather introduces a reflexive, if not possessive, element. 74  See Shimokawa, ‘Locke’s Concept of Property’, 198.

Locke on Sameness of Consciousness  97 emphasis, I want to argue that the issues are less clearly separable than Mautner and Shimokawa propose. First, a right of disposal does not exempt one from the possibility of punishment. As mentioned above, if human beings acquire more goods than they can use to improve their lives, then they can be punished because they have deprived other humans of their fair share. Thus, violations of the right of disposal can lead to punishment. Second, as I argue in the following, I believe that just moral accountability presupposes acts of appropriation. For instance, if Christine is held accountable for a criminal action now and due to be punished for it, it is not enough that she acknowledges the action as her own now, but further it is important that at the time when the action was performed she appropriated it in a robust sense. I will spell out in a moment what I take the robust sense of appropriation to be. At this stage, it is worth noting that a person can ac­know­ ledge various past events. For instance, a person can acknowledge various involuntary bodily motions and can also acknowledge that she observed various actions of other people. In these cases, the person is a passive observer and commonly it would not be fair to hold her accountable for involuntary bodily motions or for actions of others that she could not influence. Just accountability presupposes a way of distinguishing actions that are one’s own in a genuine sense from actions of other persons and involuntary bodily motions. This suggests that appropriation would play an interesting and informative role in the Essay if it can be shown that the best way to understand appropriation in Essay II.xxvii is in the sense of making one’s own, which would be analogous to Locke’s usage of ap­pro­ pri­ation in Two Treatises. By contrast, if appropriation is merely a matter of self-­ consciousness at the time when an action or event first occurs and at the later time when the original action is recalled, then passively observing actions would be enough for appropriation. Given the self-­consciousness reading, appropriation would be redundant, because it can be reduced to self-­consciousness. Thus, it is worth exploring the analogy between appropriation in Two Treatises and the Essay further. Locke aims to offer an account of persons and personal identity that addresses questions of moral accountability. Personal identity is one necessary condition for moral accountability. Another necessary condition for moral accountability for an action is that the person is (or was) free to perform the action. To be free with regard to action A requires not just voluntariness, namely the ability to do A, if one wills A, but also the ability to not do A, if one wills not to do A. Although a person can be conscious of involuntary bodily movements or things she perceives passively, they are not a person’s own in a genuine sense. From a first-­person perspective, a person can know whether an action is voluntary, but it is not always possible to decide whether an action is free. This suggests that a person regards an action as her own in a robust sense based on the voluntary performance of the

98  Consciousness and Same Consciousness action. Hence, I propose that voluntary actions are candidates for being one’s own in a genuine and robust sense.75 At this stage, it is worth commenting on Locke’s usage of the term ‘action’. Although Matthew Stuart argues that Locke distinguishes actions from bodily motions and that all actions involve an act of will,76 Locke’s text does not clearly support this reading, because Locke also uses the term ‘action’ in a broader sense to include all types of thinking and motion.77 Given this broad usage, actions do not have to involve an act of will, and can be voluntary or involuntary. In the following I intend to defend the view that only voluntary actions are appropriated in a robust sense. Involuntary actions happen against one’s will, or at least without any volition to perform them. Understood this way, appropriation can play an interesting role in Locke’s account of persons and personal identity, because only voluntary actions are candidates for moral accountability. While a thinking subject can be conscious of a wide range of thoughts and actions and memory revives former experiences irrespective of whether they were voluntary or not, appropriation, on the view that I am proposing, provides a tool to zoom in on specific contents, namely voluntary actions, which are candidates for moral accountability. On this basis, let us return to the question of how Locke understands the appropriation of present and past actions. As mentioned above it is plausible that action appropriation happens both at the time when an action is initially performed and at a later time when we acknowledge a previously performed action as our own. I will call the former ‘appropriation of present actions’ and the latter ‘appropriation of past actions’. For reasons of simplicity, I speak of appropriation of present and past actions, though strictly speaking the actions under con­sid­er­ ation are voluntary actions. It is worth examining separately how present and past actions are appropriated. First, let us examine appropriation of present actions. Since only voluntary actions can genuinely be one’s own, these actions—qua being voluntary—involve an act of will. Involuntary actions such as purely physical movements of a sleepwalker can be excluded, because they happen without a volition to do the action or against one’s will. This means that any present voluntary action is always accompanied by the conscious volition to perform it, which entails that, when I am performing a voluntary action, I am aware of performing it. While I can observe how another person performs bodily movements and I may witness how she declares the action as voluntary, her action is not my action, because it is prompted by her act of will rather than mine. This means that perception of the 75  This is an amendment of my former view. I thank Kathryn Tabb for helpful correspondence and conversations about appropriation. 76  See Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 358. 77  For instance, he writes in II.xxi.4 that ‘there being two sorts of Action, whereof we have any Idea, viz. Thinking and Motion.’ See also II.xxi.8, 72, II.xxii.11, II.xxviii.18.

Locke on Sameness of Consciousness  99 performance of an action is not sufficient for action appropriation, but further our first-­personal attitudes towards the action need to be taken into con­sid­er­ ation. More precisely, it is crucial that I initiate the action in question voluntarily. The important point is that a voluntary action that I perform in the present moment involves consciousness in two respects. First, I am conscious of the act of will to perform the action, and, second, I am conscious of performing the action. These involve cognitive and physical labour respectively, assuming the action is a bodily action. If it is a non-­bodily voluntary action, it will involve cognitive labour. Hence, the appropriation of present actions can be explained in terms of my intimate awareness of the cognitive and/or physical labour that I invest.78 In order for appropriation of a present action to take place, an individual needs to will the action and perform it, which will be accompanied both by awareness of the volition (cognitive labour) and awareness of the performance of the action (commonly physical labour). Let us turn to the appropriation of past actions. According to Locke, we appropriate past actions by consciousness.79 To be conscious of a past action will involve remembrance of the past action. As stated above, for Locke remembering a past action requires previous awareness of the action.80 This means that when I remember a past action I remember having done or having perceived a past action and I do not merely remember that a past action took place. In light of Locke’s understanding of memory and the proposed account of the appropriation of present actions, I want to suggest that a past action is appropriated on the basis of remembering the previous volition and performance of the action and one’s former awareness of willing and performing it, which includes remembering the cognitive and physical labour that one invested. This means that past actions are appropriated in virtue of remembering the initial appropriation of the action. Thus, the appropriation of past actions is not another type of action ap­pro­pri­ation, but rather can be traced back to the initial act of appropriation at the time of the voluntary performance of the action, which is revived at later times by means of memory. 78  The distinctive inner experience may be explained in analogy to Locke’s claims about sensitive knowledge in Book IV. According to him, sensitive knowledge is accompanied by distinctive inner experiences: But yet here, I think, we are provided with an Evidence, that puts us past doubting: For I ask any one, Whether he be not invincibly conscious to himself of a different Perception, when he looks on the Sun by day, and thinks of it by night; when he actually tastes Wormwood, or smells a Rose, or only thinks on that Savour, or Odour? We as plainly find the difference there is between an Idea revived in our Minds by our own Memory, and actually coming into our Minds by our Senses, as we do between any two distinct Ideas. (IV.ii.14) For he that sees a Candle burning, and hath experimented the force of its Flame, by putting his Finger in it, will little doubt, that this is something existing without him, which does him harm, and puts him to great pain: which is assurance enough, when no Man requires greater certainty to govern his Actions by, than what is as certain as his Actions themselves. (IV.xi.8) 79  See II.xxvii.16, 26. 80  See I.iv.20, II.x.2, 7.

100  Consciousness and Same Consciousness So far I have proposed an interpretation of the appropriation of present and past actions. Although Locke speaks explicitly only of the appropriation of actions,81 it is worth considering whether and how this interpretation extends to the appropriation of thoughts. Since actions, according to Locke, include thoughts, this question may seem redundant.82 However, since many of our thoughts are passive and involuntary, the more interesting consideration is to identify types of thoughts that can be said to be voluntary. In accordance with the account of action appropriation, we can then ask how voluntary thoughts are appropriated. Since Locke is interested in questions of moral accountability, it is helpful to have a means to single out voluntary, or appropriated thoughts, since they are candidates for moral accountability while passive or involuntary thoughts are not.83 Let me present an example. The demonstration of an important theorem can be a thought that deserves reward. If we accept that such a demonstration deserves reward, we can say that it should be taken into consideration in ascriptions of moral accountability. This makes it plausible to expect that demonstrations can be appropriated. A demonstration differs from many other perceptions that just pass one’s mind. However, how exactly can we understand the ap­pro­pri­ ation of a demonstration? Demonstrating a theorem presupposes an act of will to carry out the demonstration and the demonstration itself involves several individual steps. In each step of the proof one invests cognitive labour and is aware of the cognitive labour one invests. Thus, it can be said that by investing cognitive labour a person makes the demonstration one’s own. This suggests that the ap­pro­ pri­ation of a present demonstration can be understood by means of the voluntary cognitive effort one invests and one’s awareness thereof. In accordance with the account of appropriation of actions already outlined, it is plausible that a demonstration will be appropriated at a later time by remembering the initial act of appropriation.84 To turn to another example, let us consider the invention of new things. According to Locke, ideas of modes are created in the mind. In contrast to ideas of substances, which are meant to represent real things in the world and capture the way the world is independent of us, it is up to the creative mind to combine any ideas into the idea of a complex mode.85 Ideas of substances can be said to have a world-­mind direction of fit, while ideas of modes have the opposite direc81  See II.xxvii.16, 26. 82  See II.xxi.4, 8, 72. 83  I say that they are candidates for moral accountability, because voluntariness is a necessary condition for moral accountability, but it is not sufficient. 84  In IV.i.9 Locke observes that our memory of demonstrations often does not retain all the individual steps of a demonstration, but rather the memory merely retains a conviction of the proof. This intimates that, in order to appropriate a past demonstration, it may be sufficient that one is still aware that one demonstrated a proposition by one’s own cognitive efforts even if one does not recall all the individual steps of the demonstration. 85  See II.xxx, III.v, III.vi.46.

Locke on Sameness of Consciousness  101 tion of fit. ‘We do not pick out something in the world and then design a mode idea to correspond to it. Rather, we design a mode idea to serve certain purposes and then use it to refer to anything out in the world that happens to answer to it.’86 Some ideas of modes exist in the mind, before any object cor­res­pond­ing to them exists in reality. Printing is an example of such a mode, because the idea of printing had to be formed in the mind of the inventor before any printing machines were built.87 People who invent new things voluntarily invest cognitive labour when they combine several simple ideas into a new complex idea and as part of this process they consider mental images of the things they aim to invent. Inventions of new things illustrate that it is plausible to say that certain thoughts are appropriated by investing cognitive labour. My proposed interpretation of the appropriation of actions and thoughts in the Essay is developed in analogy to Locke’s account of appropriation in Two Treatises. Appropriation is explained in virtue of the cognitive and/or physical labour that one invests and one’s intimate awareness of the volition and performance of the action. This understanding of appropriation makes it possible to single out voluntary thoughts and actions to which a person actively contributed and to distinguish them from mere bodily motions, involuntary actions, passive perceptions, or events in one’s environment. In other words, appropriation makes it possible to zoom in on a subset of a person’s thoughts and actions. Appropriated thoughts and actions can be said to be more significant than involuntary thoughts and actions, because they are voluntary and voluntariness is a prerequisite for moral accountability. It is possible to argue that it is important for the persistence of a person that the person continues to be conscious of thoughts and actions that she appropriated and continues to appropriate, but it may not be a problem if she does not continue to be conscious of various other contents that passed her mind and that she did not appropriate.88 For example, Susannah may have volunteered to organize a concert with the aim of raising funds for charity. She appropriates the voluntary actions involved in the planning process and hosting of the event at the time when she originally carries them out. Furthermore, we can assume that

86  Antonia LoLordo, ‘Three Problems in Locke’s Ontology of Substance and Mode,’ in Contemporary Perspectives on Early Modern Philosophy: Nature and Norms in Thought, ed. Martin Lenz and Anik Waldow (Dordrecht: Springer, 2013), 53. For a detailed discussion of Locke’s distinction between modes and substances, see also LoLordo, Locke’s Moral Man, 74–82. 87  See II.xxii.9. 88  If this is correct, then Locke’s theory differs from neo-­Lockean interpretations such as Derek Parfit’s. According to Parfit’s psychological criterion of personal identity, there have to be continuous chains of psychological connections and a sufficient number of conscious states have to be preserved over each day, but the contents of those states and the attitude that persons take towards them are irrelevant. For further details, see Parfit, Reasons and Persons, 204–9. Moreover, the proposed reading avoids a problem raised by Stuart, namely that ‘I [do not] want any future person to remember every aspect of my present experience, every patch of color in my visual field, the sounds of each passing car, the sweat on my palms this humid day, the tightness of my left shoulder blade, the mental labor of crafting this sentence’ (Locke’s Metaphysics, 389).

102  Consciousness and Same Consciousness she remembers the actions that she did in association with the event and thereby she continues to appropriate them. It is further plausible that these actions are more significant than, for example, Susannah’s perception of all the cars that pass by outside her window over the period of a month. The difference between the former and the latter is that in the former case the voluntary performance of the actions and her awareness thereof is accompanied by an intimate awareness of the cognitive and physical labour that she invests, while this is absent in the latter case where she merely passively receives input from her environment.89 The point is that appropriation makes it possible to single out specific contents, namely appropriated voluntary thoughts and actions, and to give them more weight in considerations of personal identity and moral accountability. Furthermore, it is possible—at least not ruled out by Locke’s text—to give different weight to different appropriated thoughts and actions, possibly in relation to the cognitive and physical labour that one invests at the time when one initially performs an action or has a thought and in relation to the foreseeable consequences of one’s actions, or failure to act.90 In this sense appropriation can play an important role in his theory, but it would be a mistake to explain the persistence conditions for persons exclusively in terms of appropriation.91 Locke never says that personal identity consists in appropriation, but rather he emphasizes repeatedly that personal identity consists in same consciousness. Appropriation and memory work together, but ap­pro­pri­ ation alone is not suitable to provide persistence conditions for persons. Appropriation takes place at the time when an action is initially willed and

89  It may be objected that it is also possible to appropriate passive perception. With regard to the given example it can be argued that Susannah can also appropriate the perception of passing cars as her own perception. I acknowledge that Locke’s text does not clearly exclude such a reading. However, such a reading would reduce appropriation to self-­consciousness. I do not deny that passive perceptions are one’s own in a minimal sense of mineness, understood in terms of self-­consciousness, since self-­consciousness is part of every perception. While this is a possible reading of Locke’s text, I believe that the interpretation that I proposed better fits his overall aim to make sense of questions of moral accountability and better shows that appropriation plays an important role in his theory. 90  I am not aware of any texts where Locke directly discusses such a proposal. We have texts where Locke maintains that the moral rightness of an action depends on its conformity to divine law (see II.xxviii.5–8). Moreover, we have texts suggesting that the lawfulness of actions includes foreseeable consequences. In his correspondence with Molyneux Locke acknowledges that ‘any criminal action infects the consequences of it’ (Locke, Correspondence, letter 1693, 4:785). This provides evidence that Locke would be open to taking consequences of actions into consideration and that not only the cognitive and physical labour that I invest are relevant, but also my failure to act and subsequent consequences that arise from it. 91 My interpretation of appropriation differs from Antonia LoLordo’s, Shelley Weinberg’s, and Gideon Yaffe’s understanding of appropriation. They have coined the term ‘appropriation interpretation’ to refer to the view that appropriation is meant to provide alternative persistence conditions for persons. See LoLordo, Locke’s Moral Man, ch. 2; Shelley Weinberg, ‘Locke on Personal Identity,’ Philosophy Compass 6 (2011): 401–2; Weinberg, ‘The Metaphysical Fact of Consciousness’, 388–90; Yaffe, ‘Locke on Ideas of Identity and Diversity’, 221–3. LoLordo, Weinberg, and Yaffe ascribe the view to Winkler, ‘Locke on Personal Identity’. However, it is not clear that Winkler, let alone Locke, endorses it. For further critical discussion, see Boeker, ‘The Role of Appropriation’.

Locke on Sameness of Consciousness  103 performed or when a thought is first had. This initial act of appropriation can be revived at later times and thereby one continues to appropriate the action or thought. However, the connection between the initial act of appropriation and its revival at later times cannot be explained in terms of appropriation and involves memory. For this reason, the appropriation of past actions or thoughts cannot be separated from memory. Moreover, it is plausible to interpret Locke’s claims about a person’s consciousness of thoughts and actions in the broad sense in which he speaks of thoughts and actions, which includes involuntary thoughts and actions. This means that not only appropriated voluntary thoughts and actions are part of a person’s history, but also involuntary thoughts and actions.92 Involuntary thoughts and actions can still be said to be a person’s own in a minimal sense of mineness, because the person is self-­conscious of having them. Thus, it is helpful to distinguish appropriation, or a robust sense of mineness, that is relevant for moral accountability from a more minimal sense of mineness that is grounded in self-­consciousness. Despite the importance that memory and appropriation play in Locke’s account of same consciousness it is problematic to reduce it to memory and/or ap­pro­pri­ ation, because it neglects the many passages where Locke ascribes a unifying function to same consciousness. Memory can explain the revival of former ex­peri­ences, and appropriation why a subject regard an action or thought as one’s own in a robust sense, but unity is needed to explain why multiple different thoughts and actions belong to the same subject. To understand the togetherness of different thoughts and actions, let us turn to this further aspect of Locke’s view.

5.2.3  Unity According to Locke, same consciousness unifies. It unites present and past actions, existences, bodily parts into one person; it can even unite different substances into one person.93 Let us consider just a few of the several passages where Locke makes such claims: yet ’tis plain consciousness, as far as it can be extended, should it be to Ages past, unites Existences, and Actions, very remote in time, into the same Person, as well as it does the Existence and Actions of the immediately preceding moment: So that whatever has the consciousness of present and past Actions, is the same Person to whom they both belong.  (II.xxvii.16) 92  I return to this point in chapter 8 and argue that including involuntary thoughts and actions in addition to appropriated thoughts and actions can make it easier to trace a person’s identity over time. 93  See II.xxvii.10–11, 16, 23–5.

104  Consciousness and Same Consciousness Nothing but consciousness can unite remote existences into the same person, the identity of substance will not do it.  (II.xxvii.23) but the same continued consciousness, in which several substances may have been united, and again separated from it; which, whilst they continued in a vital union with that, wherein this consciousness then resided, made a part of that same self.  (II.xxvii.25)

Locke motivates the view by drawing an analogy between living organisms and the role of life in creating unity, on the one hand, and persons and the role of consciousness, on the other hand:94 Different Substances, by the same consciousness (where they do partake in it) being united into one Person; as well as different Bodies, by the same Life are united into one Animal, whose Identity is preserved, in that change of Substances, by the unity of one continued Life.  (II.xxvii.10)

Life, according to Locke, provides a particular organizational structure.95 This organizational structure unifies the different bodily parts in such a way that the organism can, for example, receive nourishment and grow and carry out all other life-­preserving functions. Just like life unifies bodily parts, consciousness has a unifying function. It is worth noting that in the contexts where Locke discusses the unifying aspect of consciousness he uses the term ‘consciousness’ not to refer to particular individual mental states, but rather he ascribes a distinct consciousness to each person.96 In a few passages he uses the more technical expressions ‘a consciousness’ (II.xxvii.14, 25), ‘distinct incommunicable consciousness’ (ii.xxvii.20), ‘distinct incommunicable consciousnesseses’ (II.xxvii.23), and ‘distinct consciousness’ (II.xxvii.23).97 I take it that in these passages he considers consciousness with 94  For further discussion of the analogy, see Atherton, ‘Locke’s Theory of Personal Identity,’ 181–6; Ayers, Locke, 2:260–8; Martha Brandt Bolton, ‘Locke and Leibniz on the Structure of Substance and Powers: The Metaphysics of Moral Subjects,’ in Studies on Locke: Sources, Contemporaries, and Legacy, ed. Sarah Hutton and Paul Schuurman (Dordrecht: Springer, 2008), 115–16; Bolton, ‘Locke on Identity,’ 116–17; Conn, Locke on Essence and Identity, 81, 101–2, 114, 122–6, 134; Gordon-­Roth, ‘Tracing Reid’s “Brave Officer” Objection’, 15–16; Helm, ‘Locke’s Theory of Personal Identity’, 179; Mackie, Problems from Locke, 175–6; Edwin McCann, ‘Locke on Identity: Matter, Life, and Consciousness,’ Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 69 (1987); Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, 125; Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, 158–60; Weinberg, ‘Locke on Personal Identity’, 402–3; Weinberg, ‘The Metaphysical Fact of Consciousness’, 395–6. For limits of the analogy, see Ayers, Locke, 2:265. The analogy is rejected by Locke’s eighteenth-­century critics Butler, ‘Of Personal Identity’, 1:319–20; Reid, EIP, III.4, 265–7. 95  See II.xxvii.4–8. 96  Weinberg makes a similar point by noting that Locke’s notion of consciousness is ambiguous. See Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, 153, 166–8; Weinberg, ‘The Metaphysical Fact of Consciousness’, 390–1. 97  This use of ‘consciousness’ is mentioned by Strawson, ‘ “The Secrets of All Hearts” ’, 114, 132–3, 136. Atherton, ‘Locke’s Theory of Personal Identity’, offers an interpretation of Locke’s account of

Locke on Sameness of Consciousness  105 regard to its unifying function both at a time and over time; it has the function to unify thoughts, actions, present bodily parts, and possibly a succession of ­substances and thereby it contributes to constituting a person’s existence at a time and over time. How can we understand Locke’s conception of unity? In parts of the Essay he uses ‘unity’ in a very broad sense. For example, in his examination of how we acquire ideas, he writes: Existence and Unity, are two other Ideas, that are suggested to the Understanding, by every Object without, and every Idea within. . . . And whatever we can consider as one thing, whether a real Being, or Idea, suggests to the Understanding, the Idea of Unity. (II.vii.7)

This passage suggests that ideas of unity are ubiquitous. However, we also find narrower conceptions of unity. For instance, when Locke discusses substances, he speaks of a ‘union in nature’.98 As we form complex ideas of substances, we combine ideas that we suppose to have a union in nature, meaning that they really exist together. However, combining different ideas can lead to the construction of false ideas. Locke illustrates this point with the following example of how false ideas of substances arise: When they put together simple Ideas, which in the real Existence of Things, have no union: as when to the Shape, and Size, that exist together in a Horse, is joined, in the same complex Idea, the power of Barking like a Dog: Which three Ideas, however put together into one in the Mind, were never united in Nature. (II.xxxii.18)

Here Locke suggests that false ideas of substance arise if ideas are combined into a complex idea that are never united in nature. He does not go so far as to claim that the union in nature is fully comprehensible from a human perspective, but it is revealing that he accepts that there is a union in nature. Let us return to the chapter ‘Of Identity and Diversity’ (II.xxvii) and the ana­ logy that Locke draws between living organisms and persons. I take it that he uses the terms ‘unity’ and ‘union’ not merely in their ubiquitous sense, but rather a

personal identity that is based on these passages. While she is right in emphasizing the importance of Locke’s claim that each person has a distinct consciousness, I do not think that we need to follow Atherton in regarding her interpretation as a rival interpretation to memory interpretations. Instead I intend to show that revival of former experiences by means of (genuine) memory and the unifying aspect of consciousness are consistent aspects in Locke’s account of consciousness, each playing important roles. 98  See II.xxxii.18, III.v.6, 11, 15, III.vi.28, III.ix.13, IV.iv.12; see also II.xxiii.24, 26.

106  Consciousness and Same Consciousness narrower sense is present when he considers how material particles are united to living organisms and how consciousness unifies analogously. Before we examine the details, it is helpful to acknowledge different types of unity that are relevant in this context: the first type of unity can be called ‘unity of the body’ or ‘unity of living beings’. A second type of unity concerns unity of mind or unity of thought; and a third type of unity focuses on unity of mind and body.99 The first is present in Locke’s discussion of living beings in II.xxvii.3–8, while the second and third play a role in his account of persons and personal identity. A person has multiple different thoughts at a time and over time and commonly experiences them as unified by consciousness, or as belonging to one and the same self. For instance, assume that I simultaneously see a book on my desk, hear a bird outside my window, and smell the food that is inside the oven. Why do these three different sensations all belong to one and the same self? Each perception involves self-­consciousness. This means that while I see the book on the desk I am aware of myself as subject seeing the book, while I hear the bird outside my window I am aware of myself as subject hearing the sound, and while I smell the food I am aware of myself as subject smelling the food. Although in principle one can call into doubt whether the subject that has the visual perception is identical with the subject that has the oral perception or with the subject that has the olfactory perpcetion, the self-­referential character of the different sensations makes it plausible to ascribe them all to the same self. Since initial sense perceptions are more vivid than acts of the imagination, dreams, or memories, I have convincing evidence that I actually have the three sensations.100 Moreover, as soon as I start reflecting on the first-­order sensations I gain further evidence that the three sensations are all my perceptions. Reflection brings to my attention the mental acts by which I receive the different ideas, namely seeing, hearing, and smelling, and since reflection enables me to hold the ideas of the three mental acts in my mind as my present mental acts I receive further confirmation that I have the three different sense perceptions simultaneously. This example suggests that we experience synchronic unity of thought. Next, let us consider whether and how we experience diachronic unity of thought. Assume that I now remember cooking dinner with a friend two weeks ago. As I remember this past ex­peri­ ence, I not only remember cooking dinner with my friend, but I am also aware that I have had this experience before. The previous awareness condition that accompanies each act of remembrance helps a person to regard the initial ex­peri­ ence that took place in the past and the present remembrance thereof as ex­peri­ ences of the same self. Reflection can provide further evidence that an initial

99  I thank Matthew Leisinger for prompting me to think about different types of unity and for helpful conversation. 100  See IV.ii.14.

Locke on Sameness of Consciousness  107 experience and the remembrance of it at a later time all belong to one and the same self. Moreover, reflection makes it possible to hold a series of different thoughts in the mind such as a train of different perceptions over time. Since each perception involves self-­consciousness, reflection enables a person to see that the different perceptions all belong to one and the same self.101 These considerations support that persons experience both synchronic and diachronic unity of thought. It may be more surprising that Locke further claims that various bodily parts can be united with a person and the issue is worth investigating further. Closer inspection will show that Locke shares core insights concerning our experience of the unity of mind and body with other early modern philosophers, including René Descartes and Cambridge Platonist philosophers such as Ralph Cudworth. Yet, as will become clearer in the following, agreeing with philosophers such as Descartes and Cudworth on questions of how we experience our body as closely linked with our self, does not commit him to endorse the details of their metaphysical positions. In the following I focus on different substance dualist views held by Locke’s predecessors and contemporaries, because dualists would more likely question his claim concerning the analogy between living beings and persons, while materialists can more easily accept the analogy.102 The aim of the following considerations is to show that Locke’s view, namely that a person experiences bodily parts as closely united with the person or self she is, is widely accepted by other philosophers of his day. In the next chapter, I ask whether more can be said about the metaphysics that underlies our experience of unity of thought and unity of bodily parts with a self or person. When Locke comments on the union of bodily parts with a self or person, he speaks of a ‘vital union’ (II.xxvii.11, 25). A vital union is not unique to persons, but rather he uses the same language when he discusses how material particles are united to a living organism.103 Let us consider the issues more closely by turning to II.xxvii.11: That this is so, we have some kind of Evidence in our very Bodies, all whose Particles, whilst vitally united to this same thinking conscious self, so that we feel when they are touch’d, and are affected by, and conscious of good or harm 101 Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, 215–18, argues for a similar view. In contrast to Weinberg, I put more emphasis on the previous awareness condition that accompanies each act of remembrance and regard it as essential for understanding why a subject regards an initial experience and one’s remembrance thereof as diachronically unified. 102  I do not intend to imply that living organisms are purely material beings. Indeed, Locke leaves open the possibility that they have immaterial souls. However, if they do, then persons would also have immaterial souls. If so, there would not be a specific difficulty to establish the analogy between living beings and persons. 103  See II.xxvii.4, 6, 27, 29. The term ‘vital’ originates from the Latin term ‘vita’ (life). Talk of ‘vital union’ can also be found in Locke’s correspondence with Stillingfleet. See Locke, Works, 4:305–11, 314, 323–4, 328–33.

108  Consciousness and Same Consciousness that happens to them, are part of our selves: i.e. of our thinking conscious self. Thus the Limbs of his Body is to every one a part of himself: He sympathizes and is concerned for them. Cut off an hand, and thereby separate it from that consciousness, we had of its Heat, Cold, and other Affections; and it is then no longer a part of that which is himself, any more than the remotest part of Matter. Thus we see the Substance, whereof personal self consisted at one time, may be varied at another, without the change of personal Identity: There being no Question about the same Person, though the Limbs, which but now were a part of it, be cut off.  (II.xxvii.11)

As Locke describes how bodily parts are ‘vitally united’ to a person, the important point is that a person feels or experiences the union with her bodily parts. For instance, a person ‘feel[s them] when they are touch’d’, or feels their ‘Heat, Cold, and other Affections’. This means that a person is very intimately connected with her bodily parts and is conscious of them in feeling them. It further shows that bodily parts can lose their connection with the self if they are separated from it, because their separation interrupts the experiential connection. For instance, when a limb is cut off, the part ceases to belong to the person, because she cannot any longer be conscious of it. The claim that a self can feel a close union with her bodily parts is not unique to Locke’s philosophy, but can, for instance, also be found in Descartes’s works, who claims in Meditation 6 that ‘[t]here is nothing that my own nature teaches me more vividly than that I have a body’ (AT VII:80; CSM II:56). Moreover, my various sensations inform me of the needs of my body. For instance, ‘when I feel pain there is something wrong with the body, and that when I am hungry and thirsty the body needs food and drink, and so on’ (AT VII:80; CSM II:56). According to Descartes, sensations are significant in a further respect: ‘Nature also teaches me, by these sensations of pain, hunger, thirst and so on, that I am very closely joined and, as it were, intermingled with [my body], so that I and the body form a unit’ (AT VII:81; CSM II:56). The important insight is that we learn about the union with the body by means of sensations or feelings. Similar considerations can be found in the writings of Cambridge Platonist philosophers.104 Cambridge Platonist philosophers such as Henry More and 104 We have strong evidence to assume that Locke was familiar with the views of Cambridge Platonist philosophers, including Ralph Cudworth, Henry More, and John Smith. See Locke’s manuscript note on Cudworth, Bodleian Libraries, Oxford, MS Locke f.6, 19–20, published in Locke, Early Draft, 118. See further G. A. J. Rogers, ‘John Locke and the Cambridge Platonists on the Nature of the Mind,’ in Essays on the Concept of Mind in Early-­Modern Philosophy, ed. Petr Glombíček and James Hill (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010); Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, 99, 117, 133. Furthermore, Ralph Cudworth’s daughter Damaris Cudworth, Lady Masham, is a close friend of Locke. They first met about 1681 and Locke moved to the Masham family estate in Oates in 1691 and resided there until his death in 1704. She discusses views of Cambridge Platonists in her correspondence with Locke and it is likely that Cambridge Platonist views were a topic of their conversations at Oates while Locke was preparing the second edition of his Essay. See Jacqueline Broad, ‘A Woman’s

Locke on Sameness of Consciousness  109 Ralph Cudworth do not share all Cartesian metaphysical commitments and reject mechanical explanations of the union between mind and body. Instead they argue that so-­called vital principles, or principles of life, which originate from im­ma­ter­ ial souls, explain mind-­body interaction and activities of bodies. Nevertheless, they acknowledge, like Descartes, that feelings such as pain, hunger, or thirst are signs of the close union between mind and body.105 Such considerations find clear expression in Cudworth’s A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality, first published in 1731. Although this work was not published during Locke’s lifetime and it is not clear that Locke has seen it in manuscript form, it is plausible that similar ideas were a topic of conversation between Locke and Damaris Masham, who was well acquainted with the philosophical views of her father Ralph Cudworth.106 Cudworth writes: For the soul and body, by reason of that vital union which is betwixt them making up one compound (compositum) or animal, do of necessity mutually suffer from each other, the body being variously moved by the soul, and the soul again affected by the body, or the motions which are made upon it. Neither does the soul suffer indifferently from any body, but all sense arises from that natural sympathy or compassion which the soul hath with that individual body with which it is vitally united. (A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Mortality, III.i, 51)

Influence? John Locke and Damaris Masham on Moral Accountability,’ Journal of the History of Ideas 67 (2006); K.  Joanna  S.  Forstrom, John Locke and Personal Identity: Immortality and Bodily Resurrection in 17th-­Century Philosophy (London and New York: Continuum, 2010), 96–7; Sarah Hutton, British Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 153; Sarah Hutton, ‘Damaris Cudworth, Lady Masham: Between Platonism and Enlightenment,’ British Journal for the History of Philosophy 1 (1993): 41–8. See also John R. Harrison and Peter Laslett, The Library of John Locke, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 119, 192, 235. 105  See Ralph Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, 2 vols. (New York: Garland Publishing, 1978 [1678]), I.iii; Ralph Cudworth, A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality, with a Treatise of Freewill, ed. Sarah Hutton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), III.i–ii, 49–57; Henry More, The Immortality of the Soul, So Farre Forth as It Is Demonstrable from the Knowledge of Nature and the Light of Reason (London: Printed by I. Flesher, 1659), II.xiv.8–11, 262–7. 106  Additionally, it is worth noting that both Locke and Cambridge Platonist philosophers associate unity and sympathy, which may be seen as further evidence that Locke was acquainted with their philosophical views. In II.xxvii.11 Locke states that a person ‘sympathizes and is concerned for’ ‘the Limbs of his Body’. As Sarah Hutton, ‘Salving the Phenomena of Mind: Energy, Hegemonikon, and Sympathy in Cudworth,’ British Journal for the History of Philosophy 25 (2016): 471–2, and Christia Mercer, ‘Seventeenth-­Century Universal Sympathy: Stoicism, Platonism, Leibniz, and Conway,’ in Sympathy: A History, ed. Eric Schliesser (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), show the term ‘sympathy’ became an important concept in the second half of the seventeenth century. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, it was common to regard sympathy as a magical or occult power, but later during that century such explanations were questioned and philosophers, drawing on Stoic and Platonist sources, sought more natural explanations of sympathetic relations, namely the powers that draw things together. For Cambridge Platonist philosophers sympathy is a unifying power and thus sympathy and unity are closely associated. See Cudworth, True Intellectual System, 159–62, 826–8; Cudworth, A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality, III.i–ii, 51–6; More, The Immortality of the Soul, II.x, 219–23, II.xv, 279–85, III.xii, 450–8, III.xiv, 480, III.xviii, 531.

110  Consciousness and Same Consciousness As the text continues Cudworth draws on Descartes’s discussion of the ­mind-­body union and adopts Descartes’s metaphor of the sailor and the ship.107 Following Descartes, Cudworth argues that feelings such as hunger, thirst, or pain cannot be explained as solely arising from the soul, or pure intellect, but rather they are ‘compassions with the body’.108 Such mental states ‘being not pure ­mental, but corporeal cogitations of the soul, as it vitally informs the body and is passionately united to it’.109 Again, the core insight is that we learn about the union between soul and body by having sensations, which means we experience it phenomenologically. Although Locke does not want to be committed to the details of Descartes’s, More’s, or Cudworth’s metaphysics of the mind or soul, I take it that he shares their insight that a self feels the intimate union with the body. Locke further elaborates on the role of unity in II.xxvii.25: But the same continued consciousness, in which several Substances may have been united, and yet again separated from it, which, whilst they continued in a vital union with that, wherein this consciousness then resided made a part of that same self. Thus any part of our Bodies vitally united to that, which is conscious in us, makes a part of our selves: But upon separation from the vital union, by which that consciousness is communicated, that which a moment since was part of our selves, is now no more so, than a part of another Man’s self is part of me; and ’tis not impossible, but in a little time may become a real part of another Person. And so we have the same numerical Substance become a part of two different Persons; and the same Person preserved under the change of various Substances. Could we suppose any Spirit wholly stripp’d of all its mem­ ory or consciousness of past Actions, as we find our Minds always are of a great part of ours, and sometimes of them all, the union or separation of such a Spiritual Substance would make no variation of personal Identity, any more than that of any Particle of Matter does. Any Substance vitally united to the present thinking Being, is a part of that very same self which now is: Any thing united to it by a consciousness of former Actions makes also a part of the same self, which is the same both then and now.  (II.xxvii.25)

Just like bodily parts are vitally united with a self and we experience the unity by means of our sensations or consciousness of them, so spiritual substances can be united with a self and part from it if consciousness of them is entirely lost. The passage suggests that Locke regards the unity a person experiences among her

107  See Cudworth, A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality, III.i, 51–2; Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Meditation 6, AT VII:80–1; CSM II:56. 108 Cudworth, A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality, III.i, 52. 109 Cudworth, A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality, III.ii, 56.

Locke on Sameness of Consciousness  111 thoughts and actions analogous to her experience of a close union between bodily parts and the self. Furthermore, the union can also extend to thinking substances, which can be united at different times with the self. To sum up, unity is another important aspect in Locke’s same consciousness account. In analogy to the structural organization of living beings, the unifying aspect of consciousness connects thoughts, actions, bodily parts, and possibly substances. Unity connects thoughts, actions, bodily parts, and possibly substances at a time and over time. Unity goes beyond memory, because memory can revive an individual past thought or action, but unity makes it possible to regard several different thoughts and actions, as well as bodily parts and substances, as unified at a time and over time. In this section I focused on a self ’s experience of unity of thought and of the unity with her bodily parts. However, there are hints that Locke believes further that our experience of unity has a metaphysical foundation. It remains to consider whether it is possible to say more about the underlying metaphysical foundation, provided there is one. On the one hand, it may be Lockean to suggest that our human understanding is too limited to make any further claims about its metaphysical constitution. On the other hand, since Locke is outspoken that we do not need to invoke immaterial substances to explain personal identity, it is worth investigating whether Locke can offer a plausible, though probable, alternative ontological foundation that is suitable to provide unity among thoughts and actions, bodily parts, and possibly substances. If it can be shown that there is a metaphysical alternative to immaterial substance views then his criticism of such views gains credibility. This is a task I turn to in the next chapter. At this stage I hope to have shown that there is strong textual evidence that Locke believes that same consciousness involves a unifying aspect and that in the context of his discussion of personal identity he understands ‘unity’ in a narrower sense than the ubiquitous sense of unity that he invokes in other parts of the Essay. In contrast to other forms of unity, the unity considered here is intimately felt unity.

5.2.4  Temporality Locke argues repeatedly that a person’s existence extends into the past and future.110 In this section, I focus on the question of how he can explain the temporal dimension of a person’s existence. Locke’s discussion of personal identity contains two claims: first, he makes a metaphysical claim that a person ‘has existed in a continued Duration more than one instant’ (II.xxvii.25) and this

110  See II.xxvii.9–10, 13–14, 16–17, 25–6.

112  Consciousness and Same Consciousness makes it possible that the person will continue to exist into the future.111 Second, he endorses a phenomenological claim that a person in being conscious of past and present thoughts and actions is able to consider herself as temporally extended. I suggest that it is helpful to turn to passages where Locke discusses duration as well as the question of how we acquire the idea of duration to make sense of temporality in the metaphysical and phenomenological respects and propose that temporality is a further aspect of his same consciousness account.112 Before we examine more closely how Locke understands the temporal dimension, both considered metaphysically and phenomenologically, it is helpful to consider why the aspects identified so far are not sufficient to account for tem­por­ al­ity and to ask in what way temporality supplements, or can supplement, Locke’s same consciousness account. So far we identified revival of past experiences by memory, mineness as well as a more robust sense of appropriation, and unity as important aspects of his account. Memory enables us to revive past experiences. While memory provides links to past experiences and makes it possible to be conscious again of experiences that took place in the past, it is not sufficient to explain how a person’s existence can extend into the future. Appropriation is not suitable either to explain future-­directed existence, since appropriation in the robust sense, in which I defended it here, singles out a subset of present and past thoughts and actions, namely those that are voluntary and that a person regards as her own based on the cognitive and/or physical labour that she invested when she originally performed the action or had the thought. Mineness in a minimal sense is self-­consciousness and is an inherent part of every perception. However, in order to explain the possibility of future existence the presence of self-­consciousness alone is not sufficient, but rather it is important that the ideas perceived are future-­directed ideas. This means that it is important to take the contents of ­perception into consideration and not just self-­consciousness. Unity explains the  togetherness of different thoughts and actions, bodily parts, and possibly ­substances, but unity considered by itself is not temporally ordered and thus unity alone is insufficient to explain how a person’s existence extends into the past and future and how a person is aware of their temporal extension.113 111  See II.xxvii.25. 112  Interpreters who acknowledge that duration plays a role in Locke’s account of personal identity include Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, ch. 4; Weinberg, ‘The Metaphysical Fact of Consciousness’, 392–3; Yaffe, ‘Locke on Consciousness, Personal Identity and the Idea of Duration’. 113  At this stage, I believe it makes sense to refine Weinberg’s view in Consciousness in Locke, 214–21. Weinberg argues that ‘unity of consciousness (both backward- and forward-­looking) is necessary to Locke’s account of persons as moral beings—that can bear responsibility for what they did in the past and exercise moral agency with respect to what to do in the future’ (220). In this context she focuses on the phenomenological experience of unity and temporal existence. While I do not deny the important role that unity plays in Locke’s account of personal identity, I believe that unity alone cannot explain temporal experience and, thus, I have reservations about Weinberg’s talk of backwardand forward-­looking unity. Instead my view is that unity itself need not be temporally ordered, but rather once one has acquired the ideas of succession and duration one is able to experience thoughts

Locke on Sameness of Consciousness  113 This shows that memory, mineness as well as appropriation, and unity are not sufficient to explain the temporal dimension. In particular, they do not fully explain why persons believe that they continue to exist in the future. What en­ables us to see our individual thoughts and actions as part of a temporally ordered sequence that began in the past and can continue into the future? Our past ex­peri­ences often influence decisions in the present and help us plan into the future, which is a prerequisite for attaining future happiness. This means that the various thoughts and actions often build on each other and often their temporal order is important to advance the thought processes and to inform decisions about actions in the present and future. As I explain in more detail in a moment, in order to form a belief in future existence, which is relevant for attaining long-­term happiness, a person must have acquired the idea of duration. On this basis, let us examine more closely how Locke can account for tem­por­ al­ity and what role duration and the idea of duration play in his same consciousness account. He explicitly mentions duration in II.xxvii.25: This every intelligent Being, sensible of Happiness or Misery, must grant, that there is something that is himself, that he is concerned for, and would have happy; that this self has existed in a continued Duration more than one instant, and therefore ’tis possible may exist, as it has done, Months and Years to come, without any certain bounds to be set to its duration; and may be the same self, by the same consciousness, continued on for the future. And thus, by this consciousness, he finds himself to be the same self which did such or such an Action some Years since, by which he comes to be happy or miserable now.  (II.xxvii.25)

Locke’s claim that persons have a continued duration is more explicit in this passage than in other sections of the chapter.114 This passage is of interest in a further respect: it suggests that he regards our continued duration as closely linked to our happiness and misery. Once we come to understand that we have existed in the past and will continue to exist into the future, we as sensible and intelligent beings realize that our present happiness or misery depends on past actions and this makes us concerned for our future happiness.115

and actions as temporally ordered. I acknowledge that Weinberg discusses duration in earlier parts of her book (ch. 4), but I think she could have made clearer in her section ‘The Unity of Consciousness and Moral Motivation’ (214–21) that in order to experience how a person extends into the past and future ideas of succession and duration are relevant in addition to unity. 114 The only other section in chapter xxvii where Locke explicitly uses the term ‘duration’ is II.xxvii.14. 115  Weinberg argues in Consciousness in Locke, ch. 5, for an intimate link between concern for true happiness and consciousness, but there she emphasizes the unity of consciousness rather than dur­ ation. While unity and duration are certainly closely intertwined, I believe that more can be said about the role of duration.

114  Consciousness and Same Consciousness To gain a better understanding of the role that temporality plays in Locke’s account of personal identity, it is helpful to clarify how Locke explains how we acquire ideas of succession and duration, which are two different ideas for Locke, and how he distinguishes duration from succession. These distinctions are relevant for showing that Locke’s view is not subject to criticisms raised by Joseph Butler and Thomas Reid, who object that consciousness due to its successive nature cannot account for continued existence over time.116 I return to this criticism below, but first let us look more closely at Locke’s view. He writes: ’Tis evident to any one who will but observe what passes in his own Mind, that there is a train of Ideas, which constantly succeed one another in his Understanding, as long as he is awake. Reflection on these appearances of several Ideas one after another in our Minds, is that which furnishes us with the Idea of Succession: And the distance between any parts of that Succession, or between the appearance of any two Ideas in our Minds, is that we call Duration. For whilst we are thinking, or whilst we receive successively several Ideas in our Minds, we know that we do exist and so we call the Existence, or the Continuation of the Existence of our selves, or any thing else, Commensurate to the succession of any Ideas in our Minds, the Duration of our selves, or any such other thing co-­existing with our Thinking.  (II.xiv.3)

Here Locke argues that we acquire the idea of succession by reflecting on the series of ideas that pass through our minds. The passage further suggests that the idea of succession is a prerequisite for forming an idea of duration, which is not identical with it, because Locke understands duration as the distance between any parts or ideas in a succession and not as the succession itself.117 Locke, like Descartes, accepts that I know that I exist while I am thinking, but here he further claims that I know that I exist continuously while I receive a succession of ideas. Thereby I not only form the idea of my own continued existence, or my own duration, but also know that I actually continue to exist or have duration. In a similar vein, I can ascribe continued existence to other things that co-­exist with my own successive thinking.118 By reflecting on a series of successive ideas, I know that I have existed from the time when the series of ideas started to the present moment. However, what, if any, resources does Locke have to explain that a person will continue to exist in the future? To make sense of future existence, we have to turn to his views on measures of duration and how we acquire ideas of these measures. Locke ends the

116  See Butler, ‘Of Personal Identity’, 1:321–2; Reid, EIP, III.6, 278. 117  See also II.xv.12, II.xvii.16. 118  For helpful further discussion, see Yaffe, ‘Locke on Consciousness, Personal Identity and the Idea of Duration’.

Locke on Sameness of Consciousness  115 chapter ‘Of Duration, and its Simple Modes’ (II.xxiv) by summarizing how we acquire ideas of duration and its measures. After we have formed ideas of succession and duration ‘we get the Ideas of certain Lengths or Measures of Duration, as Minutes, Hours, Days, Years, etc.’ by ‘observing certain appearances, at certain regular and seeming equidistant periods’ (II.xxiv.31). Once we have acquired the ideas of measures of duration we are ‘able to repeat those Measures of Time, or Ideas of stated length of Duration in our Minds, as often as we will, we can come to imagine Duration, where nothing does really endure or exist; and thus we im­agine to morrow, next year, or seven years hence’ (II.xiv.31). This shows that having ideas of duration and its measures is a prerequisite for believing that one will continue to exist in the future. It further reveals how Locke understands the asymmetry between future, on the one hand, and past and present, on the other hand. We can imagine future times, but we do not have access to them in the same way as we have access to our past and present. Let us take stock. According to Locke, reflecting on a series of successive ideas not only makes it possible for a person to phenomenologically experience their existence as temporally extended, but he believes further that in virtue of a successive train of ideas a person can be said to have existed continuously during this period. Moreover, he believes that a person’s existence extends as far as she is able to remember past thoughts and actions.119 Locke acknowledges that it is possible that time has passed, even if a person from an internal perspective does not ex­peri­ence the passing of time.120 For instance, measures of time confirm that time passes during sound and dreamless sleep, even if it does not appear to a person that way. The fact that it is possible that there are periods during which a person does not think raises the question whether a person exists during such intervals or whether a person’s existence over time can have gaps. I return to this issue below. At this stage, it is worth considering whether Locke has resources to respond to objections raised by some of his critics. The successive nature of our thoughts prompted eighteenth-­century critics such as Joseph Butler and Thomas Reid to reject Locke’s account of personal identity altogether, because they regard consciousness as transient and momentary and therefore, they argue, it cannot ground continued existence.121 For example, Reid writes:

119  See II.xxvii.9–10, 14, 16–17, 25–6. 120  See II.xiv.4. 121  See Butler, ‘Of Personal Identity’, 1:321–2; Reid, EIP, III.6, 278. Butler presents the objection as a citation from Anthony Collins, Answer to Dr. Clarke’s Third Defence of his Letter to Mr Dodwell. See Butler, ‘Of Personal Identity’, 1:321, fn. d. According to Uzgalis, Butler paraphrases rather than literally cites Collins. Uzgalis argues that Butler is mistaken in ascribing a successive view to Collins. Butler makes this mistake, because he does not realize that Collins does not share his metaphysics of identity. For further discussion, see William Uzgalis, ‘Locke and Collins, Clarke and Butler, on Successive Persons,’ in Personal Identity, ed. John Perry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008). For

116  Consciousness and Same Consciousness Our consciousness, our memory, and every operation of the mind, are still flowing like the water of a river, or like time itself. The consciousness I have this moment, can no more be the same consciousness I had the last moment, than this moment can be the last moment. Identity can only be affirmed of things which have a continued existence. 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; and as the right and justice of reward and punishment is founded on personal identity, no man could be responsible for his actions.  (EIP, III.6, 278)

Locke would agree with Reid (and Butler) that individual thoughts that compose a succession do not have continued existence,122 but the disagreement between Reid and Locke arises, at least in part, because they understand consciousness differently. Reid understands consciousness as reflection in the present moment. This means that the contents of conscious mental states are mental operations in the present moment.123 He argues that a subject can neither perceive nor be conscious of a succession in the present moment, because a succession extends over time ‘and there can be no succession in a point of time’.124 According to Reid, we acquire the notion of duration by the faculty of memory, which leads him to criticize Locke for supposedly failing to realize that remembrance is a prerequisite for reflecting on the train of ideas, which in turn enables us to form ideas of succession and duration.125 Locke would agree with Reid on this point. The problem is that Reid fails to realize that Locke’s understanding of consciousness is broader and richer than Reid’s and includes memory. The disagreement between Reid and Locke, however, is not merely terminological. Reid further argues that duration is ontologically more fundamental than succession and that the idea of duration is conceptually prior to the idea of succession:126 I conclude therefore, that there must be duration in every single interval or elem­ent of which the whole duration is made up. Nothing indeed is more certain than that every elementary part of duration must have duration, as every elementary part of extension must have extension. Now it must be observed, that in these elements of duration, or single intervals of successive ideas, there is no succession of ideas, yet we must conceive them to further discussion of Reid’s criticism of Locke’s notion of duration, see Tamar Levanon, ‘Thomas Reid and the Idea of the Specious-­Present,’ History of Philosophy Quarterly 33 (2016). 122  See II.xxvii.2. 123  See Reid, EIP, I.1, 22, 24. 124  Reid, EIP, III.5, 270. 125  See Reid, EIP, III.3, 258–9, III.5, 269–70. 126 See Reid, EIP, III.5, 267–75. See also Levanon, ‘Thomas Reid and the Idea of the Specious-­Present’.

Locke on Sameness of Consciousness  117 have duration; whence we may conclude with certainty, that there is a conception of duration, where there is no succession of ideas in the mind. (EIP, III.5, 272)

In this passage Reid emphasizes that a succession of ideas has shortest intervals that do not themselves consist of a succession of ideas. However, no matter how short the intervals are each interval of a succession of ideas must have duration. For Reid, this further implies that there is a conception of duration even if there is no succession of ideas. Thus, he regards duration as conceptually prior to succession. Yet Locke has resources to respond. Locke, like Reid, accepts that there can be duration even if there is no observable succession of ideas, which I will illustrate with two examples in a moment. Both Locke and Reid distinguish between dur­ation and our idea (or conception) of duration, and between succession and our idea of succession. However, Reid does not properly ­ acknowledge that, according to Locke, we acquire the ideas of succession and duration on the basis of an interplay between sensation and reflection. Taking seriously that reflection is at work in addition to sensation gives Locke resources to distance his view of how we acquire the idea of duration from Reid’s position. Locke speaks to Reid’s concern that a succession of ideas has shortest intervals when he remarks that ‘[t]here seem to be certain Bounds to the quickness and slowness of the Succession of those Ideas one to another in our Minds, beyond which they can neither delay nor hasten’ (II.xiv.9). Before we turn to a case that directly addresses Reid’s point that a real succession of events can be faster than the speed with which ideas change in our mind, let us consider the other extreme where external change is so slow that only reflection on the succession of ideas in our mind makes it possible to account for the passing of time. Assume that Karen is looking at a statue in a museum. Let us suppose further that while she is looking at the statue she cannot observe any change of the statue. The external sensation of the statue, considered by itself, will not generate an idea of succession due to the lack of observable change. Moreover, none of the internal ideas in her mind considered by themselves will give her an idea of succession. Yet while she is looking at the statue a series of ideas pass through her mind. For instance, she may feel warm, feel her heartbeat, remember that she promised to call her friend tonight, notice a tickling sensation in her toe, and so on. The series of internal ideas in her mind by themselves will not give her an idea of succession either, because an idea is either present or not present in the mind. It is only when Karen enters a point of view from which she is able to hold several ideas in her mind at once that she can acquire the idea of succession. In other words, by reflecting on the series of ideas she becomes aware that during the period when

118  Consciousness and Same Consciousness she has been looking at the statue she had a series of changing ideas in her mind and this series of ideas provides her with the idea of succession.127 Locke discusses not only examples where external change is so slow that it becomes unnoticeable, but he also introduces a rather horrifying example where change is too fast to be observable by sensation:128 Let a Cannon-­Bullet pass through a Room, and in its way take with it any Limb, or fleshly Parts of a Man; ’tis as clear as any Demonstration can be, that it must strike successively the two sides of the Room: ’Tis also evident, that it must touch one part of the Flesh first, and another after; and so in Succession: And yet I believe, no Body, who ever felt the pain of such a shot, or heard the blow against the two distant Walls, could perceive any Succession, either in the pain, or sound of so swift a stroke. Such a part of Duration as this, wherein we perceive no Succession, is that which we may call an Instant; and is that which takes up the time of only one Idea in our Minds, without the Succession of another, wherein therefore we perceive no Succession at all.  (II.xiv.10)

Again, it is helpful to pay attention to the interplay between sensation and reflection in the example. Due to the quickness with which the cannonball moves through the room, sensation does not present the ball as first being at one end in the room, then hitting one’s flesh, and then at the other end of the room, but rather one just sees it simultaneously at all the places in the room through which it moved in what appears to be an instant. The visual perception appears sim­ul­ tan­eous­ly with one’s hearing the noise of the cannonball and one’s feeling of pain.129 Upon reflecting on the sensation, it becomes clear that the cannonball cannot be at both ends of the room at the same time.130 Hence, the ball must have first hit one wall, before it hit one’s flesh, and then afterwards hit the other wall. This means that reflection enables us to realize that ‘there is a real succession’ (II. xiv.10). Sensation presents the location of the cannonball as simultaneously at both ends of the room. Hence, sensation is not sufficient to give us the idea of succession. It is only when we start reflecting on the sensation and reconstruct a series of successive events that we regard the instantaneous sensation as succes127  See II.xiv.4–6, 31. 128  Further discussion of the example can be found in Yaffe, ‘Locke on Consciousness, Personal Identity and the Idea of Duration’, 394. 129  For further discussion, see Yaffe, ‘Locke on Consciousness, Personal Identity and the Idea of Duration’, 394–401. Yaffe calls Locke’s view about sensation the ‘halting sensation view’ and explains it as follows: ‘Under it, the physical sense organs register information more quickly than the information can be represented in idea. Hence, the ideas that are formed as a result of impressions on the sense organs represent not what is going on right now, but rather all that has been “stored up” in the sense organs since the last idea was formed. On the halting sensation view, the sense organs are like an information hopper: they hold information until it can be transferred as a single batch into ideas’ (394). 130  See II.xvvii.1.

Locke on Sameness of Consciousness  119 sive. On this basis, we realize that what is presented in sensation as an instant must have duration. Contrary to Reid, Locke would insist that the idea of succession is conceptually prior to the idea of duration. Considered from Locke’s perspective, Reid can be said to focus only on sensation of succession when he argues for the conceptual priority of duration. This means that Reid fails to acknowledge that for Locke reflection is needed in addition to sensation in order to form ideas of succession and duration. Does Locke also think that succession is ontologically prior to duration? Although his cannonball example can be interpreted this way, it is harder to decide what he would say about the issue, since this question cannot be answered without settling Locke’s position regarding the ontology of time.131 If Locke prefers to remain noncommittal about the ontology of time, as suggested by Emily Thomas, he will not take a stance on whether succession is ontologically prior to duration. By contrasting Locke’s view with the views of his critics, we have seen that for Locke sameness of consciousness is not reducible to a series of different successive individual mental states, but rather reflecting on a series of individual ex­peri­ ences enables a subject to see their experiences as unified and as temporally ordered. Thereby a self not only comes to understand that their experiences are successive, but also that these experiences are the experiences of the same self and that this self has a continued existence or duration. It remains to ask what Locke means by ‘continuous existence’.132 Does it mean that persons have to exist uninterruptedly over the entire period of their existence? Or can a person’s existence over time have gaps? For example, is it possible that a person ceases to exist during dreamless sleep or between death and resurrection and continues to exist afterwards? These questions are a matter of dispute among Locke scholars.133 131  A proper answer to this question will depend on whether Locke’s metaphysics of time is absolutist or relationist. The former interpretation has been defended among others by Geoffrey Gorham and Edward Slowik, ‘Locke and Newton on Space and Time and Their Sensible Measures,’ in Newton and Empiricism, ed. Zvi Biener and Eric Schliesser (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). Emily Thomas, ‘The “Evolution” of Locke’s Space and Time Metaphysics,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 33 (2016), argues that Locke’s Essay is explicitly noncommittal with regard to the ontology of time, but that it is plausible that it implicitly preserves his earlier relationism. 132  Locke uses the expression in II.xxvii.3, 9–10, 25, 29. 133  Interpreters who accept that a person’s existence can be gappy include Chappell, ‘Locke on the Ontology of Matter, Living Things and Persons’, 30; Conn, Locke on Essence and Identity, 70–1, 79; Hoffman, ‘Locke on Whether a Thing Can Have Two Beginnings of Existence’; Jolley, Locke’s Touchy Subjects, 101; Dan Kaufman, ‘The Resurrection of the Same Body and the Ontological Status of Organisms: What Locke Should Have (and Could Have) Told Stillingfleet,’ in Contemporary Perspectives on Early Modern Philosophy: Essays in Honor of Vere Chappell, ed. Paul Hoffman, David Owen, and Gideon Yaffe (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2008), 208–11; Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 378–83; Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, 124–5, 139, 217; Yaffe, ‘Locke on Consciousness, Personal Identity and the Idea of Duration’. Interpreters who deny that a person’s existence can have gaps include Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, 156–7; Weinberg, ‘Locke on Personal Identity’, 402–5; Weinberg, ‘The Metaphysical Fact of Consciousness’, 393–4. According to Galen Strawson, there is a

120  Consciousness and Same Consciousness I do not think that there is strong enough textual support to assume that by ‘continuous existence’ Locke means uninterrupted existence over time. Alternatively, it is possible to say that an individual continues to exist as long as there is a unique link to its first beginning of existence.134 Such a reading allows for the possibility of gaps as long as the individuals before and after the gap are connected in a unique way that preserves personal identity. Locke is cautious in his discussion of duration to focus on periods during which we are aware of the successive train of thoughts in our minds and argues that during periods of dreamless sleep we do not have a sense of duration.135 Note that allowing that our sense of duration can be interrupted does not by itself establish that a person’s existence over time can have gaps. But it supports that we should take the possibility that a person’s existence over time can have gaps seriously. Why may it be significant for Locke to leave open the possibility of gaps? One option is that dreamless sleep could be a gap in a person’s existence over time. However, this proposal can be questioned. Alternatively, it can be argued that a sleeping being continues to have the disposition to be conscious. This reading aligns with the examination of memory above, which showed that it is more plaus­ible that the disposition to be conscious, rather than actual consciousness, is required for same consciousness. Thus, dreamless sleep without any actual consciousness may not create gaps in a person’s existence.136 While appeal to dispositions can help establish a person’s uninterrupted existence during ordinary life, this explanation cannot be given with respect to another candidate of a gap in a person’s existence, namely, the state between death and resurrection. If materialism is correct, a person ceases to exist at bodily death. It is worth noting that material views do not exclude the possibility of an afterlife and Locke’s predecessors developed various proposals for how a person can be recreated in the afterlife after a period of non-­existence.137 Since it was of great importance for Locke to make sense of the possibility of an afterlife—as I explain in more detail in chapter 7—and since he believes that we have to acknowledge the possibility that thinking substances are material, he wants to accommodate the possibility that a person ceases to exist at bodily death and is recreated in the afterlife.138 The

tension in Locke’s theory. In one sense, a person’s existence can be gappy, while in another sense a person is also a continuously existing individual. See Strawson, Locke on Personal Identity, 7–9, 14–15, 85–92, 99, 136–8. 134  Such a reading is made plausible by Hoffman, ‘Locke on Whether a Thing Can Have Two Beginnings of Existence’. See also Kaufman, ‘The Resurrection of the Same Body’, 208–11. 135  See II.xiv.4. 136  Stuart would not endorse this line of argument. He carefully considers dispositional views, but ultimately argues in favour of actual consciousness. It is consequent that he also argues that persons have gappy existence. See Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 359–65, 378–83. 137  See chapter 7 for further details. 138  Such views were held by thnetopsychists and Locke was familiar with their views. For further details see chapter 7.

Locke on Sameness of Consciousness  121 religious background provides strong reasons to believe that Locke wants to leave open that a person’s existence over time can have gaps.139 To sum up, I have argued that temporality is a further aspect of Locke’s same consciousness account. Temporality includes a person’s first-­personal phe­nom­ eno­logic­al experience of her own temporal extension into the past and can also include imagined future existence. For Locke the first-­personal experience of continued existence also establishes the metaphysical claim that the person has existed for a continued duration. However, his view that persons can continue to exist over time, or can have duration, does not commit him to accepting that persons continue to exist without gaps. Indeed, I believe that Locke wants to leave this possibility open, since it is possible that there are gaps in a person’s existence, for instance, between death and resurrection. I have further shown that Locke’s view is not subject to criticisms raised by Reid. Contrasting Locke’s view with Reid’s has helped to bring to light that Locke does not consider consciousness as a series of distinct individual mental states, as Reid assumes, but rather Locke has resources to avoid Reid’s objections because his understanding of same consciousness is richer and more complex.

5.2.5  Locke’s Multiple Aspects Account of Same Consciousness I have argued that Locke’s account of same consciousness involves multiple aspects: It includes the contents of mental states. Memory is important for reviving past experiences and makes it possible for a subject to be conscious of the same contents at different times. When a subject originally perceives a particular content, the subject is self-­conscious of herself as perceiving subject. When the subject remembers the content of this perception at later times, the subject will not only be self-­conscious of herself as perceiving subject (or more precisely remembering subject), but will also revive the original self-­consciousness and be aware that she had the perception before. Appropriation makes it possible to 139  At this stage I distance my view from Weinberg’s. Weinberg distinguishes what she calls a ‘metaphysical fact of consciousness’ from our awareness of individual thoughts and actions and argues that the metaphysical fact of consciousness, which is not to be identified with substance, endures through any gaps in our awareness. See Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, 149–63; Weinberg, ‘Locke on Personal Identity’, 402–5; Weinberg, ‘The Metaphysical Fact of Consciousness’, 389–400. Weinberg’s metaphysical fact comes close to what I call the unifying aspect of consciousness above. For example, she writes: ‘Locke tells us that as far as we have a unified experience of ourselves as thinking in the past and in the present, we actually are the same ongoing consciousness. . . . Furthermore, it is the ongoing consciousness that “unites” successive perceptions of ideas’ (Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, 157; Weinberg, ‘The Metaphysical Fact of Consciousness’, 394). Weinberg argues that the metaphysical constitution of the metaphysical fact of consciousness is beyond human understanding. I am open to calling the unifying aspect of consciousness a metaphysical fact of consciousness, but, contrary to Weinberg, I believe that it is possible that it can be gappy.

122  Consciousness and Same Consciousness zoom in on a subset of thoughts and actions, namely voluntary thoughts and actions, which a subject appropriates in a robust sense by investing physical and/ or cognitive labour, but appropriation needs to be supplemented by memory to explain why a person now continues to appropriate past thoughts and actions. It is worth noting, that my proposal is not that Locke’s same consciousness account is restricted to appropriated thoughts and actions, in the robust sense of ap­pro­ pri­ation, but rather in can also include consciousness of other thoughts and actions. This can make it easier to trace a person’s continued existence over time, while at the same time different weight can be given to appropriated thoughts and actions, which aids attributions of moral accountability, since voluntariness is a precondition for moral accountability and all appropriated thoughts and actions are voluntary. Additionally, unity is needed to explain the togetherness of different thoughts and actions at a time and over time, and temporality to explain a person’s extension into the past and future and her experience of temporal existence. Memory revives past experiences in the present moment, but a subject often has multiple other experiences during the period between a certain past ex­peri­ ence and its revival by memory in the present moment. We need unity and tem­ por­al­ity to explain why the various other experiences also belong to the same subject. While memory tends to focus on two times, the past time when one originally had the experience that is now remembered and the present moment, duration concerns an interval, or a period between two times. Realizing that a person has duration or continued existence, alters the way personal identity is conceived. Rather than merely comparing a person’s experiences at two different times, taking duration into consideration means that one considers a person’s continued existence during an interval. Reflection makes it possible to hold a train of experiences over a period of time in our minds, namely a series of series of temporally ordered experiences. We are able to do this once we have acquired ideas of succession and duration. Having argued that Locke’s same consciousness account involves multiple aspects, it remains to ask how they are intertwined. Locke’s understanding of same consciousness rests on the view that several contents that are given in conscious experience are unified and temporally ordered. This means that although the presence of some contents at more than one time is necessary for same consciousness, the presence of several contents alone would not be sufficient for same consciousness, but rather unity and temporality are additionally needed and they mutually supplement each other. Unity and temporality provide structural connections among the various contents. In this chapter the main focus has been on our experience of unity, but in the next chapter I will ask whether more can be said about its ontological foundation. We are able to experience synchronic and diachronic unity because whenever a subject is conscious of a certain content this conscious experience is accompanied by self-­consciousness, or awareness of oneself as perceiving subject. Since this self-­consciousness is revived in every act of

Locke on Sameness of Consciousness  123 remembrance, memory partially makes it possible to experience diachronic unity, but memory alone cannot explain why we experience different thoughts and actions as unified. The self-­consciousness at work here is mineness in a minimal sense rather than appropriation understood as more robust mineness. Although appropriation helps to single out thoughts and actions that are candidates for moral accountability, appropriation in the robust sense is neither necessary nor sufficient for same consciousness. It has become common to approach philosophical debates about personal identity by asking what the necessary and sufficient conditions are for personal identity are. It is too early to assess whether Locke would find it helpful to approach questions of personal identity in this way. In the next chapter I turn to the question of whether sameness of consciousness is sufficient for personal identity and consider more closely whether it is possible to say more about the metaphysical foundation of same consciousness and its unifying aspect in particular. In chapter 8 I engage with the question of whether Locke’s account of personal identity is meant to be transitive, which will include a discussion of whether he understands personal identity as continuous over time or whether his view focuses mainly on direct consciousness connections, considered from a particular point in time. To the extent that Locke is interested in addressing questions of moral accountability it seems relevant that his account of personal identity offers resources for answering the question of whether a person X at time t1 is identical with a person Y at time t2, since X has to be the same person as Y in order to hold Y justly accountable for X’s actions. The discussion above concerning temporality and duration has further shown that Locke also has resources for considering personal identity over intervals of time. From the perspective of a divine last judgement it may be relevant to consider the development of person’s thoughts and actions over intervals of time, rather than just to compare a person’s thoughts and actions at two times. I will return to these issues in chapter 8. At this stage, we can say that sameness of consciousness for Locke involves several aspects and includes different contents that are given in conscious ex­peri­ ence, accompanied by self-­consciousness, and these contents are unified and temporally ordered.

6

Circularity and Insufficiency Worries Having argued that sameness of consciousness is necessary for personal identity in chapter 4 and given a close examination of Locke’s understanding of same consciousness in the previous chapter, let us now turn to the further question of whether sameness of consciousness is also sufficient. I will address this question by drawing attention to different versions of circularity charges that have been raised against Locke’s theory (section 6.1). While some circularity charges such as Joseph Butler’s can be easily answered (section 6.2), I acknowledge that the worry that sameness of consciousness is not sufficient for personal identity provides the most pressing problem for Locke’s view and examine what resources he has for addressing insufficiency worries (section 6.3).

6.1  Different Versions of Circularity Locke’s theory of personal identity has repeatedly been charged as circular. Joseph Butler is most commonly associated with the circularity objection, but before we turn to his version of the objection let me classify different types of circularity worries.1 Some of Locke’s critics such as John Sergeant reject Locke’s principle of individuation as circular.2 Sergeant criticizes the view that existence itself individuates, which we labelled (PrI) in chapter 2, section 2.1. There I distinguished (PrI) from the more plausible interpretation that Locke endorses (PrI**). Since Locke does not hold the view that existence itself individuates, Sergeant’s objection is not sensitive to the nuances of Locke’s view and I will not engage further with it here. A second type of circularity charge concerns Locke’s account of a person at a time. A common objection is that consciousness cannot constitute a person, but rather presupposes a being that is able to be conscious.3 Many critics who raise this objection do not properly acknowledge Locke’s distinctions between the ideas of person, man, and substance and thereby dismiss the innovation of Locke’s theory.4 It is worth mentioning that my interpretation does not assume that 1  See Butler, ‘Of Personal Identity’. 2  See Sergeant, Solid Philosophy Asserted, 259–61. 3  See Lee, Anti-­Scepticism, II.xxvii, 124–5; Sergeant, Solid Philosophy Asserted, 265–7. 4  See Sergeant, Solid Philosophy Asserted, 265–70; Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, 190–210. Lee, Anti-­Scepticism, II.xxvii, 124–5, introduces Locke’s definition of a person, but then rejects it and argues that a person cannot be understood in terms of consciousness alone, but has to be a substance.

Locke on Persons and Personal Identity. Ruth Boeker, Oxford University Press (2021). © Ruth Boeker. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198846758.003.0006

Different Versions of Circularity  125 persons at a time are purely constituted by consciousness, or are consciousnesses, but rather, according to the interpretation that I am defending here, Locke is committed to the view that personal identity over time consists in sameness of consciousness.5 Persons at a time are moral subjects of accountability and have all the features that Locke mentions in sections 9 and 26. This brings me to a third type of circularity worry, which concerns his account of personal identity over time. The objection is that sameness of consciousness presupposes personal identity. Locke intends to explain personal identity in terms of sameness of consciousness, but if sameness of consciousness is explained in terms of personal identity, then the theory will be circular and hard to rescue. Thiel does not carefully distinguish the second type of circularity worry from the third type and argues that ‘Locke’s theory could be vulnerable to the charge of circularity only if the distinction between person, man, and soul is rejected.’6 I believe that we can advance the discussion of the problem of circularity by considering these two types of circularity worries separately. There are, at least, two reasons for this. First, those who acknowledge the distinction between the ideas of person, man, and substance, should additionally have an answer to the question of whether Locke’s account of personal identity over time is non-­circular. Second, Locke’s theory is consistent with the possibility that persons at a time are ordinary human beings,7 because—as I argued in chapter 3—his text is consistent with a Relative Identity interpretation, but he is not committed to it. If it is the case that persons at a time are ordinary human beings, then circularity worries of the second type do not arise, but the question remains whether Locke is able to establish in a non-­circular manner that personal identity over time consists in sameness of consciousness. This is the third type of circularity worry and since it is the most pressing worry I will focus on it here. Butler’s objection falls under the third type of circularity worry, because it concerns personal identity over time. Let us turn to his objection (section  6.2), and then distinguish it from insufficiency worries (section 6.3). 5  Such readings would rule out Relative Identity interpretations of Locke’s account of identity, as defended, for instance, by Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, chs. 7–8. Although I do not think that there is strong enough textual support for ascribing a Relative Identity interpretation to Locke, there is also not sufficient textual support for ruling it out. Catharine Trotter Cockburn, Defence, 55–6, argues that Locke understands persons in terms of consciousness. Lee, Anti-­Scepticism, II.xxvii, 124–5, also ascribes such a view to Locke. The view that Lockean persons are consciousnesses is discussed crit­ic­ al­ly in debates whether Lockean persons are modes or substances and held by some defenders of a mode interpretation. For further details concerning this debate see Gordon-­Roth, ‘Locke on the Ontology of Persons’; Rickless, ‘Are Locke’s Persons Modes or Substances?’, for defences of a substance interpretation, and LoLordo, Locke’s Moral Man, ch. 2, for a defence of a mode interpretation. For the proposal that Locke may be agnostic about the ontological status of persons see Peter  R.  Anstey, ‘Locke’s Moral Man, by Antonia Lolordo,’ Mind 122 (2013); Margaret Atherton, ‘Antonia Lolordo, Locke’s Moral Man,’ Notre Dame Philosophical Review (2013), https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/39844-lockes-­moral-­man/. 6 Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, 210. 7  Here I leave open whether human beings are material human animals, immaterial substances, or unions of material bodies and immaterial substances as Locke does in II.xxvii.21.

126  Circularity and Insufficiency Worries

6.2  Butler’s Circularity Objection In order to critically assess Butler’s objection, it is worth considering it in full: 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. And one should really think it self-­evident, that consciousness of personal identity presupposes, and therefore cannot constitute, personal identity; any more than knowledge, in any other case, can constitute truth, which it presupposes. This wonderful mistake may possibly have arisen from hence; that to be endued with consciousness, is inseparable from the idea of a person, or intelligent being. For, this might be expressed inaccurately thus, that consciousness makes personality: and from hence it might be concluded to make personal identity. But though present consciousness of what we at present do and feel is necessary to our being the persons we now are; yet present consciousness of past actions, or feelings, is not necessary to our being the same persons who performed those actions, or had those feelings.  (‘Of Personal Identity’, 1:318–19)

Butler here raises several concerns for Locke’s theory and it is worth addressing them separately. First, Butler’s objection that ‘consciousness of personal identity presupposes personal identity and therefore cannot constitute, personal ­identity’ (1:318) is trivial and dismisses Locke’s view. It is trivial, because it is true generally that consciousness of x presupposes x. However, Locke never claims that consciousness of personal identity constitutes personal identity; instead he argues that personal identity consists in same consciousness.8 While the statement is poorly expressed, we will have to examine whether the more general worry that sameness of consciousness presupposes personal identity threatens to undermine Locke’s view. I will return to this point. A second point of dispute concerns Butler’s claim that sameness of consciousness is not necessary for personal identity.9 Butler does not elaborate on it here, but other passages show that he ignores Locke’s distinction between the ideas of a person, man, and substance and takes for granted that persons are substances.10 8  See Rickless, Locke, 126; Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, 202. 9  See Butler, ‘Of Personal Identity’, 1:319. 10  For example, Butler writes: ‘The thing here considered, and demonstratively, as I think, determined, is proposed by Mr. Locke in these words, Whether it, i.e. the same self or person, be the same identical substance? And he has suggested what is a much better answer to the question, than that which he gives it in form. For he defines Person, a thinking intelligent being, &c., and personal identity, the sameness of a rational being. The 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’

Butler’s Circularity Objection  127 This makes it likely that Butler implicitly assumes that sameness of substance is sufficient for personal identity and, hence, he regards sameness of consciousness as not necessary for personal identity. Locke would not be satisfied with Butler’s reasoning and would reject the claim, because it is inconsistent with his view that persons are moral subjects of accountability and neglects his view that subjects from the inside have to be in a position to understand the justice of reward and punishment. Butler challenges Locke’s view further by distinguishing the metaphysical constitution of personal identity from epistemic evidence for personal identity. According to Butler, sameness of consciousness can give evidence of personal identity, but cannot constitute it.11 In response to this charge, we have to distinguish two issues: first, did Locke intend his account of personal identity to provide metaphysical persistence conditions or epistemic criteria of personal identity? Second, even if he intended to offer metaphysical persistence conditions, is he successful in doing so? We already touched on the question of whether Locke offers metaphysical persistence conditions or epistemic criteria for personal identity in chapter 2. Had Locke intended to offer epistemic criteria of personal identity, he could have made this clear in his chapter ‘Of Identity and Diversity’. Locke’s phrasing does not support an epistemic reading. His discussion focuses on what identity ‘consists in’ (II.xxvii.1–2, 6, 9, 11, 19, 21), not on how we discover it. This shows that the burden of proof lies with his critics.12 The criticism arises, because Butler as well as Reid, who reiterates the objection, think differently about the metaphysics of identity and do not adopt Locke’s kind-­dependent approach to identity. Butler and Reid distinguish strict or perfect identity, on the one hand, from identity in the ‘loose and popular sense’ or imperfect identity, on the other hand, and argue that strict or perfect identity requires an immaterial substance.13 Butler is a rather careless reader of Locke.14 Instead of trying to understand Locke’s own view he criticizes Locke by imposing his metaphysical position on Locke without realizing that Locke has reasons to reject it.

(Butler, ‘Of Personal Identity’, 1:320). In chapter 10 I show that Butler is indebted to Samuel Clarke’s philosophy and shares Clarke’s view that persons are immaterial substances. 11  See Butler, ‘Of Personal Identity’, 1:318. Reid reiterates this charge. See Reid, EIP, III.4, 264–7, III.6, 277–8. 12  Lex Newman has argued recently that Locke’s account of personal identity is epistemic rather than metaphysical. See Newman, ‘Locke on Substance, Consciousness, and Personal Identity’. I have reservations about Newman’s interpretation, because his criticism of metaphysical interpretations is directed against memory interpretations and Newman fails to acknowledge that Locke’s same consciousness account is richer than memory as I argued in the previous chapter. 13  See Butler, ‘Of Personal Identity’, 1:319–20; Reid, EIP, III.4, 265–7. Hume mentions ‘perfect identity’ in Treatise, 1.4.2.24, 31, 33, 36, 1.4.6.1, 6, 8; SBN 199, 202–3, 205, 251, 253–5. 14  Similar charges have been made by Strawson, Locke on Personal Identity, chs. 1, 12; Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, 201–2.

128  Circularity and Insufficiency Worries To sum up, Locke has resources to respond to Butler’s version of the circularity objection, because Butler poorly formulates his charge and fails to properly engage with Locke’s theory. However, the question remains whether Butler’s objection hints at a deeper and genuine worry concerning Locke’s view. Locke can easily escape the charge that consciousness of personal identity presupposes personal identity, but does he have resources to respond to the more general worry that sameness of consciousness presupposes personal identity? Butler’s discussion is unconvincing, at least from a Lockean perspective, because he focuses on the claim that sameness of consciousness is not necessary for personal identity and thereby either disagrees with or dismisses Locke’s thinking about moral accountability. Of course, we cannot expect Butler to share Locke’s moral views. As already mentioned, Locke’s thinking about moral accountability is controversial. However, if the disagreement arises due to their different moral views, Butler could have made clearer that the problem concerns Locke’s moral views, rather than circularity. To investigate whether Locke’s theory faces a genuine circularity worry, we have to turn to Locke’s view that sameness of consciousness is sufficient for personal identity. If a circularity problem arises for his view, then it is more likely that it will undermine the sufficiency claim and not the necessity claim as Butler assumed. This brings me to other versions of the circularity objection that are associated with the insufficiency worry.

6.3  Insufficiency Worries Various interpreters have worried that Locke’s theory of personal identity is unsuccessful, because—as they maintain—sameness of consciousness is not sufficient for personal identity.15 It is helpful to distinguish two different ways in which this worry can be spelled out: (i) Sameness of consciousness is insufficient, because it presupposes personal identity. (ii) Sameness of consciousness is insufficient, because it presupposes something else that underlies it, for example, a substance.16 The difference between (i) and (ii) is that (ii) is more general than (i). (i) is a version of type three circularity objections, but different from Butler’s versions of 15  See Atherton, ‘Locke’s Theory of Personal Identity’; Flew, ‘Locke and the Problem of Personal Identity’; Winkler, ‘Locke on Personal Identity’. The problem is addressed and answered by Garrett, ‘Locke on Personal Identity, Consciousness, and “Fatal Errors” ’, 106–8; Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, ch. 4; Weinberg, ‘The Metaphysical Fact of Consciousness’. 16  This worry can be found in Atherton, ‘Locke’s Theory of Personal Identity’, 286–90; Mackie, Problems from Locke, 179–80, 184; Winkler, ‘Locke on Personal Identity’, 222–3.

Insufficiency Worries  129 the circularity charge; (ii) presents an insufficiency worry that would undermine Locke’s theory, but (ii) may not be circular. This is significant, because it shows that the second insufficiency worry presents additional challenges and that it is possible to solve the problem of circularity without solving the insufficiency worry. In response to the first worry, it is important to acknowledge that Locke’s notion of same consciousness involves several intertwined aspects, as shown in the previous chapter. Same consciousness is not restricted to the contents of conscious states, but additionally it is relevant to realize that these contents are unified and temporally ordered. The worry that same consciousness is insufficient often arises if same consciousness is equated with memory. Such an in­ter­pret­ ation does not do justice to Locke’s text, because it neglects the fact that unity and temporality are important further aspects of his account of same consciousness. If same consciousness was understood solely in terms of memory and if one focused on the remembered former thoughts and actions without explaining how the remembered experience is connected with the initial experience, then the insufficiency charge would be apt. However, this is not Locke’s view. Rather, for him the connection between the initial experience and the remembrance thereof is provided by the unifying aspect of same consciousness.17 Furthermore, the remembered past experience is temporally ordered within a series of other thoughts and actions and reflecting on this series enables a person to experience her existence as temporally extended and to realize that she has existed for a continued dur­ ation. This makes it important to examine more closely not only how past ex­peri­ ences and current remembrances are unified, but also how different thoughts and actions are unified at a time and over time. In particular, it is worth asking whether the unifying aspect of same consciousness has a metaphysical foundation and, if so, whether we can give a more detailed characterization of its metaphysical constitution. Although Locke tends to be agnostic about many metaphysical claims, he does not reject all metaphysical claims as such. For instance, he believes that we can know that God exists.18 Another example can be found in his correspondence with Stillingfleet where he claims that we can know that thinking requires a substance, but we cannot know whether the substance is material or immaterial.19 In 17  In response to the insufficiency worry some interpreters argue that we have to distinguish phenomenal memory from genuine memory and that Locke’s account of memory cannot be interpreted in terms of phenomenal memory. See Garrett, ‘Locke on Personal Identity, Consciousness, and “Fatal Errors” ’. Since genuine memory involves a genuine connection between the initial experience and the later remembrance thereof I take it that this strategy to address the worry is similar to my strategy that highlights the importance of the unifying aspect of same consciousness. However, it is worth noting that although appeal to genuine memory can account for the connection between an initial ex­peri­ ence and the later remembrance thereof, it cannot explain the togetherness of different experiences at a time and over time. In this regard the unifying aspect of Locke’s same consciousness account has a function that is not captured by memory connections alone, since it provides structural relations that extend beyond memory connections. 18  See IV.x. 19  See Locke, Works, 4:33.

130  Circularity and Insufficiency Worries a similar vein, it is worth investigating whether we can make some metaphysical claims about the unifying aspect of consciousness, even if it is unlikely that we can fully comprehend its ontological constitution. Throughout his discussion of personal identity Locke challenges the view that personal identity consists solely in the continued existence of material or im­ma­ ter­ial substances.20 Traditionally substances have been assumed to provide unity and to make persistence possible. To give credibility to Locke’s position, it is worth investigating whether Locke has resources to offer an alternative ex­plan­ ation for how different thoughts and actions, bodily parts, and perhaps even substances are unified into one person at a time and over time. His analogy between persons and living organisms offers good insight into his thinking and shows that identity of material living organism does not require the continued existence of substance: those, who place Thought in a purely material, animal, Constitution, void of an immaterial Substance . . . ’tis plain they conceive personal Identity preserved in something else than Identity of Substance; as animal Identity is preserved in Identity of Life, and not of Substance.  (II.xxvii.12)

According to Locke, the identity of living organisms consists in a particular organizational structure that preserves the life of the organism. This means that the identity of organisms consists in certain relations. Given the analogy between persons and living beings, personal identity will similarly consist in structural relations, at least, if materialism is correct.21 Does this result extend to the immaterial case? Or, can an immaterial substance provide unity and thereby identity? An immaterial substance is certainly not sufficient for personal identity, if transfer of consciousness is possible. However, let us put such scenarios aside and assume that a person only inhabits one immaterial substance over time and that no other person inhabits this substance at any time. Locke’s early thoughts on this issue date back to 1682.22 In a journal entry that questions traditional arguments concerning the soul’s im­ma­ ter­iality and immortality, he proposes that we should distinguish between ‘a state of bare substantiall existence’ and ‘a state of sensibility’.23 According to Locke, we do not care to be in a state of bare perpetual existence in the afterlife, but rather in  a state of sensibility that enables us to experience happiness or misery.24 He 20  In particular, see II.xxvii.7, 10, 12–19, 23–6. 21  I acknowledge that this interpretation assumes the existence of relations outside human minds and is not shared by all Locke scholars. I am here largely in agreement with Samuel  C.  Rickless, ‘Locke’s Ontology of Relations,’ Locke Studies 17 (2017). I will say more about the interpretive issues concerning Locke’s account of relations below. 22  See his journal entry, dated 20 February 1682, which is reprinted in Locke, Early Draft, 121–3. 23  See Locke, Early Draft, 121. 24  See Locke, Early Draft, 122–3.

Insufficiency Worries  131 further advances these views in the Essay. Even in cases where a person inhabits just one immaterial substance, Locke would argue that the mere existence of an immaterial substance is not sufficient for personal identity, because it is im­port­ ant that the conscious states that a person has at different times be properly connected. In particular, he emphasizes that a person at a later time has to be able to remember an earlier person’s action to be identical with the earlier person, which means that there has to be a genuine connection between the initial action and one’s ability to remember it at a later time. Moreover, at a particular time a person commonly has more than one experience and in order to explain that the different experiences all belong to one person there have to be genuine connections among the different experiences that a person has at a time and over time. Structural relations that connect experiences at a time and over time seem a strong candidate to explain synchronic and diachronic unity, at the very least they are better suited than the mere existence of an immaterial substance. This suggests that the unifying aspect of same consciousness is likely to be relational, not just in the material case, but also in the immaterial case. If it can be shown that structural relations can provide synchronic and diachronic unity, Locke can be said to be in a strategically advantageous position in comparison with his op­pon­ ents who insist that only immaterial substances can provide unity and ground identity. Merely establishing the metaphysical possibility that relational structures can ground unity suffices to undermine their position. Of course, this does not entail that we can know that the view is correct, but rather it is a probable hypothesis to be taken seriously. Let us step back from the details of Locke’s account of personal identity for a moment and instead turn to Locke’s account of relations more generally. Chapter xxvii of Book II was added to a series of chapters on ideas of relations25 with the publication of the second edition of the Essay in 1694. In these chapters—just as in most parts of Book II of the Essay—Locke’s primary concern is psychological, namely to explain how we acquire ideas of relations. As he tells us, we form ideas of relations when we compare two or more things under a certain respect. The broader context is a discussion of complex ideas,26 which Locke divides into ideas of substances, ideas of modes, and ideas of relations.27 Nevertheless, Locke does not entirely restrict the discussion to the psychological question of how we acquire ideas and from time to time turns to questions of the underlying metaphysics. He is committed to the existence of substances28 and there is also ­convincing, though disputed, textual support that he accepts that modes exist

25  See II.xxv–xxvi, xxviii. 26  See II.xii–xxviii. 27  See II.xii.3–7. 28  In several parts of the Essay Locke presupposes the existence of substances, for instance, in his discussion of power (II.xxi). He explicitly argues that God exists and is a substance (see IV.x); and in his correspondence with Stillingfleet he gives a demonstrative argument for the existence of substance (see Locke, Works, 4:33). See also Rickless, ‘Locke’s Ontology of Relations’.

132  Circularity and Insufficiency Worries external to human minds.29 Prima facie, there is good reason to expect that he will also accept that relations exist external to human minds, or that they have a metaphysical foundation external to human minds.30 However, this is a matter of dispute and in order to establish it we face the following tasks: first, we have to show that Locke’s account of relations goes beyond the purely psychological project of explaining how we acquire ideas of relations.31 If it can be shown that Lock’s project is not purely psychological, the further question arises what stance he takes regarding the ontology of relations. Does he accept the existence of relations, or some ontological foundation of ideas of relations, or does he deny the existence of relations? This means that it remains to show additionally that the antirealist interpretation that relations do not exist, which has been defended by Matthew Stuart, is mistaken.32 If this can be shown, then Locke will accept that at least some ideas of relations have a metaphysical foundation and it remains to be seen whether a more precise characterization of their ontological foundation can be given. It is worth noting that Locke does not always carefully distinguish between relations and ideas of relations and sometimes he uses ‘relation’ in places where it would be more precise to speak of ‘idea of relation’.33 This means that we cannot always take Locke’s text at face value. Is there textual evidence that supports that he accepts that ideas of relations have an ontological foundation? As a first candidate in support of this view, let us consider the relation being father of: Cajus, whom I consider to day as a Father, ceases to be so to morrow, only by the death of his Son, without any alteration made in himself.  (II.xxv.5)

Here an external event, namely the death of Cajus’s son, explains why Cajus ceases to be a father. It is difficult to make sense of Locke’s claim if it is understood as a claim about the idea of the relation father. According to Locke, ideas cease to be ideas when they are not present in someone’s mind.34 Had Locke instead intended to make a claim about someone’s idea of the relation father, it is not clear why it ceases at the time of the death of his son, because it canot be assumed that anyone is thinking about Cajus’s relation to his son then. Rather it is more plausible to 29  See II.xii.4–5, II.xviii. See also LoLordo, Locke’s Moral Man, 74–82; LoLordo, ‘Three Problems in Locke’s Ontology of Substance and Mode’; Rickless, ‘Locke’s Ontology of Relations’; Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 4–7. 30  See Rickless, ‘Locke’s Ontology of Relations’. 31  A psychological reading has been defended by Patrick  J.  Connolly, ‘Causation and Scientific Explanation in Locke’ (PhD Thesis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2013). 32  See Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 24–32. 33  This challenge is noted by Rickless, ‘Locke’s Ontology of Relations’; Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 29–30. Several interpretive disputes hinge on the question of whether Locke means ‘idea of relation’ in places where he uses ‘relation’. For example, Rickless rejects Stuart’s and Ott’s interpretations of II.xxv.8 and Stuart rejects Ott’s interpretation of II.xxv.5 on such grounds. 34  See II.x.2, II.xiv.4.

Insufficiency Worries  133 interpret Locke as making a claim about the relation father. In this case, the presence of the relation presupposes at least the existence of both relata and thereby has a foundation external to human minds.35 This point is further supported by the following passage:36 Another occasion of comparing Things together, or considering one thing, so as to include in that Consideration some other thing, is the Circumstances of their origin or beginning; which being not afterwards to be altered, make the Relations, depending thereon, as lasting as the Subjects to which they belong; v.g. Father and Son, Brothers, Cousin-­Germans, etc. which have their Relations by one Community of Blood, wherein they partake in several degrees;

35  For further discussion, see Rickless, ‘Locke’s Ontology of Relations’. Walter R. Ott, ‘ “Archetypes without Patterns”: Locke on Relations and Mixed Modes,’ Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 99 (2017), remarks that Locke’s argument was familiar to his contemporaries and was used as a reductio argument against realism about relations. The thought is the following: if the relation father was an intrinsic feature of Cajus, then the death of his son would cause action at a distance, because the death of his son would cause the cessation of Cajus’s intrinsic feature of being father. However, there cannot be action at a distance (see II.xxiii.20). Hence, relations are not real intrinsic features of relata. As I have reconstructed the argument here, it targets a particular version of realism about relations, however, Ott, who gives a more general characterization of the reductio argument employed by Locke’s predecessors, takes their arguments to target ‘nearly every isotope of realism about relations’. Although Ott may be correct about the arguments of Locke’s predecessors, I am not convinced that Locke’s own  arguments in the Essay and his marginalia in his personal copy of Segeant, Solid Philosophy Asserted—a work that provides Sergeant’s critical commentary on Locke’s Essay—target realism about relations in general. I agree with Ott that the argument about Cajus and the death of his son is similar to a marginal note that Locke made in his copy of Solid Philosophy Asserted. In response to Sergeant’s commentary on Essay II.xxv Locke notes in the margins: ‘ “what chang? does the father in the I[n]dies suffer when his son is born in England?” ’ (John Locke, Marginalia in John Sergeant’s Solid Philosophy (1697), in The Digital Locke Project, ed. Paul Schuurman.) It is important to note that this remark targets Sergeant’s particular understanding of relations: if the Relation be new, or such a one as before was not, there must be some Novelty in the Thing it self to ground it. Whence follows that, if there be such a Real Ground on the one side only, and no Real Ground on the other, there will be a Real Relation on the one side, and no Real Relation on the other, but only a Verbal one, or Extrinsical Denomination; Answering, or (as it were) Chiming Grammatically to the Term which is really Relative, v.g. Our Powers of Seeing of Understanding any thing, have a Real Relation to their proper Objects; both because such Objects Specifie the Power, or make it such a Power, that is, give it its peculiar or distinct Essence; as also, because the Power is by the Object actuated and determin’d to act; that is, the Power is intrinsecally Chang’d, or otherwise than it was, by means of the Object suffers no kind of Change, nor is it at all Alter’d, or otherwise than it was by being known or seen. (Sergeant, Solid Philosophy Asserted, 253–4.) Locke’s remark targets the view that the relation father is a new intrinsic property that a subject acquires upon the birth of his child. A realist about relations can be a reductionist or a non-­ reductionist about relations. A reductionist explains relations in terms of the relata and their monadic properties, while the ontology of a non-­reductionist contains relations in addition to the things that are related. Reductionism can have two forms: (i) relations can be explained in terms of the monadic properties of one of the relata; or (ii) relations can be explained in terms of the intrinsic properties of all the relata collectively. For further discussion of the distinction, see Rae Langton, ‘Locke’s Relations and God’s Good Pleasure,’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 100 (2000). Sergeant seems to assume (i), but Locke rejects it. This means that we do not have textual support against realism about relations generally, but only against an implausible version of reductionism. 36  See also Locke, Drafts A and B, Draft A, §21, 36, Draft B, §148, 261.

134  Circularity and Insufficiency Worries Country-­men, i.e. those who were born in the same Country, or Tract of Ground; and these I call natural Relations. (II.xxviii.2)

Let us turn to another example, namely causation and our idea of causation.37 Locke argues that we form ideas of cause and effect when we constantly observe the production of ‘any particular simple Idea, or Collection of simple Ideas, whether Substance, or Mode, which did not before exist’ (II.xxvi.1). While II.xxvi.1 focuses on the acquisition of the ideas of cause and effect, in II.xxvi.2 Locke switches to talking about causes. Causes for Locke produce simple ideas, modes, or substances. They can create something entirely new, generate something new out of pre-­existing particles such as living beings, make artificial things such as a painting, or alter existing things.38 Although Locke returns to the question of how we acquire ideas of causes and effects at the end of the section, it is plausible to assume that for him ideas of causes have a foundation external to human minds, because he invokes ‘internal Principles’ of nature to explain how new substances are generated out of pre-­existing particles: And this, when referred to a Substance, produced in the ordinary course of Nature, by an internal Principle, but set on work by, and received from some external Agent, or Cause, and working by insensible ways, which we perceive not, we call Generation. (II.xxvi.2)

In another passage, he mentions that in order ‘to have the Idea of Cause and Effect, it suffices to consider any simple Idea, or Substance, as beginning to exist, by the Operation of some other, without knowing the manner of that Operation’ (II.xxvi.2). This means that we can acquire ideas of cause and effect by observing how simple ideas or substances come into existence through the operation of another substance. Although Locke is explicit that we are not in a position to fully comprehend the operation that is responsible for causal change, the passage in­tim­ates that he assumes that there is an underlying operation. Hence, we can assume that Locke is willing to make metaphysical assumptions that go beyond the question of how we form ideas of causes and effects, because he acknowledges that there are underlying principles or operations. This suggests that he accepts that causal relations have a metaphysical foundation, although its exact constitution is unknown by us.39 Nevertheless, Locke is explicit about the limitations of human understanding. We are not in a position to acquire certain knowledge about the exact constitution of the operations that connect causes and effects and our understanding is 37  See II.xxvi.1–2. 38  See II.xxvi.2. 39  For further discussion of Locke’s conception of causation see Walter R. Ott, ‘Locke and the Real Problem of Causation,’ Locke Studies 15 (2015).

Insufficiency Worries  135 constrained by observation and experience.40 He illustrates this point by commenting on the production of secondary qualities from certain arrangements of primary qualities as well as causal relations between mind and body: As the Ideas of sensible secondary Qualities, which we have in our Minds, can, by us, be no way deduced from bodily Causes, nor any correspondence or connexion be found between them and those primary Qualities which (Experience shews us) produce them in us; so on the other side, the Operation of our Minds upon our Bodies is as unconceivable. How any thought should produce a motion in Body is as remote from the nature of our Ideas, as how any Body should prod­ uce any Thought in the Mind. That it is so, if Experience did not convince us, the Consideration of the Things themselves would never be able, in the least, to discover to us. These, and the like, though they have a constant and regular connexion, in the ordinary course of Things: yet that connexion being not discoverable in the Ideas themselves, which appearing to have no necessary dependance one on another, we can attribute their connexion to nothing else, but the arbitrary Determination of that All-­wise Agent, who has made them to be, and to operate as they do, in a way wholly above our weak Understandings to conceive. (IV.iii.28)

Based on experience and observation we can say that certain ideas regularly occur together and assume that there are causal relations among the things under consideration. The exact connection among causes and effects is unconceivable by us, but Locke believes that God, who is a wise creator, has carefully designed the connections among things. Despite our lack of knowledge of causal operations, we can nevertheless make probable predictions about causal relations, since we can observe effects and reason by means of analogy: We see Animals are generated, nourished, and move; the Load-­stone draws Iron; and the parts of a Candle successively melting, turn into flame, and give us both light and heat. These and the like Effects we see and know: but the causes that operate, and the manner they are produced in, we can only guess, and probably conjecture. For these and the like coming not within the scrutiny of humane Senses, cannot be examined by them, or be attested by any body, and therefore can appear more or less probable, only as they more or less agree to Truths that are established in our Minds, and as they hold proportion to other parts of our Knowledge and Observation. Analogy in these matters is the only help we have, and ’tis from that alone we draw all our grounds of Probability.  (IV.xvi.12)

40  See IV.iii.24–8. See also II.xxiii.28.

136  Circularity and Insufficiency Worries So far I have argued that Locke acknowledges that some of our ideas of relation have a metaphysical foundation.41 This result undermines Stuart’s position that for Locke there are only ideas of relations, but no relations.42 However, we also need to acknowledge that we have limited understanding of the underlying metaphysical foundation. The above arguments still leave open a wide spectrum of possible interpretations,43 including non-­reductive realism,44 reductive realism,45 and foundational conceptualism46 about relations. Foundational conceptualism, as defended by Walter Ott, is a form of reductionism, but differs from reductive realism insofar as it denies the existence of relations. For Ott, relations do not exist external to our mind, but he acknowledges that our surface concepts of relations have a deeper ontological foundation.47 For present purposes, it is not necessary to settle the interpretive disputes. The important insight for us is that we have plausible textual support that Locke accepts that some of our ideas of relations have a deeper ontological foundation, and we can leave open the question of whether the underlying metaphysical foundation can be called ‘relation’ or not.48 On this basis, let us return to Locke’s account of personal identity and the question of whether his same consciousness account has a metaphysical foundation that explains how different contents of conscious states are unified into one person. Two questions are worth exploring further. First, what, if anything, makes it plausible to suppose that Locke’s same consciousness account has an underlying ontological foundation? Second, if there is convincing evidence to postulate an  ontological foundation, is it plausible to understand it in terms of causal

41  I say ‘some’ because the arguments above examine particular examples and it is not clear that the considerations extend to all types of ideas of relations. In II.xxviii.1–4 Locke distinguishes different types of ideas of relations, namely proportional, natural, instituted, or voluntary, and moral relations. 42  See Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 24–32. Rickless, ‘Locke’s Ontology of Relations’, offers strong arguments against Stuart’s view. He shows that Stuart’s interpretation depends on a questionable reading of II.xxvii.8. Another critic of Stuart is Ott, ‘ “Archetypes without Patterns” ’; Ott, ‘Locke and the Real Problem of Causation’. In ‘ “Archetypes without Patterns” ’, Ott argues that one problem with Stuart’s eliminativism is that propositions that contain ideas of relations lack truthmakers. This problem will not arise, if we acknowledge that (some) ideas of relations have a mind-­independent ontological foundation. 43  See Rickless, ‘Locke’s Ontology of Relations’. Rickless argues for a realist interpretation of Locke’s position, rejects Stuart’s and Ott’s interpretations, but does not try to decide what particular realist Locke is. Instead Rickless maintains that ‘[t]here is, as far as I know, nothing in Locke’s corpus to suggest that he has a particular ontological theory about the nature of relations’ (84). 44  This position is defended by Langton, ‘Locke’s Relations and God’s Good Pleasure’. 45 See Jonathan Bennett, Locke, Berkeley, Hume: Central Themes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 253–4. 46 See Ott, ‘ “Archetypes without Patterns” ’; Ott, ‘Locke and the Real Problem of Causation’; Walter  R.  Ott, ‘Locke on Relations,’ in Causation and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 47  A detailed explanation of the deep ontological foundation of ideas of relations can be found in Ott, ‘Locke and the Real Problem of Causation’. 48 This question divides Ott’s foundational conceptualism from other forms of realism about relations.

Insufficiency Worries  137 relations. Since several interpreters have suggested that Locke’s account of same consciousness involves causal relations it is worth giving this proposal special consideration.49 In the previous chapter I showed that Locke’s text supports that we experience different thoughts and actions as well as bodily parts as unified in one self or person at a time and over time. This is made possible, because self-­consciousness accompanies all our perceptions. We now turn to the further question, namely whether Locke would accept that there is an underlying metaphysical foundation that grounds our experience of unity. Putting it differently, the question is whether Locke would accept that thoughts, actions, bodily parts, and possibly different substances are not just unified in experience, but also connected ontologically. Since Locke regards it as plausible that there are underlying principles or op­er­ ations that explain mind-­body interaction, physical processes among material objects, or connections between primary and secondary qualities, we have evidence that he is generally open to postulating underlying metaphysical principles and operations, even if their exact constitution and manner of operation is not fully comprehensible by us. Locke believes that God’s wise creation makes it plaus­ible to suppose underlying metaphysical principles. By analogy, we can assume that he would also be willing to acknowledge that thoughts and actions as well as bodily parts that we experience as unified are connected ontologically. Since Locke is critical about the view that identity presupposes the continued existence of a substance, the best candidate for an alternative explanation is the hypothesis that relations provide ontological connections among the various contents of conscious states. This hypothesis is supported by the analogy that he draws between living beings and persons.50 Having suggested that it is plausible to suppose that same consciousness has an underlying metaphysical foundation and that it consists in relations, it remains to  consider whether there is sufficient evidence to postulate that the relevant 49  Interpreters who endorse the view that same consciousness involves causal relations, or are open to it, include Garrett, ‘Locke on Personal Identity, Consciousness, and “Fatal Errors” ’, 107–8, 116–17, 120–1; M.  W.  Hughes, ‘Personal Identity: A Defence of Locke,’ Philosophy 50 (1975): 172–5, 182, 184–7; LoLordo, Locke’s Moral Man, 73–4; Mackie, Problems from Locke, 184–6; McCann, ‘Locke on Identity: Matter, Life, and Consciousness’, 75–6; Strawson, Locke on Personal Identity, 8, 98, 131–2, 151; Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 366–8; Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, 171–4; Weinberg, ‘The Metaphysical Fact of Consciousness’, 410–13. The view has been criticized by Jolley, Locke’s Touchy Subjects, 13, 102–3. Jolley argues that it is hard to explain how there can be causal relations between this life and the afterlife. In response to Jolley a defender of a causal view can, as Parfit does, argue that there are different types of causes and the relations that explain sameness of consciousness between death and resurrection can be causal relations, but may be of a different type than normal causal relations (see Parfit, Reasons and Persons, 207–9.). A similar point has been made by Strawson, Locke on Personal Identity, 151. See also Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 367–8. Moreover, it is important to realize that Garrett believes that causal relations will be involved irrespective of whether thinking substances are material or immaterial, and if they are immaterial then there is no reason to think that the relevant causal relations between death and resurrection differ in type from those that are relevant during ordinary life. 50  See II.xxvii.12.

138  Circularity and Insufficiency Worries relations are causal relations. The relations under considerations are relations that connect thoughts and actions at a time, as well as bodily parts with a self or mind. Furthermore, the relations in question connect sequences of thoughts and actions over time, which include relations between original experiences and remembrances of them at later times, but also sequences of thoughts, for instance, when one is engaged in demonstrative reasoning. In this case the transition from one thought in the sequence to the next is intuitively certain. Moreover, there can be sequences of thoughts and actions over time. For example, I may feel hungry and develop a desire to eat, which leads to the volition to eat and prompts me to walk into the kitchen and to prepare food. In this case a desire is followed by a volition and subsequent actions. The question under consideration is whether causal relations connect the different thoughts and actions and help explain that they all belong to one person. According to Locke, we have access to observable effects, but we do not always fully comprehend the causal operations that produce the effects. Insofar as we are trying to explain relations within sequences of thoughts and actions that involve mind-­body interaction it is likely that Locke would be willing to accept that some causal relations are at work that account for mind-­body interaction, though their exact metaphysical constitution is not accessible to us.51 Due to our limited understanding of the metaphysics of causal relations, Locke would be reluctant to postulate necessary connections between causes and effects. Instead of being concerned with necessary connections, Locke would describe the observable change that is produced as the effect of causation in terms of active and passive powers.52 For Locke, an active power is able to produce change while a passive power is able to receive change.53 If active power is exercised it produces actions, namely motions or thoughts.54 Strictly speaking, active power concerns the ability to initiate or begin new thoughts or motions.55 These observations are relevant, because they intimate that for Locke the presence of causal relations56 does neither entail the presence of necessary connections nor any deterministic relations between causes and effects.57 51  See IV.iii.28. 52  For further discussion, see R.  M.  Mattern, ‘Locke on Active Power and the Obscure Idea of Active Power from Bodies,’ Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 11 (1980): 54. 53  See II.xxi.2. 54  See II.xxi.4. 55  See II.xxi.4. 56  Given that Locke understands causation in terms of powers and that powers are qualities, one may wonder whether it is plausible to speak of causal relations. In II.xxi.3 Locke observes that ‘Power includes in it some kind of relation, (a relation to Action or Change).’ Since a power can be understood as a relation between a thing that is able to produce change and the change it is able to produce, it is unproblematic to speak of causal relations. 57  It may be worth adding that Locke’s text does not rule them out either. The question of whether Locke is committed to causal determinism remains a matter of dispute among Locke scholars. For the view that Locke remains agnostic, see Harris, Of Liberty and Necessity, ch. 1; LoLordo, Locke’s Moral Man, ch. 1. Libertarian freedom has been ascribed to Locke by E.  J.  Lowe, ‘Locke: Compatibilist Event-­Causalist or Libertarian Substance-­Causalist?,’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 68 (2004). For a defence of the view that Locke endorses causal determinism, see Vere Chappell, ‘Power

Insufficiency Worries  139 Let us assess whether it is plausible to understand the underlying metaphysical foundation of sameness of consciousness in terms of causal relations. One difficulty is that causal relations in the broad sense in which Locke understands them are ubiquitous and causal relations are not only to be found within the bound­ar­ ies of a person’s consciousness, but there can also be interpersonal causal relations, or causal relations among non-­thinking external objects. The challenge is that Locke’s account of causation is so broad that not just any causal relations can provide the the ontological foundation of same consciousness, but if causal relations are involved at all, specific causal relations will have to be identified. To illustrate the point, let us assume that I hear my friend talking about her trip to Edinburgh. In this situation, it is plausible to assume that there is a causal chain between her trip to Edinburgh and the images that I form about her trip based on her reports. However, her experiences in Edinburgh should not be included among the thoughts and actions unified within my person. This example illustrates that not all causal relations are candidates for ontologically grounding sameness of consciousness, and the unity among thoughts and actions, bodily parts, and possibly substances, in particular. This is because various causal relations are interpersonal, while the unity in question here is meant to be constitutive of one person. Hence, we have not yet managed to identify a narrow enough ontological foundation. To address this challenge, we have to examine whether we can single out particular causal relations that play a constitutive role with regard to personal identity among the multitude of causal relations. One option for tackling the problem that this examples poses is to take into consideration that self-­consciousness accompanies all our experiences. In the present case, my friend was self-­conscious at the time when she had the initial experiences. At the later time when she recalls her experiences in Edinburgh she also recalls that she has had the experiences before. By contrast, I do not have first-­personal internal awareness of the experiences in Edinburgh, but can only form beliefs and images about my friend’s experiences based on her testimony. This means that I do not regard my friend’s adventures in Edinburgh as my own experiences. To remedy the problem that causal relations can be interpersonal, it seems relevant to not merely consider causal relations among different thoughts and actions, or among the contents of mental states, but to take additionally the  self-­consciousness that accompanies all mental states into consideration. However, can the thoughts and actions that are accompanied by my selfconsciousness be distinguished in a non-­circular way from my friend’s thoughts and actions that are accompanied by her self-­consciousness? From a first-­personal internal or phenomenological perspective I can distinguish my own experiences in Locke’s Essay,’ in The Cambridge Companion to Locke’s ‘Essay Concerning Human Understanding’, ed. Lex Newman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 141–8; Rickless, ‘Locke on Active Power, Freedom, and Moral Agency’; Rickless, Locke, 104–10.

140  Circularity and Insufficiency Worries from the experiences of others, because the accompanying self-­consciousness creates an intimate link, or feeling, that is absent when I learn about the ex­peri­ ences of others by testimony. This makes it worth investigating further whether this phenomenological difference is ontologically grounded. Some interpreters do not appeal to causal relations generally, but rather focus on causal traces in the brain.58 Although Locke mentions causal traces in the brain in a few passages59 and it is plausible, at least if minds are material, that causal traces are preserved in the brain, we should take Locke’s agnosticism concerning the materiality or immateriality of thinking substances seriously and, hence, avoid interpretations of the relevant causal relations that identify particular ontological realizers. I believe that Matthew Stuart is right to caution us about the temptation to identify ontological realizers.60 He draws attention to Locke’s interest in making sense of the possibility of the afterlife—a topic that we will examine closely in the next chapter. As I show in the next chapter, Locke’s theory is consistent with Christian mortalist views, namely views according to which the soul (or a person) either dies at bodily death and does not exist between death and resurrection, or enters a period of unconscious sleep. Stuart argues that Locke’s theory should accommodate mortalism and suggests a way of reconciling it with the view that personal identity is preserved by genuine causal relations: Does Locke’s attitude towards mortalism preclude him from saying that genuine memory requires certain causal connections between a memory and the remembered event? Not necessarily. One possibility would be to admit the possibility of direct causal links between events at non-­adjacent times. If action at a temporal distance were possible, then genuine memories might be preserved by causal links between an ante-­mortem person’s last soul or brain events and a resurrected person’s first soul or brain events. A less strange possibility would be a causal chain that goes outside the person and his constituent parts for a time, perhaps through the mind of God. We may think of this as analogous to transferring one’s CD collection on to a hard-­drive for a while, and then burning it back on to CDs. Memories might be grounded in soul or brain events while we are alive; there might be causal relations between the last such events in our lifetime and some aspect of the divine mind; and then at the resurrection there might be further causal connections between the divine mind and soul or brain 58  See Garrett, ‘Locke on Personal Identity, Consciousness, and “Fatal Errors” ’, 116; Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, 171–4; Weinberg, ‘The Metaphysical Fact of Consciousness’, 410–13. 59  See II.i.15, II.x.5, 10. 60  See Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 366–8. This caution is further justified, because the passages where Locke mentions traces in the brain do not show that he is committed to the view. For example, the context of II.i.15 is a critical discussion of the implausible consequences of the Cartesian hypothesis that the soul always thinks. Hence, we cannot assume that his remark concerning the traces left in the brain in II.i.15 represents his own considered view. I offer a more detailed discussion of Locke’s response to the Cartesian view that the soul always thinks in chapters 7 and 10.

Insufficiency Worries  141 events in resurrected persons. This would seem to raise a theological problem about God’s being acted upon by events outside Himself, but that is a problem that any theist—or any theist who believes in the power of prayer—must deal with in any case.61

Yet more needs to be said in response to the worry that there are too many different causal relations, not merely those that ground personal identity. Unless there is way to single out those particular relations that ground personal identity, causal relations will not offer a suitable ontological foundation of personal identity. This worry gives rise to a new circularity worry: it can be objected that in order to identify the relevant causal relations, namely those that ground personal identity, personal identity has to be presupposed.62 This objection calls for a distinction between different types of causal relations, or relations more generally. The relations that are relevant for ontologically grounding personal identity include, first, relations between initial experiences and later remembrances thereof, second, relations among different thoughts and actions at a time, third, relations among different thoughts and actions over time such as sequences of desires, volitions, and actions, and, fourth, relations between a person’s mind and body. Furthermore, it is possible that there are relations between different substances over time. With regard to memory, the relevant relations can be said to provide the ontological foundation that connects the initial experience with the later remembrance of it. These relations are genuine as long as they preserve both the content of initial experience and the accompanying self-­consciousness, which is revived in memory. By including the accompanying self-­consciousness my memories can be distinguished from the experiences of others. The relations are responsible for the proper functioning of memory, but the exact manner by which they operate exceeds human comprehension. Memory relations alone cannot explain why multiple different thoughts and actions all belong to one person. To account for the simultaneity of different thoughts and actions, additional relations are needed. On what basis would Locke accept that different thoughts and actions all belong to one person at a particular time? First of all, it is important that a person is actually conscious of the thoughts and actions in question or, at least, able to be conscious of them.63 This means that a necessary condition for ascribing thoughts and actions to one and the same person is the ability to be conscious of them, which includes the ability to be self-­conscious. As we have seen in chapter 2, he 61 Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 367–8. 62  See Mark Siderits, Personal Identity and Buddhist Philosophy: Empty Persons (Aldershot and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003), 43–4. 63  This means that bodily motions, of which one cannot be aware can be put aside. I make this remark, because Locke has broad understanding of action, according to which bodily motions are actions. Moreover, bodily motions can occur at the same place and time at which a person exists.

142  Circularity and Insufficiency Worries accepts the place-­time kind principle, namely the principle that two things of the same kind cannot exist at the same place and time.64 This entails that only one person can exist at a particular time and place. For Locke, actual conscious states or dispositions of conscious states are located in place and time. It follows that all actually or dispositionally conscious states of thoughts and actions belong to one and the same person, because otherwise the place-­time kind principle would be violated. This suggests that consciousness (that is built into individual conscious states) in combination with spatiotemporal locations makes it possible to ascribe different thoughts and actions to a person at a time. Since Locke further believes that God is a wise creator, it is likely that he would additionally regard it as plaus­ ible that God has created stronger ontological connections between different thoughts and actions at a time, but the exact details of the ontological foundation transcend the boundaries of human understanding. Next, let us consider sequences of different thoughts and actions over time. How can Locke explain that sequences of different thoughts and actions belong to the same person? When I speak of a ‘sequence’ of thoughts and actions I consider temporally ordered series of thoughts and actions where one thought or action leads to the next. This is, for instance, the case in demonstrative reasoning, where the connection between two successive thoughts in a demonstration is intuitive. Another example of a sequence of thoughts and actions concerns desires that lead to volition and subsequently result in action. Such sequences of thoughts and actions differ from series of thoughts that randomly pop up in one’s mind. For instance, as Mark tries to solve a logical problem, he may notice a noise or suddenly remember that he still needs to buy a train ticket for his upcoming trip. In this case, I do not regard his awareness of the noise or his remembrance of his intention to buy a train ticket as part of the sequence of thoughts that focuses on solving the logical problem, because these randomly occurring thoughts are not part of the attempt to solve the logical problem. Of course, it does not follow that thoughts that randomly pop up in one’s mind do not belong to the person. Indeed, the reason why they belong to the person that now attempts to solve the logical problem is that they occur simultaneously with other thoughts and actions. Since I have already discussed why different thoughts and actions that occur at the same time and place all belong to one person, I will not further consider such cases here and instead restrict the focus now to sequences of thoughts and actions. In a sequence of thoughts and actions a person is aware of how one thought or action leads to the next. Let us turn once more to a sequence of a desire that leads to a volition and subsequently results in action. In this case the action A is already anticipated when the person starts to form the desire to do A. Provided there are no conflicting desires, or the person has carefully considered her desires, the

64  See II.xxvii.1.

Insufficiency Worries  143 desire changes to a volition to do A, which eventually leads to the realization of the action. In this case the shared content, namely action A, creates links in the sequence of thoughts and action,65 while the mental attitudes towards the content change from desire to volition. Moreover, as the person performs the action she will be aware that the action is voluntary. This means that the preceding volition is still present in the person’s awareness as she performs the action, or can easily be revived. Furthermore, it is important that all thoughts and actions that are part of a sequence are conscious, which will include self-­consciousness.66 This suggests that overlapping awareness of one thought or action and the succeeding thought or action characterizes a sequence of different thoughts and actions. Moreover, it is plausible to assume that there are underlying metaphysical op­er­ ations that are responsible for the transition from one thought to another or from a thought to the performance of an action. Since such transitions involve change, we can further assume that Locke would, at least in part, explain the transitions in terms of active and passive powers, or causal relations in his sense. Yet the exact constitution of connections between different thoughts and actions in a sequence is not accessible by us. Additionally, let us consider relations between a person’s mind and body. Such relations can arise, for instance when a person feels pain in her toe and thereby feels her toe as intimately connected to her self. Moreover, we have already touched on how thoughts can lead to bodily action, or bodily action can give rise to thoughts. As already mentioned above, in these cases Locke would accept that there is causal interaction, but also make clear that the exact causal operations are not accessible by us.67 Overall, there is plausible evidence to suppose that Locke is willing to ac­know­ ledge relations among different thoughts and actions, bodily parts, and possibly substances. Moreover, I proposed that in light of his belief in a wise creator he would further be open to accept that the relevant relations have an underlying metaphysical foundation. Several other interpreters have suggested that causal relations provide the relevant connections. Although it is convincing that causal relations play some role in connecting different thoughts and actions, as well as bodily parts, the proposal is not as straightforward as other interpreters have presented it. One difficulty is that there are multiple causal relations and only some of them are candidates for providing connections that play a role in ontologically grounding personal identity. Furthermore, it is possible that other relations such

65  It is worth noting that this is not a requirement for all sequences of thoughts and actions. For instance, the contents of the thoughts in a demonstration change as one moves from one step of a demonstration to the next. 66  Since sequences of thoughts and actions commonly include initial thoughts and actions, rather than remembered thoughts and actions, there must be actual consciousness rather than just the ­disposition to be conscious of them. 67  See IV.iii.28.

144  Circularity and Insufficiency Worries as spatiotemporal relations play a role in addition to causal relations. By weighing probabilities and by reasoning from analogy, we can assume that Locke would be willing to acknowledge the hypothesis that relations connect different thoughts and actions at a time and over time and have some ontological foundation as convincing. These relations help to create unity among thoughts and actions. He would certainly regard this hypothesis as more convincing than the view that many of his predecessors and contemporaries held, namely that only substances can unify different thoughts and actions and that identity presupposes the con­ tinued existence of a substance. Due to the limitations of human understanding, we cannot give an exact ontological descriptions of the relations that play a role in unifying thoughts and actions, bodily parts, and possibly substances at a time and over time. Rather characterizing them in terms of their unifying function may be the best description we can give. It is time to return to the insufficiency worry (i), namely the worry that sameness of consciousness is insufficient, because it presupposes personal identity. The proposal above offers resources for answering this worry. The worry arises, because it is not immediately clear how different thoughts and actions68 can be said to belong to one and the same person at a time and over time. In other words, the worry is whether it is possible to explain how thoughts and actions are unified without presupposing personal identity. Acknowledging that Locke’s account of same consciousness is complex and involves several intertwined aspects, including a unifying aspect, as shown in the previous chapter, is a first step towards answering the worry. Closer examination of the unifying aspect in this chapter has made it plausible that certain relations, which will likely include some causal relations, are responsible for unifying the various thoughts and actions. This means that it is possible to explain why different thoughts and actions belong to the same person with reference to relational structures among them without invoking personal identity. Thus, the insufficiency worry (i) vanishes. It may be worth acknowledging that the resources for answering the worry ­differ depending on whether one engages with it from a first-­personal perspective or from an external God’s eye perspective. From a first-­personal perspective, I ex­peri­ence the unity among thoughts and actions phenomenologically in light of the self-­consciousness that accompanies all my experiences. Moreover, I can appeal to spatiotemporal location to argue based on spatiotemporal relations among thoughts and actions that they are all my thoughts and actions. Additionally, as a person I have the ability to reflect on the different thoughts and actions at a time and over time. By means of reflection I can form the further perception that I have all the different experiences simultaneously or over a 68  For reasons of simplicity I focus on thoughts and actions here and in the following paragraphs, but the arguments can easily be extended to bodily parts that are unified with a self, and different substances that may compose a person over time.

Insufficiency Worries  145 period of time and thereby regard them as unified. Although I do not think that a Lockean person constantly reflects (or must reflect) on her experiences, the fact that Lockean persons have the disposition to do so suggests that there is an underlying power that gives rise to the experience of unity when a person reflects. God will know the exact metaphysical constitutions of the relations that connect thoughts and actions at a time and over time. This means that from a God’s eye perspective there is no insufficiency problem, because God will know whether thoughts and actions belong to a person, since he knows what the metaphysical foundation that connects them at a time and over time and can trace it. Shelley Weinberg has given a similar response to the insufficiency worry.69 Weinberg suggests that the best interpretation is to assume that there is a metaphysical fact of an enduring consciousness.70 It is plausible to understand Weinberg’s so-­called metaphysical fact as the metaphysical foundation of the unifying aspect of Locke’s same consciousness account, because she writes: ‘Locke tells us that as far as we have a unified experience of ourselves as thinking in the  past and in the present, we actually are the same ongoing consciousness. . . . Furthermore, it is the ongoing consciousness that “unites” successive perceptions of ideas.’71 According to Weinberg, the exact metaphysical constitution of this metaphysical fact of consciousness is beyond our ken and only accessible to God,72 but this is unproblematic, because ‘we do not need a full account of consciousness in order to know that we have (there is) one and that it is distinct from our fleeting perceptions of ideas.’73 Weinberg and I agree that Locke’s account of same consciousness cannot be restricted to the contents of conscious states and that in addition to our phenomenological experience of unity it is plausible to assume that there is an underlying metaphysical foundation. Weinberg calls this underlying foundation ‘a metaphysical fact of consciousness’. I am in agreement with her that we cannot know the exact metaphysical constitution of the underlying foundation of same consciousness, but I have reservations about some metaphysical details of her metaphysical fact view.74 69  See Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, ch. 4; Weinberg, ‘The Metaphysical Fact of Consciousness’. 70 See Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, 154–63; Weinberg, ‘The Metaphysical Fact of Consciousness’, 391–400. Although Weinberg regards the metaphysical fact of consciousness as enduring without gaps, I do not think that we need to assume that it cannot have gaps. See chapter 5, section 5.2.4 for further details. 71 Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, 157; Weinberg, ‘The Metaphysical Fact of Consciousness’, 394. 72  See Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, 156–7, 161–3, 182; Weinberg, ‘The Metaphysical Fact of Consciousness’, 393, 396–400, 413. 73 Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, 160; Weinberg, ‘The Metaphysical Fact of Consciousness’, 396. 74  Although Weinberg generally makes clear that the exact metaphysical constitution of the metaphysical fact of consciousness is not accessible to us, she offers metaphysical characterizations of it, which I believe can be questioned. First, she argues by analysing Locke’s views about duration that the metaphysical fact of consciousness is enduring without gaps. See Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, 154–61; Weinberg, ‘The Metaphysical Fact of Consciousness’, 391–8. See chapter 5, section 5.2.4 for alternative interpretations. Moreover, she argues that Locke ‘thinks that we are consciousness/mind/

146  Circularity and Insufficiency Worries As I see it, the interpretation that I have given above differs from Weinberg’s interpretation insofar as I have tried to develop an argument for why the unifying aspect of same consciousness has relational structure and have turned to Locke’s general account of relations to show that it is plausible to suppose that Locke’s same consciousness account has an underlying metaphysical foundation. Weinberg does not engage with Locke’s account of relations. The advantage of my interpretation is that it can explain as to why Locke added the chapter ‘Of Identity and Diversity’ to a series of chapters on relations. Moreover, by taking the relational structure of same consciousness seriously my interpretation sheds further light on why and how personal identity can be said to differ from sameness of substance. Hence, the advantage of my interpretation is that it shows that Locke has convincing resources to support his claim that personal identity should be distinguished from identity of substance. Thereby the views of his opponents are weakened, because he has resources for showing that a relational account offers a plausible alternative metaphysical possibility. Let us turn to the second insufficiency worry, according to which sameness of consciousness is insufficient, because it presupposes something else that underlies it. A critic could object that if personal identity requires the presence of a specific underlying metaphysical foundation, which most likely will be composed by certain relations (or the metaphysical foundation of relations), and will prob­ ably include certain causal relations, Locke will have to give up his view that personal identity consists in same consciousness. At this stage, we enter a verbal dispute about the meaning of ‘same consciousness’. Our critic assumes that same consciousness does not extend to the under­ lying ontological foundation that connects individual conscious states at a time and over time. If same consciousness is restricted to aspects that are accessible to us in first-­personal awareness, then it is hard to answer the insufficiency worry. There is undeniable textual evidence that Locke’s account of same consciousness includes a unifying aspect. Our critic can even admit that we experience our thoughts and actions as unified at a time and over time. However, our critic denies that the underlying ontological foundation that enables us to experience thoughts and actions as unified is included in Locke’s notion of same consciousness. Although Locke admits that we cannot access and hence fully describe the underlying foundation, he does not deny that there is such an underlying ontological foundation. This speaks in favour of including it in his account of same consciousness. If this is correct, then the second worry can also be answered.

body composites (persons), where each component is ontologically distinct regardless of what the underlying real constitutions turn out to be’ (Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, 165). In light of the interpretive disputes discussed in chapter 3, I am not convinced that Locke needs to be read this way.

7

Locke’s Response to the Problems of his Predecessors In the previous chapters we examined Locke’s account of personal identity in terms of sameness of consciousness. Locke maintains that any other theory of personal identity would lead to ‘great Absurdities’ (II.xxvii.21). This statement intimates that Locke thought carefully about alternative conceptions of personal identity and their problems. In this chapter, I argue that, by understanding Locke’s account of personal identity in the context of metaphysical and religious debates of his day, especially debates concerning the afterlife and the state of the soul between death and resurrection, we can reveal the strengths of his view and show how his account of personal identity has the resources to avoid problems that arise for the views of his predecessors. Locke’s predecessors did not carefully distinguish between the ideas of a person, man, and substance. As I will show, their views face serious metaphysical problems, especially their attempts to explain a person’s continued existence in the afterlife. Moreover, their views risk leaving room for unjust reward and punishment in the afterlife. My aim here is to explain why Locke has good reasons to reject any alternative account of personal identity and to strengthen his case for why the only plausible option is to account for personal identity in terms of sameness of consciousness. Locke approaches the debates of his predecessors in a strategic and clever manner: he is able to establish his theory without proving the views of his predecessors to be mistaken. At this stage it is helpful to recall that Locke’s kind-­dependent approach to identity provides the basis for distinguishing the question of what a person at a time is from the question of what personal identity over time consists in. If we take this distinction seriously, we can see that his view is consistent with the possibility that persons at a time are or coexist with material human organisms, Cartesian egos, other immaterial substances, unions of material bodies and immaterial substances. Although, according to Locke, the continued existence of these entities is not suitable to provide persistence conditions for persons and only sameness of consciousness can provide personal identity, he does not have to rule out the possibility that, on contingent grounds, the continued existence of a person coincides with that of human organisms, Cartesian egos, immaterial substances, or unions of minds and bodies. As I will argue, Locke’s innovation is not only that he offers a theory that avoids the problems that arise for his predecessors, but also that his theory is consistent with the mutually exclusive views of his Locke on Persons and Personal Identity. Ruth Boeker, Oxford University Press (2021). © Ruth Boeker. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198846758.003.0007

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Locke’s Response to the Problems of his Predecessors

predecessors, because he does not have to disprove the metaphysical possibility of their views. I will proceed by classifying the views of Locke’s predecessors (section  7.1), drawing attention to general epistemological problems (section 7.2), and examining the different types of views held by his predecessors and their respective problems, namely, material views of the soul (section  7.3), Cartesian views of the soul (section 7.4), non-­Cartesian immaterial views (section 7.5), and the view that human beings are unions of immaterial souls and material bodies (section 7.6). I conclude (section 7.7) by showing how Locke’s theory avoids the problems that arise for his predecessors.

7.1  Locke’s Predecessors Locke groups the views of other thinkers into ‘those, who place Thought in a purely material, animal, Constitution, void of an immaterial Substance’ (II.xxvii.12), and ‘those, who place thinking in an immaterial Substance only’ (II.xxvii.12).1 He further distinguishes Cartesian immaterial views from non-­Cartesian views. Cartesians, as Locke characterizes them, are committed to the view that the soul always thinks,2 while non-­Cartesians allow that there can be periods during which the soul does not think. At this stage, it is worth adding some terminological remarks. Locke and other thinkers of his day use the terms ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’ to refer to a thinking substance, irrespective of whether it is material or immaterial.3 Locke’s predecessors commonly use the term ‘soul’, but they do not systematically distinguish between the terms ‘person’, ‘soul’, and ‘substance’.4 When I introduce and discuss their views I will follow their usage and use the term ‘soul’ to refer to a thinking substance. Locke added new clarity to the debates by distinguishing between the ideas of person and substance.5 Given these distinctions, it becomes meaningful to ask whether a person can continue to exist despite a change of substance, and whether

1  It is worth noting that Locke draws this distinction in the context of a discussion that focuses on human thinking, and he remains neutral on whether thinking in animals requires the same metaphysical constitution as in humans. He acknowledges that Cartesians, who believe that humans have immaterial souls, deny that animals have immaterial souls (see II.xxvii.12). 2  See II.i.9–20. 3  See Locke, Works, 4:33–7. 4 For further discussion, see Anstey, John Locke and Natural Philosophy, 223–5; Rogers, ‘John Locke and the Cambridge Platonists on the Nature of the Mind’, 82–3. 5  It is worth noting that Locke’s insistence that we need to distinguish the ideas of person and substance is neutral with regard to the controversy whether persons metaphysically are substances, as argued by Gordon-­Roth, ‘Locke on the Ontology of Persons’; Rickless, ‘Are Locke’s Persons Modes or Substances?’ The rival view that persons are modes has been defended by Law, A Defence of Mr Locke’s Opinion Concerning Personal Identity; LoLordo, Locke’s Moral Man, ch. 2. The proposal that Locke is agnostic about the ontological status of persons can be found in Anstey, ‘Locke’s Moral Man, by Antonia Lolordo’; Atherton, ‘Antonia Lolordo, Locke’s Moral Man’.

Locke’s Predecessors  149 more than one person can inhabit the same substance over time.6 Note, further, that there is variation concerning the use of the term ‘human being’, or ‘man’. In II.xxvii.21, Locke asks what the term ‘man’, can refer to and lists three options: first, it can refer to a purely immaterial thinking substance; second, it can refer to a purely material human animal; third, it can refer to the union of an immaterial substance and a material body. Locke does not ultimately decide among these meanings, because he believes that, irrespective of the particular meaning of ‘man’, it is important to distinguish between the ideas of man and person.7 This distinction makes it meaningful to ask whether over time two (or more) persons can exist within one human being and whether a person can continue to exist despite a switch of human body.8 Although Locke does not explicitly engage with ‘mixed views’ that argue that certain types of thinking such as rational thinking take place in an immaterial soul, while other types of thinking such as sensations take place in a corporeal soul,9 such mixed views were discussed by his contemporaries and his view is not inconsistent with them. There is no need for him to mention them in the context of Essay II.xxvii.12–13, because there he addresses the question of whether it is possible that a person can continue to exist despite a change of substance and whether more than one person can exist within the same substance over time. He admits that both these options are possible, and a fortiori the same will hold for mixed views. Locke would classify mixed views among views that regard human beings as unions of immaterial souls and material bodies. The primary aim of this chapter is to understand how Locke responds to the views of his predecessors, and it will thus be sufficient for present purposes to discuss the views of his predecessors as he conceives of them. For this reason, I adopt Locke’s classifications and consider material views of the soul separately from Cartesian and non-­Cartesian immaterial views, and from views according to which human beings are unions of immaterial souls and material bodies.

6  See II.xxvii.12–14. 7  Further discussion of II.xxvii.21 can be found in chapter 3. 8  See II.xxvii.12, 15, 19–23. 9  Such a view was held by Thomas Willis, Two Discourses Concerning the Soul of Brutes, Which Is That of the Vital and Sensitive of Man, ed. Solomon Diamond, trans. Samuel Pordage (Gainesville: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, 1672, 1971), Part I, ch. 7. Willis was a leading physician, natural phil­ oso­pher, and a contemporary of Locke at Oxford. They can also be found in a pamphlet written by Matthew Smith, who published under ‘M.  S.’ See M.  S., A Philosophical Discourse of the Nature of Rational and Irrational Souls (London: Printed and sold by Richard Baldwin, 1695). This pamphlet was not published until 1695. Locke owned a copy of Rational and Irrational Souls. Moreover, Locke’s manuscripts include an entry on ‘Animam brutorum’ that contains notes paraphrasing Smith’s Rational and Irrational Souls, 7: ‘Animam brutorum, et sensitivam hominis esse materialem v: Bacon Advancemt 208. 209. Willis de Anima Brut: Gassendi Phys: §3 l.1 c.11 M.S 7/34’ (John Locke, ‘Anima Brutorum’ (Bodleian Libraries MS Locke d.11), fol. 3v; John  R.  Milton, ‘Locke and Gassendi: A Reappraisal,’ in English Philosophy in the Age of Locke, ed. M.  A.  Stewart (Oxford University Press, 2000), 93, n. 20). The entry continues: ‘The different opinions of the ancient philosophers may be read in Aristotle De Anima & Ciceros Tusculan questions Chillingworth c7 §34’ (Locke, ‘Anima Brutorum’, fol. 3v).

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Locke’s predecessors were deeply interested in questions concerning the state of the soul between death and resurrection. According to Cartesian views, the soul always thinks, and hence it would not only be thinking during ordinary life and in the afterlife, but also between death and resurrection. However, what ­reasons or evidence do we have for assuming that a soul thinks between death and resurrection as well as during ordinary sleep? The so-­called soul sleepers, or Christian Mortalists, were attracted to the view that the state of the soul is analogous to ordinary sleep.10 It is common to distinguish two versions of the doctrine of soul sleep: some thinkers maintain that the soul sleeps literally between death and resurrection just as during ordinary sleep. This version is also called psychopannychism.11 Other thinkers argue that the soul sleeps metaphorically. They believe that the soul ceases to exist at the time of bodily death. This version is also called thnetopsychism.12 Psychopannychists believe that the soul is an immaterial entity, while thnetopsychists believe that the soul is a material entity or that it depends on the material body for its existence.13 In the following, I will engage further with thnetopsychist views when I examine how material views of the soul can account for the afterlife. I will return to psychopannychism in the context of a discussion of non-­Cartesian immaterial views. However, before I turn to these views I want to draw attention to general epistemological problems.

7.2  Epistemological Problems Many of Locke’s predecessors are committed to strong metaphysical views. Those who argue that human thinking takes place in material substance exclude the existence of (human) immaterial thinking substances;14 those who argue that human thinking takes place in immaterial substance exclude the possibility that

10  See Bryan W. Ball, The Soul Sleepers: Christian Mortalism from Wycliffe to Priestley (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 2008), 9–23. See also Norman  T.  Burns, Christian Mortalism from Tyndale to Milton (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972). 11  The term ‘psychopannychism’ derives from the Greek terms ‘psyche’ (soul) and ‘pannychios’ (lasting all night). Defenders of this view include More, The Immortality of the Soul, III.i.12, axiom xxxv, III.xiv.8, 339–40, 477–8. 12  The term ‘thnetopsychism’ has its roots in the Greek terms ‘thnetos’ (mortal) and ‘psyche’ (soul). Defenders of this view include Richard Overton, Man’s Mortalitie (Amsterdam: Printed by John Canne, 1643); Richard Overton, Man Wholly Mortal, 2nd, corrected and enlarged ed. (London, 1675); John Milton, Paradise Lost, ed. David Scott Kastan (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2005); Hobbes, Leviathan, III.xxxviii, 301–14, IV.xliv.14–16, 23–40, 418–20, 424–35, App. I.iii.19–20, 544. 13  The different versions of thnetopsychist views will all be classified as material views of the soul in the following. 14  For present purposes, it is sufficient to focus on human thinking and we can leave open the possibility that God or angels, given they exist, have immaterial souls.

Epistemological Problems  151 thinking matter can be the basis of human thinking.15 However, do we have convincing evidence to decide the issue? According to Locke, we do not.16 Locke argues that we are aware of our thoughts, but that our cognitive capacities are too limited to know whether the ontological constitution of the underlying entity, in which our thinking takes place, is material or immaterial. We may be in a pos­ ition to regard certain views as more probable than others, but in order to know the ontological constitution of the substance in which our thinking takes place, we must have either intuitive, demonstrative or sensitive knowledge of it.17 We cannot have intuitive or demonstrative knowledge, because either hypothesis is conceivable.18 Moreover, sensitive knowledge is not possible either. The scope of sensitive knowledge is much narrower than the scope of intuitive or demonstrative knowledge because sensitive knowledge concerns only ‘the Existence of Things actually present to our Senses’ (IV.iii.5). By means of sensitive knowledge, one can at best establish that there has to be something that causes one’s present thought, but this is not sufficient to infer that the underlying entity in which our thinking takes place is material or immaterial. One aim of Locke’s Essay, and of Book IV in particular, is to draw attention to the limitations of human understanding. However, Locke does not end philosophical enquiries once it becomes clear that we are not in a position to know a certain proposition or view. Rather he continues the enquiry by examining faith and probable beliefs. According to Locke, revelation does not have the same certainty as knowledge, but it is to be taken seriously.19 Faith cannot be contrary to knowledge, but ‘divine Revelation, ought to over-­rule all our Opinions, Prejudices, and Interests, and hath a right to be received with full Assent’ (IV.xviii.10). For example, we cannot demonstrate that there will be an afterlife, but Locke maintains that its possibility is to be taken seriously, because it is revealed in Scripture.20 Furthermore, Locke is deeply interested in understanding why certain propos­ itions or views are more probable than others. I will pursue a similar strategy in the following, as I examine in detail the more specific problems that arise for the individual views of his predecessors. 15  I restrict the claims here to human thinking, because I want to leave open the possibility that thinking in non-­human animals could have a material basis. For such views see René Descartes, Discourse on the Method, ed. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch, vol. 1, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1637, 1985), part  5, AT VI:55–60; CSM I:139–41; Willis, Soul of Brutes. 16  See II.xxiii.28–32, 37, IV.iii.6. 17  See IV.ii. 18  See IV.iii.6. 19  Locke writes: ‘Whatever GOD has revealed is certainly true; no Doubt can be made of it. This is the proper object of Faith: but whether it be a divine Revelation, or no, Reason must judge; which can never permit the Mind to reject a greater Evidence to embrace what is less evident, nor allow it to entertain Probability in opposition to Knowledge and Certainty’ (IV.xviii.10). 20  See IV.xviii.7.

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7.3  Materialism and the Afterlife Let us focus on material views of the soul. Thinkers who endorse these views accept that thinking takes place in a material substance or depends on material entities. As I argued in the previous section, we are not in a position to know that material views are correct. Having excluded knowledge, the remaining options are that material views are based on faith or probability. For Locke, faith is not merely a matter of an individual’s religious conviction, but rather it is important that matters of faith are revealed in Scripture. Locke was a careful reader of the Bible and observes that Scripture only speaks of the resurrection of the dead, but not of the resurrection of the same body.21 Thus, Scripture does not provide support for material views of the soul, yet leaves open their possibility. It remains to examine how probable material views of the soul are. During everyday life, we do not experience that thinking takes place outside a human body, and this makes material views plausible. However, a major difficulty for material views of the soul is to explain how a material soul that ceases to exist at bodily death can be resurrected. The pressing question is why the material soul continues to exist at the resurrection, rather than being newly created. The main types of responses that were debated in the seventeenth century to explain that there is a unique relation between a living being and a resurrected being include the following. First, we find proposals that numerical identity of particles is required. Some thinkers argue that all material particles have to be the same, while others maintain that it is sufficient if some material particles are identical. Second, there are views that focus on the preservation of the life of a human organism. These proposals include analogies with seeds and the postulation of a special resurrection-­bone.22 To begin with the former, Locke’s Second Reply to Edward Stillingfleet documents that he thought critically about the problems that arise for the view that numerical identity of all material particles is required.23 One difficulty concerns time: given that a resurrected being will be composed of exactly the same material particles as a living body, the question about which time or times during the 21  See Locke, Works, 4:303–4, 326–9, 333–4. He writes: ‘Not that I question, that the dead shall be raised with bodies: but in matters of revelation, I think it not only safest, but our duty, as far as any one delivers it for revelation, to keep close to the words of the scripture’ (4:334). A similar remark can be found in ‘Resurrectio et quae sequuntur’: ‘They shall be raised that is said over & over, But how they are raised or with what bodys they shall come the Scripture as far as I have observed is perfectly silent’ (Locke, Writings on Religion, 237). 22 See Boyle, ‘Some Physico-­Theological Considerations’, 192–208; J.  Playfair McMurrich, ‘The Legend of the Resurrection Bone,’ Transactions of the Royal Canadian Institute 9 (1913); Edward Reichman and Fred Rosner, ‘The Bone Called Luz,’ Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 51 (1996); Thiel, ‘Personal Identity’, 1:886; Thiel, ‘Religion and Materialist Metaphysics’; Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, 86–92; Fernando Vidal, ‘Brains, Bodies, Selves, and Science: Anthropologies of Identity and the Resurrection of the Body,’ Critical Inquiry 28 (2002). 23  See Locke, Works, 4:305–15.

Materialism and the Afterlife  153 or­din­ary life of the body are relevant arises. Is it plausible that a resurrected being will be numerically identical to a living body just before bodily death?24 One advantage of this approach seems to be that the individual is in a position to look back at his or her entire life. However, numerical identity of particles does not by itself guarantee that the individual is aware of his or her entire past. To ensure this, the condition has to be supplemented by a further psychological condition. Yet this undermines the need for numerical identity of material particles. Moreover, it can be undesirable that a resurrected being is composed of numerically the same particles as the living body just before death. Individuals before death may suffer due to sickness or injury. If the suffering is caused by a decayed or damaged body, then it is likely that their suffering will continue in the afterlife, given the proposal that their resurrected body be the same as their living body just before death. Locke illustrates these problematic consequences with the example of Christ who, according to this proposal, would have to be resurrected with open wounds.25 Another suggestion that Locke’s contemporaries consider is that a resurrected being is numerically identical to a living body that sinned, because this would guarantee that one will suffer for the sin at the last judgement in the very same body as the body that committed it.26 However, this does not remove the difficulty concerning time. If only one time during ordinary life is selected, then— presuming that a human body, or material soul, exists longer than one moment and has sinned at more than one time—other sins and good or bad actions will either not properly be punished or rewarded or a (partially) different body will receive reward or punishment for them. Alternatively, all times at which a soul sinned may be taken into consideration and the resurrected being can be composed of the sum of all the material particles that composed a human being at all the different times at which it committed sins. As a consequence, resurrected beings will be shaped rather differently than ordinary human bodies.27 A further option would be that there is one resurrected being corresponding to each of the sins committed at different times. It would follow that there are more resurrected beings than ordinary human beings, unless human beings have momentary existence. The problem with this option is that it ignores that many actions are planned long in advance, often in light of past actions and experiences. These con­sid­er­ ations undermine the motivation for the proposal that resurrected beings should have the same body as a living body that sinned. In general, it is arbitrary to select any particular time and to postulate that resurrected beings must be composed of the same material particles as a living being at that time. Moreover, it is unclear why the numerical identity of material particles is relevant. Rather, it is a strong but not well-­motivated metaphysical commitment. 24  Locke discusses this proposal in Locke, Works, 4:306–7, 311, 313. 25  See Locke, Works, 4:313. 26  See Locke, Works, 4:307–10. 27  See Locke, Works, 4:309–10.

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There is a further serious problem: is there any guarantee that there will be sufficient material particles at the resurrection if resurrected beings are composed of exactly the same material particles as living bodies? The problem of direct and indirect cannibalism, which was lively debated among Locke’s predecessors, illustrates the issue.28 After a person’s death the corpse decomposes into smaller parts. It is possible that animals consume parts of the corpse and other human beings may eat the animals that are partly composed of particles that once composed another human being. In such a case there would not be sufficient material par­ ticles for recreating human bodies with all the material particles that composed a living body. This problem might be avoided by massive divine providence. It may be said that God oversees human nourishment in such a way that he ‘will take care that no one shall die whilst his Body contains any Particles that belong to another.’29 However, this response is ad hoc. A more promising response to the problem of cannibalism is that numerical identity of all material particles is not necessary, but rather numerical identity of some material particles is sufficient. For example, Humphrey Hody—fellow of Wadham College Oxford and chaplain to Edward Stillingfleet—defends this view in his 1694 work, The Resurrection of the (Same) Body Asserted, which he dedicated to Stillingfleet.30 This work offers a detailed summary of the different accounts of the resurrection held across cultures from antiquity to his day, and then defends the view that the same human body will be resurrected against various objections. In his response to the problem of direct and indirect cannibalism, Hody makes clear that there are some necessary parts of the body and their numerical identity will be sufficient at the resurrection: It is further to be consider’d, that though the same Body that died is to rise again, yet it is not necessary that all the Particles of it should be rais’d up. ’Tis enough that such Particles are rais’d as made up the integrant and necessary Parts of the Body. By necessary Parts, I mean those which remain after the utmost degree of Maceration, without which the Body would not be Integral, but Imperfect. And these are chiefly the Bones, the Skin, the Nerves, the Tendons, the Ligaments,

28  See Boyle, ‘Some Physico-­Theological Considerations’, 198; Humphrey Hody, Resurrection of the (Same) Body Asserted (London: Printed for Awnsham and John Churchill, 1694), 184–7. See also Cǎtǎlin Avramescu, An Intellectual History of Cannibalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), ch. 5; Forstrom, John Locke and Personal Identity, 107–12; Kaufman, ‘The Resurrection of the Same Body’, 201–2; Ann Talbot, ‘The Great Ocean of Knowledge’: The Influence of Travel Literature on the Work of John Locke (Leiden: Brill, 2010), ch. 5. 29 Hody, Resurrection, 189. Hody does not argue for massive divine providence. Instead he contrasts this solution with his own to emphasize the advantage of his proposal, to which I will turn next. 30  See Hody, Resurrection, dedication. See also Kaufman, ‘The Resurrection of the Same Body’, 202. For further information concerning Hody’s life, see Martin Greig, ‘Hody, Humphrey (1659–1707),’ online, Jan 2008 ed., Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

Materialism and the Afterlife  155 and the Substance of the several Vessels. As long as these, and all that are necessary to Life, remain, the Body is truly Whole, though never so much macerated. All the Flesh that is added makes nothing at all to the Wholeness or Integrality of the Body, tho’ it conduce to Strength and Ornament. (Hody, Resurrection, 187–8)

So far we have focused on theories that aim to explain the resurrection in terms of numerical identity of all or some material particles. How can these proposals be integrated into accounts of the persistence conditions for persons? The per­sist­ence of a person—or, given the current proposal, a material soul—during or­din­ary human life cannot be explained in terms of numerical identity of all or some par­ ticles of the human body, because material particles change during the life of a human person. It follows that the persistence conditions will be disjunctive: one condition will explain persistence during ordinary human life, and another condition, namely numerical identity of all or some material particles, will explain per­ sist­ence between death and resurrection, and possibly a further condition will explain persistence in the afterlife. Hody acknowledges this consequence; he writes: The Identity of the Body here in this Life consists in a fit Construction and Organization of successively fleeting Particles of matter. The Identity of the Rising Body, or it’s sameness with that which died, can consist in nothing else but in the Restauration of the same Particles of Matter, which made up the necessary Parts of the dying Body, to their former Construction.  (Hody, Resurrection, 192)

One may ask whether anyone who explains the resurrection in terms of sameness of numerical particles has to accept that the persistence conditions are genuinely disjunctive. So far we have not specified what it takes for a person, or material soul, to persist during ordinary human life. A plausible proposal is that a person at an earlier and a later time both belong to the same human organism. Yet one can propose to explain sameness of human organism as follows: a person at an earlier and a later time belong to the same human organism if and only if there is a series of individuals such that there is only minimal change of material particles from one moment of the person’s existence to the next, meaning that the number of particles that change from one moment to the next is fewer than n. Commonly, the series of individuals would be spatiotemporally continuous, but this condition can also account for persistence after periods of non-­existence such as between death and resurrection, given that there is only minimal change of par­ ticles between the last moment before a period of non-­existence and the first moment after it. Nevertheless, this proposal faces another difficulty, because it is not sufficient to account for the sameness of a human organism. Assume a human organism is alive at t1, dies shortly afterwards at t2 by natural causes, and at t3 there is a corpse at the spatiotemporal location where the human organism was at t2. There has been only minimal change of material particles between t1 and t3

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and, according to the present proposal, it would follow that the human organism continues to exist, though in fact it has died. Consequently, the present proposal is not suitable to account for the persistence of human organisms, because it does not properly capture that living human organisms have a particular organization and structure that is needed for their continuous life.31 Hence, if one adopts a proposal that explains persistence between bodily death and resurrection in terms of numerical identity of all or some material particles, then the persistence conditions will be genuinely disjunctive. Let us ask what, if anything, is problematic about disjunctive persistence conditions. Locke’s predecessors and contemporaries rarely worry about this issue,32 because they consider the view to be in accordance with Scripture.33 However, insofar as we are aiming to explain why a person continues to exist in the afterlife rather than being newly created, presenting disjunctive persistence conditions is ad hoc. The change from one condition to another will be mysterious and hard to explain. Therefore, it is worth searching for an account that offers a better ex­plan­ation for why a person continues to exist in the afterlife. I now want to acknowledge two other influential attempts to explain the resurrection: the first is motivated by the seed metaphor that can be found in St Paul’s epistles and aims to explain the resurrection by means of seminal principles;34 the second is the view that there is an indestructible resurrection-­bone, sometimes called ‘luz’.35 Those who argue for the former believe that their interpretation is supported by biblical texts. It is worth drawing close attention to 1 Cor. 15.35–8—an im­port­ant passage on which the interpretive questions hinge. I cite it from Locke’s Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistles of St Paul: 35. But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come? 36. Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickned except it die. 37. And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain. 38. But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body. (1:248) 31  See Hody, Resurrection, 192. See also Behan, ‘Locke on Persons and Personal Identity’, 59. 32  Hody, for example, explicitly acknowledges that the persistence conditions are disjunctive, but he does not present this as a problem. See Hody, Resurrection, 192. 33  For instance, 1 Cor 15 is commonly cited. 34  See Boyle, ‘Some Physico-­Theological Considerations,’ 195–7; Locke, Works, 4:316–24; Hody, Resurrection, 34, 109–12, 119, 161, 191–2; Locke, Correspondence, letter 2617A, 6:685–6. 35  See Boyle, ‘Some Physico-­Theological Considerations’, 197–9, 206; Hody, Resurrection, 34, 40–2, 44, 48, 52, 62, 68, 71, 75, 99–100, especially 111; Mark Johnston, Surviving Death (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 108–9; Leibniz, New Essays, II.xxvii.6, 233; McMurrich, ‘The Legend of the Resurrection Bone’, 45–51; Reichman and Rosner, ‘The Bone Called Luz’, 52–65; Thiel, ‘Personal Identity’, 1:886; Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, 87.

Materialism and the Afterlife  157 One controversy concerns the question of whether seminal principles can explain that resurrected beings will have the same body as living beings. Locke’s paraphrase of these verses makes clear that he does not support this interpretation, but rather he believes that resurrected beings will have a different body: 35But

possibly it will be asked. How comes it that men dead are raised? And with what kind of bodys doe they come? Shall they have at the resurrection such bodys as they have now? 36Thou fool Does not dayly experience teach thee that the seed which thou sowest corrupts and dies before it springs up and lives again? 37That which thou sowest is the bare grain of wheat or barely, or the like, but the body which it has when it rises up is different from the seed that is sown. 38For it is not the seed that rises up again but a quite different body such as god hath thought fit to give it, viz. a plant of a particular shape and size which god has appointed to each sort of seed. (Paraphrase and Notes, 1:251–2, em­phases added)

Contrary to Locke, Stillingfleet insists that the resurrection must be a resurrection of the same body, because otherwise a new individual comes into existence.36 It is unclear whether Locke and Stillingfleet understand ‘sameness of body’ in the same way. It could mean ‘sameness of material particles’ or it could mean ‘sameness of organism’.37 While Stillingfleet intends to explain persistence in terms of sameness of organism, it may seem that Locke assumes in his response to Stillingfleet that sameness of body requires sameness of material particles and, thus, he fails to engage with Stillingfleet. However, another explanation for why Locke does not take seminal principles, as invoked by the seed metaphor, as explanations of the resurrection seriously is that the view confounds numerical identity of an organism with sameness of species. He raises this concern in his Second Reply to Stillingfleet: I cannot understand St. Paul to say, that the same identical sensible grain of wheat, which was sown at seed-­time, is the very same with every grain of wheat in the ear at harvest, that sprang from it: yet so I must understand it, to make it prove that the same sensible body, that is laid in the grave, shall be the very same with that which shall be raised at the resurrection. For I do not know of any seminal body in little, contained in the dead carcase of any man or woman;

36 Stillingfleet writes: ‘and therefore in the Resurrection the same Material Substance must be re­united; or else it cannot be called a Resurrection, but a Renovation; i.e. it may be a New Life, but not a raising the Body from the Dead’ (Stillingfleet, Answer to Mr Locke’s Second Letter, 44). 37  Kaufman, ‘The Resurrection of the Same Body’, raises this concern and argues that Locke dismisses Stillingfleet’s view, because Locke insists that bodies are masses of matter and does not acknowledge that Stillingfleet regards bodies as organisms. See also Thiel, ‘Religion and Materialist Metaphysics’, 95–6.

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which, as your lordship says, in seeds, having its proper organical parts, shall afterwards be enlarged, and at the resurrection grow up into the same man. For I never thought of any seed or seminal parts, either of plant or animal, “so wonderfully improved by the providence of God,” whereby the same plant or animal should beget itself; nor ever heard, that it was by divine providence designed to produce the same individual, but for the producing of future and distinct individuals, for the continuation of the same species.  (Works, 4:319)

According to Locke, seeds do not continue the life of an organism that previously existed, but rather bring a new organism of the same species into existence. They can explain membership in the same species, but fail to explain numerical identity of organisms. For this reason, he regards the seed metaphor as not suitable for explaining personal identity between death and resurrection.38 To guarantee that the same organism continues to exist in the afterlife would require massive divine providence. Consequently, persistence between death and resurrection would not be explained in terms of natural seminal principles, but rather it involves supernatural divine interaction. Hody further criticizes the hypothesis that the resurrection can be compared with a growing corn and argues that it is extremely implausible, because the resurrection seems impossible if dead bodies are burnt, exposed to air, or dissolve in water.39 He acknowledges that one attempt to solve these problems can be found in Jewish sources that postulate the existence of a little resurrection-­bone, also called ‘luz’: ’Tis impossible to conceive any such semina resurgendi, unless we will suppose that there always remains some little part of the Body undissolv’d. And therefore some of the Jews, who will have the Body to be made up in the Resurrection by growing as out of a Seed (and from whom Origen seems to have borrow’d his Notion) tell us, that there is a certain little Bone in the Body of a Man (they call it Luz) which can never be dissolv’d.  (Hody, Resurrection, 111)

This brings me to the second view, namely, that there is an indestructible bone that makes the resurrection possible. According to Rabbinic sources, the resurrection-­bone luz, which is said to have the size of an almond, cannot be dissolved by water, destroyed by fire, ground by a mill, or damaged by a hammer,

38 Anstey, John Locke and Natural Philosophy, ch. 10, especially 200–3, draws attention to Locke’s detailed studies in botany and argues that his views on seeds and generation inform why he rejects an explanation of the resurrection in terms of seminal principles. See also Richard Burthogge’s letter to Locke, dated 19 September 1699, in Locke, Correspondence, letter 2617A, 6:685–6; Peter  R.  Anstey and Stephen  A.  Harris, ‘Locke and Botany,’ Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C 37 (2006). 39  See Hody, Resurrection, 111.

Materialism and the Afterlife  159 even if the rest of the body is disintegrated.40 It is said to restore life like a seed.41 Several of Locke’s contemporaries were familiar with this view.42 We noted above that numerical identity of particles does not by itself account for the life-­preserving functions of organisms. In contrast to views that aim to account for persistence between death and resurrection in terms of numerical identity of all or some particles, this view has the advantage that it concerns the preservation of life, because the bone is supposed to preserve the life of a human organism. However, how plausible is the proposal? Given that the bone luz is said to have the size of an almond, we lack evidence that such indestructible bones exist. If it did, one would expect to find it, for example, when a corpse is burnt to ashes. Hody worries that it is very likely that not even two particles will remain united after long enough time of decay of a corpse and claims that ‘it cannot be imagin’d, that there can remain so many Particles united together as are necessary to the making up of such a Semen’ (Hody, Resurrection, 112). Since other parts of the body decay and dissolve into individual particles, the best explanation for why the bone luz does not decay is that supernatural divine powers prevent its destruction. However, then it follows that the resurrection is not explained by means of natural persistence of a human organism, but rather it requires supernatural divine powers and divine providence. One may further ask whether the bone luz grows during ordinary human life. On the one hand, this is plausible, because all other parts of the body grow. On the other hand, if it grows then it may not be fully developed in young infants, or in embryos.43 If there is a stage when the bone luz is not yet fully developed, then individuals that die too early may have a deprived afterlife and may never be able to fully participate in the joys of the afterlife. Let us reflect more generally on the last two attempts to account for persistence between death and resurrection. Both views aim to take seriously that we are human organisms during ordinary life and appeal to principles that preserve life to account for persistence between death and resurrection. In either case, the 40 See McMurrich, ‘The Legend of the Resurrection Bone’; Reichman and Rosner, ‘The Bone Called Luz’. 41  See Reichman and Rosner, ‘The Bone Called Luz’, 57, 59, 64. 42  The bone luz is explicitly mentioned by Hody, Resurrection, 111; Leibniz, New Essays, II.xxvii.6, 233. Boyle, ‘Some Physico-­Theological Considerations,’ 206, alludes to such a view. 43  Although I am not aware that Locke directly engages with the view that there is a resurrection-­ bone, he raised concerns about embryos in his correspondence with Stillingfleet when he comments on the view that numerical identity of all particles is needed to account for the resurrection. Locke writes: ‘But then pray, my lord, what must an embryo do, who, dying within a few hours after his body was vitally united to his soul, has no particles of matter, which were formerly vitally united to it, to make up his body of that size and proportion which your lordship seems to require in bodies at the resurrection? or must we believe he shall remain content with that small pittance of matter, and that yet imperfect body to eternity; because it is an article of faith to believe the resurrection of the very same body?’ (Works, 4:311). Most likely Locke would raise similar concerns regarding a not yet fully developed bone luz.

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numerical identity of the living human organism and the post-­ resurrection organism can only be established if we assume that supernatural divine powers are at work between death and resurrection. However, during ordinary life it is plausible to explain the persistence of a human organism by means of natural powers and relations. At least, this makes the seed metaphor attractive in the first place. It is less clear how advocates of the resurrection-­bone luz would explain persistence during ordinary life: they could explain persistence of the human organism by means of natural powers and relations. Alternatively, they could argue that the bone luz persists by means of supernatural powers at all times of its existence, but then they owe us an explanation how human organisms are created from the bone luz. We can now see that those who explain the resurrection in terms of numerical identity of all or some material particles, those who appeal to seminal principles, and possibly those who invoke a resurrection-­bone have to accept that the per­ sist­ence conditions for persons will be disjunctive. As above, disjunctive pro­ posals are ad hoc and do not properly explain why a person continues to exist in the afterlife.

7.4  Cartesian Views of the Soul Next, let us turn to Cartesian views of the soul. Locke critically engages with Cartesian views in II.i.9–20 and characterizes them by the claim that the soul always thinks.44 To be sure, he does not claim that the Cartesian view is false, but rather his aim is to show that it is ‘much more probable, that [the soul] should sometimes not think’ (II.i.18).45 Locke accuses the Cartesians of confounding a hypothesis with a matter of fact.46 He argues that their view cannot be taken for granted and we need to distinguish the following two hypotheses: (H1)  The soul always thinks. (H2)  The soul does not always think. 44  Descartes does not explicitly present his view in these terms in the Meditations, but he endorses the claim that the soul always thinks in a letter to Hyperaspistes (August 1641), in Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, AT III:423–4; CSMK III:189–90. See also Jolley, Locke’s Touchy Subjects, 17–18. 45  In this respect my interpretation diverges from Jolley’s who ascribes a stronger thesis to Locke. According to Jolley, ‘Locke does not regard it as an open question whether the soul always thinks; even if he does not demonstrate it in the Essay, he regards the dogma as “manifestly false” ’ (Jolley, Locke’s Touchy Subjects, 31). I acknowledge that Jolley makes a more cautious remark on page 20. On the basis of Locke’s explicit claim that ‘I say, it is as possible, that the Soul may not always think; and much more probable, that it should sometimes not think, than that it should often think, and that a long while together, and not be conscious to it self the next moment after, that it had thought’ (II.i.18), I do not think that Jolley’s strong thesis is supported. 46  See II.i.10.

Cartesian Views of the Soul  161 In light of these two exclusive hypotheses, Cartesians owe us an explanation as to why they endorse (H1). In particular, there is a pressing need to explain how it is possible that the soul thinks during sleep, but does not remember the thoughts afterwards. Locke proposes three possible explanations: (E1)  Separate units of consciousness exist within the same soul.47 (E2)  Thinking during sleep is immediately forgotten afterwards.48 (E3)  Thinking during sleep involves innate ideas.49 Let us examine these explanations in turn. To begin with (E1), how is it possible that separate units of consciousness exist within one soul? Locke invites us to consider that the soul leaves the body during night and has conscious experiences apart from its ordinary body: These Men cannot then judge it impossible, or a contradiction, That the Body should live without the Soul; nor that the Soul should subsist and think, or have Perception, even Perception of Happiness or Misery, without the Body.  (II.i.12)

However, the question remains why the soul does not remember any of the thoughts that it had when it enters the body again the next morning. Locke now makes a second supposition and asks us to assume that the soul, after it has left the body, enters another body without a soul: Let us then, as I say, suppose the Soul of Castor separated, during his Sleep, from his Body, to think apart. Let us suppose too, that it chuses for its Scene of Thinking, the Body of another Man, v.g. Pollux, who is sleeping without a Soul: For if Castor’s Soul can think whilst Castor is asleep, what Castor is never conscious of, ’tis no matter what Place it chuses to think in. We have here then the Bodies of two Men with only one Soul between them, which we will suppose to sleep and wake by turns; and the Soul still thinking in the waking Man, whereof the sleeping Man is never conscious, has never the least Perception.  (II.i.12)

If we make these suppositions, we can explain the lack of memory due to the assumption that the soul’s thinking takes place in another body while its or­din­ ary body sleeps. However, the consequence is that the body will be needed for storing memory traces. Locke discards this view as not very promising, because it would imply that the soul owes its rational perfection to the body.50 Since this consequence is at odds with Cartesian commitments, explanation (E1) is unlikely to be correct.

47  See II.i.11–12, 16.

48  See II.i.14–15.

49  See II.i.17.

50  See II.i.16.

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Let us turn to (E2), namely, the explanation that most thinking during sleep is immediately forgotten afterwards. Locke claims: That the Soul in a sleeping Man should be this moment busy a thinking, and the next moment in a waking Man, not remember, nor be able to recollect one jot of all those Thoughts, is very hard to be conceived, and would need some better Proof than bare Assertion, to make it be believed. For who can without any more ado, but being barely told so, imagine, That the greatest part of Men, do, during all their Lives, for several hours every day, think of something, which if they were asked, even in the middle of these Thoughts, they could remember nothing at all of? Most Men, I think, pass a great part of their Sleep without dreaming. (II.i.14)

Additionally, Locke questions (E2) by arguing that thinking that would not be retained in memory would be useless.51 Furthermore, he maintains that this view conflicts with the belief in an infinitely wise creator, and it is hard to conceive that we would have been created with a faculty that is ‘uselesly employ’d, at least ¼ part of its time here, as to think constantly, without remembering any of those Thoughts, without doing any good to it self or others, or being any way useful to any other part of Creation’ (II.i.15). Hence, Locke regards (E2) as implausible. It remains to examine the plausibility of (E3), which is the proposal that thoughts during sleep are based upon innate ideas.52 Locke finds it very hard to believe that innate ideas affect our thinking only during sleep and will never be recalled during our waking life. If we indeed had innate ideas, he argues, it would be more plausible that they also affect our waking thoughts.53 According to Locke, two conclusions can be drawn from the hypothesis that ‘the waking Man’ never remembers innate ideas: ‘either . . . the Soul remembers something that the Man does not; or else that Memory belongs only to such Ideas, as are derived from the Body, or the Minds Operations about them’ (II.i.17). If the memories of the soul are inaccessible during waking life, as the former view suggests, then the mem­or­ies of the soul and the memories of the body would belong to two different persons.54 If the latter is correct, then—as above—the soul would owe its rational perfection to the body and this result is at odds with Cartesian commitments. Having shown that neither (E1), (E2), nor (E3) offer satisfying explanations of the hypothesis (H1) that the soul always thinks, we can understand why Locke concludes that Cartesian views of the soul are not very probable, though possible.55 51  See II.i.15. 52 Jolley, Locke’s Touchy Subjects, 22–4, offers a reconstruction of Locke’s argument in II.i.17. According to Jolley, who admits that the details are controversial, the conclusion of the argument is that ‘the mind does not always think’ (22). I have reservations about attributing this strong conclusion to Locke. Locke regards the proposal as ‘strange’ (II.i.17), but this is not sufficient to establish (H2). 53  See II.i.17. 54  See II.i.11. 55  See II.i.18.

Non-­C artesian Immaterial Views of the Soul  163

7.5  Non-­Cartesian Immaterial Views of the Soul Given the difficulties that we have identified for material and Cartesian views, let us examine whether immaterial non-­Cartesian views provide a promising alternative.56 Prima facie, it seems that they do, because they do not share the Cartesian commitment that the soul always thinks and accept that there can be periods during which the soul does not think. For instance, psychopannychists such as Henry More hold this view. They believe that the soul literally sleeps between death and resurrection just as it sleeps during ordinary sleep.57 Moreover, in contrast to material views, immaterial views of the soul seem to have the advantage that they can offer non-­disjunctive persistence conditions for persons. However, one worry that Locke and his contemporaries raise for the view that thinking takes place in an immaterial substance concerns animals. Animals have sensations, and if all thinking is said to take place in immaterial substances, then animals must have immaterial substances and it is to be expected that their immaterial souls will continue to exist in the afterlife.58 Defenders of a non-­Cartesian immaterial views of the soul will argue that a person is an immaterial substance and continues to exist in virtue of the con­ tinued existence of the immaterial substance. According to Locke, the proposal to account of personal identity in terms of the continued existence of an immaterial substance is not tenable due to two problems: we do not know enough about the constitution of immaterial substances to exclude the possibility of transfer of consciousness from one immaterial substance to another59 and to exclude the possibility of pre-­existence.60 56  We have strong evidence to assume that Locke was familiar with the views of the Cambridge Platonists, including Ralph Cudworth, Henry More, and John Smith. See Locke’s manuscript note on Cudworth, Bodleian Libraries, Oxford, MS Locke f.6, 19–20, published in Locke, Early Draft, 118. See also Harrison and Laslett, The Library of John Locke, 119, 192, 235. See also chapter 5, section 5.2.3. 57  See More, The Immortality of the Soul, III.i.12, axiom xxxv, III.xiv.8, 339–40, 477–8. See also section 7.1 above. 58  Locke draws attention to such concerns in II.xxvii.12 and in his journal note from 20 February, 1682, published in Locke, Early Draft, 121–3. According to Ralph Cudworth, the view that the animals have pre- and post-­existing souls ‘was hardly ever be called into doubt or question by any, before Cartesius’ (True Intellectual System, 1:39). Henry More mentions the objection, but thinks that it lacks strength: ‘There is onely one perverse Objection against this so easy and natural Conclusion, which is this; That by this manner of reasoning, the Soules of Brutes, especially those of the perfecter sort, will also not onely subsist, (for that difficulty is concocted pretty well already) but also live and enjoy themselves after death. To which I dare boldly answer, That it is a thousand times more reasonable that they doe, then that the Soules of Men doe not’ (The Immortality of the Soul, II.xvii.6, 302–3; see also II.xii.6–7, 302–7.) See also S. [Matthew Smith], Rational and Irrational Souls. 59  See II.xxvii.13. 60  See II.xxvii.14. The doctrine of pre-­existence is familiar among Locke’s predecessors and contemporaries. For example, see Cudworth, True Intellectual System, I.i.xxxi–xxxvii, 1:38–46; Hody, Resurrection, 78–88; More, The Immortality of the Soul, II.xii–xiv, 237–67. See also Thiel, ‘Personal Identity’, 1:885.

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To begin with the former, Locke argues that, due to our limited understanding of the ontological constitution of substances, we do not know whether consciousness can be transferred from one immaterial substance to another. If thinking takes place in material substances, then consciousness will be transferred from one material substance to another61 and there is no principled reason why consciousness could not also be transferred from one immaterial substance to another. Why does the possibility of transfer of consciousness create a problem for the immaterial account of persistence conditions? For the sake of argument, let us assume that personal identity consists in the continued existence of an immaterial substance. To illustrate the problem, let us assume, further, that immaterial substance S steals all the cherries from a tree in their neighborhood at time t1, and at a later time t2 all the current conscious states and memories of S, including the memory of stealing the cherries, are transferred to another im­ma­ter­ial substance S*. After t2, S* is able to remember the criminal action, while S is entirely unable to recall the action. Locke would argue that this example shows that the immaterial substance view can create fatal injustice at the resurrection.62 A defender of the immaterial substance view could either punish S for stealing the cherries or disregard the action at the last judgement and not punish anyone for it. Both options are problematic. The latter risks creating injustice by neglecting crimes. The former is incompatible with Locke’s moral views. Locke maintains that it is unjust to punish S for stealing the cherries at a time later than t2, because S is unable to remember the action. According to Locke, the ability to remember an action from the inside is a precondition for just reward and punishment, because it is important that a person from the inside understands why she is held accountable for an action.63 This includes that she acknowledges the action as her own.64 Let us turn to the problem of pre-­existence. Locke maintains that we know very little about the ontological constitution of immaterial substances. However, we can assess the consistency and probability of immaterial substance views by conceiving of different possible metaphysical scenarios. Locke presents one such scenario in the following passage: Suppose a Christian Platonist or Pythagorean, should upon God’s having ended all his Works of Creation the Seventh Day, think his Soul hath existed ever since; and should imagine it has resolved in several Humane Bodies, as I once met with one, who was perswaded his had been the Soul of Socrates (how reasonably I will not dispute . . . .) would any one say, that he, being not conscious of any of 61  See II.xxvii.12. 62  Note that the discussion here, while being inspired by II.xxvii.13, is not meant to provide a reconstruction of the fatal error passage. 63  For further discussion, see chapter 4, and Boeker, ‘The Moral Dimension in Locke’s Account of Persons and Personal Identity’, 239–40. 64  See II.xxvii.15–26; Correspondence, letter 1693, 4:785–6.

Human Beings as Unions  165 Socrates’s Actions or Thoughts, could be the same Person with Socrates? . . . Let him also suppose it to be the same Soul, that was in Nestor or Thersites, at the Siege of Troy, (For Souls being, as far as we know any thing of them in their Nature, indifferent to any parcel of Matter, the Supposition has no apparent absurdity in it) which it may have been, as well as it is now, the Soul of any other Man: But he, now having no consciousness of any of the Actions either of Nestor or of Thersites, does, or can he, conceive himself the same Person with either of them? Can he be concerned in either of their Actions? Attribute to himself, or think them his own more than the Actions of any other Man, that ever existed? (II.xxvii.14)

Locke does not directly engage with the question how likely it is that such scen­arios actually occur. Instead, he acknowledges that the metaphysical possibility cannot be ruled out, and aims to convince Platonists and other defenders of pre-­existence that we have to reject an account of personal identity in terms of sameness of immaterial substance. Like in the transfer of consciousness case, Locke believes that it can lead to fatal injustice if resurrected beings are held accountable for the actions of all the human beings—potentially multiple—that the im­ma­ter­ial substance inhabited. To illustrate the point, let us return to Locke’s example of Socrates. If there is one resurrected being that has the same soul as Socrates and Nestor, then one resurrected being will be held accountable not only for Socrates’s actions, but also for the actions of Nestor at the siege of Troy, despite the fact that Socrates has no access to the consciousness of Nestor. According to Locke, this is unjust, because the person at the resurrection will not be able to regard all the thoughts and actions as the actions of one continuously existing person and will therefore not be in a position to understand the justice of the reward or punishment received. To sum up, Locke’s arguments concerning the possibility of transfer of consciousness and the possibility of pre-­existence provide two different reasons for rejecting the view that personal identity consist in sameness of immaterial substance. The former shows that sameness of immaterial substance is not necessary for personal identity, and the latter that it is not sufficient.

7.6  Human Beings as Unions of Immaterial Souls and Material Bodies Let us turn to the further possibility that human beings are unions of immaterial souls and material bodies. Locke acknowledges this possibility in II.xxvii.21.65 65  It can be suggested that Descartes endorses such a view. Descartes certainly emphasizes the importance of the union between mind and body in Meditation 6, in his Correspondence with Elisabeth of Bohemia, and in The Passions of the Soul. However, we have no textual indication that

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I  will here leave open whether material bodies are just mechanical bodies or whether they are further the seat of a sensitive corporeal soul. Locke does not explicitly distinguish different types of unions between bodies and immaterial souls, because these differences do not affect his overall argument in II.xxvii that personal identity has to consist in sameness of consciousness. How can those who claim that human beings are unions of immaterial souls and material bodies account for the persistence of a human being between death and resurrection? First, it can be suggested that the human being ceases to exist at bodily death. Then one will, like defenders of material views, have to explain how a human being is recreated at the resurrection. If the claim is that resurrected beings will have the same body as a living human being, then the view will face the same difficulties as material views of the soul. Instead, it can be argued that it is not essential that the immaterial soul is resurrected with the same body, but it will only be important that it is united to any body. Given this view, the period between death and resurrection can be explained in two different ways. One possibility is that between death and resurrection the soul is not united to any body. As a consequence, the human being will be annihilated between death and resurrection, but the recreation of the human being can be explained in terms of the continued existence of the immaterial substance. While this view has the advantage that it can better explain the recreation of a human being at the resurrection than material views, it inherits the problems that arise for immaterial views of the soul outlined in section 7.5. A second possibility is that an immaterial soul has to be united to a body at all times of the existence of the human being and this includes the period between death and resurrection, but the bodies to which the immaterial soul is united can be very different in shape and size. Locke’s friend Robert Boyle, for example, endorses such a view in ‘Some Physico-­Theological Considerations about the Possibility of the Resurrection’: Since, then, a human body is not so confined to a determinate bulk, but that the same soul being united to a portion of duly organized matter is said to constitute the same man, notwithstanding the vast differences of bigness that there may be at several times between the portions of matter whereto the human soul is united. (205) [W]hatever duly organized portion of matter [the soul] is united to, it therewith constitutes the same man.  (206) Locke is directly engaging with Descartes’s view when he mentions the possibility that human beings are unions of immaterial substances and material bodies. We find two conceptions of the self in Descartes’s philosophy: one concerns the self as a purely thinking thing and the second concerns the union of mind and body. For further details, see Deborah Brown, ‘The Sixth Meditation: Descartes and the Embodied Self,’ in The Cambridge Companion to Descartes’ Meditations, ed. David Cunning (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). Locke’s discussion of the Cartesian view in II.i.9–19 focuses on the former, and for this reason I examined the problems that Locke identifies for the Cartesian view in a separate section above.

Locke’s Response  167 In this case, the human being will persist in virtue of the persistence of the im­ma­ ter­ial substance, provided it is united to any body. Since the further condition that the immaterial substance has to be united to any body is just an add-­on condition, this proposal will also be subject to the problems that arise for immaterial views of the soul. One further possibility is that the union is understood as a union between an immaterial rational soul and corporeal sensitive soul, but it is not relevant that an immaterial soul is united to an entire human body. In this case there is a new option to explain the persistence of the union, namely, in terms of the continued existence of both the rational and the sensitive souls. Since the sensitive soul is corporeal, it would not exist long if its persistence is understood in terms of numerical identity of material particles. The more interesting way to account for the persistence of a sensitive soul is in terms of the continued existence of sensations. Then the persistence of the union of rational and sensitive souls is best understood in terms of sameness of consciousness, which means that the view collapses into Locke’s view. All other options are subject to the problems that arise for immaterial views. On the one hand, if the union does not require the con­ tinued existence of the same sensitive soul, but only that the rational soul is united to any sensitive soul at all times of its existence, then it is subject to the problems that arise for immaterial views. On the other hand, if the union can persist, even if the sensitive soul does not exist between death and resurrection, the view will also be subject to the problems that arise for immaterial views.

7.7  Locke’s Response Locke claims ‘personal Identity can by us be placed in nothing but consciousness . . .  without involving us in great Absurdities’ (II.xxvii.21). This quote highlights the results of our examination in the previous sections in a pointed way: Locke is well aware of the problems that arise for the different views of his predecessors and he believes that his account of personal identity in terms of sameness of consciousness offers a response to their problems. Our next task is to see how Locke’s theory provides resources to respond to the various problems that arise for the different views of his predecessors, or, at least, how his theory is not worse off than the competing views. First, Locke’s predecessors endorse strong metaphysical commitments that go beyond the boundaries of human understanding by claiming that thinking takes place in material or in immaterial substance. His theory is not subject to the epistemological problems, because he is agnostic with regard to the question of whether thinking or consciousness inheres in material or immaterial substance. Second, a major problem for material views of the soul is to explain how the soul is recreated in the afterlife rather than being newly created. Locke’s theory

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does not require that an entire human body be recreated in the afterlife. Since his theory merely requires that there be sameness of consciousness, it is meta­phys­ic­ al­ly less demanding than the material views that argue that the entire body will be recreated at the resurrection. Moreover, Locke’s theory escapes the question why numerical identity of material particles is relevant, and he has a convincing answer for why same consciousness is relevant: according to Locke, it enables the person to understand the justice of reward and punishment and to be guided and judged by her conscience.66 Locke does not have to worry about lack of material particles, and the threat of direct and indirect cannibalism more particularly. In contrast to theories that appeal to seminal principles and merely account for membership in the same species, Locke’s theory has the resources to explain numerical identity of persons and not just species membership. At this stage it is relevant that his same consciousness account of personal identity can account not only for the revival of past experiences, but also for the mineness and togetherness of various thoughts and actions at a time and over time. A thought or action is mine in virtue of the self-­consciousness that accompanies awareness of a thought or action. Furthermore, voluntary thoughts and actions can be appropriated in a stronger sense based on the cognitive and/or physical labour that one invests. Locke can explain the togetherness of different thoughts and actions, since his same consciousness account involves a unifying aspect, which most likely has a metaphysical foundation consisting in certain relations. The unifying aspect connects different thoughts and actions and thereby they belong to one and the same person. Although the postulation of a resurrection-­bone luz provides a better account of numerical identity of the human organism than seminal principles, it lacks evidence and presupposes supernatural divine powers. Locke is careful not to postulate the existence of metaphysical entities such as a resurrection-­bone that lack evidence. Next, can Locke’s theory avoid the need for disjunctive persistence conditions? According to Locke, personal identity consists in sameness of consciousness and sameness of consciousness will be relevant both in this life and in the afterlife. This is a non-­disjunctive account of personal identity. However, we can also consider his account at a deeper metaphysical level and examine the underlying metaphysical foundation of same consciousness, and particularly its unifying aspect. At this level it is possible that Locke’s theory also has to invoke supernatural divine powers at the resurrection to explain how sameness of consciousness is recreated in the afterlife. In any case, Locke’s theory will not be worse off than the alternative material views and it has the strong advantage that he can explain why sameness of consciousness is relevant, while the alternative theories struggle to account for the relevance of their proposed persistence conditions. 66  See II.xxvii.22. See also chapter  4, and Boeker, ‘The Moral Dimension in Locke’s Account of Persons and Personal Identity’, 239–40.

Locke’s Response  169 Third, Cartesian views are based on the improbable hypothesis that the soul always thinks. We lack evidence that the soul thinks during dreamless sleep, and attempts to explain why thoughts during the sleep of the body are not remembered lead to implausible consequences. Locke’s account of personal identity does not require that he take a stance on the Cartesian hypothesis that the soul always thinks. The problem arises if one understands consciousness solely in terms of the contents of particular conscious states. The clue to Locke’s solution is that his account of same consciousness involves multiple aspects. It is not restricted to contents of particular mental states, but additionally involves a unifying aspect and temporality. His theory does not require that a person be actually aware of particular contents of mental states uninterruptedly. A person can survive p ­ eriods without any actual mental states such as periods of dreamless sleep, provided that there are unique links between mental states before and after the unconscious periods. Such links are made possible by the unifying aspect of same consciousness and its metaphysical foundation. To survive periods without consciousness it is important that after the period of unconsciousness some former experiences are revived by memory and accompanied by the awareness that one has had the experience before. Fourth, other immaterial views of the soul are under pressure to accept that not only humans but also non-­human animals have immaterial souls that survive bodily death. Let us consider whether Locke’s theory entails that animals are persons and can continue to live after their bodily death. Locke argues that animals have perceptions67 and considers it to be likely that some of them will also have memories.68 His story of the rational parrot in II.xxvii.8 suggests that he would be prepared to call animals persons if they appear to have consciousness as human persons do.69 However, his theory leaves room for distinguishing human persons from non-­human animals, as we can see if we turn to passages where Locke discusses the appropriation of actions. According to Locke, some of the thoughts and actions of which we are conscious are thoughts and actions that we appropriate.70 I suggested that appropriation in a robust sense focuses on voluntary thoughts and actions and that the initial act of appropriation involves cognitive and/or physical labour. By appropriating an action we make the action our own.71 It can be argued that it is important for the persistence of a person that the person continue to be conscious of thoughts and actions that she appropriated and continue to appropriate them, but it may not be a problem if she does not continue to be conscious of various other thoughts and actions that she did not appropriate. To return to the question of whether Locke has resources to distinguish persons 67  See II.ix.12–15. 68  See II.x.10. 69  The main purpose of the story, however, is an attack of the definition of a human being as a rational animal. Human organisms need not be rational and there are rational animals that are not humans. 70  See II.xxvii.16, 26. 71  See chapter 5 for a more detailed discussion.

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from animals, it is not clear that animals have volitions as humans do, that they appropriate actions, and that they remember their previous awareness of thoughts and actions. Yet appropriated thoughts and actions play an important role in Locke’s account of personal identity and it is thus unlikely that it applies to animals. A further major problem for immaterial views concerns our ignorance of the ontological constitution of immaterial substances, and hence we have to take the possibility of transfer of consciousness from one immaterial substance to another and the possibility of pre-­existence seriously. According to Locke, both pos­si­bil­ ities can lead to fatal injustice in the afterlife if personal identity consists in the continued existence of an immaterial soul. Locke’s theory can accommodate the possibility of transfer of consciousness from one immaterial substance to another, because, on his view, sameness of immaterial substance is not necessary. Transfer of consciousness will be unproblematic if the conscious states that are transferred continue to be connected by the underlying metaphysical foundation of the unifying aspect of consciousness. Finally, Locke does not have to worry about the possibility of pre-­existence either. Even if pre-­existence occurs, it will be irrelevant to personal identity. Personal identity, according to Locke, extends as far as ­consciousness and if the consciousness of one person is unconnected with the ­consciousness of others then it is irrelevant how many persons inhabit one ­immaterial substance over time. Locke’s theory has another remarkable feature: to establish his theory, Locke does not have to prove that any of the views of his predecessors are false—such a task would transcend the boundaries of human understanding—but rather the advantage of his view is that he can remain agnostic as to whether thinking takes place in material or in immaterial substance. While he insists that personal identity consists in sameness of consciousness, he does not have to rule out the possibility that his account of the persistence conditions coincides with any of the other views on contingent grounds. Indeed, Locke admits this possibility, for example, in the Stillingfleet correspondence. Locke there considers his theory to be consistent with the possibility that resurrected beings are composed of exactly the same material particles as living bodies.72 Similarly, he regards the Cartesian view as possible, though very improbable.73 Furthermore, he is well aware that it is possible that a person’s continued existence coincides with the existence of an immaterial soul. Given our limited human capacities, we cannot exclude this possibility as well as the possibility that a person’s continued existence coincides with multiple different substances. The interesting result is that his theory is consistent, on contingent grounds, with the mutually exclusive views concerning the materiality or immateriality of thinking substances defended by his predecessors. 72  See Locke, Works, 4:33, 37.

73  See II.i.18.

Locke’s Response  171 I hope to have shown that interpreting Locke’s theory of personal identity in the context of the metaphysical and religious debates by his predecessors reveals the strengths of his theory of personal identity in terms of sameness of consciousness and explains why it is so important for Locke to emphasize the distinction between the ideas of person, man, and substance. It allows us to see that he responds to the debates in a strategic and powerful manner: not only does he offer a theory that avoids many different problems of their views, he has also offers a theory that is consistent with their mutually exclusive views.

8

Personal Identity, Transitivity, and Divine Justice In the previous chapter I showed that it is important to consider Locke’s account of personal identity within its religious and metaphysical context. In particular we saw that it is of great importance for Locke to take seriously the possibility of the afterlife and a last judgement. This insight provides the basis for a new look at the problem of transitivity. The problem of transitivity is one of the best-­known objections against Locke’s account of personal identity. Following Berkeley, an anonymous author, and Reid, interpreters have assumed for a long time that the logic of identity dictates that an account of personal identity must be transitive.1 They object that Locke’s consciousness-­based account of personal identity does not meet this constraint, because it could be the case that I am now conscious of (a sufficient number of) my thoughts and actions a week ago, but am not able to be conscious (of a sufficient number of) my thoughts and actions two weeks ago, even though I was conscious of them a week ago. Now the objection goes that Locke’s theory implies that I am and I am not identical with my past self two weeks ago and this is absurd. Hence, they argue that Locke’s theory should be rejected or revised. We will examine the traditional transitivity objection more closely in section 8.1. The objection relies on the fact that Locke uses the term ‘identity’. However, this is not sufficient to guarantee that Locke intends to offer a transitive account of personal identity. Although it seems trivial that identity has to be transitive,2 I  take it that Locke aims to offer persistence conditions for persons and other kinds of beings and it is not trivial that persistence conditions are transitive. If we replace the term ‘identity’ with the term ‘persistence conditions’ then it will become clear that the logic of identity itself does not decide the issue, but rather an 1  See George Berkeley, Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher, ed. A. A. Luce and T. E. Jessop, vol. 3, The Works of George Berkeley (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1950 [1732]), 3:299; Anon., An Essay on Personal Identity. In Two Parts (London: Printed for J. Robson, 1769), 37–8; Reid, EIP, III.6, 276. Although Reid is often given credit for the transitivity objection and his memorable brave officer example is widely cited, it is worth noting that Berkeley and the anonymous author of Essay on Personal Identity raised the objection before Reid. Gordon-­Roth, ‘Tracing Reid’s “Brave Officer” Objection’, proposes that Berkeley’s objection builds on philosophical views developed by Anthony Collins. However, Collins does not explicitly discuss a case that constitutes failure of transitivity. 2  This view has been contested by Graham Priest, ‘Non-­Transitive Identity,’ in Cuts and Clouds: Vagueness, its Nature and its Logic, ed. Richard Dietz and Sebastiano Moruzzi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).

Locke on Persons and Personal Identity. Ruth Boeker, Oxford University Press (2021). © Ruth Boeker. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198846758.003.0008

The Traditional Transitivity Objection  173 argument is needed for why Locke’s account of personal identity is transitive or not. The common transitivity objection has been challenged by Galen Strawson and Matthew Stuart who both argue for a non-­transitive interpretation of Locke’s theory (section 8.2).3 They emphasize that, according to Locke, past thoughts or actions can only belong to my present self if I am still able to be aware of them. Strawson and Stuart put forward important arguments for taking seriously a nontransitive interpretation and second my point that the question whether Locke’s theory is transitive is to be decided by means of argument. However, I argue that a shortcoming of their views is that they do not properly take the religious context of Locke’s theory into consideration.4 I propose that a genuine question of transitivity arises in the context of the afterlife and a last judgement and that Locke would take the transitivity problem seriously in this context (section 8.3). I  develop a hybrid interpretation that combines insights of transitive and nontransitive interpretations and show how my interpretation is grounded in Locke’s account of sameness of consciousness, as introduced in chapters 5 and 6, and how it can better accommodate the religious context than competing interpretations without neglecting the insights of Strawson’s and Stuart’s interpretations (section 8.4). I end with reflections on divine justice and show that my interpretation leaves room for repentance (section 8.5).

8.1  The Traditional Transitivity Objection Let me begin by introducing the traditional transitivity objection. A relation R is transitive if and only if for all a, b, and c the following condition is satisfied: if aRb and bRc then aRc. Since the identity relation is commonly characterized as a reflexive, symmetrical, and transitive relation, it is argued that the logic of iden­ tity requires that personal identity has to be transitive. In short, the objection against Locke’s theory is that consciousness is not a transitive relation and therefore personal identity cannot be understood in terms of sameness of consciousness, at least not without further refinement.

3  See Strawson, Locke on Personal Identity, 53–7, chs. 10–11; Strawson, ‘ “The Secrets of All Hearts” ’, 122–3, 138–40; Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 8, especially 353–9, 378–85. See also Behan, ‘Locke on Persons and Personal Identity’, 70–2; Nicholas Jolley, Locke: His Philosophical Thought (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 120–1; Mackie, Problems from Locke, 178–83. 4  It is worth noting that Strawson’s interpretation involves considerations about reward and punishment on the day of judgement. Strawson and I differ about the question as to how ‘the Secrets of all Hearts shall be laid Open’ and the role that God plays at the great day. I say more about these matters below. I share Rickless’s proposal that God can restore consciousness at the day of judgement (see Rickless, Locke, 127), but will offer more detailed and new arguments for it. Further discussion of the importance of the religious context can be found in Victor Nuovo, Christianity, Antiquity, and Enlightenment: Interpretations of Locke (Dordrecht: Springer, 2011), 236–7.

174  Personal Identity, Transitivity, and Divine Justice Both Berkeley and Reid raise this problem for Locke’s account of personal identity. Yet there is an important difference between Berkeley’s and Reid’s version of the objection. Berkeley considers a person at three different times: at the second time the person is conscious of half of the conscious experiences that a person had at the first time, but has lost the other half that is replaced with new experiences. At the third time the person has lost awareness of all the conscious states that a person at the first time had, but is still aware of the experiences that the person newly acquired at the second time.5 In contrast to this, Reid’s story of the brave officer focuses on isolated actions: 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.  (EIP, III.6, 276)

These two stories show that Locke’s text leaves interpretive scope for spelling out what the exact conditions for personal identity are.6 Is a person now the same as a past person if the person now is conscious of just one of the past person’s thoughts or actions? Or does the person now have to be conscious of all of his past thoughts and actions? This question shows that we can formulate two extreme, but structurally similar versions of the transitivity objection. Let A refer to a person at time t1, B to a person at t2, and C to a person at t3. (1)   B is (able to be) conscious of all [at least one] of A’s thoughts and actions. (2)   C is (able to be) conscious of all [at least one] of B’s thoughts and actions. (3)   C is not (able to be) conscious of all [any one] of A’s thoughts and actions. (4)   An earlier person is identical with a later person if and only if the later person is (able to be) conscious of all [at least one] of the thoughts and actions of the earlier person. On the basis of (1), (2), (3), and (4) it follows that: 5  See Berkeley, Alciphron, 3:299. 6 Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, 212–13, argues that a further difference between Berkeley and Reid is that Berkeley’s objection is formulated in terms of consciousness, while Reid equates consciousness and memory. Although Reid accuses Locke of confounding memory with consciousness, it is worth noting that Reid does not formulate the objection in terms of memory. Moreover, any version of the problem of transitivity in terms of memory can easily be rephrased in terms of consciousness. This suggests that the problem arises irrespective of whether the objection is formulated in terms of memory or consciousness. Yet it remains to consider whether the versions in terms of consciousness focus on individual conscious states rather than Locke’s richer notion of same consciousness.

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(5)   A is identical with B. (6)   B is identical with C. (7)   A is not identical with C. Given the transitivity of identity, it follows from (5) and (6) that: (8)   A is identical with C. However, (7) contradicts (8). To escape the contradiction, it is commonly concluded that premise (4) is unacceptable and that personal identity cannot consist in sameness of consciousness. As we have seen in chapter 5, Locke’s understanding of sameness of consciousness is more complex than premise (4) ac­know­ledges. I will return to this point in section 8.4. For the time being, I adopt the terminology of Locke’s critics and the defenders of non-­transitive interpretations, because otherwise there is a risk of missing part of the challenge posed by the transitivity problem.

8.2  Non-­transitive Interpretations One prominent attempt to rescue Locke’s theory from the problem of transitivity is the proposal to understand Locke’s account of personal identity in terms of the ancestral of the consciousness relation, rather than in terms of direct consciousness relations. This proposal is often regarded to be a friendly amendment to Locke’s theory.7 However, there are passages in Locke’s text that speak against such a revision:8 That with which the consciousness of this present thinking thing can join it self, makes the same Person, and is one self with it, and with nothing else; and so attributes to it self, and owns all the Actions of that thing, as its own, as far as that consciousness reaches, and no farther; as every one who reflects will ­perceive.  (II.xxvii.17) But yet possibly it will still be objected, suppose I wholly lose the memory of some parts of my Life, beyond a possibility of retrieving them, so that perhaps I shall never be conscious of them again; yet am I not the same Person, that did those Actions, had those Thoughts, that I was once conscious of, though I have now forgot them? To which I answer, that we must here take notice what the Word I is applied to, which in this case is the Man only. And the same Man being presumed to be the same Person, I is easily here supposed to stand also for 7  See Lowe, Locke on Human Understanding, 112–14; Noonan, Personal Identity, 55–6; Winkler, ‘Locke on Personal Identity,’ 206–8. 8  This point is emphasized by Mackie, Problems from Locke, 180–3.

176  Personal Identity, Transitivity, and Divine Justice the same Person. But if it be possible for the same Man to have distinct incommunicable consciousness at different times, it is past doubt the same Man would at different times make different Persons.  (II.xxvii.20)

How, then, should Locke respond to the failure of transitivity? Recently, Galen Strawson and Matthew Stuart both argued that Locke need not be embarrassed by the failure of transitivity. They claim that it is not an objection to Locke’s theory, but rather it is his theory.9 Strawson emphasizes that Locke’s theory is a theory of moral responsibility. According to Strawson, it is important that we take seriously the ‘forensic point’10 of Locke’s theory. This leads Strawson to argue that a person’s diachronic identity is best understood from a particular point in time. Moreover, diachronic ­identity changes over time, because as time passes one has new experiences and is not any longer able to recall some past experiences and actions.11 He argues that a person’s diachronic identity extends as far as there are direct consciousness connections from a particular point in time. To borrow Parfit’s terminology, Strawson believes that diachronic identity of Lockean persons is to be understood in terms of connectedness and not in terms of continuity.12 How does Strawson argue for this conclusion? Strawson’s argument hinges on the premise that a person is only punishable for an action A, if the person is Conscious13 of A in Locke’s special sense of ‘conscious’, meaning that the person is (able to) experience A as one’s own in a certain immediate kind of way.14 Strawson further believes that if a person’s diachronic identity included past actions that the person is not Conscious of, then the person would be constituted by forensically relevant and forensically irrelevant actions. However, if a person’s diachronic identity includes actions that a person is unable to be Conscious of, namely actions that do not have any direct Consciousness connection to the present person, then it is hard to make sense of Locke’s aim to offer a theory of moral responsibility.15 Therefore Strawson 9  See Strawson, Locke on Personal Identity, 54; Strawson, ‘ “The Secrets of All Hearts” ’, 123, 138–40; Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 379. 10 Strawson, Locke on Personal Identity, 54. 11  See Strawson, Locke on Personal Identity, 55–6. 12  Strawson follows Parfit, Reasons and Persons, 205–6, in defining psychological connectedness and continuity: (1) a person [P] at t2 is (directly) psychologically connected to a person[Px] at t1 if—to take the case of memory—[P] can now remember having some of the experiences that [Px] had at t1, and (2) a person [P] at t2 is psychologically continuous with [Px] if there is some unbroken overlapping chain of such direct connections ([P] being psychologically connected to some [Pi], [Pi] to some [Pj], [Pj] to some [Pk], and so on, all the way back to [Px]). (Strawson, Locke on Personal Identity, 88) 13  Strawson capitalizes ‘Conscious’ and its cognates to mark Locke’s special sense of consciousness. I adopt this convention when discussing Strawson’s interpretation in this chapter. 14  See Strawson, Locke on Personal Identity, 30–41, 87. 15  See Strawson, Locke on Personal Identity, 56, 87, 91–2.

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c­oncludes that a person’s diachronic identity is to be understood in terms of ­psychological connectedness rather than in terms of psychological continuity. In Strawson’s words, the failure of transitivity is ‘an illustration of [the] fundamental forensic point’16 of Locke’s view. Let us turn to Matthew Stuart’s non-­transitive interpretation. His discussion of the transitivity objection is preceded by his detailed defence of a Relative Identity interpretation of Locke’s general account of identity.17 According to Stuart, absolute identity is hard to reconcile with non-­transitivity, but because Stuart’s Locke endorses Relative Identity, Stuart is in a position to deny the transitivity of iden­ tity.18 He argues that Locke’s commitment to non-­transitivity follows from the fact that Locke endorses the simple memory theory. Although I have distanced my interpretation of Locke’s same consciousness account from memory in­ter­ pret­ations in chapter 5, it is worth recalling that my criticism was that memory interpretations are incomplete and need to be supplemented. Nevertheless, memory interpretations often provide helpful insight into Locke’s view and this makes it worth engaging closely with Stuart’s arguments. In order to give a fair reconstruction of Stuart’s arguments I adopt his terminology for the sake of argument and we can ask at a later stage how the view may need to be adjusted to accommodate Locke’s richer and more complex account of same consciousness that I introduced in the previous chapters. According to Stuart, the simple memory theory is the view that a past action A is correctly attributed to a person S if and only if S can remember having performed A. He distinguishes the simple memory theory from the memory con­ tinu­ity theory. While the simple memory theory requires that there be a direct memory connection, the memory continuity theory requires only that there be a continuous chain of memory connections from a present person to a past person. This means that the memory continuity theory replaces the non-­transitive relation being able to remember with the transitive ancestral of that relation.19 What are Stuart’s arguments for ascribing the simple memory theory to Locke? First and foremost, he argues that it fits Locke’s text better by citing passages such as II.xxvii.20 cited above.20 Moreover, he maintains that the simple memory theory can better explain the following remark about forgetfulness:

16 Strawson, Locke on Personal Identity, 54. 17  See Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, ch. 7. I offer a critical discussion of Relative Identity in­ter­pret­ ations in chapter 3. 18  See Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 379. 19 See Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 346, 352–3. In Stuart’s (and Parfit’s) terminology the simple memory theory is the view that a person’s diachronic identity consists in direct memory connections (connectedness via memory), whereas the memory continuity theory accounts for personal identity as its name says in terms of a continuous chain of memory relations (or continuity via memory). 20  See Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 354–5.

178  Personal Identity, Transitivity, and Divine Justice For granting that the thinking Substance in Man must be necessarily suppos’d immaterial, ’tis evident, that immaterial thinking thing may sometimes part with its past consciousness, and be restored to it again as it appears in the forgetfulness Men often have their past Actions, and the Mind many times recovers the memory of a past consciousness, which it had lost for twenty Years together. (II.xxvii.23)

Stuart argues that if the memory continuity theory was correct, then it could not be the case that mental items part from one’s consciousness and become available again at later times—as Locke claims in II.xxvii.23. Rather if the memory con­ tinu­ity theory is correct then a past action will be part of a person’s consciousness as long as there is a continuous chain of consciousness connections that leads back to the action, which conflicts with his claim in II.xxvii.23. Thus, Stuart infers, Locke cannot endorse the memory continuity theory.21 Furthermore, Stuart claims that the memory continuity theory ‘would require Locke to abandon [his] account of the ownership of mental items’.22 Before we can analyse how Stuart reaches this conclusion, it is helpful to clarify how he understands ownership of mental items. According to Stuart, ‘thoughts are my thoughts only if I am aware of having them.’23 He further believes that this view extends to actions and ‘that actions are my actions only if I am aware of myself performing them.’24 For Stuart ownership of actions is a special case of Locke’s more general account of the ownership of mental items, however, this hinges on whether one is willing to adopt Stuart’s narrow interpretation of what an action is for Locke.25 Stuart distinguishes actions from bodily motions and argues that all actions involve an act of will, which means that they have a mental component: A bodily motion is not an action of mine unless it is triggered by an act of my will. The act of will and the motion together constitute the action. Since acts of will are necessarily self luminous in the way that all mental acts are for Locke, it follows that a present action cannot be one’s own without one’s being aware of performing it.26

Given that Stuart emphasizes that a subject’s awareness of mental items—which for him includes actions—is necessary in order for ownership, it is possible that Stuart understands ownership of mental items in terms of self-­consciousness, since self-­consciousness is a subject’s awareness of oneself as perceiving subject.

21  See Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 355. 22 Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 359, see also 357–9. 23 Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 358. 24 Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 358. 25  Locke adopts a broader conception of an action in various passages in the Essay. For instance, see II.xxi.4, 8, 72, II.xxii.11, II.xxviii.18. 26 Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 358.

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I will consider in a moment whether it is plausible to attribute this interpretation to Locke. First of all, let me reconstruct Stuart’s reasons for believing that the memory continuity theory conflicts with Locke’s understanding of the ownership of mental items. I take it that Stuart’s underlying argument can be analysed as follows: (1) A thought or action is mine only if I am aware of having the thought, or having had the thought, or aware of performing the action, or of having performed the action. (2) Every item that is part of the continuous chain (that the memory continuity theory postulates) is mine. (3) I am not aware of some items in the continuous chain. (4) Thus, in order to accept (2), Locke has to give up (1). Stuart is explicit that his account of the ownership of mental items is not restricted to present thoughts and actions, but also extends to past ones.27 As already mentioned, for Stuart, thoughts and actions ‘are constituents of oneself ’ ‘only by virtue of one’s consciousness of them’.28 What is less clear is whether past thoughts and actions are mine only if I am actually conscious of having had them before or actually conscious of having performed them in the past, or whether an ability or disposition to be conscious of having had the thought or performed the action previously is sufficient for ownership of them. Stuart acknowledges this difficulty, but rejects the dispositional reading and argues instead that only past thoughts and actions that a person actually remembers are part of the person’s past:29 ‘This means that if it takes me a minute to remember yesterday’s lunch, then during that minute I am not the person who ate the leftover curry. After the minute, I may again be the person who ate the leftover curry.’30 Despite ac­know­ ledg­ing that the view ‘is strange’,31 Stuart believes that his simple memory theory reading has the advantage that it is ‘based upon a coherent principle—the prin­ ciple that a mental episode or a body part belongs to a person in virtue of firstpersonal consciousness of it.’32 Yet Locke’s text does not clearly support the actual consciousness reading. A defender of the memory continuity theory could challenge Stuart’s reading with reference to passages where Locke speaks of a subject’s ability to be conscious of past thoughts and actions such as his statement that a person ‘will be the same self 27  See Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 358. 28 Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 358. 29  See Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 359–65. Although Stuart’s concluding paragraph of section §50 speaks of a person’s ability to remember an action and suggests that it is a requirement for it to be hers (see 359), the next section §51, which focuses on remembering and forgetting, makes explicit that Stuart endorses the view that actual consciousness of past thoughts and actions is required for ownership. 30 Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 364. 31 Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 364. 32 Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 364.

180  Personal Identity, Transitivity, and Divine Justice as far as the same consciousness can extend to Actions past or to come’ (II.  xvii.10).33 If we replace the requirement for actual consciousness of past thoughts and actions in premise (1) with a subject’s ability to be aware of them, then the premise becomes: (1*)  A thought or action is mine only if I am aware of having the thought, or able to be aware of having had the thought, or aware of performing the action, or able to be aware of having performed the action. The second premise remains as is, but the real question concerns whether a subject is able to be aware of all items in the conscious chain, which in turn raises the question of what it means for a subject to be able to be conscious of past thoughts and actions. On the one hand, if a subject is able to be conscious of all items in the chain, the argument against the memory continuity theory is blocked. However, Stuart’s point that a defender of the memory continuity theory cannot easily explain forgetfulness, namely how certain items can part with a person’s consciousness and be restored to it again at later times, remains a pressing challenge for a defender of the memory continuity theory. On the other hand, if a subject is unable to be conscious of some items in the continuous chain, a modified version of Stuart’s argument still succeeds. This puts pressure on a defender of the memory continuity theory not only to explain the tension between (1*) and (2), but also how to draw a distinction between items that a subject is able to be conscious of and those that they are unable to be conscious of. Stuart advances the scholarly debates by considering different types of forgetfulness. He proposes that it is helpful to distinguish between inattention, mental dullness, and memory loss.34 We are inattentive on a daily basis simply because ‘the scope of our attention is finite’.35 Inattention does not worry Locke and it is not strictly speaking a form of forgetfulness. Next, Stuart draws attention to common struggles ‘to retrieve ideas quickly enough for their retrieval to be of use’.36 For instance, this happens ‘when we forget a person’s name, or the title of a book, though we are sure it will come to us later’.37 Following Locke, we can call this form of forgetfulness ‘mental dullness’ or ‘dullness of mind’.38 Additionally, there are cases of total memory loss. Ideas can fade over time and eventually be entirely lost.39 Given these distinctions, a defender of the memory continuity theory could argue that the distinction between mental dullness and memory loss is relevant for explaining the difference between items that a subject is able to be conscious of and those that they are unable to be conscious of. A defender of the memory

33  See also II.xxvii.9, 16–17, 24, 26. 34  See Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 359–61. 35 Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 360. 36 Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 360. 37 Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 360–1. 38  See II.x.8; Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 360–1. 39  See II.x.5; Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 361.

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continuity theory would accept that items that a person currently cannot retrieve due to mental dullness still belong to the person’s history. However, in order to make sense of Locke’s claim in II.xxvii.23 that some items can be temporarily forgotten and retrieved again at later times, Stuart argues that a defender of the memory continuity theory would additionally have to introduce a distinction between remediable memory loss and irremediable memory loss.40 This leads to the challenge to explain the difference between mental dullness and remediable memory loss. Since there does not seem to be a clear-­cut distinction but rather the difference seems to be a matter of degree, Stuart doubts that a defender of the memory continuity theory can successfully establish their view and prefers the simple memory theory as the more consistent alternative.41 I will revisit in the following sections whether Stuart’s simple memory interpretation is the best option to avoid the problems that arise for memory continuity theories. At this stage I want to draw attention to another consequence of Stuart’s in­ter­ pret­ation. Stuart understands Lockean actions in a narrower sense than I have so far. For Stuart actions are to be distinguished from mere bodily motions and involve an act of will. Although Stuart does not clearly specify whether the act of will in question is a volition to perform the action or some other act of will, which may be a desire to do the action, there are difficulties with restricting Locke’s account of action in the way Stuart does irrespective of what the accompanying act of will turns out to be. The worry is that Stuart’s account of ownership of actions excludes items that are plausibly seen as part of a person’s diachronic identity. To illustrate the point, let us consider the following example. Assume that Dave deliberately decided to rob a bank, but got caught by the police. Subsequently he was handcuffed and escorted to the police station. Although Dave would not regard the handcuffing as an action that he initiated by an act of will, he can be conscious of it. Stuart would argue that this is not an action of Dave, but rather something happening to him.42 Does it follow that events such as handcuffing against one’s will are not part of a person’s diachronic identity? It can be argued that awareness of such events can be a relevant part of a person’s diachronic identity, because they enable Dave to reconstruct why he is prosecuted for the bank robbery. Of course, Dave would not be directly held accountable for the handcuffing, because the handcuffing is not a voluntary action, but rather for his deliberate bank robbery. I do not want to imply that Stuart lacks the resources to accommodate this point. Indeed, he can acknowledge that Dave’s perception of the handcuffing is one of his thoughts and since he is conscious of it, like all other thoughts, it is part of his diachronic identity. If Stuart adopts this view, then we are largely in agreement.

40  See Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 361–4. 42  See Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 358, 403–5.

41  See Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 363–4.

182  Personal Identity, Transitivity, and Divine Justice Reflecting on examples such as this brings to light that it can be helpful to distinguish a minimal sense of mineness from a more robust sense of mineness or appropriation. Appropriation, understood in a more robust sense, is a pre­requis­ ite for moral accountability, while the more minimal sense of mineness is relevant for considering which items are part of a person’s diachronic identity. This distinction provides resources for saying that a person can be conscious of actions— understood in a broad sense, which includes happenings in Stuart’s sense—that are not voluntary. Such actions can be seen as one’s own insofar as one is conscious of having the perception, but the person does not regard them as one’s own in a more robust sense of appropriation, because the actions are not performed voluntarily. It is not clear that Stuart’s account of the ownership of mental items can easily integrate these distinctions, since he does not distinguish between appropriation in a robust sense and a more minimal sense of mineness.43 As a preliminary result, it is worth noting that Strawson’s and Stuart’s in­ter­pret­ ations provide good insight into Locke’s texts and help formulate constraints that a good interpretation of Locke’s theory should accommodate: (i) It should take seriously that, according to Locke, just reward and punishment requires direct consciousness relations. (ii) It should acknowledge that Locke aims to address questions of moral accountability. (iii) It should be consistent with Locke’s text, in particular II.xxvii.17, 20, 23, 26, and explain Locke’s remarks concerning forgetfulness and the ownership of mental items. I will return to these constraints and will use them to assess the interpretation that I develop in the following sections.

8.3  The Religious Context The aim of this section is to establish that a genuine question of whether Locke’s theory of personal identity is transitive or not arises in the religious context of the afterlife and a last judgement. As I explain below, the specific question at the resurrection is whether the criterion of personal identity used when resurrecting persons is transitive or non-­transitive. I take it that Locke would have taken this question seriously and that it would have concerned him more than failures of 43  The comments in this paragraph also call into question Strawson’s argument for connectedness in Locke on Personal Identity, 89–92. There Strawson assumes that Locke’s theory is a theory of moral responsibility and therefore a person’s diachronic identity is to be understood in terms of connectedness. He tends to assume that direct consciousness connections are necessary and sufficient for moral responsibility, but as argued here this assumption can be questioned.

The Religious Context  183 transitivity during ordinary life on Earth. If my interpretation is correct, then we have at the same time an explanation for why he was less worried about the problem that Berkeley, Reid, and many other commentators consider to be a fundamental flaw of his theory. Locke is well aware that his theory has limited applicability in ordinary human law courts, because it is impossible for a human judge to look into the mind of another person and to know of what actions she is able to be conscious:44 Humane Laws punish both with a Justice suitable to their way of Knowledge: Because in these cases, they cannot distinguish certainly what is real, what counterfeit; and so the ignorance in Drunkenness or Sleep is not admitted as a plea. For though punishment be annexed to personality, and personality to consciousness, and the Drunkard perhaps be not conscious of what he did; yet Humane Judicatures justly punish him; because the Fact is proved against him, but want of consciousness cannot be proved for him.  (II.xxvii.22)

Locke neither recommends that human law courts change their practice to accommodate his view nor revises his view to accommodate common practice. The passage that immediately follows explains why potential failures of justice in human law courts do not worry him: But in the great Day, wherein the Secrets of all Hearts shall be laid open, it may be reasonable to think, no one shall be made to answer for what he knows nothing of; but shall receive his Doom, his Conscience accusing or excusing him. (II.xxvii.22)

This passage supports the claim that ultimately Locke’s view is directed towards a divine last judgement and any potential failures of human justice will be corrected at the great day.45 Consequently, we can expect that Locke would not worry much about failure of transitivity in ordinary human contexts, but rather if he is concerned about transitivity then it is plausible that a genuine issue arises in the religious context. Let us therefore examine whether and, if so, what type of transitivity problems can arise in the religious context of an afterlife and a last judgement. It is worth recalling that for Locke the belief in an afterlife and a last judgement is a matter of faith that cannot be known with certainty. Yet, it is to be taken ­ser­ious­ly, because it is revealed in Scripture.46 Locke’s views about the epistemic 44  For further discussion, see Jolley, Locke, ch. 6, especially 117–20; Thiel, Lockes Theorie der personalen Identität, chs. 6–7, especially 144–51; Thiel, ‘Personal Identity’, 1:894–7; Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, 130–1. 45  See also II.xxvii.26. For further discussion, see Thiel, Lockes Theorie der personalen Identität, 144–51; Thiel, ‘Personal Identity’, 1:894–6; Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, 130–4. 46  See IV.iii.6, IV.xviii, especially IV.xviii.7.

184  Personal Identity, Transitivity, and Divine Justice status of faith set the methodological scope for the following examination. While we can assess the probability of the different proposals, we cannot expect to know with certainty whether the criterion of personal identity used at the resurrection is transitive or not. Locke believes in a last judgement as it is revealed in Scripture: the Apostle tells us, that at the Great Day, when every one shall receive according to his doings, the secrets of all Hearts shall be laid open. The Sentence shall be justified by the consciousness all Persons shall have, that they themselves in what Bodies soever they appear, or what Substances soever that consciousness adheres to, are the same, that committed those Actions, and deserve that Punishment for them.  (II.xxvii.26)

Following Scripture, Locke believes that everyone will appear before God’s judgement seat.47 However, he does not conceive of the judgement as a purely external judgement by God, but rather the judgement is in part a self-­judgement; as he writes, a person’s ‘Conscience accusing or excusing him’ (II.xxvii.22). According to Locke, a fair trial requires that the individuals can understand why they are rewarded or punished for their actions and are able to acknowledge the justice thereof. Thus, Locke emphasizes that persons must have consciousness of all their past actions that they are held accountable for.48 According to Locke, the redeemed can expect joy and happiness in the kingdom of God, and the damned will be tormented in hell before they are annihilated by death.49 To return to the problem of transitivity, the interesting question to address is how ‘the Secrets of all Hearts shall be laid open’ (II.xxvii.22, 26). One possibility is that at the resurrection persons just wake up, like they wake up after ordinary sleep, and happen to be conscious of (some of) their past thoughts and actions.50 When we wake up after ordinary sleep the thoughts and actions we are conscious of vary from morning to morning. If the resurrection followed the same model, then it would be random whether I am conscious of a crime then or am lucky not to remember it. However, it is deeply problematic to base decisions about

47  Further evidence can be found in ‘Resurrectio et quae sequuntur’. There Locke states: ‘We must all appear before the judgment seat of god that every one may receive the things done in his body according to that he hath done whether it be good or bad 2 Cor  V.  10’ (Locke, Writings on Religion, 237). 48  This view is rooted in Locke’s moral thinking. For further details, see Locke, ‘Of Ethic in General’. 49 See ‘Resurrectio et quae sequuntur’, in Locke, Writings on Religion. Regarding the damned, Locke writes: ‘That they shall be cast into hell fire to be tormented this is soe express & soe often mentioned in Scripture that there can be noe doubt about it’ (234). He further maintains that the torment will not be eternal: ‘That they [the damned] shall not live forever This is soe plain in Scripture & is soe every where inculcated that the wages of sin is death & the reward of the righteous is everlasting life’ (234). 50  See Strawson, Locke on Personal Identity, 52, 54–6, 87, 90, 134.

The Religious Context  185 damnation or eternal happiness on luck. Let us therefore examine whether there are other more plausible options. To avoid the problem that luck comes into play at the resurrection, God will have to be actively involved and make persons conscious of their past in a prin­ cipled way.51 At this stage God has to decide how many persons will be resurrected and of which thoughts and actions the resurrected persons will be conscious. The options that God faces include the following:52 (a)    to resurrect one person corresponding to every continuous chain of consciousness connections, and to restore consciousness of all the relevant thoughts and actions that are part of the continuous chain; (b)   to resurrect a person corresponding to a person at a particular time t, and to restore consciousness such that the consciousness of the resurrected person will extend as far as the direct consciousness connections of the person reached at t. If God uses (a) at the resurrection to trace a person’s past existence, then God’s criterion is transitive.53 In contrast to this, (b) offers a non-­transitive criterion, which is similar to Strawson’s account in terms of connectedness and Stuart’s ­simple memory theory. Let me begin by reflecting on (b), because it is likely that defenders of a nontransitive interpretation assume that this model is relevant at the great day.54 The proposal is based on the thought that the consciousness of resurrected persons does not extend further than the consciousness of a human person during or­din­ ary life; it is motivated by the view that it is unfair to be held accountable for actions that one was unable to respond to. For instance, if I cannot remember a past action, then it is impossible to regret it or to make compensations for it.55 However, it is important to see that proposal (b) faces several difficulties. As formulated, (b) does not provide a clear answer to the question of how many persons will be resurrected. The reason for this is not merely that the formulation is vague, but rather—as will become clearer below—any attempt to specify the number of resurrected persons conflicts with considerations of divine justice and is therefore unsatisfying.

51  Textual support for God’s active role at the day of judgement can be found in IV.iii.6. 52  The issue arises irrespective of whether one endorses a memory interpretation of Locke’s account of personal identity or the same consciousness account developed in chapters 5 and 6. I am formulating (a) and (b) in terms of consciousness connections, because this terminology is close to the language Strawson and Stuart use. Stuart would regard consciousness connections as memory connections. However, consciousness connections can also be understood as the connections provided by the unifying aspect of Locke’s same consciousness account. 53  (a) is consistent with the memory continuity theory, but (a) does not have to be spelled out purely in terms of memory and its ancestral relations. 54  See Strawson, Locke on Personal Identity, 52, 54–6, 87, 90, 134. 55  See Strawson, Locke on Personal Identity, 54–7, 139–49.

186  Personal Identity, Transitivity, and Divine Justice Why is there a genuine question of how many persons will be resurrected? A critic may deny the problem and argue that exactly one person will be resurrected for every human individual that dies and the resurrected being will be made conscious of those thoughts and actions that the human individual was conscious of at a time close to her death.56 Yet this view has problematic consequences. Assume a human being develops a mental illness that makes her forget her former thoughts and actions. In such a case, all of her former thoughts and actions will be neglected at the last judgement. The problem with this view is that it does not take seriously Locke’s distinction between the ideas of person, human being, and substance, because it assumes that a person dies at the same time as the human being. As we have seen, defenders of the non-­transitive interpretation such as Strawson and Stuart argue that a person changes from day to day, or even from moment to moment. This means that whenever a new person comes into existence, a former person goes out of existence. If one is willing to accept the nontransitive interpretation, then one has to allow that multiple persons can die, or cease to exist, over the lifetime of a human being. Consequently, the question of how many persons will be resurrected is a genuine question. To illustrate the difficulty of specifying the number of resurrected persons, let us turn to an example (see Figure 8.1): assume that Max57 stole strawberries at time t1, he volunteered to work in a soup kitchen at t2, he plagiarized a paper during his final year as an undergraduate student at t3, he donated a million dollars to charity to help children in poverty at t4, and he disguised a luxury holiday as a business trip at t5 and was reimbursed for it by his employer. Now suppose further that Max at t6 remembers that he disguised his luxury holiday as a business trip at t5, and that he plagiarized a paper as an undergraduate student at t3, but he is not able to remember any of the actions at t4, t2, and t1. Assume further that at t5 he remembers that he donated a million dollars to charity at t4 and that he pla­giar­ ized at t3, but he is not able to remember any of the actions at t2 and t1. At t4 he remembers that he plagiarized, but he is not able to remember any of the actions at t2 and t1; at t3 he remembers that he stole the strawberries at t2, but is not able to

t1

t2

t3

t4

t5

t6

Figure 8.1.  Illustration of problems for non-­transitive interpretations. Source: Author. 56 Strawson, Locke on Personal Identity, 56, endorses such a view. 57  Max refers to the human being that is the locus of consciousness. For reasons of simplicity I assume that consciousness is neither transferred from one human body to another, nor from one immaterial soul to another.

The Religious Context  187 remember his actions at t1; and at t2 he remembers that he worked in a soup kitchen at t1. Furthermore, Max does not have any conscious awareness after t6. In this case a defender of (b) can argue that there will be a resurrected person that corresponds to Max at t6 and the resurrected person will be made conscious of the actions at t6, t5, and t3. Furthermore, it is plausible to argue that there will be another resurrected person corresponding to Max at t2 that will be made conscious of the actions at t2 and t1. However, will there additionally be a resurrected person that is conscious of the action at t4? This question reveals a dilemma: If not, then Max’s action at t4 will be completely neglected at the last judgement. It is hard to justify how a just God could entirely neglect the donation of one million dollars to charity, or any other good or evil action. To avoid this problem, it can be argued that additionally a person must be resurrected that will be conscious of the actions at t4. This resurrected person will either correspond to Max at t5 or to Max at t4. For reasons of simplicity, let us assume that it will correspond to Max at t4. Now the second horn of the dilemma becomes apparent: there will be two resurrected beings that are conscious of Max’s plagiarism at t3, one corresponding to Max at t4 and the other to Max at t6, and both will be held accountable for the action at t3. However, would a just God hold two different individuals accountable for the same crime? In a manuscript on God’s justice, Locke emphasizes that any execution of God’s power must be in accordance with his wisdom and goodness.58 According to Locke, divine punishment can only be justified if it serves as a means to increase goodness: For since our actions cannot reach unto him, or bring him any profit or damage, the punishments he inflicts on any of his creatures, i.e. the misery or destruction he brings upon them, can be nothing else but to preserve the greater or more considerable part, and so being only for preservation, his justice is nothing but a branch of his goodness, which is fain by severity to restrain the irregular and destructive parts from doing harm; for to imagine God under a necessity of punishing for any other reason but this, is to make his justice a great imperfection, and to suppose a power over him that necessitates him to operate contrary to the rules of his wisdom and goodness, which cannot be supposed to make anything so idly as that it should be purposely destroyed or be put in a worse state than destruction (misery being as much a worse state than annihilation, as pain is than insensibility, or the torments of a rack less eligible than quiet sound sleeping). The justice then of God can be supposed to extend itself no further than infinite goodness shall find it necessary for the preservation of his works. (‘Of God’s Justice’, 278)

58  See John Locke, ‘Of God’s Justice,’ in Political Essays, ed. Mark Goldie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997 [1680]), 277–8.

188  Personal Identity, Transitivity, and Divine Justice If God were to resurrect two different individuals and punish both of them for the same action, then God would inflict more harm than necessary. It is hard to see what purpose double punishment of the same action could have. In light of Locke’s claims in the manuscript ‘Of God’s Justice’, it is likely that he would regard the purpose of divine punishment to be deterrence; this means that the prospect of punishment is meant to move persons to refrain from committing crimes. Punishing one individual in the afterlife for a crime achieves this purpose. In light of this Locke should not support the view that multiple individuals will be punished for one and the same crime, because not only is it unnecessary for deterrence, but also it diminishes God’s goodness. Consequently, proposal (b) conflicts with divine justice, because either there is the risk that some actions will be neglected at the last judgement or multiple individuals can be rewarded or punished for one and the same action. Having argued that connectedness should not guide God’s decisions at the last judgement, what other criteria are available to God? The consciousness of resurrected beings can either extend over shorter or longer periods of time than it extends via direct psychological connections. An extreme version of the former is the view that resurrected beings are only conscious of actions that are newly performed at a certain time or thoughts that are originally acquired at a certain time. However, this view assumes that actions are momentary and fails to take into consideration that several actions take place over time. Moreover, actions are often done in light of past actions that we remember and we plan future actions in light of past and present experiences. Any intermediate position between (b) and the extreme version will not entirely escape the problems of neglect of actions, multiple judgement, or neglect of long-­term actions. Alternatively, if God uses a transitive criterion when tracing a person’s past, and follows (a) at the resurrection, then these problems will be avoided. A transitive criterion is well suited to accommodate that long-­term actions can involve planning over long periods of time, because the entire chain of thoughts and actions that are connected by consciousness is taken into consideration, including the thoughts and actions that lead to or are part of a long-­term action. The problems of neglect of actions and multiple judgement will not arise for all thoughts and actions that are part of a continuous chain of consciousness connections.

8.4  Consciousness and Transitivity Having argued that considerations of divine justice give a strong reason to assume that Locke would give preference to the view that God will restore consciousness at the great day on the basis of a transitive criterion of personal identity, it remains to examine whether this result is supported by his text and is consistent with his account of same consciousness.

Consciousness and Transitivity  189 One issue that deserves further consideration is the question of whether Locke’s theory leaves room for God’s active participation at the last judgement. My argument assumes that God plays an active role at the resurrection and has a principled way to make resurrected beings conscious of their past thoughts and actions, because otherwise it can be random which thoughts and actions one remembers at the great day. We may think about God’s involvement at the resurrection and last judgement in analogy with a therapy session.59 The resurrected person may be said to have a ‘therapy session’ with God during which her past experiences are laid out in front of her so that she has full awareness of all the thoughts and actions for which she is held accountable and can understand the justice of reward or punishment. When God traces a person’s past in order to restore her consciousness of all her relevant past thoughts and actions, he needs an objective criterion.60 This makes it pressing to examine whether Locke’s same consciousness account can provide an objective criterion for God. At this stage we are drawing on the results of chapters 5 and 6. There I suggested that Locke’s account of same consciousness involves a unifying aspect, which explains the togetherness of different thoughts and actions, as well as bodily parts, and possibly substances, at a time and over time. I suggested further that it is plausible that the unifying aspect has an underlying metaphysical foundation and that it is probable that it is constituted by certain relations. This makes it plausible that God at the resurrection turns to the underlying metaphysical foundation of same consciousness. As already noted, the question of transitivity is not restricted to memory connections, but arises more generally for connections that are provided by same consciousness, and its unifying aspect in particular. Hence we can ask whether the connections provided by the underlying metaphysical foundation of same consciousness and its the unifying aspect are transitive or not. We can say that a connection provided by the underlying metaphysical foundation, for instance, to a past action performed at t1 is direct if and only if it preserves the original consciousness of performing the action and the accompanying self-­consciousness in such a way that the original awareness of the action, including the original self-­consciousness, can be revived at the later time. A continuous chain will be composed of several direct connections, but it is not a requirement that there be direct connections to all the thoughts and actions that are part of the chain. Similarly, as in section  8.3 above, we can ask whether God, when he restores a person’s consciousness at the resurrection, traces direct connections from a particular point in time of a person’s existence on Earth or whether God traces continuous chains of direct connections. Considerations concerning divine

59  I thank Joshua Wood for suggesting this analogy. 60 The point that God needs to use an objective criterion has also been noted by Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, ch. 4; Weinberg, ‘The Metaphysical Fact of Consciousness’.

190  Personal Identity, Transitivity, and Divine Justice justice also apply in this case and, as above, it is more likely that Locke would give preference to the latter transitive option. As already mentioned in chapter 5, Locke’s account of same consciousness is complex and has multiple aspects. It is undeniable that it is important for Locke that a person be able to remember past thoughts and actions from the inside as her own, which is made possible through the interplay of memory and ap­pro­pri­ ation. Strawson and Stuart emphasize this point and I agree with them that it is an essential part of Locke’s theory, but I believe that their interpretations overemphasize the internal side of Locke’s view. The shortcoming is that they do not sufficiently take the unifying aspect of Locke’s same consciousness account into consideration, which is phenomenologically given in experience, but also has a metaphysical foundation.61 The view that I am proposing is a hybrid view. It involves transitive relations, which are accessible from a God’s eye perspective and these transitive relations can be traced by turning to the underlying metaphysical foundation of same consciousness. Additionally, it involves direct consciousness connections, which are non-­transitive and crucial from the internal first-­personal perspective. I am suggesting that at the resurrection God turns to the metaphysical foundation of same consciousness, and its unifying aspect in particular, and traces the continuous chain of the relevant relations (or whatever the metaphysical foundation turns out to be). Thereby God knows all the thoughts and actions that are part of the continuous chain, or, in other words, that are connected by the metaphysical foundation of same consciousness. His next task is to restore the original consciousness of all the relevant thoughts and actions so that the resurrected person has direct first-­personal access to their former thoughts and actions. I say ‘relevant’ because it is plausible that God will be selective instead of simply making the resurrected person aware of all the many former conscious states. The advantage of a selective approach is that the resurrected person will not be overwhelmed with a massive number of former conscious states that are morally neutral or irrelevant. Yet if God is selective, he will have to be selective in an objective and principled way. One possibility is that God focuses on appropriated thoughts and actions, perhaps supplemented by consciousness of other former experiences that were not appropriated, but are nevertheless relevant for reconstructing how the appropriated thoughts and actions were brought about throughout a person’s continued existence on Earth.62 Through God’s active involvement at the last

61  Strawson has more resources to respond than Stuart. Strawson postulates an underlying con­ tinu­ous­ly existing subject of experience and he could argue that it plays a similar role to the unifying aspect. I prefer my interpretation, because it is better rooted in Locke’s text. 62  For instance, supplementing appropriated thoughts and actions with other experiences can be relevant if something involuntarily happened to a person and some of these involuntary experiences can help explain subsequent actions.

Consciousness and Transitivity  191 judgement the resurrected person will be able to directly remember all the relevant thoughts and actions as her own. To sum up, my proposed interpretation combines insights of non-­transitive and transitive interpretations. Considered from a first-­personal perspective, internally accessible direct consciousness connections, which are non-­transitive, are a central feature of the interpretation. At the last judgement a person will have direct access to all thoughts and actions that belong to her past and the person will be held accountable only for thoughts and actions to which direct consciousness connections exist. Thereby my interpretation takes into consideration insights of non-­ transitive interpretations. Additionally, my interpretation acknowledges an external divine perspective. It takes seriously that due to con­sid­ er­ations of divine justice God plays an active role at the resurrection and it is more likely that God traces transitive relations when he makes a person conscious of her past experiences. I proposed that these transitive relations are grounded in the underlying metaphysical foundation of same consciousness. In this sense, my interpretation is hybrid.63 It is time to consider whether my interpretation meets the three constraints that we identified above. First, does my interpretation acknowledge that just reward and punishment requires direct consciousness connections? My in­ter­ pret­ation takes this constraint seriously, but it also argues for a more fine-­grained understanding of Locke’s account of same consciousness. While direct consciousness connections are relevant from the internal perspective, I propose that Locke’s theory can better accommodate considerations of divine justice if it is supplemented by transitive relations, which are accessible to God and grounded in the underlying metaphysical foundation of same consciousness. Second, by acknowledging the importance of direct internal consciousness connections among the contents of conscious states, my interpretation takes ser­ ious­ly that Locke aims to answer questions of moral accountability. More particularly, my interpretation takes seriously that Locke’s theory has limited applicability in ordinary human law courts and is directed towards a divine last judgement. If the metaphysical foundation of the unifying aspect of consciousness involves continuous chains rather than only direct connections, we can eliminate luck and the risk of fatal injustice at the last judgement. Thus, the second constraint is also satisfied. Third, let us look more closely at the passages that Strawson and Stuart cite in support of their non-­transitive interpretations. They believe that II.xxvii.17 and

63 Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, ch. 4, similarly distinguishes between consciousness con­ sidered from a first-­personal point of view and an external objective perspective, but she does not develop a hybrid view in response to the problem of transitivity. Instead she takes the transitivity of identity for granted.

192  Personal Identity, Transitivity, and Divine Justice 20 provide major support for a non-­transitive interpretation. Let us take another look at II.xxvii.17: That with which the consciousness of this present thinking thing can join it self, makes the same Person, and is one self with it, and with nothing else; and so attributes to it self, and owns all the Actions of that thing, as its own, as far as that consciousness reaches, and no farther; as every one who reflects will perceive.

This passage can easily be reconciled with my interpretation if we read ‘consciousness of this present thinking thing’ as referring to the internally accessible aspects of consciousness, that is the contents of conscious states. This is a plausible reading, because the passage focuses on the thoughts and actions of which a person is aware or can be aware. Next, let us consider II.xxvii.20 again: But yet possibly it will still be objected, suppose I wholly lose the memory of some parts of my Life, beyond a possibility of retrieving them, so that perhaps I shall never be conscious of them again; yet am I not the same Person, that did those Actions, had those Thoughts, that I was once conscious of, though I have now forgot them? To which I answer, that we must here take notice what the Word I is applied to, which in this case is the Man only. And the same Man being presumed to be the same Person, I is easily here supposed to stand also for the same Person. But if it be possible for the same Man to have distinct incommunicable consciousness at different times, it is past doubt the same Man would at different times make different Persons.

This passage is the most difficult passage for my proposed interpretation. One difficulty is that Locke does not elaborate on what he means by irretrievable forgetfulness.64 However, even if he did, the following more generic problem remains: any thoughts and actions that an individual is aware of can be remembered, say for two months, and be irretrievably forgotten afterwards. If the underlying metaphysical foundation of the unifying aspect of consciousness is composed of a continuous chain of connections, then thoughts and actions can be unified despite the fact that they are irretrievably forgotten, at least from a first-­personal perspective. This result cannot easily be reconciled with Locke’s claims in II.xxvii.20. However, let us look at the last sentence of the passage cited from II.xxvii.20: ‘But if it be possible for the same Man to have distinct incommunicable consciousness at different times, it is past doubt the same Man would 64 Stuart offers a helpful discussion of possible meanings of ‘forgetfulness’. See Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 360–5.

Consciousness and Transitivity  193 at different times make different Persons.’ Although the example of someone who remembers thoughts and actions for two months before irretrievably forgetting them initially seems to create a counter-­example to my interpretation, this is not straightforward. It is not clear that it is a case of ‘distinct incommunicable consciousness’, because the thoughts and actions remain linked by means of a continuous chain. Locke does not address borderline cases such as gradual irretrievable forgetfulness. Nevertheless, he states that ‘in the great Day . . . the Secrets of all Hearts shall be laid open’ (II.xxvii.22) and reiterates this claim four sections later.65 This intimates that he acknowledges God’s involvement at the resurrection. Since Locke does not directly engage with problem cases such as irretrievable memory loss after two months, we have to weigh how much emphasis we put on Locke’s claims in II.xxvii.20. If we emphasize the claims in II.xxvii.20, the theory is at risk of conflicting with divine justice. I believe that if Locke realized that his claims in II.xxvii.20 can lead to serious injustice at the last judgement he would refine his view to avoid conflicts with divine justice. Let us return to Locke’s claims concerning forgetfulness in II.xxvii.23: For granting that the thinking Substance in Man must be necessarily suppos’d immaterial, ’tis evident, that immaterial thinking thing may sometimes part with its past consciousness, and be restored to it again as it appears in the forgetfulness Men often have their past Actions, and the Mind many times recovers the memory of a past consciousness, which it had lost for twenty Years together.

How can my interpretation explain that consciousness of a past action, which was lost for twenty years is recovered at a later time? Standard memory continuity interpretations have to say that any thought or action that is included in the continuous chain is part of the person’s diachronic identity. They are the target of Stuart’s objection, because they cannot properly explain the loss of consciousness that occurs in forgetfulness. By distinguishing an internal perspective from an underlying metaphysical foundation, which is accessible from an external divine perspective, my interpretation is not subject to Stuart’s objection. From the in­tern­al perspective, consciousness of a past action can be lost for long periods due to forgetfulness, but then be revived again through memory at later times. This means that actions that a person has forgotten during certain periods are not accessible from the internal perspective, but if the memory loss is remediable they can become available again at later times from the internal perspective. Considered from an external perspective, there are continuous chains of consciousness connection and God has access to this underlying metaphysical foundation of same consciousness. In order to eliminate luck or violations of divine

65  See II.xxvii.26.

194  Personal Identity, Transitivity, and Divine Justice justice God can—by tracing the underlying metaphysical foundation of same consciousness—actively participate at the last judgement and make a resurrected person aware of past experiences that would otherwise be neglected due to forgetfulness.66 Finally, let us see whether my interpretation can accommodate Locke’s remarks concerning the ownership of mental items in II.xxvii.26. I already argued that I take my interpretation to be superior, because it distinguishes a minimal sense of mineness from a more robust sense of mineness or appropriation. For Stuart ownership of mental items is grounded in actual consciousness and he prefers this view over the memory continuity theory, because it rests on a coherent prin­ ciple. His concern is that a defender of the memory continuity cannot easily distinguish between mental dullness and remediable memory loss, but this distinction is important if a defender of the memory continuity theory wants to explain why some items are temporally forgotten and retrieved again at later times. Since I already argued that my interpretation can make sense of forgetfulness from a first-­personal perspective, this worry can be put aside. The problem with restricting ownership of mental items to actual consciousness from a firstpersonal perspective, as Stuart proposes, is that it is not clear how Stuart can overcome the problem of luck at the last judgement. On my view, a person at the last judgement, considered from the first-­personal perspective, must have actual consciousness of the thoughts and actions in question—in this regard it accommodates insights of non-­ transitive interpretations like Stuart’s. However, my interpretation also allows that God can play an active role at the last judgement and make resurrected persons conscious of their past by tracing continuous chains of consciousness connections. This is crucial in order to eliminate luck and violations of divine justice. To conclude, my interpretation has the advantage that it takes seriously that Locke’s theory is directed towards a last judgement. Moreover, in light of my mul­ tiple aspects interpretation of Locke’s account of same consciousness, I am able to argue that considerations of divine justice make plausible that the ontological foundation of same consciousness is transitive, without giving up the claim that internally we have to be able to be directly conscious of all thoughts and actions for which we are held accountable. Since my interpretation can accommodate the constraints that motivate Strawson’s and Stuart’s interpretations, it offers a strong alternative. Moreover, it can explain why Locke might have been less worried about the problem of transitivity than his critics. I want to acknowledge a potential worry. Locke does not explicitly discuss what God would do at the resurrection or a last judgement in his writings. Thus, 66 Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, ch. 4, similarly distinguishes between a first-­personal point of  view and an external objective perspective, but she does not engage with non-­ transitive interpretations.

Divine Justice and Repentance  195 one may worry whether it is Lockean to reflect about God’s involvement at the resurrection and a last judgement.67 Although one may argue that we should not speculate about religious matters that are not revealed in the Bible, I believe that as long as we acknowledge that we cannot have knowledge, but only probable beliefs about God’s potential involvement at the resurrection it is reasonable for Lockean persons to enquire about a last judgement. Since our moral actions are guided by divine law and the prospect of divine reward or punishment it is reasonable that persons insofar as they are moral agents want to find out what God will do at the last judgement. Moreover, such considerations are not alien to Locke’s contemporaries. For instance, Anthony Collins, whose philosophical views build on and develop Locke’s philosophy, considers the possibility of mul­ tiple judgement in his correspondence with Samuel Clarke. Collins appeals to considerations of divine justice to reject the possibility of multiple judgement: if God should cause to exist Twenty present Representations of the same past sinful Actions in so many distinct Beings, the consequent Punishment would be Twenty times as much as the sinful Action deserved, and his Justice required. Wherefore if God will not punish for Punishment-­sake, as to be sure he will not, there cannot be two distinct Beings, with each of them a Consciousness extending to the same past Actions, and attributing them to themselves. (A Letter to Mr. Dodwell; Together with Defences and Replies, ATD, 373–4; U 236)

Since Collins’s reflections here are strikingly similar to some of the arguments that I presented in favour of the view that God would use a transitive criterion when tracing a person’s past, I believe that we have evidence that at least some of Locke’s contemporaries are interested in considering what God would do at the resurrection and the last judgement. On this basis, I believe that it is reasonable for Lockean persons to enquire about God’s actions, even though they cannot know with certainty what will happen in the afterlife.

8.5  Divine Justice and Repentance My argument above in support of a hybrid interpretation of Locke’s account of personal identity is based on considerations of divine justice and goodness. In this section I want to reflect further on divine justice and the question of whether Locke’s account of personal identity leaves room for repentance.68 Divine justice 67  I thank Kathryn Tabb for prompting me to think about these issues. 68  As far as I am aware, questions of repentance did not receive much attention by interpreters of Locke’s account of personal identity until Strawson drew attention to the issue. See Strawson, Locke on

196  Personal Identity, Transitivity, and Divine Justice can be understood in different ways and it is reasonable to expect that altering the underlying conception of divine justice can change the conception of personal identity and our response to the question of whether a person’s diachronic iden­ tity is transitive or not.69 To illustrate the issue, it is informative to compare Locke’s and Leibniz’s different ways of understanding of divine justice. Leibniz writes: I doubt that man’s memory will have to be raised up on the day of judgment so that he can remember everything which he had forgotten, and that the know­ ledge of others, and especially of that just Judge who is never deceived, will not suffice. (New Essays, II.xxvii.22, 243)

Contrary to Locke, Leibniz believes that there is no need that resurrected individuals be made conscious of all the past thoughts and actions for which they will be judged, because it is sufficient that God, the judge, has an accurate account of them. Locke would not be satisfied with Leibniz’s understanding of divine justice at the last judgement, because he believes that a person at the great day must have direct internal access to the past thoughts and actions for which she is held accountable; otherwise she would not be in a position to understand the justice of reward and punishment. This point of disagreement illustrates that divine justice can be understood in different ways and invites us to consider more generally the range of different conceptions of divine justice. One extreme position would be a radical retributive view, which includes all actions ever done by the person and, on this view, reward or punishment will be proportional to the number of accumulated good and bad actions. Strawson labels this the ‘accumulated bag of actions’ view and rejects it.70 Although Leibniz does not clearly endorse such a view, his thinking about divine justice comes closer to this model than Locke’s, because the accumulated bag of action model does not take into consideration whether a person appropriates the actions as her own, which is important for Locke. When Locke mentions appropriation in II.xxvii.26 he speaks of persons ‘appropriating Actions and their Merit’. This invites us to speculate about whether the appropriation of an action can come apart from the appropriation of merit for it. The idea is that it may be possible that a person continues to appropriate an action, but believes that she does not any longer deserve reward or punishment

Personal Identity, ch. 19. For a critical response to Strawson, see Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, 139–43. Behan reformulates Reid’s gallant officer example and introduces the example of an Anglican who repented a sin in his youth. See Behan, ‘Locke on Persons and Personal Identity’, 71–2. 69 Strawson draws attention to different conceptions of divine justice. See Strawson, Locke on Personal Identity, ch. 19; Strawson, ‘ “The Secrets of All Hearts” ’, 138–40. 70  See Strawson, Locke on Personal Identity, 149. Strawson’s reasons for rejecting it are primarily the perniciousness and implausibility of the view.

Divine Justice and Repentance  197 for it. I do not think that Locke gives a clear answer to the question. Nevertheless, we can think about examples that make such a distinction plausible. For instance, let us assume that Simon stole figs regularly from a fig tree in the neighbourhood. If we assume further that he confessed the deed a few years later and properly repaid his neighbours for the damage, then this is a case in which a person still acknowledges that he stole the figs and appropriates the action as his own, but does not any longer regard himself as blameworthy. This intimates that simply because a person is conscious of having done a criminal action in the past does not automatically entail punishment for it.71 Strawson raises a similar issue by suggesting that Locke’s theory should leave room for repentance: [Locke] would surely wish to accommodate [repentance]: the idea that repentance—metanoia—can cancel out or detach one from a past wrongdoing in such a way that one won’t be punished for it on the Day of Judgment (or indeed on some earlier, sublunary occasion) even though one remembers perfectly well what one did.  (Locke on Personal Identity, 145)

Would Locke want to accommodate repentance as Strawson proposes? Locke does not mention repentance in the context of his discussion of personal identity, but we have a manuscript note, which reads ‘Repentance Mat. IV.17’72 and he discusses repentance and this biblical verse in The Reasonableness of Christianity:73 As John began his Preaching with Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, Mat. III.2. So did our saviour begin his, Mat. IV.17. From that time began Jesus to Preach, and to say, Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Or, as St. Mark has it in the parallel place, Mark I.14, 15. Now after that John was put in Prison, Jesus came into Galilee, Preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, and saying; The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand: Repent ye, and believe the Gospel. (Reasonableness, 167–8) What this Repentance was; which the New Covenant required as one of the Conditions to be performed by all those who should receive the Benefits of the Covenant; is plain in Scripture, to be not only a sorrow for sins past, but (what is a Natural consequence of such sorrow, if it be real) a turning from them, into a new and contrary Life. And so they are joined together, Acts III.19. Repent and

71  At this stage my interpretation diverges from interpretations by Behan and Thiel, who emphasize that for Locke ‘punishment [is] annexed to personality, and personality to consciousness’ (II.xxvii.22). See Behan, ‘Locke on Persons and Personal Identity’, 69; Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, 139–40, 143. 72  John Locke, ‘MS Locke c.27’ (Bodleian Libraries). Locke does not comment on Mat. IV.17 in his interleaved Bentley Bible. 73  See Locke, Reasonableness, 167–84.

198  Personal Identity, Transitivity, and Divine Justice turn about; Or, as we render it, be converted. And Acts XXVI. Repent and turn to God. (Reasonableness, 169) Repentance is an hearty sorrow for our past misdeeds, and a sincere Resolution and Endeavour, to the utmost of our power, to conform all our Actions to the Law of God. So that Repentance does not consist in one single Act of sorrow (though that being the first and leading Act, gives denomination to the whole) But in doing works meet for Repentance, in a sincere Obedience to the Law of Christ, the remainder of our Lives.  (Reasonableness, 169)

These passages show that Locke’s understanding of repentance goes beyond Strawson’s proposal. Strawson focuses on repentance of individual actions, while for Locke, who follows the Gospels, this is only the starting point. According to Locke, repentance is a wholehearted turning to God and a sincere commitment to live and act in accordance with divine law. Upon genuine repentance one can expect eternal life.74 In the Gospels the paradigm example of repentance is wholehearted conversion to Christianity. Since Locke is a Christian believer who takes Scripture seriously we can assume that he would prefer his account of personal identity to accommodate the possibility of repentance, just as it is important for him to leave room for the possibility of an afterlife. But can he accommodate it? Thiel argues that ‘Locke would have to say that despite my genuine repentance I would nevertheless be subject to punishment for [past misdeeds], because “punishment [is] annexed to personality, and personality to consciousness”.’75 Thiel assumes that for Locke ‘just rewards and punishments depend only on consciousness’.76 If Thiel’s interpretation is correct, Locke would have to give up the Christian belief in repentance. It is clear that for Locke same consciousness is necessary for punishment, but I do not think that Locke is committed to the claim that punishments depend only on consciousness. What other options are available to Locke? Some other philosophers and theologians argue that repentance makes one an entirely new person in virtue of the change of personality or character.77 However, this route is not available to Locke, because repentance does not wipe out the memories of former thoughts and actions, and as long as one is still in a position to remember one’s former thoughts and actions as one’s own one continues to be the same person. Strawson favours the view that a person’s overall moral standing is not judged on the basis of actions, but rather on the basis of one’s overall moral character.78 While it is certainly possible to understand divine justice this way, the notion of a

74  See Locke, Reasonableness, 169, 172–6, 178, 180. 75 Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, 143. 76 Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, 143. 77  See, Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, 140–3. 78  See Strawson, Locke on Personal Identity, 143–4.

Divine Justice and Repentance  199 moral character is not a central concept in Locke’s moral philosophy.79 For Locke divine law ‘is the only true touchstone of moral Rectitude’ (II.xxviii.8 2–5) and divine law is meant to direct our actions. He believes that divine ‘Retribution . . . [is based on our] doings in this Life’ (II.iii.6). Hence, Strawson’s proposal lacks text­ ual support. Instead we have convincing evidence that for Locke persons will receive divine reward and punishment according to their actions in this life.80 A more promising approach is to consider whether genuine repentance could be a reason for not punishing a person for past criminal actions. One possible line of argument is to emphasize the temporal dimension of Locke’s account of personal identity. A person’s diachronic identity has duration and as soon as a person has acquired the idea of duration, she is able to see her thoughts and actions as parts of an ordered sequence. For instance, a person understands how one action follows from another and how processes of planning often precede actions. Repentance itself would not be possible if it was not preceded by one action or several actions that one regrets at later times. It is crucial that a person’s existence has duration and that a person experiences her temporal extension, because thereby a person is able to see her actions as temporally ordered. These con­sid­er­ ations give an additional reason for why Locke cannot endorse the ‘accumulated bag of actions’ model. Actions in a bag are not ordered, but the actions that are part of a person’s diachronic identity are temporally ordered. Consequently, it would be problematic to make decisions about reward and punishment simply by looking at thoughts and actions in isolation; instead their role in ordered sequences of thoughts and actions that are constitutive of a person’s diachronic identity should be taken into consideration. Let us focus on cases of regret, apology, and compensation, before we return to wholehearted repentance. If a criminal action is followed by regret and a sincere apology, and if a person has made fair compensation for the damage, then this whole sequence of events should be taken into consideration at the great day. Inflicting further punishment at the last judgement for actions that a person has acknowledged during her lifetime as wrong and properly corrected would conflict with God’s goodness and not be fair.81 Indeed, it would undermine the mo­tiv­ation to make compensation during one’s lifetime if one knew that one would be punished for one’s crimes again at the last judgement. Locke believes that God ‘has Goodness and Wisdom to direct our Actions to that which is best’ (II.xxviii.8) and the rewards and punishments attached to divine law give God the power to enforce divine law. The prospect of divine punishment is an effective

79  It plays a prominent role in Shaftesbury’s philosophy, who criticizes moral theories, including Locke’s, that are grounded in divine reward and punishment for undermining virtue and character development. I turn to this issue in chapter 11. 80  See also II.xxi.60. 81  See Locke, ‘Of God’s Justice’, 277–8.

200  Personal Identity, Transitivity, and Divine Justice means for guiding persons to act in accordance with divine law in this life, especially if otherwise they are at risk of easily losing sight of eternal happiness.82 Let us assume that a person does not any longer deserve punishment for a past criminal action, because she has made appropriate compensations for it. Strawson would argue that in such a case the criminal action can be neglected and will not be included at the day of judgement, because the person is not any longer morally or emotionally involved in the action, or concerned in the action.83 This brings us back to the question of the objective criterion that God uses at the resurrection to restore consciousness of past thoughts and actions. Strawson favours the option that God excludes all thoughts and actions for which a person does not any longer deserve reward or punishment. Against this proposal it can be argued that including consciousness of past criminal actions—though not automatically punishment for them—can have advantages, because it makes it possible to understand what role criminal actions play in sequences of actions and personal development. Moreover, it makes it possible to give persons credit for deliberately turning towards a moral life and refraining from further criminal actions. Similarly, if acknowledging one’s wrongdoing results in genuine repentance and the person wholeheartedly decides to act and live in accordance with divine law from that moment onwards, there is no need to exclude consciousness of the former wrongdoing. Rather continued awareness of a past criminal action has the potential to reinforce one’s commitment to obey divine law. However, I take it that Locke would accept that as a consequence of genuine repentance one no longer deserves punishment for the former wrongdoing; otherwise God’s goodness would be diminished. Finally, I want to reiterate that the arguments here give merely probable answers to the question of whether Locke’s account of personal identity is transitive or not. We have seen that there is more than one possible way of understanding divine justice. I argued that Lockean considerations of divine justice make it more likely that God will use a transitive criterion when he restores consciousness at the resurrection. Yet if the underlying conception of divine justice is altered, the response to the question of transitivity can change and consequently the account of persons and personal identity may change. The interesting result is that the problem of transitivity is not in the first instance addressed by logical considerations, but rather the problem that Locke would regard as relevant is better addressed within the moral and religious context of his philosophy.

82  See II.xxi.60, 70, II.xxviii.8. For further discussion see Sheridan, ‘Pirates, Kings and Reasons to Act’. 83  See Strawson, Locke on Personal Identity, 142–3.

9

Locke’s Underlying Background Beliefs It is time to step back and to reflect on the insights that my study of Locke’s account of persons and personal identity has brought to light. Throughout the chapters of this book we have seen that Locke’s account presupposes particular moral, religious, metaphysical, and epistemic background beliefs, many of which were and continue to be controversial. In this chapter, I summarize and highlight the role that the various background beliefs play in Locke’s account of persons and personal identity. Locke creates space for a new approach to persons and personal identity by taking more agnostic attitudes towards metaphysics than many of his predecessors. His metaphysical agnosticism is paired with epistemic humility and goes hand in hand with his conviction that we are best advised to devote our time to morality and religion. I want to highlight two respects in which Locke breaks with traditional metaphysical views and advances debates about persons and personal identity. First, Locke remains agnostic about the ontological nature of thinking substances and leaves open whether they are material or immaterial. His deliberately agnostic stance with regard to questions concerning the materiality or immateriality of the soul en­ables him to overcome the problems that arise for the views of his predecessors. The strength of Locke’s account of personal identity is that it holds irrespective of whether materialism or immaterialism is true. Yet as we will see in chapter 10 several of Locke’s early critics are unwilling to adopt his meta­phys­ic­al­ly agnostic stance and, hence, neglect or criticize Locke’s new account of persons and personal identity. Second, for Locke persistence does not require the continued existence of substance, but rather persistence conditions can vary depending on the kind of being under consideration. This is because he argues for a kind-­dependent approach to questions of identity over time. In contrast to Locke, several other philosophers regard identity as ‘strict’ or ‘perfect’ and take it to be grounded in the continued existence of an immaterial substance. Strict or perfect identity continues to be a strong competing view throughout the eighteenth century and several of his critics were not willing to adopt or take seriously Locke’s alternative kind-­dependent framework.1 In particular, they disagree with Locke about questions of unity and 1  For instance, strict or perfect identity is endorsed by Butler, ‘Of Personal Identity’, 1:317–25, especially 1:319–20; Reid, EIP, III.iv, 264–7. Hume mentions it in Treatise 1.4.2.24, 33, 36 1.4.6.1, 6, 8–9; SBN 199, 203–4, 251, 254–6. Locke on Persons and Personal Identity. Ruth Boeker, Oxford University Press (2021). © Ruth Boeker. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198846758.003.0009

202  Locke’s Underlying Background Beliefs composition, as we will see in chapter 10, and insist that synchronic and diachronic unity presupposes an immaterial substance.2 Adopting Locke’s kind-­dependent framework means that we first have to agree on how the idea of the person is understood, which involves spelling out the characteristic features that all persons have in common qua belonging to the kind person, before we can in a further step specify the persistence conditions for persons. The kind-­dependent framework is consistent with different definitions of the term ‘person’, since sortal terms denote nominal essences that are created by us. Locke’s characterization of a person, as given in II.xxvii.9 and II.xxvii.26, is one possible way of understanding the idea of a person. Yet it is not arbitrary that Locke offers a moral and legal conception of a person and understands persons as moral subjects of accountability, because this conception of a person plays a central role within his moral and religious thinking. One of the interesting insights of the previous chapters is that there is more than one possible way to develop a moral conception of a person, as the disagreement between Locke and his early critics, Molyneux and Leibniz, brings to light. Accepting that persons are moral subjects of accountability does not commit one to sharing Locke’s particular and controversial thinking about moral accountability. As we have seen, for Locke just accountability presupposes the ability to be conscious of the action for which one is held accountable. A strength of his view is that it focuses on the importance of understanding the justice of reward and punishment from a first-­ personal in­tern­al perspective. However, as Locke would admit, the view has limited ap­plic­ abil­ity in ordinary human law courts. He is not troubled by this limitation, since he believes that potential human injustices can be corrected in a divine law court. This reveals that his religious belief in a divine last judgement shapes his thinking about moral accountability. Locke’s understanding of moral accountability can be challenged on at least two grounds: first, it is possible to share Locke’s religious belief in a divine last judgement but to think differently about the justice of reward and punishment. Leibniz adopts this line when he argues ‘I doubt that man’s memory will have to be raised up on the day of judgement so that he can remember everything which he had forgotten, and that the knowledge of others, and especially of that just Judge who is never deceived, will not suffice’ (New Essays, II.xxvii.22, 243). Locke would disagree and argue that it is unfair to be rewarded or punished for actions that one does not regard as one’s own, insofar as one is unable to understand the justice of reward and punishment. The second way of challenging Locke’s view is to reject a belief in a divine last judgement entirely. Someone who adopts this position may think differently 2  For instance, see Clarke and Collins, A Letter to Mr Dodwell; Together with Defences and Replies. As I show in more detail in chapter 10, Clarke’s views influenced Locke’s critics Butler and Reid.

Locke ’ s Underlying Background Beliefs  203 about the purpose of reward and punishment and shift the focus from Locke’s internal first-­personal perspective towards a more social perspective. For instance, the purpose of reward and punishment can be seen as educational or as a deterrent for others in society. This means that punishing someone for a crime, even if they are not in a position to remember the deed from a first-­personal perspective, can have societal benefits, because it prevents others from committing similar crimes. Alternatively, one could downplay the importance of reward and punishment for moral development, or even warn that a moral theory that is grounded in divine sanctions can hinder the development of character and virtue. As we will see in chapter 11, Anthony Ashley Cooper, the Third Earl of Shaftesbury, distances his view from Locke’s by questioning the need and relevance of divine sanctions. Molyneux alerts Locke prior to the publication of the chapter ‘Of Identity and Diversity’ that his view conflicts with common practices of punishment in human law courts and that his thinking about drunkenness overturns common legal reason­ing. Despite this criticism Locke could not be moved to change his understanding of moral accountability.3 His particular understanding of moral accountability explains why he argues that sameness of consciousness is necessary for personal identity. Yet in light of the controversies that surround his thinking about moral accountability, it is worth asking whether his critics who reject his understanding of moral accountability would also reject his view that personal identity consists in sameness of consciousness and instead prefer alternative persistence conditions for persons. We will look at Shaftesbury’s and Hume’s critical responses to Locke more closely in chapter 11. At this stage, let us focus on an imaginative critic who denies the religious belief in a last judgement and argues that reward and punishment is meant to deter others in society. Such a critic can agree with Locke that persons are moral subjects of accountability, but it is more likely that the critic will explain personal identity in terms of bodily or biological continuity, because bodily or biological continuity can be traced from a third­person perspective. If the main purpose of reward and punishment is to deter others in society, then the justice of reward and punishment will be considered primarily from the perspective of others rather than from a first-­personal internal perspective. On this view, personal identity will still be a necessary condition for moral accountability. However, within the social realm pragmatic considerations regarding the effectiveness of punishment give a reason to select persistence conditions that are accessible to other people from a third-­person perspective. Since psychological connections as well as immaterial substances are inaccessible from a third-­person perspective, it is likely that our imaginative critic would prefer to understand personal identity in terms of bodily or biological continuity rather

3  See Locke, Correspondence, letters 1685, 1693, 4:767, 785–6.

204  Locke’s Underlying Background Beliefs than in terms of psychological continuity or in terms of immaterial substances. Thus, the shift away from the first-­personal internal perspective towards a social perspective and the rejection of religious beliefs in an afterlife and last judgement, make bodily or biological persistence conditions more attractive. One may wonder why it is of such great importance for Locke to introduce the idea of a person as distinct from our ordinary idea of a human being. One might further suggest that there is an alternative way of understanding the relation between personal identity and moral accountability. The alternative view is the proposal to understand personal identity in terms of the continued existence of a human being, with personal identity being one among other necessary conditions for moral accountability. Another necessary condition could be that one be free, and a further condition—insofar as one shares Locke’s thinking about moral accountability—could be that one be able to be conscious of the past thought or action for which one is held accountable, and there may be additional necessary conditions for just accountability. Why does Locke not adopt this alternative model? I believe that he has good, though disputable, reasons for emphasizing the importance of distinguishing between the ideas of person, man, and substance and for arguing that personal identity consists in sameness of consciousness. These reasons are grounded in his religious belief in the afterlife and his metaphysical agnosticism about the materiality or immateriality of thinking substances. To illustrate this point, let us turn once more to II.xxvii.21 and consider the three different meanings of the term ‘man’ (or ‘human being’) that Locke distinguishes in this passage. First, let us consider the possibility that the term ‘man’ refers to purely im­ma­ ter­ial substances. Given the alternative view that identifies personal identity with the continued existence of a human being, the current proposal is that personal identity consist in the continued existence of an immaterial substance. This view cannot be reconciled with the possibility of transfer of consciousness from one immaterial substance to another. Due to our limited understanding of the metaphysical constitution of thinking substances we cannot rule out this possibility and Locke will not accept the alternative view if human beings are purely im­ma­ ter­ial substances. Thus, he has a reason to prefer his view. Second, can the alternative view be defended if ‘man’ refers to purely material human organisms? If questions of accountability are restricted to this life, then there will be no genuine reason for preferring Locke’s view to the alternative model. However, if one aims to make sense of the possibility of an afterlife, then there is reason to favour Locke’s view, because it is the metaphysically less demanding theory. Hence, Locke who takes seriously the possibility of the afterlife will not accept the alternative view if human beings are purely material human organisms. Next, let us turn to the possibility that ‘man’ refers to unions of material bodies and immaterial souls. As explained in chapter 7, section 7.6, there are different

Locke ’ s Underlying Background Beliefs  205 ways to spell out the persistence conditions for human beings. On the one hand, if persistence of the same human body is required, then—as in response to the second option—Locke would prefer his view because it can make sense of the afterlife in a metaphysically less demanding way. On the other hand, if persistence only requires the persistence of the immaterial substance, then—as in response to the first option—Locke would argue that this view cannot accommodate the possibility of transfer of consciousness. These considerations highlight that Locke’s thinking about persons and personal identity is not only shaped by his moral background beliefs, but also by his religious belief in an afterlife and a last judgement, and his metaphysical background beliefs, which often lean towards agnosticism and are paired with epi­ stem­ic humility. There is no doubt that morality and religion are closely intertwined in Locke’s philosophy. Here I want to bring to light how Locke’s account of persons and personal identity hinges on additional particular, but also controversial, moral and religious background beliefs. My argument that Lockean persons are subjects of accountability presupposes Locke’s view that morality is grounded in divine law. Locke further believes that we can demonstrate God’s existence and prove that God is a superior lawmaker, who has the power to enforce laws by means of reward and punishment. All of these assumptions can be questioned. Indeed, as we will see in chapter  11, Shaftesbury is a harsh critic of moral views that are grounded in divine law. Shaftesbury claims that divine law theories undermine virtue, because we would be selfishly focused on avoiding divine punishment. Another point of dispute concerns the underlying conception of divine justice. This is not only a matter of controversy in Leibniz’s response to Locke, but it is also at the heart of my interpretation of the problem of transitivity. If my in­ter­ pret­ation is correct, then the question of whether Locke’s account of personal identity is transitive or not is closely connected with considerations of divine just­ ice. If we alter the underlying conception of divine justice the answer to the problem of transitivity can change. By understanding Locke’s account of persons and personal identity within his larger philosophical project and the historical and philosophical debates of his day, I am able to take seriously both Locke’s claim that ‘person’ is a forensic term and his claim that personal identity consists in sameness of consciousness. Although I am not the first interpreter to draw attention to the forensic aspect of Locke’s account of personhood, my study provides deeper insight into how Locke’s moral views are intertwined with his religious beliefs. As I have argued, Locke’s thinking about persons and personal identity is shaped by his particular moral, religious, metaphysical, and epistemic background beliefs. It remains to ask why hardly any of Locke’s contemporaries, early critics and successors interpret Locke in the way I have suggested. This question is

206  Locke’s Underlying Background Beliefs im­port­ant, because we should ask whether the fact that they understand Locke differently calls my interpretation into question. I do not think so. Rather there is a better explanation for why they do not adopt my interpretation: they do not share Locke’s particular and controversial moral, religious, metaphysical, and/or epi­stem­ic background beliefs. If this is correct, then we have found additional support for my thesis that Locke’s account of persons and personal identity is shaped by his particular moral, religious, metaphysical, and epistemic background beliefs. The task for the remaining two chapters is to support this point by means of a few case studies that examine reactions by Locke’s early critics and defenders. Chapter  10 focuses on metaphysical and epistemic differences and chapter 11 on moral and religious differences between Locke and his early critics and defenders.

10

Locke and his Early Critics and Defenders Metaphysical and Epistemic Differences

Locke’s account of persons and personal identity is widely criticized on meta­­physic­al and religious grounds soon after its publication.1 For instance, Locke’s early critics worry that Locke’s view undermines immortality and the Christian belief in the resurrection.2 Moreover, Locke is accused of holding principles that cannot make sense of the Trinity and is thus charged with being a Socinian.3 Throughout the Essay Locke never mentions the Trinity and believes that he has been unfairly criticized by Stillingfleet and others.4 Since questions concerning the Trinity are absent in Locke’s Essay, I put this issue aside here. Instead I focus on the worry that Locke’s view undermines the religious belief in immortality. Locke and his critics, who object that his view undermines immortality, all agree that it is important to make sense of the afterlife, but they disagree about the epi­stem­ic status of religious beliefs in immortality. While some of Locke’s critics assume that immortality can and should be demonstrated, for Locke the belief in immortality is a matter of faith that cannot be known with certainty.5 As becomes quickly apparent many of Locke’s critics fail to adopt his new conceptual distinctions between person, man, and substance, but instead fall back to speaking about souls or human beings rather than persons. One explanation for 1  See Thiel, ‘Personal Identity’, 897–9; Thiel, ‘Religion and Materialist Metaphysics’; Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, chs. 5–8. 2 For instance, see Anon., Remarks; Lee, Anti-­Scepticism, II.xxvii, 119–30; Sergeant, Solid Philosophy Asserted, 255–70; Edward Stillingfleet, The Bishop of Worcester’s Answer to Mr Locke’s Letter, Concerning Some Passages Relating to His Essay of Humane Understanding, Mention’d in the Late Discourse in Vindication of the Trinity with a Postscript in Answer to Some Reflections Made on That Treatise in a Late Socinian Pamphlet. (London: Printed by I. H. for Henry Mortlock at the Phoenix in St. Paul’s Churchyard, 1697), 47–57; Stillingfleet, Answer to Mr Locke’s Second Letter, 32–44, 174–6. 3  See Edward Stillingfleet, A Discourse in Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity: With an Answer to the Late Socinian Objections against it from Scripture, Antiquity and Reason. And a Preface Concerning the different Explications of the Trinity, and the Tendency of the present Socinian Controversie (London: Printed by I. H. for Henry Mortlock at the Phoenix in S. Paul’s Church-­yard, 1697); Matthew Stuart, ‘The Correspondence with Stillingfleet,’ in A Companion to Locke, ed. Matthew Stuart (Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2016), 354–5; Udo Thiel, ‘The Trinity and Human Personal Identity,’ in English Philosophy in the Age of Locke, ed. M. A. Stewart (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 4  Locke makes this point in his letter to Stillingfleet: ‘in my whole Essay, I think there is not to be found any thing like an objection against the Trinity’ (Works, 4:4). For further details about Locke’s correspondence with Stillingfleet, see Stuart, ‘The Correspondence with Stillingfleet’. 5  See IV.xviii.7. Locke on Persons and Personal Identity. Ruth Boeker, Oxford University Press (2021). © Ruth Boeker. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198846758.003.0010

208  Locke and his Early Critics and Defenders why many of his critics are not very receptive to Locke’s new kind-­dependent approach to identity is that their thinking is deeply entrenched in the traditional view that persistence requires the continued existence of a substance. Locke’s claim that the continued existence of a substance is neither necessary nor sufficient for personal identity breaks with longstanding metaphysical assumptions and the consequences of Locke’s view may have appeared too radical to his early critics to take seriously his view. Of course, there is disagreement among his critics as to what substances are and how we can best explain persistence, but an overwhelming majority of his critics remains committed to the view that per­sist­ence requires the continued existence of a substance.6 As we have seen in previous chapters, Locke’s account of personal identity leaves open that a person’s existence over time can have gaps, for instance during dreamless sleep or between death and resurrection. The possibility that a person’s existence over time is gappy worries his contemporaries, because they have doubts as to how a person can come back into existence after a period of unconsciousness. In particular, they are concerned that Locke’s view undermines immortality, because it is not clear that the same person will be resurrected rather than a new person created.7 The possibility of gaps gives rise to the concern whether Locke can properly explain immortality. Thus, it is understandable that several of Locke’s early critics press him on religious and metaphysical questions concerning the afterlife. In the following I want to highlight two often related issues that Locke’s critics push against his views. The first criticism concerns the question of whether the soul always thinks (section 10.1); the second the question of whether matter can think (section 10.2). As we have seen in chapter 7, section 7.4, Locke questions the Cartesian view that the soul always thinks in II.i.9–20 and argues that there is no evidence for it, but rather it is highly unlikely. The aim here is to understand why several of his critics, including Elizabeth Berkeley Burnet (1661–1709),8 an anonymous author of Remarks Upon an Essay concerning Humane Understanding, whom I will hereafter call ‘the Remarker’,9 Thomas Emes (d. 1707),10 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz 6  Some of Locke’s predecessors and contemporaries understand substances in terms of substantial forms (see Lee, Anti-­Scepticism; Sergeant, Solid Philosophy Asserted), others in terms of their essence (see Astell, Christian Religion), and others as an independently existing entity that is a subject of inherence. 7  For instance, see Stillingfleet, Answer to Mr Locke’s Second Letter, 36; Clarke and Collins, A Letter to Mr Dodwell; Together with Defences and Replies, TD, 308–9; U 192–3, ATD, 368–70; U 232–3. 8  See Elizabeth Berkeley Burnet, ‘Religious Diary’ (Bodleian Libraries, Oxford, MS Rawlinson D 1092, n.d.); Locke, Correspondence, letter 2627, 6:707–8. 9 See Anon., Remarks; Anon., Second Remarks; Anon., Third Remarks. Although it is widely assumed that the author of Remarks, Second Remarks, and Third Remarks was Thomas Burnet, Walmsley, Craig, and Burrows have argued convincingly that this attribution lacks evidence and that it is more likely that Richard Willis, successively bishop of Gloucester, Salisbury, and Winchester, was the author. For further details, see J. C. Walmsley, Hugh Craig, and John Burrows, ‘The Authorship of the Remarks Upon an Essay Concerning Humane Understanding,’ Eighteenth-­Century Thought 6 (2016). I follow Catharine Trotter Cockburn and refer to the author as ‘the Remarker’. 10  See Anon., Vindiciae Mentis. An Essay of the Being and Nature of Mind: Wherein the Distinction of Mind and Body, the Substantiality, Personality, and Perfection of Mind is Asserted; and the Original of

Locke and his Early Critics and Defenders  209 (1646–1716),11 and Isaac Watts (1674–1748),12 continue to insist contra Locke that the soul always thinks, or—as Elizabeth Burnet does—that it is more plaus­ ible that the soul always thinks. I ask as to why they are not convinced by Locke’s arguments and Catharine Trotter Cockburn’s (1679–1749) additional new arguments in her Defence of Mr Locke’s Essay of Human Understanding,13 written in response to Remarks, Second Remarks, and Third Remarks. One explanation for why the dispute continued is rooted in the dispute over innate ideas (section  10.1.1). Another explanation can be given by examining the revised and refined notions of consciousness, which Locke’s critics develop in response to his criticism of perpetually thinking souls and which differ from Locke’s understanding of consciousness (section 10.1.2). Moreover, there is a worry whether souls can be distinguished from matter and nothingness if the soul does not always think and I examine different responses to this concern (section 10.1.3). The second criticism refers to Locke’s widely disputed claim in IV.iii.6 ‘that GOD can, if he pleases, superadd to Matter the Faculty of Thinking’. Critics who reject Locke’s thinking matter hypothesis include Edward Stillingfleet, Henry Lee (c.1644–1713),14 the Remarker,15 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,16 Mary Astell (1666–1731),17 Samuel Clarke (1675–1729),18 and Joseph Butler (1692–1752).19 Additionally, Thomas Reid (1710–96) is a harsh critic of materialism, though his criticism primarily targets Joseph Priestley’s materialism.20 Critics of the thinking matter hypothesis tend to identify persons with immaterial substances, or the union of an immaterial mind and a material body. Furthermore, they commonly assume that immortality presupposes immateriality. Locke, as we have seen, rejects these traditional opinions and states that ‘[a]ll the great Ends of Morality our Minds, their Present, Separate, and Future State, is Freely Enquir’d into, in order to a more certain Foundation for the Knowledge of God, and our Selves, and the Clearing all Doubts and Objections that have been, or may be made concerning the Life and Immortality of Our Souls. In a New Method, by a Gentleman. (London: Printed for H. Walwyn, at the Three Legs in the Poultrey, the corner of Old Jury, 1702), 33–9. Although Vindiciae Mentis was published anonymously, Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, 227, offers good evidence for attributing it to Thomas Emes, who was a medical practitioner. 11  See Leibniz, New Essays, Preface 52–9, II.i.9–19, 111–18, II.xxvii.14, 239–40. 12  See Isaac Watts, Philosophical Essays on Various Subjects, Viz. Space, Substance, Body, Spirit, the Operations of the Soul in Union with the Body, Innate Ideas, perpetual Consciousness, Place and Motion of Spirits, the departing Soul, the Resurrection of the Body, the Production and Operations of Plants and Animals; With some Remarks on Mr Locke’s Essay on the Human Understanding. To which is subjoined, A brief Scheme of Ontology, or, The Science of Being in general with its Affections (London: Printed for Richard Ford and Richard Hett, 1733), Essay V, 114–31. 13 Cockburn, Defence, 53–63. 14  See Lee, Anti-­Scepticism, IV.iii, 246–9. 15  See Anon., Remarks; Anon., Second Remarks; Anon., Third Remarks. 16  See Leibniz, New Essays, Preface, 64–8, IV.iii.6, 378–82; Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Damaris Masham, ‘Leibniz and Damaris Masham,’ in Leibniz’s ‘New System’ and Associated Contemporary Texts, ed. R.  S.  Woolhouse and Richard Francks (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 210–15, 218–20. 17  See Astell, Christian Religion, §§ 226–31, §§ 386–93. 18  See Clarke and Collins, A Letter to Mr Dodwell; Together with Defences and Replies, LD, D, SD, TD, FD. 19  See Butler, Analogy of Religion, 1, 1:17–40; Butler, ‘Of Personal Identity’. 20  See Reid, Animate Creation.

210  Locke and his Early Critics and Defenders and Religion, are well enough secured, without philosophical Proofs of the Soul’s Immateriality’ (IV.iii.6).21 For Locke the afterlife is a ‘state of Sensibility’ (IV.iii.6) and thus he regards the bare continued existence of a substance as insufficient for personal identity.22 Catharine Trotter Cockburn23 and Damaris Masham (1658–1708)24 are more sensitive to Locke’s position and argue in support of the possibility of thinking matter. Anthony Collins (1679–1729)25 is also a careful reader of Locke, but, in contrast to Locke, who claims that it is more likely that thinking substances are immaterial, Collins regards the possibility that thinking substances are material as more acceptable. He offers detailed arguments in support of the possibility of thinking matter in his correspondence with Clarke. Collins’s arguments provide an important foundation for the development of eighteenth-­century materialist views.26 My aim here is to analyse important factors that explain as to why Locke’s early critics and defenders disagree about the possibility of thinking matter. I propose that Locke and his critics and defenders disagree about the metaphysics of essences (section  10.2.1), the question of whether matter can be active (section 10.2.2), and questions about unity, sim­pli­ city, and composition (section 10.2.3). Moreover, I believe that the disputes about perpetually thinking souls and Locke’s thinking matter hypothesis help explain as to why many of Locke’s early critics misunderstand Locke’s new theory of persons and personal identity, or why they neglect his distinctions between the ideas of person, man, and substance. Although many critics attack Locke’s view on metaphysical, epistemic, and/or religious grounds, I show that their failure to acknowledge his conceptual distinctions between persons, men, and substances reveals that they are not very sensitive to his kind-­ dependent approach to identity and the moral con­ sid­ er­ ations that prompted Locke to argue for his new account of persons and personal identity. 21  Locke refers to the passage quoted from IV.iii.6 and reiterates his point in his letter to Stillingfleet. See Locke, Works, 4:33–4. 22  He already holds this view in an early journal entry dating back to 1682. See Locke, Early Draft, 121. See also Vili Lähteenmäki, ‘Locke and the Metaphysics of “State of Sensibility”,’ in Philosophy of Mind in the Early Modern and Modern Ages: The History of the Philosophy of Mind, ed. Rebecca Copenhaver (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2018). 23  See Cockburn, Defence, 53–63. 24  See Leibniz and Masham, ‘Leibniz and Damaris Masham’, 215–18. 25  See Clarke and Collins, A Letter to Mr Dodwell; Together with Defences and Replies, LLD, RD, RSD, ATD. 26  Some interpreters regard Collins as a materialist. See William Uzgalis, ‘Anthony Collins on the Emergence of Consciousness and Personal Identity,’ Philosophy Compass 4 (2009); Uzgalis, ‘Locke and Collins, Clarke and Butler, on Successive Persons’, 320. For a different reading, which comes closer to Locke’s metaphysical agnosticism, see Vili Lähteenmäki, ‘Anthony Collins and the Status of Consciousness,’ Vivarium 52 (2014). According to Lähteenmäki, Collins does not endorse materialism, but only the possibility of thinking matter. For further discussion of the development of eighteenth-­century materialism, see Thiel, ‘Religion and Materialist Metaphysics’; John  P.  Wright, ‘Materialism and the Life Soul in Eighteenth-­ Century Scottish Physiology,’ in The Scottish Enlightenment: Essays in Reinterpretation, ed. Paul Wood (Rochester: Universty of Rochester Press, 2000); John  W.  Yolton, Thinking Matter: Materialism in Eighteenth-­Century Britain (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983).

Perpetually Thinking Souls  211

10.1  Locke’s Early Critics and Defenders on Perpetually Thinking Souls Locke argues not only that it is highly unlikely that the soul always thinks, but also that the question is irrelevant if we adopt his new theory of persons and personal identity. Nevertheless, several of his early critics express doubts and objections. Locke’s view that a person’s existence over time can have gaps worried Elizabeth Berkeley Burnet (1661–1709), who is a close friend of Locke and started cor­re­ spond­ing with him in 1696.27 She is also a close friend of Stillingfleet. Burnet (then Berkeley) closely follows the heated dispute between her two friends Locke and Stillingfleet and adopts a mediating stance, but also makes clear her points of philosophical disagreement.28 In a letter to Locke, dated 17 October 1699, she reflects on the question of whether consciousness can be interrupted between death and resurrection and writes: Since my coming into the Countrey reflecting on some discourse I had in Town, concerning the state of the soul after death, I seet my self to read the new Testement as heedfully as I could with a regard only to that perticuler, and I confess I find many texts that seem very favourable to that openion that suspends the happenesse of the soul to the generall Resurection and reunion with a Body, yet I think few of them are so express but that another sense may be given, and that for the more received openion of its keeping an uninterrupted self consiousness some places are very express and full, I own I am not quit an indifferent examiner! (Correspondence, letter 2627, 6:707)

Burnet makes clear that, although the Bible is not decisive, she believes that there are reasons to prefer the view that self-­consciousness continues uninterruptedly.29 Her letter continues: for my part I cannot easlyly beleeve a mind so raised and so well prepared must be shut up in a long state of ignorance and inactiveity, its looks like a defect in so excellent a part of the Creation to joyn something so excellent a part of the Creation to joyn something so excellent as a Rational mind to what is so week 27  For further background, see Jacqueline Broad, ed, Women Philosophers of Seventeenth-­Century England: Selected Correspondence (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), ch. 4. See also Jacqueline Broad, ‘Selfhood and Self-­Government in Women’s Religious Writings of the Early Modern Period,’ International Journal of Philosophical Studies 27 (2019); Frances Harris, ‘Burnet [Neé Blake; Other Married Name Berkeley], Elizabeth (1661–1709),’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 28  For instance, she reminds Locke of the importance of interacting charitably with his critics (Locke, Correspondence, letter 2491, 2511, 6:483, 509–11). See also Broad, Women Philosophers of Seventeenth-­Century England, ch. 4. 29  See Locke, Correspondence, letter 2627, 6:707–8.

212  Locke and his Early Critics and Defenders and frail as the Body in so inseparable a manner as to make the operation of the one depend on the texture of the other; not that I think such reasonings of any force against revelation, for if God has made us otherwise I dout not but ’tis in the whole best it should be so; but since many parts of revelation look favourable the other way, wee may be, sure permited to hope and agrue for what is most desireable. (Correspondence, letter 2627, 6:708)

It is worth noting that she offers probable arguments for why it is more likely that minds exist independently of bodies by contrasting the excellence of minds with the weakness of bodies. Moreover, she claims that it would be a defect of minds if they cease to think and be active and therefore, she claims, it is more likely that minds continue to think uninterruptedly. Locke and Burnet are in agreement that it is more likely that minds are immaterial substances,30 however, they disagree on the question how likely it is that minds think uninterruptedly. Her criticism of Locke’s view finds further expression in her private ‘Religious Diary’ where she worries in a passage addressing ‘Mr L’ that if a person’s (or soul’s) existence is interrupted, then it is hard to make sense of the resurrection, because after a person (or soul) has been annihilated it would have to be recreated, rather than resurrected: If your notion implys an extengusing that breath or flame of life is not that the same with Anihilation, & then life would not be resurection but recreation, is it not more probable the spirit or principle of life exists with God or hovers in an imperfect state, in expectation of a more perfect one at the resurection nor can any strong arguement be drawn from the words breath life soul, being used only for the present life in some places since they are used in others by those who beleeved & intended to express them to represent the soul as a separat substance (‘Religious Diary’, fol. 143r–143v)

This shows that Burnet believes that in order to make sense of the religious belief in the resurrection it is important that a person, self, or soul continues to exist without any gaps. The question of whether a person’s existence over time can have gaps worried not only Burnet, but also the anonymous Remarker, who in his pamphlet Remarks Upon an Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, published in 1697, objects that Locke’s view, namely that it is possible ‘that the Soul may . . . be sometimes absolutely without thoughts of one kind or other’,31 undermines the immortality of the soul.

30  See II.xxvii.25.

31 Anon., Remarks, 8.

Perpetually Thinking Souls  213 Locke read Remarks, and his marginalia in his personal copy intimate that he was not impressed by the Remarker’s arguments. For instance, in reaction to the Remarker’s claim ‘I wonder how you can observe that your Soul sometimes does not think; for when you do observe, you think,’32 Locke notes: ‘I wonder how you can observe that you sometimes sleep. for when you observe it you are awake.’33 Locke is not interested in engaging publicly in a debate with the Remarker. At the time Locke is engaged in a public debate with Edward Stillingfleet on related issues and he adds ‘An Answer to Remarks upon an Essay concerning Human Understanding, &c.’ as a postscript to the publication of his reply to Stillingfleet’s letter.34 In response to the Remarker’s charge concerning immortality, he refers to his correspondence with Stillingfleet, and writes: “The immortality of the soul is another thing,” he says, “he cannot clear to himself, upon my principles.” It may be so. The right reverend the lord bishop of Worcester, in the letter he has lately honoured me with in print, has undertaken to prove, upon my principles, the soul’s immateriality: which I suppose, this author will not question to be a proof of its immortality. And to his lordship’s letter I refer him for it. But if that will not serve his turn, I will tell him a prin­ ciple of mine that will clear it to him; and that is, the revelation of life and immortality of Jesus Christ, through the Gospel.  (Works, 4:188)

Locke here reiterates his view that the belief in immortality is a matter of faith rather than demonstratively certain knowledge.35 In light of Locke’s disinterest in Remarks, the Remarker develops the objections further in Second Remarks (1697) and Third Remarks (1699). While Locke could not be moved to debate these pamphlets publicly, Catharine Trotter Cockburn believes that Locke has been criticized unfairly and takes up the task of responding to the Remarker in her Defence. She offers clever arguments of her own in response to the Remarker’s objections and in support of Locke’s philosophy, especially his metaphysically agnostic stance. On this basis, let us turn to the Remarker’s and Cockburn’s arguments. Cockburn points out that it is not clear how the question whether souls perpetually think is related to immortality, but she is willing to examine the 32 Anon., Remarks, 8. 33  See John Locke, Marginalia in Anon., Remarks Upon an Essay Concerning Humane Understanding (Yale University: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, 1697), 8. 34  See Locke, Works, 4:185–9. 35  See also Essay IV.xviii.7. The quoted passage targets Stillingfleet’s problematic assumption that the immortality of the soul can be demonstrated with certainty. See Anon., Remarks, 8. Cockburn is even more explicit than Locke that Locke never intended to give a proof of the immortality of the soul. See Cockburn, Defence, 53. See also Jacqueline Broad, Women Philosophers of the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 153–4; Jessica Gordon-­Roth, ‘Catharine Trotter Cockburn’s Defence of Locke,’ The Monist 98 (2015).

214  Locke and his Early Critics and Defenders Remarker’s arguments to subsequently revisit the question of whether perpetual thinking is required for immortality.36 Here I follow Cockburn’s strategy. The Remarker finds it incomprehensible how there could be ‘a thoughtless, senseless, lifeless Soul’37 and challenges Locke by asking how a soul can begin to think again after a period without thinking: However, you ought to tell us, how you bring the Soul out of this unintelligible State. What Cause can you assign able to produce the first Thought at the end of this Sleep and Silence, in a total Ecclipse and intermission of Thinking? Upon your Supposition, That all our Thoughts perish in sound Sleep; and all Cogitation is extinct, we seem to have a new Soul every Morning.  (Second Remarks, 16–17)

Cockburn offers a series of arguments in response. First, she emphasizes our ignorance of mental operations and writes: Do you understand how the soul thinks at all? How it passes from one thought to another? How it preserves its treasure of ideas, to produce them at pleasure on occasions? And recollects those it had not in a long time reflected on? How it moves your body, or is affected by it? These are operations, which I suppose you are not so skeptical as to doubt of; nor yet pretend to understand how they are done.  (Defence, 57)

Second, she draws an analogy between cogitation and soul, on the one hand, and motion and body, on the other hand.38 Motion cannot be restored and thus a new motion is numerically distinct from a previous motion. However, it is implausible to infer from this that a new body comes into existence whenever a new motion is produced. By analogy it is just as problematic to assume that whenever a new thought is produced a new soul comes into existence.39 Moreover, she shows that the Remarker’s assumption leads to a reductio. She argues that if we accept the assumption that a new soul comes into existence each morning, we will also have to accept that a new soul comes into existence whenever our soul moves from one thought to another. Since this is an absurd consequence, the assumption should be rejected.40 Cockburn accepts that when I  wake up in the morning my thoughts are numerically different from the thoughts I had yesterday, but it does not follow from this that a new soul has come into existence.41 36  See Cockburn, Defence, 53–4. See also Broad, Women Philosophers of the Seventeenth Century, 155. 37 Anon., Second Remarks, 16. 38  This argument is a response to Anon., Second Remarks, 17. 39  See Cockburn, Defence, 57–8. See also Gordon-­Roth, ‘Catharine Trotter Cockburn’s Defence of Locke’, 69–70. 40  See Cockburn, Defence, 58. 41  See Cockburn, Defence, 57–8.

Perpetually Thinking Souls  215 Let us pause for a moment to reflect on an ambiguity. Thinking can refer to our actual thinking or to the power, ability, or disposition to think. When Cockburn argues that it is plausible that the soul does not always think, she means that it is plausible that the soul is not always actually thinking, but at these times the soul can retain the power to revive ideas again at a later time.42 By contrast, the Remarker speaks of ‘a thoughtless, senseless, lifeless Soul’ (Second Remarks, 16) and of ‘all Cogitation [being] extinct’(Second Remarks, 17), which presumably means that not only actual thinking ceases, but also the power to think.43 Are Cockburn and the Remarker just talking past each other? Although disambiguating the use of the term ‘thinking’ removes some of the dispute, I believe that the disagreement whether souls perpetually think has deeper roots, which will become clearer in the following sections. What would Locke say regarding the ambiguity? Although it is possible to argue that a person during unconscious sleep continues to have the ability to think and remember their former experiences, I take it that Locke leaves open the possibility that a person between death and resurrection not only ceases to think actually, but also loses the ability to think and remember her former experiences. This is a consequence of Locke’s agnosticism with regard to the materiality or immateriality of thinking substances. As shown in chapter  7, Locke’s theory is consistent with thnetopsychism, namely the view that the soul, or thinking substance, is material and ceases to exist at bodily death. Despite the ambiguity of some texts, it is plausible to assume that for Locke a person’s existence over time can be gappy in both senses.

10.1.1  Disagreement about Innate Ideas In this section, I want to propose that one explanation for why the dispute whether souls perpetually think continued concerns an underlying epistemic disagreement about innate ideas. Although Locke and Cockburn, who both reject innate ideas, do not see a link between the two issues,44 the Remarker, who is a defender of innate ideas, sees the following connection: If all Cogitation be extinct, all our Ideas are extinct, so far as they are Cogitations, and seated in the Soul: So we must have them new imprest; we are, as it were, new born, and begin the World again. If you say, the Ideas remain in the Soul, in 42  See Cockburn, Defence, 58–9. 43  It is worth noting that not all philosophers accept the distinction. Emes argues that there cannot be a soul that only has the power to think, but does not actually think. See Anon., Vindiciae Mentis, 37–8. In the same vein, Watts argues that the power of thinking must be exerted. See Watts, Philosophical Essays on Various Subjects, 116. 44  See Cockburn, Defence, 59–60.

216  Locke and his Early Critics and Defenders that State of Silence and Insensibility, and need only a new Excitation; Why then, say I, may not Infants have innate Ideas (which you so much oppose) that want only Objects and Occasions to excite and actuate them, with a fit dis­pos­ ition of the Brain?  (Second Remarks, 17)

If souls have innate ideas, then it is not possible that ‘all Cogitation be extinct’, which for the Remarker amounts to the view that the soul always thinks. Leibniz is another critic of Locke, who insists both that souls perpetually think and that they contain innate ideas. Turning to his view provides further insight into how both issues can be linked. Leibniz draws attention to the problem of the individuation of souls, namely the question of what makes one soul distinct from another soul. Since Leibnizian souls are immaterial, their individuation cannot be explained in terms of something material. Assume we remove all the thoughts of my soul and all the thoughts of your soul. Is there anything left that explains why your soul is distinct from my soul? Leibniz argues that in such a case it would not be possible to distinguish your soul from my soul. This problem of individuation motivates the belief that innate ideas must be imprinted upon souls, because they make it possible to distinguish one soul from another.45 In Leibniz’s words: Human souls differ not only from other souls46 but also from one another, though the latter differences are not of the sort that we call specific. And I think I can demonstrate every substantial thing, be it soul or body, has a unique relationship to each other thing; and that each must always differ from every other in respect of intrinsic denominations. Not to mention the fact that those who hold forth about the ‘blank page’ cannot say what is left of it once the ideas have been taken away—like the Scholastics who leave nothing in their prime matter. It may be said that this ‘blank page’ of the philosophers means that all the soul possesses, naturally and inherently, are bare faculties. But inactive faculties—n short, the pure powers of the Schoolmen—are also mere fictions, unknown to nature and obtainable only by abstraction.  (New Essays, II.i.2, 110)

If one accepts Leibniz’s view that innate ideas are required for the individuation of souls, then it follows that the soul has a continuous disposition to think. However, not all philosophers who endorse the existence of innate ideas share Leibniz’s view. Those who believe that there are only very few innate ideas such as the idea of God, are less likely to establish the claim that the soul always thinks with appeal to innate ideas. Thus it is time to turn to other possible explanations for why the dispute concerning perpetually thinking souls continued. 45  See Leibniz, New Essays, II.ifn2, 110. 46  For Leibniz not only humans, God, and angels have souls, but also animals, and even plants and inanimate objects are composed of immaterial substances, or ‘monads’ as he calls them.

Perpetually Thinking Souls  217

10.1.2  Different Accounts of Consciousness Locke’s criticism of the Cartesian view that the soul always thinks prompted some Lockean critics to develop sophisticated views about consciousness that challenge Locke’s arguments in II.i.9–20. Although Burnet, the Remarker, and Cockburn do not say enough about consciousness to spell out their particular understanding of consciousness, some of Locke’s other critics such as Emes, Leibniz, and Watts develop detailed views about consciousness that differ from Locke’s understanding of consciousness. Hence, a close examination of their accounts of consciousness can shed light on why they, contra Locke, insist that souls perpetually think. Before we turn to Locke’s critics, let us begin with Descartes and see how his views were modified in the subsequent debates. Descartes accepts the following two claims: (A)  The mind always thinks (or thinking is the essential attribute of minds).47 (B)   Thinking is transparent, i.e. when I am thinking I am aware of it.48 Locke questions (A), but accepts a modified version of (B).49 As argued in chapter 5, section 5.1, he accepts that thinking subjects are conscious of the contents of their thought and of themselves as thinking subjects, but a thinking subject does not always have to be conscious of the mental act of the particular thought. Emes and Leibniz accept (A), but reject (B).50 Emes identifies consciousness with reflection. This enables him to respond to the challenge that Locke presents for Descartes’s view, namely to explain why a soul after periods of sleep often does not remember many of the thoughts that it supposedly had. Emes writes: But I Answer, That it is not necessary that even whilst awake, we should be always actually sensible, or Conscious of our own Thoughts; for we may be so strongly affected by the Perceptions of some Objects, that we may not reflect presently on our own Perceptions; and some perceptions may be so slight, and

47 See Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, AT III:423–4; CSMK III:189–90; AT V:192–3; CSMK III:354–5; AT VII:356–7; CSM II:246–7. 48  See Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, AT VII:29, 160, 246; CSM II:19, 113, 171; AT VIIIA:7–8; CSM I:195. 49  See II.i.9–19, II.xxvii.9. One may question whether Locke accepts that all thinking is transparent. In II.x.10 Locke asserts that animals such as birds ‘have Perception, and retain Ideas in their Memories, and use them for Patterns’. It is not clear that Locke would hold that animals are conscious of their perceptions. Hence, Locke may not accept that all thinking is transparent, but rather accept a more restricted version of (B). For present purposes, there is no need to settle the question whether the perceptions of animals are transparent, and we can focus on the thoughts of persons. With regard to persons, who are moral agents, Locke accepts that they are conscious of all the contents of their thoughts. I thank Patrick Connolly for helpful discussion of these issues. 50  See Anon., Vindiciae Mentis, 33–9; Leibniz, New Essays, Preface, 52–68, II.i.9–19, 111–18. Watts, Philosophical Essays on Various Subjects, 75, also identifies consciousness with reflection.

218  Locke and his Early Critics and Defenders remiss, and our Wills so little determined by them that they may pass almost as if we had no such Perceptions; as every slight touch of the Body, tho’ really a perception or Thought, is not Reflected on.  (Vindiciae Mentis, 34–5)

For Emes the fact that I am not conscious of thoughts during a particular period, does not show that I am not thinking during this period, but rather suggests that I am not reflecting on my thoughts during that period. In New Essays Leibniz assumes that Locke identifies consciousness with reflection.51 If one adopts Leibniz’s reading and identifies consciousness with reflection, then—as Leibniz points out—the view is threatened by an infinite regress.52 The regress arises, if in addition to identifying consciousness with reflection one accepts Locke’s claim that consciousness and thinking are inseparable, by which Locke means that ‘[i]t being impossible for any one to perceive, without perceiving, that he does perceive’ (II.xxvii.9). However, as we have seen in chapter  5, section 5.1, the textual evidence speaks against identifying Locke’s notion of consciousness with reflection. There is no regress problem if instead consciousness is understood as an inherent part of every thought or perception.53 Leibniz challenges Locke’s view that every perception is conscious. Instead he argues for the existence of unconscious perceptions.54 Leibniz is well aware that his attempt to defend the view that the soul always thinks against Locke is ‘a little different from the usual one’ (New Essays, Preface, 53).55 Leibniz’s position is grounded in his metaphysical commitments about substances and active powers, which I will examine more closely in section 10.2.2. For Leibniz ‘no substance can lack activity’ (New Essays, Preface, 53). Thus if a soul ceased to think, it would lack activity, and hence cease to be a substance. This would be an unacceptable consequence for him. Leibniz offers additional observations and reflections on our own mental ex­peri­ences that are meant to motivate the existence of unconscious perceptions. He claims that perceptions remain unconscious if they ‘are either too minute and too numerous, or else too unvarying, so that they are not sufficiently distinctive of their own’ (New Essays, Preface, 53). For instance, consider a background noise. You may have become so accustomed to it that you only notice it when it stops. 51  For present purposes, I focus on views that Leibniz ascribes to Locke and leave open whether Leibniz himself identifies consciousness with reflection. Leibniz scholars disagree whether he holds a higher order theory of consciousness. For further details, see Larry M. Jorgensen, ‘The Principle of Continuity and Leibniz’s Theory of Consciousness,’ Journal of the History of Philosophy 47 (2009). 52  See Leibniz, New Essays, II.i.19, 118. 53  See Coventry and Kriegel, ‘Locke on Consciousness’; Philippe Hamou, ‘Locke and Descartes on Selves and Thinking Substances,’ in Locke and Cartesian Philosophy, ed. Philippe Hamou and Martine Pécharman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 121–4; Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, 111–18; Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, ch. 2; Weinberg, ‘Coherence of Consciousness’. See also chapter 5, section 5.1. 54  See Leibniz, New Essays, Preface, 53–6, II.i.9–19, 111–18, II.xxvii.14, 239–40. 55  See also Leibniz, New Essays, II.i.12, 113–14.

Perpetually Thinking Souls  219 In this case the change in perception creates conscious awareness. However, in order to notice the change, you must have sensed the noise before it stopped.56 Therefore, there must be unconscious perceptions in addition to conscious ones. Another example that Leibniz offers to illustrate as to why we have unconscious perception concerns waking up from sleep: While sleeping, even without dreams, one always has some faint sensing going on. Waking up is itself a sign of this: the easier someone is to awaken, the more sense he has of what is going on around him, though often this sense is not strong enough to cause him to wake.  (New Essays, II.i.13, 115)

Furthermore, Leibniz challenges Locke’s view that it ‘is very hard to be conceived’ (II.i.14) that the thoughts that a soul supposedly has at night are immediately forgotten afterwards.57 Leibniz responds as follows: Not only is it easy to conceive, but something like it can be observed during every day of our waking lives. For there are always objects which strike our eyes and ears, and therefore touch our souls as well, without our paying heed to them. For our attention is held by other objects, until a given object becomes powerful enough to attract it, either by acting more strongly upon us or in some other way. It is as though we had been selectively asleep with regard to that object; and when we withdraw our attention from everything all together, the sleep becomes general. It is also a way of getting to sleep—dividing one’s attention so as to weaken it.  (New Essays, II.i.14, 115)

These considerations show that for Leibniz awareness comes in degrees and some perceptions are entirely unconscious. Isaac Watts also challenges Locke’s position that it is very unlikely and hard to conceive that the soul immediately forgets many of its thoughts. Watt’s strategy is to offer refined views about memory and dreams.58 Watts distinguishes three ­different types of impressions that can be made upon the brain during sleep.59 First, there are soft and gentle impressions. One may have slight awareness of them at the moment, but they leave no trace and will not be remembered. Second, there are impressions which are stronger than those of the first kind, but not too violent either. ‘[T]his is usually called Dreaming Sleep, and these Dreams we remember and can relate’ (Philosophical Essays on Various Subjects, 120). These impressions leave distinct traces on the brain. Third, some impressions are so 56  See Leibniz, New Essays, Preface, 53–7, II.i.15, 115–16. 57  As shown in chapter 7, section 7.4, this is one proposed explanation that Locke offers on behalf of Cartesian philosophers and then dismisses it as highly unlikely. 58  See Watts, Philosophical Essays on Various Subjects, 119–30. 59  See Watts, Philosophical Essays on Various Subjects, 120–1.

220  Locke and his Early Critics and Defenders strong and violent and in too rapid flux that they do not leave proper traces, because the ‘Thoughts or Ideas are all confounded and mutually destroy one another, so that we are rendered incapable of recollecting them’ (Philosophical Essays on Various Subjects, 120). Watts compares these different types of impressions with the impressions that a seal can leave upon melted wax: The first of these is like a soft touch of a Seal upon melted Wax which searce makes any Image, or at least such as is lost again as soon as made, by the meer Softness of the Wax itself, not retaining the Impression. The second of these is like deep and distinct Impressions of the Seal upon Wax, yet not so immoderate either in Violence of Number as to confound and destroy one another; therefore they remain and we remember them. The Third is like a Multitude of violent Impressions of the Seal upon Wax, which perpetually mingle and confound one another, and leave no perfect Image of any thing. Thus the faint Impressions of the first kind have much the same Effect as the excessive Numbers and Violence of the third kind, i.e. they leave no distinct Traces or Memorials.  (Philosophical Essays on Various Subjects, 121)

Once we examine more carefully the different types of perceptions that one can have during sleep it becomes more plausible as to why many of our thoughts are immediately forgotten afterwards. Watt’s strategy is one of the most promising ways of challenging Locke’s arguments against the Cartesian view that the soul always thinks. Yet the claim that the soul always thinks remains a hypothesis. To sum up, by closely examining how the different philosophers understand consciousness we have found a further explanation for why Locke’s critics continue to insist that the soul always thinks. Philosophers who insist that the soul always thinks often do not share Locke’s view that all thinking is conscious and give different accounts of consciousness, for instance, by identifying consciousness with reflection or by arguing for the existence of unconscious perceptions, as Leibniz does. Another strategy, adopted by Watts, is to challenge Locke’s position by offering a refined understanding of memory and dreaming. Watts advances the debates by analysing the conditions under which perceptions during sleep can be remembered afterwards. Would Locke welcome these critical responses? Locke may have to admit that there are more sophisticated ways to defend the hypothesis that the soul always thinks than he considered, but his critics blur the conceptual distinction between a person and a thinking substance or soul. He would insist that it is important to have the idea of a person in addition to that of a soul or thinking substance, because persons are subjects of moral accountability and for Locke moral accountability requires the ability to be conscious from the inside of the thoughts or actions for which one is held accountable. Thus, he would argue that the mere

Perpetually Thinking Souls  221 presence of a perpetually thinking soul is not sufficient for personal identity, especially if a soul is thinking in virtue of unconscious perceptions. Unconscious perceptions are irrelevant with regard to Locke’s moral purposes. Therefore, Locke would not give up his view that personal identity requires that a person has conscious awareness now and the ability to be conscious of relevant former thoughts and actions. It may be worth clarifying that for Locke it is important that a person is able to be conscious of the contents of perceptions, which are thoughts and actions in the first instance, but it is possible that there are other aspects of perception or the structural relations among different perceptions that a person is not fully conscious of. Thus, it may be more precise to say that the dispute between Locke and Leibniz focuses on the contents of perceptual states and as far as the contents are concerned Locke would insist that a person must be able to be aware of them.

10.1.3  Worry about Individuation I want to draw attention to another worry raised by the Remarker against Locke’s view that it is likely that souls do not perpetually think and then analyse Cockburn’s critical response. This worry concerns the question of whether and how a soul can be individuated or distinguished from matter if a soul does not always think.60 In Remarks the author worries whether it is possible to define or describe a soul in a state when it does not think: she must be actually something if she exist. She must then have some Properties whereby she may be defin’d or describ’d; something whereby she is distinguish’d from Nothing, and from Matter. Then after all, What Security can we have upon this Supposition, that we shall not fall into this Sleep at Death? and so continue without Life or Thought? And bare being is but the immortality of a senceless Stone. (Remarks, 9)

For the Remarker it is unacceptable that a soul entirely ceases to exist, for instance, between death and resurrection, because it is mysterious how after a  state of nothingness it would start thinking again.61 However, it is just as unacceptable that a soul is reduced to the state of a senseless stone, because such a state of existence does not properly describe what it means to be a soul. Hence, the Remarker’s considerations imply that thinking is the essential 60  See Anon., Remarks, 9; Anon., Second Remarks, 13–14; Anon., Third Remarks, 24–5. A similar objection is expressed in Watts, Philosophical Essays on Various Subjects, 116–18. 61  See Anon., Remarks, 9–10.

222  Locke and his Early Critics and Defenders property of souls, because other­wise it would not be possible to distinguish souls from matter or nothingness.62 As already noted the Remarker equates persons with souls and immaterial sub­ stances and fails to acknowledge that Locke distinguishes our ideas of a person, man, and substance.63 The Remarker’s failure to acknowledge Locke’s new theory of persons and personal identity certainly contributed to the misunderstanding of Locke’s position. However, even if one adopts the Remarker’s identification of persons with souls, the Remarker’s position can be questioned on philosophical grounds, as Cockburn’s critical response shows. Cockburn emphasizes that the operations of the soul should be distinguished from the soul itself and argues that we are not entitled to draw metaphysical ­conclusions from observing (or not observing) the soul’s operations: it is true, we have no idea of the soul but by her operations; but that is no more a reason to conclude that she is nothing when she does not operate, than when she does, since we are equally ignorant what the soul is, when we do think, as when we do not.  (Defence, 60)

This passage reveals that Cockburn, like Locke, argues for epistemic humility and reminds us how little we know about the metaphysical constitution of the soul. Furthermore, she shows that the Remarker’s two metaphysical commitments, namely that souls always think and that souls are immaterial, lead to a serious dilemma, which she constructs as follows:64 (1) Assume souls must always think, because thinking is an essential property that distinguishes souls from other material substances and nothingness. (2) There are two options: either souls have other essential properties or they do not. (3) If souls do not have other essential properties, then there is no reason why matter, or nothingness, cannot have the power to think. (4) If souls have other essential properties, the other properties will distinguish souls from material substances and nothingness. (5) If souls have other essential properties, then it is unproblematic that the soul does not always think. (6) Hence, the assumption that the soul must always think, because otherwise souls would not be distinguished from matter and nothingness, is mistaken. 62  See Anon., Remarks, 9. In Third Remarks the focus shifts to a critical discussion of deism and mortalism and the Remarker identifies problems that arise if the soul is not a third type of substance distinct from God and matter. See Anon., Third Remarks, 24–5. 63  See Cockburn, Defence, 55–6. 64 See Cockburn, Defence, 60–1. See also Emily Thomas, ‘Catharine Cockburn on Unthinking Immaterial Substance: Souls, Space, and Related Matters,’ Philosophy Compass 10 (2015): 258.

Perpetually Thinking Souls  223 Cockburn cleverly undermines the assumption made in premise (1). Her argument intends to show that the view that thinking is the essential property of souls does not require that souls be immaterial, because if thinking is the only essential property of souls then the view is consistent with the possibility of thinking matter. If souls have other essential properties, then there is no need to insist that they always think, because the other essential properties distinguish souls from matter and nothingness. The lessons that she draws are, first, that the view that souls perpetually think does not support immaterialism and, second, that the worry concerning individuation tacitly assumes that thinking is the only essential property of souls. Cockburn’s dilemma portrays the Remarker as someone who dogmatically accepts Cartesian metaphysical commitments and fails to take ­ser­ious­ly other metaphysical possibilities. Yet philosophers continue to defend the claims that the soul is immaterial and that it always thinks. This makes it worth examining whether her opponents would accept the dilemma she constructs, or how they would challenge it. For instance, Descartes would not accept the first disjunct of premise (2) and would deny that a substance can have more than one essential property, because he is committed to the view that every substance has exactly one principal attribute.65 This reveals a metaphysical commitment that Cockburn does not take for granted. If Cockburn’s argument is correct, Descartes would subsequently have to accept premise (3). However, would he and other Cartesian philosophers accept it? Descartes is aware that he has to prove the real distinction between mind and body.66 Although he ultimately rejects the view that minds are material, he is at least willing to entertain the question of whether matter can think until he has argued for the real distinction between mind and body. This means that Descartes accepts that it is logically possible that there is thinking matter, but he argues against the metaphysical possibility. Nevertheless, a closer examination of his real distinction argument reveals that he offers little justification for his claim that minds are non-­extended.67 Let us assume for a moment that there is thinking matter. Let us further assume, as premise (3) states, that thinking is the only essential property of the soul or thinking material substance. Presumably there will not only be thinking material substances, but also non-­thinking material substances, or more precisely material substances that lack the ability to think. If we accept a Cartesian meta­ phys­ic­al framework, then the essential property of non-­thinking things will be extension. However, if thinking is the only essential property of souls, or thinking material substances, then extension would be a mode of thinking material 65 See Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Principles  I.53, AT VIIIA:25; CSM I:210–11. 66  See Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, AT VII:12–16, 78, 155–70; CSM II:9–11, 54, 110–20. 67  See Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, AT VII:78; CSM II:54.

224  Locke and his Early Critics and Defenders sub­stances. This questionable consequence reveals a tension in Cockburn’s pos­ ition and shows that Cartesian philosophers have resources for criticizing premise (3). For instance, as I will show in section 10.2.1, Mary Astell rejects the view that thinking can be the essence of material bodies. Although Cockburn defends Locke’s metaphysically agnostic stance in general, her willingness to engage with her opponents and to adopt their metaphysical categories for the sake of argument, leads to a tension that her opponents can attack and weakens her view in comparison with Locke’s agnosticism. Locke, who insists on the distinction between nominal and real essences, would not make any claims about the (real) essential properties of substances, because they are unknown. Therefore Locke’s position is immune to the criticism that can be raised against premise (3) of Cockburn’s argument. Since Cockburn’s argument directly targets the Remarker, I want to ac­know­ ledge the resources that the Remarker has for questioning premise (3). The Remarker is deeply committed to the metaphysical view that ‘[t]he Body is only Passive, whereas Power always signifies something Active’ (Third Remarks, 21). This suggests that the question of whether matter can be active is a further source of the disagreement between Locke and Cockburn, on the one hand, and their critics, on the other hand. I will return to issues concerning essences and disputes whether matter can be active in the next section where I examine critical responses to Locke’s thinking matter hypothesis and the underlying philosophical disagreements about essences, the passivity or activity of matter, and unity, simplicity, and composition of thinking beings.

10.2  Locke’s Early Critics and Defenders on the Thinking Matter Hypothesis It is time to analyse more closely how responses to Locke’s thinking matter hypothesis68 by his early critics and defenders inform their thinking about persons and personal identity. As will become apparent many of Locke’s early critics do not share his agnostic stance regarding the materiality or immateriality of thinking substance. Before I engage more closely with the views of his critics, I want to draw attention to the argumentative resources that Locke’s agnosticism offers

68  See IV.iii.6. For further discussion of Locke’s thinking matter hypothesis, see Martha Brandt Bolton, ‘Locke on Thinking Matter,’ in A Companion to Locke, ed. Matthew Stuart (Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2016); Patrick J. Connolly, ‘Lockean Superaddition and Lockean Humility,’ Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 51 (2015); Jolley, Locke’s Touchy Subjects, ch. 5; Han-­Kyul Kim, ‘A System of Matter Fitly Disposed: Locke’s Thinking Matter Revisited,’ American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 90 (2016); Matthew Stuart, ‘Locke on Superaddition and Mechanism,’ British Journal for the History of Philosophy 6 (1998); Yolton, Thinking Matter.

Thinking Matter Hypothesis  225 and the strategies he uses to counter metaphysical objections. Locke’s marginal notes in his copy of Third Remarks69 provide helpful insight into his thinking. They reveal that one of his strategies is to shift the burden of proof in response to objections against his thinking matter hypothesis. Thereby he is able to strengthen his case for metaphysical agnosticism. To illustrate how Locke employs these argumentative strategies, let us consider some of the marginal notes that he wrote in response to objections in Third Remarks. The Remarker objects that Locke does not offer positive evidence for the possibility of thinking matter: I do not willingly dispute about what is Possible or Impossible to God, (for we cannot comprehend an Infinite Nature) but rather what is Conceivable or Unconceivable to us. And I will not assert any thing Possible, that is Unconceivable, unless I have positive Assurance, Divine or Humane, that it is Possible. Now you bring no positive Evidence of this Possibility of Cogitation in Matter; and I think it unconceivable, according to our Faculties and Conceptions, that Matter should be capable of Cogitation, as a power of Matter, either Innate or Impress’d. (Third Remarks, 17)

In response, Locke shifts the burden of proof and points out that we should not only consider whether there is positive evidence for the thinking matter hypothesis, but also whether positive evidence can be given for the view that thinking substances are immaterial: Can you then conceive an unextended created substance? Can you conceive an unextended and unsolid substance moveing or moved by matter? Can you ­conceive Ideas or thought produced by the motion of matter? The positive proofs of the one side and the other should be ballanced. (Marginalia, Third Remarks, 17)

In the same vein, Locke challenges the Remarker’s view that matter is incapable of thinking in another note: If an inability to explain how any system of matter can thinke be an argument against a material soule the inability to explain how body by motion can affect an immaterial being will be an argument against an immaterial soule. But such arguments raise great trophies from the ignorance of others but think them selves sage in their own. Where both sides are equally ignorant I think noe advantage can be made of it on either side.  (Marginalia, Third Remarks, 18) 69 See John Locke, Marginalia in Anon. Third Remarks Upon an Essay Concerning Humane Understanding (1699) (Yale University: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library).

226  Locke and his Early Critics and Defenders Locke acknowledges our limited understanding of how a system of matter may be able to think. However, our inability to explain how a system of matter can think does not undermine the metaphysical possibility of thinking matter. The mistake of the Remarker, as Locke sees it, is attempting to establish an alternative meta­ phys­ic­al position on the basis of epistemic ignorance of the position in question. Furthermore, the Remarker fails to realize that the alternative metaphysical view, namely immaterialism, is just as difficult to understand, because if thinking sub­ stances are immaterial then it is hard to explain how mind and body interact. On this basis, let us examine how the objections raised against Locke’s thinking matter hypothesis, as well as the defences of it, inform the debates about persons and personal identity by his early critics and defenders.

10.2.1  Disagreement about Essences As has already become clear above in the analysis of the dilemma that Cockburn presents in response to the Remarker, philosophers who engage with Locke’s thinking matter hypothesis disagree about the metaphysics of essences. The controversial issues include the question of whether substances have exactly one essential property, as Descartes claims, or whether they can have more than one essential property. Moreover, there is a question of whether it is plausible to distinguish between real and nominal essences, as Locke does, and whether real essences can be known. To further illustrate the significance of metaphysical questions concerning essences, I introduce Mary Astell’s objections against Locke’s thinking matter hypothesis. Astell defends the view that mind and body are two distinct sub­ stances.70 Her religious beliefs motivate her view that souls must be immortal by their own nature, which means they must be naturally indivisible and indestructible, because we cannot suppose God, who is a wise creator, ‘to make a creature with a design to destroy or unmake it’.71 Astell ridicules Locke’s thinking matter hypothesis by drawing an analogy between Locke’s thinking matter hypothesis and a triangle, which has been given the property of speaking, walking, or dancing.72 Her strategy is to adopt expressions that Locke uses in his correspondence with Stillingfleet with the aim of

70  See Astell, Christian Religion, §§ 226–31, §§ 386–93; Jacqueline Broad, The Philosophy of Mary Astell: An Early Modern Theory of Virtue (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), ch. 4. 71 Astell, Christian Religion, § 227. 72  See Astell, Christian Religion, §§ 388–9. For further discussion, see Broad, The Philosophy of Mary Astell, 66; Kathleen M. Squadrito, ‘Mary Astell’s Critique of Locke’s View of Thinking Matter’ Journal of the History of Philosophy 25 (1987); E. Derek Taylor, ‘Mary Astell’s Ironic Assault on John Locke’s Theory of Thinking Matter,’ Journal of the History of Ideas 62 (2001).

Thinking Matter Hypothesis  227 undermining Locke’s view ‘by his own principles’.73 If it is possible that God can superadd thinking to a system of matter, then by the same token God’s omnipotency should make it possible to give a triangle the property of speaking, walking, dancing, or of being equal to a square.74 On this basis, Astell attempts to show that Locke’s thinking matter hypothesis contains a contradiction.75 While Locke would accept that it is contradictory that a triangle cannot be equal to a square, because it is intuitively certain that a triangle is not a square, it is questionable whether it is contradictory to assume that matter can think. Astell appeals to Locke’s views concerning knowledge of co-­existence76 and claims: that it is impossible for “a solid substance to have qualities, perfections, and powers which have no natural or visible connection with solidity and extension”;77 and since there is no visible connection between matter and thought, it is “impossible for matter” or “any parcels of matter to think,” at least for us to “suppose it contains a contradiction.”78 So that, in fine, I utterly despair of meeting with a triangle equal to a square, and that can eat and discourse; and I find it equally impossible for body to think. Thought and extension being as “incompatible” to the same substance, as the properties of a square and a tri­angle are at the same time.  (Christian Religion, § 391)

Astell infers that matter cannot think, because she claims that there is ‘no natural or visible connection’ between the essence of matter, namely solidity and extension, and thinking. I take it that Locke would resist Astell’s conclusion and argue instead that due to the absence of a visible connection between matter and thinking we should adopt an agnostic stance.79 In the Essay he emphasizes our ignorance concerning the co-­existence of simple ideas and, since simple ideas represent qualities, we are just as ignorant of the co-­existence of qualities. He claims that we have ‘very 73 Astell, Christian Religion, § 388. 74  See Astell, Christian Religion, § 388. 75  See Astell, Christian Religion, §§ 389–91. 76 See Essay IV.i.3, 6, IV.iii.9–17. 77  This is a reference to Locke, Works, 4:465. 78  This is a reference to Locke, Works, 4:466. 79 See Essay IV.iii.9–17; Locke, Works, 4:465–6. Astell’s interpretation of Locke’s view concerning co-­ existence takes Locke’s claims out of context. The passage from the correspondence with Stillingfleet from which she quotes reads in full:  That Omnipotency cannot make a substance to be solid and not solid at the same time, I think, with due reverence, we may say; but that a solid substance may not have qualities, perfections, and powers, which have no natural or visibly necessary connexion with solidity and extension, is too much for us (who are but of yesterday, and know nothing) to be positive in. If God cannot join things together by connexions inconceivable to us, we must deny even the consistency and being of matter itself; since every particle of it having some bulk, has its parts connected by ways inconceivable to us. So that all the difficulties that are raised against the thinking of matter, from our ignorance or narrow conceptions, stand not at all in the way of the power of God, if he pleases to ordain it so; nor prove any thing against his having actually endued some parcels of matter, so disposed as he thinks fit, with a faculty of thinking, till it contains a contradiction to suppose it.  (Works, 4:465–6) 

228  Locke and his Early Critics and Defenders ­ arrow, and scarce any at all’ (IV.iii.10) insight into co-­existence of ideas, because n ‘the simple Ideas whereof our complex Ideas of Substances are made up, are, for the most part such, as carry with them, in their own Nature, no visible necessary connexion, or inconsistency with any other simple Ideas, whose co-­existence with them we would inform our selves about’ (IV.iii.10). While we can know that each subject can have only one primary and only one secondary quality of each sort, meaning that it can have only one particular extension, figure, motion, colour, smell, and so on, we know very little about the connections among different sorts of qualities, including connections among primary and secondary qualities.80 Having argued that we have very limited understanding of the powers and op­er­ ations of bodies, Locke claims that ‘we are much more in the dark in reference to Spirits; whereof we naturally have no Ideas, but what we draw from that of our own, by reflecting on the Operations of our own Souls within us, as far as they can come within our Observation’ (IV.iii.17). Since we can neither observe a connection between thinking and matter nor between thinking and immaterial substance, Locke believes that we should remain agnostic. Astell offers a further argument against Locke’s thinking matter hypothesis. This argument invokes the Cartesian distinction between essences, or principal attributes, and modes. Her argument proceeds as follows:81

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

(7) (8) (9) (10)

Assume body can think. If body can think, then thinking is either the essence or a mode of body. Thought cannot be the essence of body. If bodies can think, thought must be a mode of body. It is contradictory that thought is both a mode of body and of mind. If thought is a mode of body, then God is an extended being or otherwise he cannot think. God is a thinking being and God has all perfections. To be extended is an imperfection. Thinking cannot be a mode of body. Therefore, it is impossible that body can think.

This argument reveals that Astell accepts Cartesian metaphysical views.82 For instance, premise (2) shows that she accepts Cartesian ontological categories. She does not offer a justification for premise (3), but if asked to explain her reasons for endorsing (3) she would likely argue that every modification of a substance 80  See IV.iii.12–15. 81  See Astell, Christian Religion, § 231. 82  Although I highlight her Cartesian metaphysical commitments here, I do not intend to claim that she is wholeheartedly a Cartesian philosopher. Indeed as Jacqueline Broad, ‘Mary Astell’s Malebranchian Concept of the Self,’ in Early Modern Women on Metaphysics, ed. Emily Thomas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), argues she also develops Malebranchian meta­­ physic­al themes.

Thinking Matter Hypothesis  229 has to be understood through its essence. This means that if thinking is the essence of body, then every mode of body has to be understood through thinking. However, this is implausible, because there is no connection, for example, between thinking and a particular figure of a material body. Statement (4) follows from premises (2) and (3). Premise (5) is one of the most controversial premises of her argument as it directly opposes Locke’s view. Locke is committed to God being a thinking immaterial being, but leaves open the possibility that finite minds are material.83 This means that Locke would reject Astell’s argument by denying premise (5). However, if one accepts (5), then it is plausible to accept (6). Premise (7) expresses a traditional concept of God. Since extended things are divisible and whatever is divisible is destructible, Astell accepts that being extended is an imperfection, which she states in premise (8).84 Given (6), (7), and (8), the interim conclusion (9) follows. On the basis of (2), (3), and (9), it follows that body cannot think. This argument fundamentally rests on Cartesian metaphysical categories, namely essences and modes, and assumes that all modes of a substance can be understood through the essence of the substance. It is time to ask whether Locke would accept these metaphysical categories. According to Locke, we have immediate access to ideas and ideas can be divided into simple and complex ideas.85 Simple ideas represent qualities and complex ideas represent substances, modes, or relations.86 Although Locke adopts the language of modes and substances, it is important to note that Locke does not mean by ‘mode’ what his predecessors meant.87 Examples of ideas of modes that Locke offers include number,88 various modes of thinking such as sensation, remembrance, attention, intention, dreaming,89 triangle, gratitude, murder,90 beauty, theft,91 running, speaking,92 or rainbow.93 This list shall suffice to show that Lockean modes cannot be identified with the entities that Descartes or Astell call ‘modes’. While for Descartes and Astell modes are properties of substances, Locke’s list is not restricted to properties. Locke does, however, characterize modes as being ‘considered as Dependences on, or Affections of Substances’ (II.xii.4). However, modes are not the only en­tities that depend upon substances, according to Locke, since qualities also depend on substances and something cannot be both a quality and a mode.94 What follows with regard to the Cartesian categories of essences and modes? It is clear that Lockean modes cannot be identified with Cartesian modes. However, is it plausible to identify Lockean qualities with Cartesian modes? Although many 83  See IV.x. 84  See Astell, Christian Religion, § 228. 85  See II.xii. 86  See II.xii. 87  For helpful discussion, see Antonia LoLordo, ‘Person, Substance, Mode and “the Moral Man” in Locke’s Philosophy,’ Canadian Journal of Philosophy 40 (2011); LoLordo, ‘Three Problems in Locke’s Ontology of Substance and Mode’. See also Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 4–7, 16–23. 88  See II.xvi. 89  See II.xix.1. 90  See II.xii.4. 91  See II.xii.5. 92  See II.xxii.10. 93  See II.xviii.4. 94  See LoLordo, ‘Three Problems in Locke’s Ontology of Substance and Mode’, 56.

230  Locke and his Early Critics and Defenders entities that Locke describes as qualities are modes in Descartes’s sense, there are at least two difficulties with the proposal. First, the various modifications of thinking such as perceiving, remembering, intending are modes in Descartes’s sense, but also modes in Locke’s sense.95 Second Locke claims that our idea of extension is a simple idea,96 which suggests that it represents a quality, but extension is not a mode for Descartes, but rather the essence, or principal attribute of body. This shows that the Cartesian category of a mode does not fit Locke’s ontological categories, because Cartesian modes are neither co-­extensive with Lockean qualities nor modes and the other two ontological categories that Locke recognizes, namely substances and relations, are irrelevant in this case. There is a further important difference: while Cartesian philosophers recognize essences, or principal attributes, as a further ontological category in addition to modes and substances, Locke does not mention essences when he divides complex ideas into ideas of modes, substances, and relations.97 This is not a neglect on Locke’s part, but rather he intends to shift the way we are thinking about essences by introducing his distinction between nominal and real essences.98 As far as modes are concerned, Locke argues that their nominal and real essences are identical.99 With regard to substances, he asserts that their real essences are unknown and nominal essences are complex abstract ideas that humans create to group things into sorts or kinds.100 This shows that it does not make sense for Locke to distinguish modes from essences in the way his Cartesian predecessors and con­ tem­por­ar­ies do, because Lockean modes have (nominal and real) essences, rather than being another ontological category distinct from them. Instead of continuing to speculate as to how Cartesian ontological categories may or may not fit Locke’s ontology, I believe that these considerations bring to light a more important issue. Locke’s kind-­dependent approach to questions of identity over time focuses on nominal essences. However, many of his critics do 95  It is worth drawing attention to a tension in Locke’s text, as he does not clearly settle whether ideas of perceiving, remembering, imagining, doubting, and so on, are simple or complex ideas. He first introduces such ideas as simple ideas of reflection in II.i.4, but then classifies our ideas of the various modes of thinking as ideas of simple modes in II.xix. The reason for why Locke regards them as ideas of simple modes is that all the different ideas of mental acts can be understood as modifications of the simple idea of thinking. This becomes clearer if we consider how Locke describes the difference between acquiring the ideas of sensation and remembrance: Thus the Perception, which actually accompanies, and is annexed to any impression on the Body, made by an external object, being distinct from all other Modifications of thinking, furnishes the mind with a distinct Idea, which we call Sensation; which is, as it were, the actual entrance of any Idea into the Understanding by the Senses. The same Idea, when it again recurs without the operation of the like Object on the external Sensory, is Remembrance.  (II.xix.1)  Furthermore, it is worth noting that in II.xix.1 Locke considers the mental act of sensing or remembering in conjunction with the idea, which is the object of the mental act. Understood this way, it makes sense to regard the ideas of sensation or remembrance as complex ideas. 96  See II.v. 97  See II.xii. 98  See III.iii.12–19. 99  See III.iii.18, III.v.7, III.vi.44, IV.vi.4. 100  See II.xxxi.11, 13, III.iii.18, III.vi.2–3, 6, IV.vi.4, 12.

Thinking Matter Hypothesis  231 not adopt Locke’s distinction between nominal and real essences. Those who continue to understand essences in more traditional ways are not very receptive to Locke’s new kind-­dependent approach to identity, because it invokes nominal essences. Thus their neglect of Locke’s distinction between nominal and real essences can help explain as to why they fail to appreciate Locke’s distinctions between our ideas of person, man, and substance, and instead identify persons with souls or human beings.

10.2.2  Disagreement Whether Matter Can Be Active One further reason as to why Locke’s critics reject his thinking matter hypothesis is that they are committed to the view that matter is entirely passive. As already mentioned, the Remarker endorses this view.101 Here I examine why and how Leibniz and Reid argue for the passivity of matter, and consider how their op­pon­ents who take the possibility of thinking matter seriously challenge the assumption that matter is entirely passive. Leibniz rejects the view that material bodies can think. He endorses a mechanical view of matter and claims that ‘“prime matter” . . . is something purely passive’ (New Essays, IV.iii.6, 378). More complex material bodies, or ‘secondary matter’, are aggregates. According to Leibniz, ‘any real aggregate presupposes simple sub­ stances or real unities’ (New Essays, IV.iii.6, 378). He argues that it is im­pos­sible that matter thinks naturally, because ‘a sentient or thinking being is not a mechanical thing like a watch or mill: one cannot conceive of sizes and shapes and motions combining mechanically to produce something which thinks’ (New Essays, Preface, 66–7). Since thinking cannot be explained mechanically, Leibniz assumes that he has eliminated that thinking or sense are ‘natural to matter’, and infers that there are only two other possible explanations for how matter may be given the power to think: ‘through God’s combining it with a substance to which thought is natural, or through his putting thought into it by a miracle’ (New Essays, Preface, 67). Leibniz endorses the former option and, thus, holds that thinking requires an immaterial substance. In a letter to Damaris Masham, dated 30 June 1704, he elaborates on his reasons for why he prefers a natural over a miraculous explanation: It is true that the illustrious M. Locke maintained in his excellent Essay, and in writing about it against the late Bishop of Worcester [Stillingfleet], that God could give to matter the power of thinking because he can do things beyond anything we can understand; but it would then be by a continual miracle that

101  See Anon., Third Remarks, 21.

232  Locke and his Early Critics and Defenders matter thought, there being nothing in matter in itself, in extension and im­pene­ tra­bil­ity, that is to say, from which thought could follow, or on which it could be founded. We can say then that the natural immortality of the soul is proved. One could assert its extinction only by asserting a miracle, either by attributing to matter the ability to think, received and maintained by a miracle, in which case the soul could perish by the cessation of the miracle; or by holding that the substance which thinks, distinct from the body, could be annihilated—which would also be a miracle, but a new miracle. Now, I say that God, in the former case of thinking matter, would have not only to give matter the capacity for thought miraculously, but also to maintain it continuously by the same miracle, since it could have no basis there, unless God also gave matter a new nature. But if we were to say that God gave matter this new nature or basic capacity for thought, which thereafter maintained itself unaided, it would in fact be a thinking soul that he had given it, or at least something which differs from it only in name. Moreover, since this basic capacity would not really be a modification of matter (for modifications are explicable by the natures that they modify, which this force isn’t), it would be independent of matter. (‘Leibniz and Damaris Masham’, 213–14)

While it is hard to understand how thinking can be superadded to matter by a miracle, Leibniz identifies an even more pressing problem, namely that it is not sufficient that God just once miraculously superadds the power of thinking to matter, but rather God would continuously have to maintain thinking by a series of miracles. For Leibniz, this is an unacceptable consequence. Leibniz believes that Locke is mistaken to appeal to the limitations of human understanding. Instead, for Leibniz, it is unintelligible how thinking can be superadded to matter—it is a violation of reason, rather than a case of lack of understanding.102 If one accepted that superaddition could occur miraculously, then one would have to accept that part of the world lacks an explanation, which means that there would be unintelligible brute facts. This is a violation of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (short ‘PSR’)—the principle that everything has an explanation, or that there is a reason why it exists.103 The PSR is a fundamental principle in Leibniz’s philosophical system. We can now see why for Leibniz the Lockean view that matter could think comes at a hard cost, because it would require Leibniz to give up the view that the world is intelligible. Rather than accepting Locke’s agnostic position, Leibniz tries to show that the position ­violates reason. 102  See Leibniz, New Essays, Preface, 66. 103  Leibniz introduced the name ‘Principle of Sufficient Reason’. He endorses it, for example, in Monadology §§ 31–2, in Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Philosophical Essays, ed. Roger Ariew and Daniel Garber (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989), 217. For further discussion, see Yitzhak Y. Melamed and Martin Lin, ‘Principle of Sufficient Reason,’ ed. Edward N. Zalta, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2017), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2017/entries/sufficient-­ reason/; Michael Della Rocca, ‘PSR,’ Philosophers’ Imprint 10 (2010).

Thinking Matter Hypothesis  233 Like Leibniz, Thomas Reid emphasizes the passivity of matter and defends it against Joseph Priestley’s materialism.104 In a manuscript that opposes Priestley’s position, Reid does not see the need to defend why matter cannot be active, but rather he ‘take[s] it for granted that Matter is that inert & passive Substance which all Natural Philosophy teaches it to be’ (Animate Creation, 217) and is primarily interested in reflecting on the consequences of his view. Since Reid denies that matter can be active, he accepts that all activity, including any causal change, presupposes an immaterial substance: As to the Execution of the Laws of nature that obtain in the Material System we know very little, but from what we know of the inertness and Inactivity of Mat[t]er and from the Active Forces we see every where employed in producing Phenomena, we may I think certainly conclude that these Forces are exerted upon Matter, either by the immediate Agency of the immaterial Cause of all Things or by the Agency of subordinate immaterial Causes or Instruments which he has appointed for that purpose.  (Animate Creation, 222) Thus I think it appears that inanimate Matter is acted upon by some Agent or Agents that are not Material. And I think we have equal Reason to conceive that Animated Matter in Vegetables and in animals of every degree, is united to some Substance that is immaterial.  (Animate Creation, 240)

Reid’s metaphysical commitment that all activity requires an immaterial substance helps explain as to why he equates persons with immaterial substances and is insensitive to Locke’s distinctions between the ideas of person, man, and substance. Leibniz’s and Reid’s arguments crucially rest on a mechanical conception of matter, according to which pure matter is entirely passive and best compared with a machine. However, why should matter be regarded as entirely passive? Although many of Locke’s immaterialist critics take for granted that matter is passive, philo­ sophers who take seriously the possibility that matter can have the power to think, rarely endorse this conception of passive matter.105 Indeed, Falk Wunderlich observes that: 104  See Reid, Animate Creation, 127–41, especially 215–32. Reid starts to target Priestley’s materialism following the publication of Joseph Priestley, An Examination of Dr Reid’s Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense, Dr Beattie’s Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, and Dr Oswald’s Appeal to Common Sense in Behalf of Religion (London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1774); Joseph Priestley, Hartley’s Theory of the Human Mind, on the Principle of the Association of Ideas (London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1775). Additionally, we know that Reid is familiar with the cor­re­ spond­ence between Clarke and Collins, as he explicitly sides with Clarke’s immaterialist position and opposes Collins’s view. See Reid, Animate Creation, 231. For further discussion, see Wright, ‘Materialism and the Life Soul’. 105  See Thiel, ‘Religion and Materialist Metaphysics’; Charles  T.  Wolfe, Materialism: A Historico-­ Philosophical Introduction (Dordrecht: Springer, 2015); Charles  T.  Wolfe, ‘Varieties of Vital Materialism,’ in The New Politics of Materialism: History, Philosophy, Science, ed. Sarah Ellenzweig and John H. Zammito (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2017); Falk Wunderlich, ‘Varieties of Early Modern Materialism,’ British Journal for the History of Philosophy 24 (2016).

234  Locke and his Early Critics and Defenders There seems to be a consensus among most of the materialists and their op­pon­ ents that passive matter alone is unable to produce thought and consciousness. Thus matter is either entirely passive and some sort of dualism must be true, or there must be something in matter, or in certain kinds or configurations of matter that includes activity, such as self-­induced motion, irritability or thought.106

Philosophers who endorse the possibility of thinking matter commonly pursue one of the following strategies to explain how matter can think:107 first, activity can be regarded as a non-­mechanical property that is an inherent part of matter.108 Second, instead of ascribing activity to all matter, thinking can be ascribed to certain kinds of matter such as living organisms. Third, it is possible to distinguish basic elements of matter and higher-­level properties that arise from certain complex combinations of the basic elements of matter. In present-­day philosophy this view is called ‘emergentism’. The proposal is that activity and thought are higher-­level properties that emerge when matter is arranged in certain complex ways, but the basic elements are purely mechanical and thinking or activity does not occur at the elementary level. Anthony Collins has been interpreted as developing such a view and I will examine his view more closely in the next section.109 Fourth, it is possible to argue that thinking is externally superadded to matter, for instance, by God. Although it may appear as if Locke follows the fourth strategy, it is worth noting that Locke says little to explain how exactly superaddition would occur. For Locke there is ‘no contradiction’ involved in God superadding the faculty of thinking to matter.110 This means that it is logically possible that God superadds thought to matter, but Locke’s text does not clearly settle whether thinking is externally added to matter, or whether thinking is inherent in matter, or emerges from certain arrangements of matter.111 106  Wunderlich, ‘Varieties of Early Modern Materialism’, 805. 107  See Wunderlich, ‘Varieties of Early Modern Materialism’, 805–7. 108 Locke’s contemporary, John Toland develops such a view. For further details see Stewart Duncan, ‘Toland, Leibniz, and Active Matter,’ Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy 6 (2012). 109  See Uzgalis, ‘Anthony Collins on the Emergence of Consciousness and Personal Identity’. 110  See IV.iii.6. 111  The question as to how superaddition can best be understood is a matter of controversial debate among Locke scholars. An extrinsic interpretation is given by Joshua  M.  Wood, ‘On Grounding Superadded Properties in Locke,’ British Journal for the History of Philosophy 24 (2016). Mechanist readings have been defended among others by M. R. Ayers, ‘Mechanism, Superaddition, and the Proof of God’s Existence in Locke’s Essay,’ Philosophical Review 90 (1981); Edwin McCann, ‘Lockean Mechanism,’ in Debates in Modern Philosophy: Essential Readings and Contemporary Responses, ed. Stewart Duncan and Antonia LoLordo (New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 2013); Edwin McCann, ‘Locke’s Philosophy of Body,’ in The Cambridge Companion to Locke, ed. Vere Chappell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). An alternative essentialist reading, which proposes that superadded properties are grounded in real essences, has been defended by Lisa Downing, ‘Locke’s Ontology,’ in The Cambridge Companion to Locke’s Essay, ed. Lex Newman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Lisa Downing, ‘Mechanism and Essentialism in Locke’s Thought,’ in Debates in Modern Philosophy: Essential Readings and Contemporary Responses, ed. Stewart Duncan and Antonia LoLordo (New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 2013); Lisa Downing, ‘The Status of Mechanism in Locke’s Essay,’ Philosophical Review 107 (1998). Stuart, Locke’s Metaphysics, 264–80, argues in favour of a ‘no theory interpretation’.

Thinking Matter Hypothesis  235 To sum up, the question of whether matter can think depends on the under­ lying conception of matter. If it is asserted that matter is entirely passive then there is little scope for explaining the possibility of thinking matter. However, there are alternative ways of explaining the metaphysical constitution of material things. Once the assumption that matter is passive is challenged, the possibility of thinking matter gains plausibility.

10.2.3  Disagreement about Unity, Simplicity, and Composition Locke’s thinking matter hypothesis comes under attack due to another concern. His immaterialist critics worry that if matter has the power to think, then it will not be possible to explain the unity of perception or consciousness. More precisely, they argue that since we experience various perceptions as unified, this unity presupposes a simple perceiving subject. On this basis, they infer that the perceiving subject must be an immaterial substance.112 Objections along these lines have been raised against Locke’s view, for instance, by the Remarker, Clarke, Butler, and Reid. The question of whether consciousness presupposes a simple substance is discussed in detail in the Clarke-­Collins correspondence and Collins challenges Clarke’s assumptions about simplicity, unity, and composition by arguing for the possibility of thinking matter. Before I turn to the dispute between Clarke and Collins, I want to briefly introduce the Remarker’s objection and Locke’s critical response in his marginalia. The Remarker rejects Locke’s thinking matter hypothesis as inconceivable and offers the following support for this claim: My Reasons are these; That Unity we find in our Perceptions, is such an Unity, as, in my judgment, is incompetent to Matter, by reason of the Division or Distinction of its Parts. All our Perceptions, whether of Sense, Passions, Reason, or any other Faculty, are carried to one Common Percipient, or one common Conscious Principle.  (Third Remarks, 17)

Locke’s marginal response reads as follows: This argument of unity if it has any force in it supposes all our perceptions of sense to be made in a point which cannot be unless all our nerves terminate in a point. (Marginalia, Third Remarks, 17)

112  Arguments of this kind are not invented by Locke’s critics, but have a long tradition. For further historical background see Thomas M. Lennon and Robert J. Stainton, eds, The Achilles of Rationalist Psychology (Dordrecht: Springer, 2008). Following Kant, this type of argument is often called ‘Achilles argument’. See Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Werner  S.  Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1996 [1781/1787]), A 351.

236  Locke and his Early Critics and Defenders This response may be surprising, since Locke rarely offers detailed physiological explanations in the Essay. However, it is worth noting that Locke’s strategy is to draw attention to the consequences that his opponent has to accept. Although Locke does not elaborate on this point he is likely thinking about the togetherness of our various phenomenological experiences such as hearing a sound, feeling cold in my hand, and feeling pain in my toe. In order to make sense of the view of the Remarker, the sensation of cold would have to occur in the same point as the sensation of pain and thus the various impulses would have to be transported through nerves in the body to this one point. Locke does not deny this view, but rather he exposes the metaphysical and physiological commitments of the Remarker. Since Locke is not restricted by these commitments, I take it, that he sees himself in the superior position.113 Although Locke’s turn to physiology in this marginal note may appear surprising at first, it becomes more plausible if we consider the note in the context of the Remarker’s objection. As the text continues, the Remarker presses Locke to identify the part or parts of the body where thinking takes place: Pray then tell us, what part of the Body is that, which you make the Common Percipient: Or, if that be too much, tell us how any one part of the Body may or can be so. If you say they are many; then let us know how they conferr Notions, or tell one another what they have perceiv’d in their several Districts. Still they must come, however, to one Common Percipient, either by Conference, or at the first Perception; and you are oblig’d to assign this part of the Body, that we may examine whether it be capable of such a Function, or no.  (Third Remarks, 17)

Locke’s reaction to this passage is the following: I make noe part of the body soe. But how any part of the body may or can be soe I will undertake to tell when you shall tell how any created substance may be so. (Marginalia, Third Remarks, 17)

Once again, Locke is trying to shift the burden of proof and does not see the need to engage further with the Remarker’s position unless the Remarker better supports and motivates it. Since we find more detailed and philosophically sophisticated arguments in the correspondence between Samuel Clarke and Anthony Collins, it is time to turn to their philosophical disputes. The Clarke-­Collins correspondence has its origin in Henry Dodwell’s publication of An Epistolary Discourse, proving from 113  For another explanation of Locke’s marginal note, see Jean-­Pierre Schachter, ‘Locke and the Achilles Argument,’ in The Achilles of Rationalist Psychology, ed. Thomas  M.  Lennon and Robert J. Stainton (Dordrecht: Springer, 2008), 119–21.

Thinking Matter Hypothesis  237 the Scripture and first Fathers, that the Soul is a Principle naturally Mortal in 1706. Clarke is troubled by Dodwell’s view that the soul is naturally mortal and publishes A Letter to Mr Dodwell in response, wherein he argues for the immateriality and natural immortality of the soul. Clarke’s Letter to Mr Dodwell prompts Collins to publish A Letter To the Learned Mr Henry Dodwell; containing Some Remarks on a (pretended) Demonstration of the Immateriality and Natural Immortality of the Soul, in Mr Clarke’s Answer to this late Epistolary Discourse, &c. Collins’s aim is not ‘to prove the Natural Mortality of the Soul by Reason’,114 but rather he intends to show the inconclusiveness of Clarke’s arguments that are meant to establish the natural immortality of the soul. After Clarke and Collins have both presented their positions in their respective public letters to Dodwell, Clarke and Collins subsequently defend and refine their arguments in sets of four defences by Clarke, and three replies by Collins.115 For present purposes, I intend to focus on Clarke’s and Collins’s dispute whether matter can think, as Collins agues, or whether souls must be immaterial, as Clarke maintains. Clarke rejects the possibility of thinking matter due to con­ sid­er­ations concerning divisibility and composition. Clarke accepts that the properties of a whole are the sums of the same sorts of properties of the parts.116 Applying this composition condition to matter, Clarke argues that matter cannot be conscious unless all of its parts are conscious.117 Collins challenges Clarke’s view by inviting him to consider the example of a rose. Collins argues that the sweet smell of a rose is not present in all of the individual particles that compose the rose. To explain how the sweet smell of the rose arises, Collins argues that ‘either each of the Particles in that Union contributes to the individual Power, which is the external Cause of our Sensation; or else God Almighty superadds the Power of producing that Sensation in us upon the Union of the Particles.’118 By analogy, Collins maintains, the power of thinking can either arise from the arrangement of the material particles that compose the brain or else may have been superadded by God.119 However, Clarke does not accept the analogy between the sweet smell of a rose and thinking matter and refines his view by distinguishing three sorts of qualities or powers.120 First, Clarke asserts, there are qualities or powers that really inhere in a substance. Clarke further 114  Clarke and Collins, A Letter to Mr Dodwell; Together with Defences and Replies, LLD, 75; U 46. 115  All of these works are included in the 1731 edition, Clarke and Collins, A Letter to Mr Dodwell; Together with Defences and Replies. Uzgalis’s modern edition does not include Clarke’s Letter to Mr Dodwell. 116  For further discussion see William L. Uzgalis, ‘Introduction,’ in The Correspondence of Samuel Clarke and Anthony Collins, 1707–08 (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2011). 117  See Clarke and Collins, A Letter to Mr Dodwell; Together with Defences and Replies, LD, 22–3. 118  Clarke and Collins, A Letter to Mr Dodwell; Together with Defences and Replies, LLD, 79; U 49. 119 See Clarke and Collins, A Letter to Mr Dodwell; Together with Defences and Replies, LLD, 79; U 49. 120  See Clarke and Collins, A Letter to Mr Dodwell; Together with Defences and Replies, D, 89, 92–6; U 54, 56–8.

238  Locke and his Early Critics and Defenders specifies that qualities of the first sort satisfy the following principle, namely that in order to be a power that really inheres in a composite system of matter, it must be the sum or aggregate of powers of the same kind of the parts.121 Following Vailati, we can call this principle the Homogeneity Principle.122 The significance of the Homogeneity Principle will become clearer below when I show how Clarke applies it in his argument for why a system of matter cannot think. Second, there are qualities, which we call sensible (or secondary) qualities such as colour, taste, smell, heat, light, sound. Such qualities do not exist in material objects, but are only produced in thinking subjects. For Clarke, the sweet smell of a rose belongs to this second type of qualities and ‘is well known not to be a Quality really inhering in the Rose; but a Sensation, which is merely in him that smells it, and a Mode of the Thinking Substance that is the Man.’123 Third, Clarke acknowledges that there are other powers such as magnetism, gravity, and electrical attractions that ‘are not real Qualities at all, residing in any Subject, but merely abstract Names to express the Effects of some determinate Motions of certain Streams of Matter’.124 On the basis of these distinctions, it becomes clear as to why Clarke rejects Collins’s analogy between the sweet smell of a rose and thinking matter. For Clarke, consciousness is not a quality or power of the second or third kind, because it is neither merely an effect produced in another substance (such as the smell of a rose, which is a sensation caused by the rose in another substance, namely a thinking and sensing human being) nor merely an abstract name. Instead consciousness really inheres in a subject. Thus the analogy breaks down because Collins focuses on two different sorts of qualities.125 Nevertheless, Collins does not give up and shifts the focus to another example, namely the roundness of a globe.126 Since roundness does not belong to the second and third type of qualities, the objections that Clarke raised against the smell of the rose example do not apply. For Collins roundness is a quality of a complex object, but it is not an aggregate of properties of the same kind, which inhere in the parts. Why not? Because as soon as one divides a round body, ‘it will never be found to consist only of round Parts.’127 Collins argues that this example ‘prove[s] 121  Clarke states the principle as follows: ‘every Power of Quality, that is or can be inherent in any System of Matter, is nothing else than the Sum or Aggregate of so many Powers of Qualities of the same kind, inherent in all its Parts’ (D, 92; U 56). 122  See Ezio Vailati, ‘Clarke’s Extended Soul,’ Journal of the History of Philosophy 31 (1993): 395. For helpful further discussion, see also Marleen Rozemond, ‘Can Matter Think? The Mind-­Body Problem in the Clarke-­Collins Correspondence,’ in Topics in Early Modern Philosophy of Mind, ed. Jon Miller (Dordrecht: Springer, 2009); Marleen Rozemond, ‘The Achilles Argument and the Nature of Matter in the Clarke Collins Correspondence,’ in The Achilles of Rationalist Psychology, ed. Thomas M. Lennon and Robert J. Stainton (Dordrecht: Springer, 2008); Uzgalis, ‘Introduction’, 22–6. 123  Clarke and Collins, A Letter to Mr Dodwell; Together with Defences and Replies, D, 94; U57. 124  Clarke and Collins, A Letter to Mr Dodwell; Together with Defences and Replies, D, 94; U 57. 125  See Clarke and Collins, A Letter to Mr Dodwell; Together with Defences and Replies, D, 95; U 58. 126  See Clarke and Collins, A Letter to Mr Dodwell; Together with Defences and Replies, RSD, 200–4; U 123–6. 127  Clarke and Collins, A Letter to Mr Dodwell; Together with Defences and Replies, RSD, 200; U 123; see also RSD, 203–4; U 125.

Thinking Matter Hypothesis  239 that there are Powers in Matter that are not the Sums of Powers of the same kind’.128 By the same token, it should also be possible ‘to show that Consciousness, of whose Nature we are ignorant, may inhere in a System of Matter, without being the Sum of the Consciousnesses of the Parts’.129 This means that Collins rejects the Homogeneity Principle and regards it as plausible that a complex system of matter can have the power to think, even if the individual material particles that compose it lack the power to think. To see whether Clarke would be willing to accept Collins’s arguments in support of the possibility of thinking matter, it is helpful to turn to one of Clarke’s arguments concerning the unity of consciousness:130 I think it is proved strongly, that Consciousness cannot reside in a Being that consists of a Multitude of separate and distinct Parts: Because if it could, it must ne­ ces­ sar­ ily follow, either that it would become a Multitude of distinct Consciousnesses, contrary to the Supposition which you your self allow; or else that an Individual Quality of each single Particle, would become the Individual Quality of every one of the rest likewise, which is a Contradiction in Terms; or else, that the Consciousness would be one Power resulting from the contributing Powers of all the several separate and distinct Particles; in which case, it would be, as I have before proved in enumerating the several kinds of Powers, a mere abstract Name or complex Notion, and not a real Quality residing in any Subject at all.131

Clarke’s argument can be analysed as follows: (1) Assume consciousness resides in a composite being with multiple separate and distinct parts. (2) If (1) is correct, then it follows that either (i) consciousness becomes a multi­tude of distinct consciousnesses; or (ii) that an individual quality of each single particle, would become the individual quality of every particle of the composite as well; or (iii) that the consciousness would be one power resulting from the contributing powers of all the several separate and distinct particles (3) Option (i) should be rejected because it postulates a multitude of consciousnesses, but cannot account for unity of consciousness. (4) According to option (ii), all the particles of the composite would have the same numerical consciousness, but then the particles would cease to be distinct. Hence, option (ii) leads to a contradiction. 128  Clarke and Collins, A Letter to Mr Dodwell; Together with Defences and Replies, RSD, 204; U 125. 129  Clarke and Collins, A Letter to Mr Dodwell; Together with Defences and Replies, RSD, 204; U 125–6. 130  In the following I am building on the helpful analysis of the argument by Vailati, ‘Clarke’s Extended Soul,’ 395–6. 131  Clarke and Collins, A Letter to Mr Dodwell; Together with Defences and Replies, SD, 166–7; U 101.

240  Locke and his Early Critics and Defenders (5) According to option (iii), consciousness is a power that arises from the powers of all the separate and distinct particles of the composite, from which it follows that consciousness is not a real quality inherent in any subject. (6) Given the problematic consequences of options (i), (ii), and (iii), assumption (1) is false. (7) Therefore, consciousness inheres in a simple being. Premise (5) is at the centre of the dispute between Clarke and Collins. Clarke endorses it, because he is committed to the Homogeneity Principle. The Homogeneity Principle is motivated by his metaphysical commitments regarding causation. Clarke accepts that an effect cannot contain anything that is not already contained in the cause, which is grounded in the principle that something cannot ‘be produced out of Nothing’.132 Given these causal principles, we can see as to why Clarke opposes the possibility that a new power arises from an aggregate that is not yet contained in the particles that compose the aggregate. If he admitted that consciousness could arise out of a certain arrangement of material particles, he would have to accept that an effect can contain more than its causes, which Clarke regards as a violation of the principle that something cannot be produced out of nothing. Clarke further rejects the possibility of thinking matter on religious grounds. Since these arguments directly bear on Clarke’s and Collins’s respective views about consciousness and personal identity, it is worth examining them here. The dispute starts with Clarke’s objection that if thinking is a mode of a changing ­system of matter, then it is not possible to explain how the same person is resurrected, but instead a new person similar to me would be created: But if Thinking be in realty nothing but a Power or Mode, which inhering in a loose and fleeting System of Matter, perishes utterly at the Dissolution of the Body; then the restoring the Power of Thinking to the same Body at the Resurrection, will not be a Raising again of the same Individual Person; but it will be as truly a Creation of a new Person, as the Addition of the like Power of Thinking to new Body Now, would be the Creation of a new Man.133

In response, Collins is right to point out that the argument depends on a particular understanding of consciousness.134 Collins accepts that, if the view that personal identity consists in sameness of consciousness is interpreted as requiring nu­mer­ 132  Clarke and Collins, A Letter to Mr Dodwell; Together with Defences and Replies, SD, 155; U 94. 133  Clarke and Collins, A Letter to Mr Dodwell; Together with Defences and Replies, TD, 308; U 192–3. This passage is cited in Collins’s Answer to Mr Clarke’s Third Defence, ATD, 368–9; U 232–3. 134 See Clarke and Collins, A Letter to Mr Dodwell; Together with Defences and Replies, ATD, 369–71; U 233–4.

Thinking Matter Hypothesis  241 ic­al identity of the same ‘Acts of Thinking or Consciousness’,135 then it follows that there cannot be two numerically identical acts of consciousness at different times, because an act of consciousness perishes the moment it begins to exist. Consequently, a person would not continue to exist over time and it would not be possible to explain the resurrection.136 However, Collins proposes that it is more plausible to understand consciousness or memory as ‘a present Representation of a past Action, and that personal Identity consists only in having such a Consciousness or Memory’.137 Once we adopt this understanding of consciousness, Collins asserts, it will be possible to explain the resurrection. For him ‘the restoring the Power of Thinking to the same (or if you please a different) Body at the Resurrection, with a Memory of Consciousness extending to past Actions, will be a raising the same Person, and not a Creation of a new Person.’138 Just as thinking is restored after a night of sleep, Collins believes, it will be pos­sible to restore thinking at the resurrection. Clarke is not satisfied by Collins’s response and draws attention to the fact that representations or memory can be false.139 The problem that Clarke identifies has received attention in the twentieth-­century secondary literature on Locke, where it is discussed as the problem of whether Locke can distinguish seeming from genuine memory.140 The worry is that seeming memory is insufficient for personal identity, but in order to distinguish genuine memory from seeming memory a more robust account of personal identity is required.141 Although it can be argued that Collins’s view departs from Locke’s account of personal identity insofar as Collins can be read as identifying consciousness with memory and does not pay much attention to the other aspects of Locke’s same consciousness account, the controversy illustrates that there is disagreement as to how sameness of consciousness is best understood. Those who equate sameness of consciousness with seeming memory tend to be critical of consciousness-­based accounts of personal identity. However, sameness of consciousness need not be understood in this way. Thus, accounts of personal identity vary depending on how consciousness or sameness of consciousness is understood. There is no doubt that Locke does not share Clarke’s understanding of consciousness that focuses on individual acts of consciousness, because for Locke

135  Clarke and Collins, A Letter to Mr Dodwell; Together with Defences and Replies, ATD, 370; U 234. 136 See Clarke and Collins, A Letter to Mr Dodwell; Together with Defences and Replies, ATD, 370–1; U 234. 137  Clarke and Collins, A Letter to Mr Dodwell; Together with Defences and Replies, ATD, 371; U 234. 138  Clarke and Collins, A Letter to Mr Dodwell; Together with Defences and Replies, ATD, 369; U 233. 139  See Clarke and Collins, A Letter to Mr Dodwell; Together with Defences and Replies, FD, 426–9; U 271–3. 140 For instance, see Flew, ‘Locke and the Problem of Personal Identity’; Winkler, ‘Locke on Personal Identity’. 141  I believe that Locke has resources to respond to the worry, as argued in chapter 6.

242  Locke and his Early Critics and Defenders sameness of consciousness is more complex and has a richer structure.142 Moreover, Locke has resources, as I argued in chapters 5 and 6, to respond to the worry that memory or representations can be false. First, for Locke memory involves previous awareness, which rules out merely imaginary memories. Although it is not possible to distinguish between genuine and seeming memory from a first-­person perspective, I suggested that considered from an external or divine perspective there is no question of whether the contents of mental states are genuine memories. Indeed, I believe that Locke is in a stronger position than Collins, who identifies consciousness with memory, to respond to Clarke’s objections. Clarke worries that in the absence of an immaterial substance there are merely distinct conscious states. However, for Locke sameness of consciousness does not reduce to the set of distinct conscious states, but rather the various individual conscious states are unified for Locke. The difference between Clarke’s and Locke’s view is that Clarke maintains that only immaterial substances can provide unity, while for Locke, given we adopt his rich conception of sameness of consciousness, same consciousness has a unifying function and this unifying function does not have to be ontologically realized by an immaterial substance. I want to end by noting that Locke’s well-­known critics Butler and Reid are both influenced by Clarke and may be better seen as disciples of Clarke than careful readers of Locke. Butler corresponded with Clarke. Butler’s dissertation ‘Of Personal Identity’ includes a reference to Collins’s Answer to Mr Clarke’s Third Defence.143 This dissertation is appended to Butler’s work The Analogy of Religion. Butler starts The Analogy of Religion with a chapter ‘Of a Future Life’ (I.i), which draws on views that Clarke develops in his correspondence with Collins. Butler writes: All presumptions of death’s being the destruction of living beings, must go upon supposition that they are compounded; and so, discerptible. But since consciousness is a single and indivisible power, it should seem that the subject in which it resides must be so too.  (Analogy of Religion, I.i.10, 1:24–5)

As the text continues, Butler reiterates the claim that not only perception or consciousness is indivisible, but also the perceiving subject or the conscious being. In a footnote he credits Clarke for having given such an argument and refers the reader to ‘Dr. Clarke’s Letter to Mr. Dodwell, and the defences of it’.144 Like Butler, Reid asserts that thinking beings are immaterial. We further know that Reid is familiar with the Clarke-­Collins correspondence and he does not hide 142  For the same reason Locke would reject objections by Butler and Reid that appeal to the transient nature of conscious mental states. See Butler, ‘Of Personal Identity’, 1:321–2; Reid, EIP, III.6, 278. See also Uzgalis, ‘Locke and Collins, Clarke and Butler, on Successive Persons’. 143  See Butler, ‘Of Personal Identity’, 1:321. 144 Butler, Analogy of Religion, I.i.10, 1:25, n. c.

Thinking Matter Hypothesis  243 that he sides with Clarke.145 Indeed, Reid explicitly endorses Clarke’s immaterialism and the Homogeneity Principle in a manuscript: Dr Samuel Clarke one of the greatest Metaphysicians of this Age, has endeavoured to shew that the divisibility of Matter is inconsistent with its being the Subject of Thought. Matter is made up of parts each of which is a distin[c]t Substance & has its own inherent Qualities. Every Quality in the whole is compounded of parts of the same Quality inherent in some or in all the parts of the compound substance. Every part being a distinct Substance whatever is inherent in one part cannot be the same that is inherent in another part. External Denominations such as Figure or Place or Use may be common to the Whole, but no inherent Quality can. Thinking is an inherent Quality in its proper Subject, the thinking Being. To suppose one part of a thought to be in one Substance and another part of the same Thought in another Substance appears to be absurd. The Subject of Thought therefore must be one individual Substance. But no Matter nor part of Matter is one individual Substance & therefore Matter cannot be the Subject of Thought.  (Animate Creation, 230–1)

Reid’s commitment to immaterialism also shapes his thinking about personal identity in Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man. Reid’s critical discussion of Locke’s account of personal identity is preceded by a chapter, entitled ‘Of Identity’ (EIP, III.4), where Reid asserts that personal identity requires the continued ­existence of an indivisible substance: My personal identity, therefore, implies the continued existence of that in­di­vis­ ible thing which I call myself. Whatever this self may be, it is something which thinks, and deliberates, and resolves, and acts, and suffers. I am not thought, I  am not action, I am not feeling; I am something that thinks, and acts, and suffers. My thoughts, and actions, and feelings, change every moment; they have no continued, but a successive existence; but that self or I, to which they belong, is permanent, and has the same relation to all the succeeding thoughts, actions, and feelings, which I call mine.  (EIP, III.4, 264)

Understanding Butler’s and Reid’s philosophical views about personal identity in light of the Clarke-­Collins correspondence and their endorsement of Clarke’s metaphysical arguments illuminates as to why Butler and Reid both take for granted that persons are immaterial substances and fail to acknowledge Locke’s distinctions between our ideas of person, man, and substance.

145  For instance, Reid notes that he regards Clarke’s answers to Collins as ‘very satisfying’ (Animate Creation, 231).

244  Locke and his Early Critics and Defenders

10.3  Final Reflections on Metaphysical and Epistemic Differences The considerations in this chapter provide a glimpse into the various objections that have been raised against Locke’s account of persons and personal identity and the attempts to defend his view. My discussion is not meant to be complete, but rather by focusing on the lively debates concerning perpetually thinking souls and thinking matter I hope to have shown that in order to understand as to why Locke’s early critics do not adopt Locke’s new consciousness-­based account of personal identity, let alone his distinction between the ideas of person, man, and substance, we have to take seriously that they endorse underlying metaphysical and/or epistemic commitments that Locke does not share. Moreover, the considerations above shed further light on the scope of Locke’s metaphysical agnosticism and his epistemic humility. His agnosticism offers power­ful tools to counter dogmatic metaphysical assumptions of his con­tem­por­ ar­ies. He appeals to agnosticism to establish the thinking matter hypothesis as an alternative to immaterialism. Moreover, he remains agnostic about the meta­ physics of real essences. However, with regard to other issues he is more willing to take a stance. He accepts that God’s existence can be demonstrated and is in agreement with the majority of his early critics that it is important to take ser­ ious­ly the possibility of the afterlife, though by contrast with some of his critics he denies that life after death can be proven with certainty. Furthermore, Locke clearly asserts that there are no innate ideas and thus would not accept appeals to innate ideas as evidence for perpetually thinking souls. The examination has further revealed that several of Locke’s critics who equate persons with immaterial substances and neglect Locke’s distinctions between the ideas of person, man, and substance understand consciousness differently than Locke does, for instance by identifying consciousness with reflection—a view that Locke does not share. Although there is scope for understanding consciousness differently than Locke does, several of the alternative views are not well suited for Locke’s moral purposes. Another point of disagreement concerns philosophical disputes about unity and composition. Locke departs from traditional views that assume that only immaterial sub­stances can provide unity, but several of his early critics insist that unity requires an immaterial substance. For Clarke, who is a notable defender of this view, this is a consequence of the Homogeneity Principle, namely the principle that a whole cannot have any quality that is not also a quality of all of its parts. Locke does not want to be committed to abstract metaphysical principles. Instead his starting point is our empirical experience of unity. Having experienced several thoughts and actions as unified in one self, Locke’s philosophy supports that it is plausible to assume that our experience of unity has an underlying metaphysical foundation, though this remains a probable inference and the exact

Final Reflections  245 metaphysical constitution of the underlying metaphysical foundation remains unknown to us. Taking seriously the different metaphysical and epistemic background beliefs shows that the success of the various objections raised against Locke’s view by his early critics depends on whether one favours the metaphysical and epistemic beliefs of his critics or Locke’s view. In any case, I hope to have shown that Locke has resources to push back against various objections.

11

Locke and his Early Critics and Defenders Moral and Religious Differences

In the previous chapter we saw that many of Locke’s early critics challenge his account of persons and personal identity on metaphysical, epistemic, and/or religious grounds. Taking the different metaphysical and epistemic commitments into consideration helps explain as to why Locke’s early critics question or reject Locke’s account of personal identity and neglect his distinctions between the ideas of person, man, and substance. In this chapter I focus on objections to Locke’s account of persons and personal identity that can be traced back to different moral and religious background beliefs. Here I restrict the discussion to alternative views developed by Anthony Ashley Cooper (1671–1713), who in 1699 becomes the Third Earl of Shaftesbury,1 and David Hume (1711–76). Although they are not the only thinkers to questions Locke’s view on moral and religious grounds, Shaftesbury’s and Hume’s philosophical views about selfhood, persons, and personal identity do not only differ from Locke’s position, but their respective approaches to persons and personal identity also differ from each offer. These differences, as I intend to show, are rooted in their divergent underlying moral and religious views. Thus, Shaftesbury and Hume serve as good representatives to illustrate how our conception of persons and personal identity can change if Locke’s underlying moral and religious beliefs are altered or rejected. It is worth noting that Shaftesbury’s and Locke’s relationship is close, but also ambivalent.2 At the time of Shaftesbury’s birth Locke lives in the household of Shaftesbury’s grandfather (who becomes the First Earl of Shaftesbury in 1672), and in 1674 Locke is entrusted to supervise Shaftesbury’s education.3 They remain 1  Hereafter I follow common practice in the literature and call him ‘Shaftesbury’. 2  For further details of Shaftesbury’s life and works, see Michael B. Gill, ‘Lord Shaftesbury [Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury],’ ed. Edward N. Zalta, Fall 2016 ed., Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2016), https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/shaftesbury/; John McAteer, ‘Shaftesbury,’ ed. James Fieser and Bradley Dowden, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2011), http://www.iep.utm. edu/shaftes/; J. R. Milton, ‘The Third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713),’ in The Continuum Companion to Locke, ed. S.-J. Savonius-­Wroth, Paul Schuurman, and Jonathan Walmsley (London and New York: Continuum, 2010); Gideon Yaffe, ‘Earl of Shaftesbury,’ in A Companion to Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Steven Nadler (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002). 3  We can assume that Shaftesbury’s education was meant to follow principles that Locke subsequently published in Some Thoughts Concerning Education.

Locke on Persons and Personal Identity. Ruth Boeker, Oxford University Press (2021). © Ruth Boeker. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198846758.003.0011

Locke and his Early Critics and Defenders  247 friends and correspond until Locke’s death in 1704. Shaftesbury is introduced to philosophy by Locke and never criticizes his teacher explicitly in his published works, but as he tries to find his own philosophical voice he often distances his views from Locke’s. Among Shaftesbury’s published works Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, which is a collection of his mature works, is the most significant source containing his mature philosophical views. For Shaftesbury philosophy is meant to ‘to refine our Spirits, improve our Understandings, or mend our Manners’ (Characteristicks, S III.1, 1:179; C 129). He emphasizes that philosophy should have an ethical or practical dimension, it should guide our intellectual and moral development, and thereby our search for happiness and the good.4 Shaftesbury generally shares Locke’s position that human understanding of metaphysics is limited, but Shaftesbury’s attitudes towards metaphysics, especially super-­speculative metaphysics, tend to be more critical than Locke’s, and are often polemic. The important issue for Locke is to be cautious not to transcend the boundaries of human understanding and to acknowledge that in many cases we cannot have certain knowledge about metaphysical questions, but nevertheless we can try to assess the probability of different positions.5 To be clear, Shaftesbury does not dismiss metaphysical enquiry entirely and accepts that it can be relevant.6 For example, understanding the order of the universe can help us understand our place in the world and live in harmony with nature. His criticism targets ‘super-­speculative philosophy’ (Characteristicks, S III.1, 1:181; C 131), namely, purely speculative metaphysical enquiries that are entirely unconnected with our life and happiness. Although broadly speaking Shaftesbury may be said to share Locke’s insight ‘that Morality is the proper Science, and Business of Mankind in general’ (IV.xii.11), closer inspection in the sections below will show how Shaftesbury’s moral views depart from Locke’s. Shaftesbury is critical of moral views that are grounded in divine reward and punishment such as Locke’s view.7 By rejecting divine law as the foundation of morality, Shaftesbury simultaneously distances his philo­soph­ ic­al position from the Christian belief in an afterlife and a last judgement, but accepts that other forms of religion can be conducive to morality.8 For Shaftesbury questions of selfhood and personal identity are not merely theoretical or metaphysical questions, but rather he shifts the focus of the debates and emphasizes 4  For further discussion, see Kenneth P. Winkler, ‘ “All Is Revolution in Us”: Personal Identity in Shaftesbury and Hume,’ Hume Studies 26 (2000); Gill, ‘Lord Shaftesbury’; Susan  M.  Purviance, ‘Shaftesbury on Self as a Practice,’ Journal of Scottish Philosophy 2 (2004). 5  See Locke, Essay, Book IV, especially IV.iii, vi, xv–xvi. 6 Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, 240–7, brings to light Shaftesbury’s metaphysical commitments. 7 See Shaftesbury, Characteristicks, I I.iii.3, 2:33–41; C 184–90; Anthony Ashley Cooper Shaftesbury, Third Earl of, Several Letters Written by a Noble Lord to a Young Man at the University (London, 1716), 39. 8  See Shaftesbury, Characteristicks, I I; C 163–92; M II.3; C 263–72.

248  Locke and his Early Critics and Defenders the importance of character development and self-­mastery. This means that selfhood becomes a practical or developmental project.9 Hume is also critical of religion, and the Christian belief in an afterlife, in particular, but adopts more sceptical attitudes towards religion and metaphysics than both Locke and Shaftesbury. Divine law has no place in Hume’s study of morality, but rather Hume focuses on the study of human nature. In Locke’s moral philosophy, the two other types of laws are civil law and the law of opinion and reputation.10 According to Hume, it is important to acknowledge that there are artificial virtues in addition to natural virtues.11 While natural virtues form an inherent part of human nature, artificial virtues have their foundation in social conventions and are needed to coordinate social interaction with others. Humean artificial virtues may be said to take the place that civil law plays in Locke’s philosophy. Furthermore, social interaction with others plays a much more significant role in Hume’s philosophy than it does in Locke’s. Indeed, sympathy, namely our ability to enter into another’s feelings and to make them our own, is a fundamental psychological principle in Hume’s moral philosophy.12 Moreover, as we will see, he accepts that through sympathetic interaction, other people contribute to the constitution of selves. Thus, Hume can be said to extend the scope of Locke’s law of opinion or reputation; in Hume’s philosophy approval or disapproval by others, which to a large extent is stimulated by the principle of sympathy, may be said to take the place that divine law plays in Locke’s account of persons and personal identity. According to Hume, ‘personal identity . . . has become so great a question in philosophy, especially of late years in England’ (Treatise 1.4.6.15; SBN 259). It is clear that Hume’s theory is developed in response to Locke’s account of personal identity. Hume follows Locke in discussing, first, the identity of plants and animals before turning to personal identity.13 Hume in part agrees with Locke’s view that personal identity consists in sameness of consciousness and that memory is part of same consciousness. Hume accepts that memory helps us form beliefs in personal identity, but he also intends to criticize Locke when he claims that ‘we can . . . extend our identity beyond memory’ (Treatise 1.4.6.20; SBN 262) by caus­ ation. However, it is striking that Hume does not put much emphasis on Locke’s

9  For more detailed discussion of Shaftesbury’s developmental approach to selfhood, see Ruth Boeker, ‘Shaftesbury on Persons, Personal Identity and Character Development,’ Philosophy Compass 13 (2018); Ruth Boeker, ‘Shaftesbury on Liberty and Self-­ Mastery,’ International Journal of Philosophical Studies 27 (2019). 10 See II.xxviii.7, 9–12. See also Sreedhar and Walsh, ‘Locke, the Law of Nature, and Polygamy,’ 97–100. 11  See Hume, Treatise, Book 3. Hume first introduces the distinction between natural and artificial in Treatise 3.1.2.7–11; SBN 473–6. Part 2 of Book 3 focuses on artificial virtues and Part 3 on natural virtues. 12  See Hume, Treatise 2.1.11, 2.2.5.21, 3.3.1.7, 10–11, 3.3.6.1; SBN 316–24, 365, 575–9, 618. 13  See Hume, Treatise 1.4.6.5–20; SBN 253–62.

Criticism of Locke’s Psychological Approach  249 conceptual distinctions between person, man, and substance and never ac­know­ ledges Locke’s claim that ‘person’ is a forensic term.14 In the following I examine how Shaftesbury and Hume both in their own ways criticize Locke’s psychological account of personal identity (section 11.1). I pay particular attention to how they each endorse moral and religious views that differ from Locke’s and how these moral and religious beliefs inform their own positive approaches to persons and personal identity (section 11.2).

11.1  Criticism of Locke’s Psychological Approach to Personal Identity Shaftesbury and Hume are both critics of Locke’s psychological account of personal identity. Shaftesbury offers a couple of arguments for why consciousness or memory is neither necessary nor sufficient for personal identity.15 Although he does not mention Locke by name, we can assume that these arguments target a Lockean account of personal identity. Hume acknowledges that memory plays an important role in forming beliefs in personal identity, but argues that memory is not always necessary, because we can suppose to have existed at past times, even if we have no remaining memory of our experiences at those times. Thus, Hume argues that our belief in personal identity extends beyond memory by causation. Since both Shaftesbury’s and Hume’s objections target memory accounts of personal identity, one may worry that they misunderstand Locke’s position, because, as shown in chapter 5, Locke does not reduce sameness of consciousness to memory.16 Although this is a legitimate worry, the following examination will bring to light that Shaftesbury’s and Hume’s objections have deeper roots.

11.1.1  Shaftesbury’s Criticism Shaftesbury’s criticism that memory is neither necessary nor sufficient for personal identity has been discussed by a number of interpreters,17 but I believe that we have not yet sufficiently understood how Shaftesbury’s criticism of a Lockean

14  See II.xxvii.26. 15  See Shaftesbury, Characteristicks, S III.1, 1:176; C 127; M II.1, 2:133–4; C 253–4; MR IV.1, 118; C 420–1. 16  For instance, this worry is raised by Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, 177–8. 17 See Laurent Jaffro, ‘Shaftesbury on the “Natural Secretion” and Philosophical Personae,’ Intellectual History Review 18 (2008): 353–4; Raymond Martin and John Barresi, Naturalization of the Soul: Self and Personal Identity in the Eighteenth Century (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 60–4; Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, 177–80; Winkler, ‘Personal Identity in Shaftesbury and Hume’, 6–8.

250  Locke and his Early Critics and Defenders view is informed by his moral background assumptions, which he distances from Locke’s. This is what I aim to show in the following. Memory is not necessary, Shaftesbury argues, because a person can continue to exist and continue to be concerned in her past or future even if she has lost memories of her previous thoughts or actions. He writes: Now to be assur’d that we can never be concern’d in anything hereafter, we must understand perfectly what it is which concerns or engages us in any thing present. We must truly know our-­selves and in what this Self of ours consists. We must determine against Pre-­existence, and give a better reason for our having never been concern’d in anything before our Birth, than merely, “Because we remember not, nor are conscious.” For in many things we have been concern’d to purpose, of which we have now no Memory or Consciousness remaining. And thus we may happen to be again and again, to perpetuity, for any reason we can show to the contrary.  (Characteristicks, M II.1, 2:133–4; C 253–4)

As we have seen in chapter  7, Locke believes that due to our limited human capacities we are not in a position to exclude the possibility of pre-­existence, namely scenarios where your current soul was formerly the soul of Princess Elisabeth.18 Locke was not troubled by such scenarios, because if you are unable to be conscious of Princess Elisabeth’s thoughts and actions and there is no consciousness connection between you and her, then you and Elisabeth are two different persons. It does not follow that Locke believes that it is likely that pre-­existence actually occurs, but rather the important point for Locke is to show that his account of personal identity holds even if such far-­fetched metaphysical scenarios occur. Let us now try to understand as to why Shaftesbury is not satisfied with Locke’s position. To be clear, Shaftesbury does not intend to argue for pre-­existence, but he finds it unconvincing to appeal to our inability to remember someone else’s actions, because I am not only unable to remember the thoughts and actions of other persons, but also many of my own former thoughts and actions for which I had great concern previously and may continue to be concerned in. Shaftesbury’s point is that continued concern does not require memory, because memory is too fluctuating and not robust and stable enough to ground personal identity. A defender of Locke can respond that Shaftesbury fails to take seriously Locke’s distinction between the ideas of person and man and that Locke can agree that a human being often extends beyond the memories of a person. However, Shaftesbury will likely insist that due to the fluctuating nature of consciousness or memory, the boundaries of Lockean persons are too narrow and unstable.

18  See II.xxvii.14.

Criticism of Locke’s Psychological Approach  251 Additionally, Shaftesbury argues that memory is not sufficient for personal identity. One reason he offers is that memory can be false.19 A second reason concerns radical changes of character. Shaftesbury invites us to consider the changes that a close and intimate friend could undergo while sick and travelling in foreign countries. On the one hand, he acknowledges that there could be outer changes of bodily appearance, but he argues that a person can endure such changes.20 On the other hand, there can be inner alterations of beliefs, characters, and manners and if they radically change then—so Shaftesbury suggests—a person is not any longer the same, even if they are still able to remember their former experiences: But shou’d a like Face and Figure of a Friend return to us with Thoughts and Humours of a strange and foreign Turn, with Passions, Affections, and Opinions wholly different from any thing we had formerly known; we shou’d say in earn­ est, and with the greatest Amazement and Concern, that this was another Creature, and not the Friend whom we once knew familiarly. Nor shou’d we in reality attempt any renewal of Acquaintance or Correspondence with such a Person, though perhaps he might preserve his Memory the faint Marks or Tokens of former Transactions which had pass’d between us. (Characteristicks, S III.1, 1:176; C 127)

First, Shaftesbury here makes an epistemological point that it would be difficult to recognize a former friend after they have radically changed their character. Additionally, he seems to draw a metaphysical conclusion, namely that ‘this was another Creature’. It is not clear how far Shaftesbury is willing to take these conclusions. As the text continues he reminds us how little we know about ourselves and writes:21 When a Revolution of this kind, tho not so total, happens at any time in a Character; when the Passion or Humour of a known Person changes remarkably from what it once was; ’tis to Philosophy we then appeal. (Characteristicks, S III.1, 1:176; C 127)

At this stage it remains to address a criticism made by Thiel, namely that Shaftesbury does not properly understand the nuances of Locke’s view.22 Shaftesbury can be accused of failing to understand Locke’s position, because Locke does not express his view in terms of memory, but rather he argues repeatedly 19  See Shaftesbury, Characteristicks, MR IV.1, 118; C 420–1. 20  See Shaftesbury, Characteristicks, S III.1, 176; C 127. 21  For further discussion of the role of self-­knowledge in Shaftesbury, see Ursula Renz, ‘Socratic Self-­Knowledge in Early Modern Philosophy,’ in Self-­Knowledge: A History, ed. Ursula Renz (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). 22  See Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, 177–8.

252  Locke and his Early Critics and Defenders that personal identity consists in same consciousness.23 As we have seen in chapter  5, memory plays a role in Locke’s account of same consciousness, but same consciousness cannot be reduced to memory. Thiel is right to note that Shaftesbury does not properly ‘grasp Locke’s distinctions between consciousness and memory and between man and person’.24 Had Shaftesbury properly understood Locke’s view and Locke’s notion of memory, Shaftesbury would realize that his claim that memory can be false does not apply to Locke’s view, because for Locke memory involves previous awareness and excludes imaginary memories.25 Some of Shaftesbury’s arguments target the fleeting nature of mental states. These arguments focus on the contents of mental states, but neglect that for Locke same consciousness is richer and more complex and not restricted to the contents of mental states, but additionally involves structural relations among various contents, which unify and temporally order the different contents. Nevertheless, I believe that it is unlikely that Shaftesbury would have retracted his arguments entirely had he been more sensitive to the nuances of Locke’s view. The reason for this is that the disagreement between Shaftesbury and Locke does not primarily concern the question of whether memory should be replaced by a more sophisticated understanding of consciousness, but rather it arises due to their very different moral views. As I explain in more detail in section 11.2.1, once we give up Locke’s background belief that morality is grounded in divine law and involves divine sanctions and turn instead to virtue ethical views, the need for the presence of direct consciousness connections to individual past actions vanishes. For Locke, direct consciousness or memory connections are necessary conditions for moral accountability, and thus for being the same person, or subject of accountability, because otherwise the person would not be in a position to understand why she is justly held accountable for the action. Shaftesbury attacks the foundation of Locke’s moral view by questioning divine sanctions. For Shaftesbury morality should not focus on reward or punishment for individual actions, but rather morality should focus on virtue and character development. In order to reach happiness, he argues, we should try to develop a stable character. I offer a more detailed proposal of how we can interpret Shaftesbury’s developmental approach to persons in section 11.2.1. Shaftesbury’s emphasis on the importance of developing a stable character is evident in his example of the traveller and more indirectly in his claim that concern does not have to be tied to consciousness. Shaftesbury stresses the im­port­ ance of actively taking part in becoming who we truly are, which is a process of self-­constitution. His criticism targets psychological accounts of personal identity, that focus on mental states that just pop up in our minds and over which we have very little control. Shaftesbury’s objections against a Lockean view can be seen as 23  See II.xxvii.9–26. 24 Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, 177–8. 25  See chapter 5, section 5.2.1 for details.

Criticism of Locke’s Psychological Approach  253 a shift of focus away from passivity towards activity; or, as Kenneth Winkler puts it, ‘Shaftesbury [is] a critic of Locke inclined to locate personal identity not in the understanding, but in the will.’26 In light of Shaftesbury’s focus on activity, or the will as a governing principle, I believe, he would not have given up his criticism of accounts of personal identity in terms of memory or consciousness had he been informed that Locke’s understanding of consciousness is richer than just memory. Rather, I take it, Shaftesbury would insist that we need to focus on character development and actively develop a stable character if we want to make sense of personal identity.

11.1.2  Hume’s Criticism Before we look more closely at Hume’s argument for why memory is not necessary for personal identity, it is helpful to briefly situate it in the context of his approach to personal identity in Book 1 of the Treatise. Hume turns to philo­soph­ ic­al questions concerning self and personal identity in a section entitled ‘Of Personal Identity’ (Treatise 1.4.6; SBN 251–63). The section begins with negative arguments criticizing other philosophers who take for granted not only a self ’s existence and continued existence, but also ‘its perfect identity and simplicity’ (Treatise 1.4.6.1; SBN 251). Hume challenges these assumptions of his predecessors by applying the copy principle, namely the principle ‘that all simple ideas in their first appearance are deriv’d from simple impressions, which are correspondent to them, and which they exactly represent’ (Treatise 1.1.1.7; SBN 4).27 If no impressions can be found from which an idea is derived, then, Hume argues, the idea is meaningless and it should not be used in philosophical discourse.28 The copy principle gives Hume resources to reject the idea of a self understood as simple and as having perfect identity, because as soon as we introspect we cannot find one single constant and invariable impression, but only a series of constantly changing impressions. On this basis, Hume rejects the idea of a self as being simple and having perfect identity.29 However, it does not follow that Hume denies the existence of the self. Instead he argues that all that is given to us in experience is ‘a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement’ (Treatise

26  Winkler, ‘Personal Identity in Shaftesbury and Hume’, 5. For further discussion, see also Boeker, ‘Shaftesbury on Persons, Personal Identity and Character Development’; Jaffro, ‘Shaftesbury on the “Natural Secretion” and Philosophical Personae’, 353–4. 27  See also Hume, EHU 2; SBN 17–22. Impressions, according to Hume, are more vivid and lively perceptions than ideas. The copy principle can also be applied to complex ideas. In this case, a complex idea can first be resolved into simple ideas and subsequently the copy principle can be applied to consider whether simple impressions can be found from which the idea is derived. 28  See Hume, EHU, 2.9; SBN 21–2. 29  See Hume, Treatise 1.4.6.2; SBN 251–2.

254  Locke and his Early Critics and Defenders 1.4.6.4; SBN 252).30 Having positively characterized a self, as it is accessible to us in experience, as a bundle of different and changing perceptions, Hume turns to the question why we nevertheless ascribe identity to a self or person. Although Hume scholars have not settled the extent to which his project in Book 1 of the Treatise is psychological, metaphysical, epistemological, or perhaps better scep­ tic­al, it is plausible to say that Hume engages with the psychological question of why we form a belief in personal identity over time in Treatise 1.4.6.5–21 (SBN 253–62).31 This becomes clear, for instance, when he asks ‘[w]hat then gives us so great a propension to ascribe identity to these successive perceptions, and to suppose ourselves possest of an invariable and uninterrupted existence thro’ the whole course of our lives?’ (Treatise 1.4.6.5; SBN 253).32 According to Hume, it is important to ‘distinguish betwixt personal identity, as it regards our thought or imagination, and as it regards our passions or the concern we take in ourselves’ (Treatise 1.4.6.5; SBN 253).33 His discussion in Book 1 focuses on the former, but he indicates that the Book 1 account is incomplete and to be supplemented in Book 2. In Book 2 of the Treatise Hume develops his theory of the passions, which provides the foundation for this moral views in Book 3, and in the context of Book 2 he returns to questions of self with focus on personal identity ‘as it regards our passions or the concern we take in ourselves’. While the Book 1 account is primarily backwards directed and helps explain why a present self is believed to be identical with past selves, the Book 2 account adds a forward looking dimension by taking passions and future-­directed concerns into consideration.34 For now let us focus on his Book 1 account, but I return to his Book 2 account below in section 11.2.2. In order to examine personal identity ‘as it regards our thought or imagination’, Hume maintains that it is helpful to explain first how we come to believe that plants and animals are identical over time, before turning to the question of how

30  Hume uses ‘perception’ in a broad sense to include both impressions and ideas. 31  While I am emphasizing Hume’s focus on psychological questions in Treatise 1.4.6, this does not rule out that he could additionally accept certain metaphysical beliefs or adopt a sceptical stance. Interpreters who offer a psychological reading of Hume’s project in Book 1 of the Treatise include Don Garrett, Cognition and Commitment in Hume’s Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); Wayne Waxman, Hume’s Theory of Consciousness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Modified metaphysical readings have been proposed by Galen Strawson, The Secret Connexion: Causation, Realism, and David Hume, Revised edition. ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Galen Strawson, The Evident Connexion: Hume on Personal Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Sceptical readings have been given by Donald  C.  Ainslie, Hume’s True Scepticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); Kenneth P. Winkler, ‘The New Hume,’ Philosophical Review 100 (1991). 32  Further support for a psychological reading can be found in Treatise 1.4.6.16; SBN 259–60. 33  See also Hume, Treatise 1.4.6.19; SBN 261. 34  Jane McIntyre has done helpful work that shows how the forward-­looking aspect of Hume’s Book 2 account supplements his Book 1 account. See McIntyre, ‘Personal Identity and the Passions’; Jane  L.  McIntyre, ‘Hume and the Problem of Personal Identity,’ in The Cambridge Companion to Hume, ed. David Fate Norton and Jacqueline Anne Taylor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

Criticism of Locke’s Psychological Approach  255 we form beliefs in personal identity.35 He invokes the three associative principles, namely resemblance, spatiotemporal contiguity, and causation, which play major explanatory roles throughout the Treatise, to explain beliefs in identity over time.36 While all three principles are relevant to explain our belief in the identity of plants and animals, Hume claims that only resemblance and causation are rele­ vant when we form beliefs in personal identity, and contiguity ‘has little or no influence in the present case’ (Treatise 1.4.6.17; SBN 260).37 To understand Hume’s criticism of Locke’s psychological account of personal identity, it is helpful to examine more closely what role resemblance, causation, and memory play in his explanation of personal identity. If there is a series of resembling perceptions, for instance, if one continues to have a certain belief, or continues to remember a past experience, then despite the fact that there is a series of different, though resembling perceptions, the imagination easily makes the transition from the series of resembling perceptions to the belief in one continuously existing self or person. This shows that the presence of resembling perceptions prompts one to form beliefs in personal identity over time. Furthermore, Hume writes that ‘[i]n this particular, then, the memory not only discovers the identity, but also contributes to its production, by the producing the relation of resemblance among the perceptions’ (Treatise 1.4.6.18; SBN 261). Since a subject not only has resembling perceptions, but also changing perceptions over time, Hume argues that causation is relevant in addition to resemblance. He holds that ‘the true idea of the human mind, is to consider it as a system of different perceptions or different existences, which are link’d together by the relation of cause and effect, and mutually produce, destroy, influence, and modify each other’ (Treatise 1.4.6.19; SBN 261). Causation makes it possible to explain why perceptions vary over time, why certain perceptions are followed by others, and how they are linked within a system that we can consider as a mind or person. Having argued that resemblance and causation are the two associative prin­ ciples that are relevant for explaining our belief in personal identity over time, Hume comments further on the role of memory and clearly distances his view from Locke’s: 35  See Hume, Treatise 1.4.6.5; SBN 253. 36  See Hume, Treatise 1.4.6.6–21; SBN 253–62. Hume introduces the associative principles of the mind in Treatise 1.1.4; SBN 10–13. 37 Hume does not elaborate in Treatise 1.4.6 as to why he regards contiguity as irrelevant for explaining our belief in personal identity. However, we can find an explanation if we turn to Treatise 1.4.5 (see Annette Baier, A Progress of Sentiments: Reflections on Hume’s Treatise (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 142; Garrett, Cognition and Commitment, ch. 8). In Treatise 1.4.5 Hume argues that some perceptions lack spatial location (see Treatise 1.4.5.10–16; SBN 235–40). This offers an explanation for why he regards contiguity as irrelevant for explaining our belief in personal identity in Book 1: Selves, as they are given in experience, are bundles of perceptions and perceptions can lack spatial location. Hence, it will not be possible to consider perceptions that lack spatial location as contiguous, at least in space.

256  Locke and his Early Critics and Defenders As memory alone acquaints us with the continuance and extent of this succession of perceptions, ’tis to be consider’d, upon that account chiefly, as the source of personal identity. Had we no memory, we never shou’d have any notion of causation, nor consequently of that chain of causes and effects, which constitute our self or person. But having once acquir’d this notion of causation from the memory, we can extend the same chain of causes, and consequently the identity of our persons beyond our memory, and can comprehend times, and circumstances, and actions, which we have entirely forgot, but suppose in general to have existed. For how few of our past actions are there, of which we have any memory? Who can tell me, for instance, what were his thoughts and actions on the first of January 1715, the 11th of March 1719, and the 3d of August 1733? Or will he affirm, because he has entirely forgot the incidents of these days, that the present self is not the same person with the self of that time; and by that means overturn all the most establish'd notions of personal identity? In this view, therefore, memory does not so much produce as discover personal identity, by shewing us the relation of cause and effect among our different perceptions. ’Twill be incumbent on those, who affirm that memory produces entirely our personal identity, to give a reason why we can thus extend our identity beyond our memory. (Treatise 1.4.6.20; SBN 261–2)

Without memory, Hume argues, we would not be in a position to acquire notions of causation and of personal identity. However, for Hume memory plays an epi­ stem­ic role insofar as it helps us discover personal identity, but it does not constitute personal identity and is not necessary for personal identity, since personal identity can extend beyond memory by causation. It is worth asking whether Locke would accept Hume’s criticism. I take it that Locke has resources to push back against Hume’s objection. First, if the in­ter­pret­ ation that I have given in chapters 5, 6, and 8 is correct, then Locke does not have to reject the significance of causal relations entirely, but rather relevant causal relations, possibly supplemented by other relations, can help explain why different thoughts and actions, bodily parts, and possibly substances are unified at a time and over time and all belong to the same person. Nevertheless, closer inspection will reveal in a moment that differences between Locke and Hume remain and that their divergent attitudes towards religion shed light on their thinking about causation and the role it plays in their respective views about personal identity. Second, it is worth noting that Hume does not explicitly acknowledge Locke’s conceptual distinction between persons and human beings. This leads to the question of whether Hume has resources for acknowledging a distinction between persons and human beings. Although I believe that Hume’s Book 1 account leaves scope for distinguishing persons understood as minds from human beings understood as human animals, the distinction that Hume is able to  draw diverges from Locke’s moral thinking about persons as subjects of

Criticism of Locke’s Psychological Approach  257 accountability and neglects Locke’s claim that ‘person’ is a forensic term. Let us now examine these two possible lines of responses in more depth. Locke would not want to be seen as endorsing a memory theory of personal identity. Although Hume does not realize this and Locke does not make it explicit, it is plausible that certain causal relations, possibly supplemented by other relations, play some role in Locke’s same consciousness account. As shown in chapter 6, it is likely that Locke would turn to relations to explain the metaphysical foundation of the unifying aspect of same consciousness. Furthermore, it is plaus­ible that the relevant relations involve certain types of causal relations. Although such underlying relational structures can merely be postulated by means of probable reasoning, establishing their metaphysical possibility gives credibility to Locke’s criticism of other views that assume that identity requires the continued existence of substance. In other words, by acknowledging the possibility that relations—which likely include some causal relations—can provide a metaphysical foundation of same consciousness, it can be shown that there are metaphysical alternatives to substance accounts of identity. Thus, Locke can in part agree with Hume that causal relations are relevant for understanding personal identity, but he would question Hume’s view that personal identity can extend by causation to experiences at past times that a person has entirely forgotten. Locke and Hume agree that our understanding of causal relations is limited. While we can observe the regular co-­occurrence of causes and effects, they both accept that the exact metaphysical constitution of causal operations is incomprehensible to us and we cannot conceive necessary connections between causes and effects. However, in contrast to Hume, Locke does not draw sceptical conclusions concerning causal operations.38 Instead his faith in God as a wise creator gives him confidence to suppose that causal operations have a metaphysical foundation. Thus, Locke, based on his religious faith, can be said to accept not only that we experience different thoughts and actions as unified at a time and over time, but also that there is a metaphysical foundation that is responsible for why different thoughts and actions are connected and most likely it consists in certain relations. By contrast, Hume does not share Locke’s religious faith and, having confined philosophical explanations to a small number of principles such as the copy principle and the associative principles of the mind, he struggles to explain unity among different perceptions and this realization most likely prompted him to doubt his account of personal identity in the Appendix.39

38  See Hume, EHU 4–5, 7. 39  See Hume, Treatise App 10–21; SBN 633–6. In the Appendix, Hume raises doubts that he cannot render his view consistent. Interpreters are far from reaching agreement as to why exactly Hume regards his view as inconsistent. For a helpful interpretation that locates Hume’s doubts about personal identity in his views concerning unity and composition, see Jonathan Cottrell, ‘Minds, Composition, and Hume’s Skepticism in the Appendix,’ Philosophical Review 124 (2015).

258  Locke and his Early Critics and Defenders A further route for challenging Hume’s view that personal identity can extend beyond memory by causation, is to draw attention to the moral dimension of Locke’s view. Hume neglects Locke’s claim that ‘person’ is a forensic term.40 Hume never explicitly acknowledges the importance of the Lockean conceptual distinction between persons and human beings in Book 1. Hume fails to realize that due to moral consideration it is important for Locke that a person from the inside is still able recall former actions as her own. Otherwise, Locke argues, it would be unjust to reward or punish the person for the actions in question. This is not to deny that from an external divine perspective relations—and likely certain causal relations—play a role in tracing a person’s existence over time. However, as I argued in chapter 8, Locke’s view is hybrid. In the context of a last judgement God would not merely externally consider which thoughts and actions belong to a person’s continued existence over time, but rather he plays an active role in reviving a person’s former experiences so that a person from the inside becomes aware of all thoughts and actions in question and can understand the justice of reward and punishment. As God revives past experiences he is guided by an objective criterion, which most likely involves tracing relevant relational structures. Thus, at least within the context of a divine last judgement, Locke would argue that memory extends as far as causal and/or other relevant relations extend, though most likely this is made possible by God’s active involvement at the great day. Since Hume does not share Locke’s religious beliefs in an afterlife and a last judgement, it is unlikely that Hume would alter his position had he better understood the moral and religious dimensions of Locke’s view. Rather Hume does not see the need for direct consciousness connections to all past experiences. Hence, he can be expected to stand behind his claim that personal identity can extend beyond memory by causation. Since Locke’s response rests on his moral characterization of a person and his distinction between the ideas of person and man, it is worth examining whether Hume’s theory leaves scope for acknowledging a conceptual distinction between persons and human beings. In Book 1 of the Treatise Hume uses the term ‘mind’ interchangeably with ‘self ’ or ‘person’.41 Like Locke, Hume develops his account of personal identity in analogy to that of plants and animals.42 Moreover, there is good textual evidence that he regards human beings as human animals, since he writes that ‘[a]n infant becomes a man, and is sometimes fat, sometimes lean, without any change in his identity’ (Treatise 1.4.6.12; SBN 257). This statement is strikingly similar to Locke’s claim that ‘a Colt, grown up to a Horse, sometimes fat, sometimes lean, is all the while the same Horse’ (II.xxvii.3). Hence, there is strong evidence that Hume identifies persons with minds and human beings with human animals in Book 1. Although Hume does not make it explicit, a 40  See II.xxvii.26. 41  See Hume, Treatise 1.4.6.4, 1.4.6.15–16, 1.4.6.22; SBN 253, 259, 263. 42  See Hume, Treatise 1.4.6.5; SBN 253.

Moral Personhood  259 conceptual distinction between persons and human beings is implicit in Book 1. Nevertheless, it is important to note that the distinction that Hume is able to draw differs from the conceptual distinction that we find in Locke’s chapter ‘Of Identity and Diversity’. According to Locke, persons are subjects of accountability; they are agents who are ‘capable of a Law, and Happiness and Misery’ (II.xxvii.26). Since Hume restricts the focus of his Book 1 account to the mind, or to ‘personal identity, as it regards our thought or imagination’ (Treatise 1.4.6.5; SBN 253), his Book 1 account is too restricted to explain the moral issues that are at the heart of Locke’s account of persons. In order to address questions of moral agency and moral accountability that interest Locke, Hume has to extend the discussion beyond the mental realm and has to turn to personal identity ‘as it regards our passions or concern we take in ourselves’ (Treatise 1.4.6.5; SBN 253), which I examine more closely in section 11.2.2.

11.2  Moral Personhood Having shown that Shaftesbury and Hume both criticize psychological accounts of personal identity, it remains to ask to what extent their own positive approaches to selves or persons leave scope for regarding a self or person as a moral being. As we have seen before, it is possible to reject Locke’s view that personal identity consists in sameness of consciousness without rejecting his view that persons are moral beings. This makes it interesting to consider whether and how Shaftesbury and Hume have resources for adopting a moral account of personhood. In particular, we can ask whether they would share Locke’s view that persons are subjects of accountability. In this section I show that Shaftesbury and Hume both reject moral views grounded in divine law and pursue their own philosophical projects. Thereby they shift the focus of debates about persons and personal identity and closer engagement with their respective views will reveal how their different moral and religious background beliefs create space for alternative approaches to moral personhood.

11.2.1  Shaftesbury on Virtue and Character Development Since Shaftesbury emphasizes that philosophy is meant to be practical and help us improve our lives and character, we can expect that his own positive approach to selfhood has a moral dimension. However, questions of moral accountability, reward, and punishment, which are central to Locke’s thinking about persons and  his moral views more generally, play a very restricted role in Shaftesbury’s positive philosophical views. Indeed, he considers moral theories that are based on the superior power of a divine lawmaker who can enforce reward and

260  Locke and his Early Critics and Defenders punishment as problematic, because they can undermine virtue.43 Virtue, according Shaftesbury, is the promotion of the good of humankind. For Shaftesbury, only humans who are capable of reason and reflection are capable of being virtuous:44 Let us suppose a Creature, who wanting Reason, and being unable to reflect, has, notwithstanding, many good Qualitys and Affections; as Love to his Kind, Courage, Gratitude, or Pity. ’Tis certain that if you give to this Creature a reflecting Faculty, it will at the same instant approve of Gratitude, Kindness, and Pity; be taken with any shew or representation of the social Passion, and think nothing more amiable than this, or more odious than the contrary. And this is to be capable of Virtue, and to have a Sense of Right and Wrong. (Characteristicks, I I.iii.3, 2:31; C 182–3)

Reason and reflection make it possible to reflect on what one does and ‘to take notice of what is worthy or honest’ (Characteristicks, I I.ii.3, 2:18; C 173) and then to direct one’s actions accordingly. Goodness, by contrast, is not restricted to humans for Shaftesbury and concerns the well-­being of humans and other creatures.45 Shaftesbury is a moral realist who believes in objective goodness.46 In the background of this belief are strong teleological views regarding the order and structure of the universe.47 For Shaftesbury humans and members of other species are part of a system and a system of a species is again part of a larger system—the system of the universe. Genuine goodness, as he understands it, focuses on the well-­being of a species or the larger whole, not just the well-­being of an individual. However, as Shaftesbury himself realizes, it is not immediately obvious whether goodness in this sense is attainable and whether we are capable of virtue, if it is understood as the promotion of the well-­being of humanity. As I will discuss further below, Shaftesbury’s proposal is that our best path towards attaining stable goodness and happiness is to develop genuine friendship, which he understands as love of humanity.48 This suggests that to be virtuous is to develop ‘an equal, just, and universal Friendship’ (Characteristicks, M II.1, 2:137; C 256). 43  See Shaftesbury, Characteristicks, I I.iii.3, 2:30–44; C 182–92. For further discussion, see Stanley Grean, Shaftesbury’s Philosophy of Religion and Ethics: A Study in Enthusiasm (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1967), ch. 12; Tim Stuart-­Buttle, From Moral Theology to Moral Philosophy: Cicero and Visions of Humanity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), ch. 2. 44  See Shaftesbury, Characteristicks, I I.ii.3, 2:16–21, I.iii.3, 2:31; C 172–5, 182–3. See also Gill, ‘Lord Shaftesbury’ section 2.1. 45  See Shaftesbury, Characteristicks, I I.ii.1, 2:8–12; C 167–70. 46  See Shaftesbury, Characteristicks, M II.3, 2:151; C 266–7. For further discussion, see Grean, Shaftesbury’s Philosophy, 214–15; Michael B. Gill, ‘Shaftesbury on Life as a Work of Art,’ British Journal for the History of Philosophy 26 (2018): 1124. 47  See Shaftesbury, Characteristicks, I I.ii.1, 2:8–12; C 167–70; M II.4, III.1; C 272–88, 296–316. 48  See Shaftesbury, Characteristicks, M II.1, 2:125–39; C 247–57.

Moral Personhood  261 On this basis, let us consider as to why Shaftesbury criticizes moral theories that focus on divine reward and punishment. His concern is that if moral behaviour is based on fear of punishment or expectation of reward, then one would not be genuinely virtuous and fail to pursue goodness for its own sake: Thus a Person loving Life for Life’s sake, and Virtue not at all, may by the Promise or Hope of Life, and Fear of Death, or other Evil, be induc’d to practice Virtue, and even endeavour to be truly virtuous, by a Love of what he practices. Yet neither is this very Endeavour to be esteem’d a Virtue: For tho he may intend to be virtuous, he is not become so, for having only intended, or aim’d at it, thro’ love of the Reward. But as soon as he is come to have any Affection towards what is morally good, and can like or affect such Good for its own sake, as good and amiable in itself; then is he in some degree good and virtuous, and not till then. (Characteristicks, I I.iii.3, 2:38; C 187–8)

Furthermore, Shaftesbury remarks that those whose actions are guided by the expectation of future reward or punishment often tend to pursue self-­interest. ‘On this account, all other Affections towards Friends, Relations, or Mankind, are often slightly regarded, as being worldly, and of little moment, in respect of the Interest of our Soul’ (Characteristicks, I III.i.3, 2:39; C 188). These considerations lead Shaftesbury to conclude that expectations of divine reward and punishment can ‘be fatal to Virtue’: From whence it appears, that in some respects there can be nothing more fatal to Virtue than the weak and uncertain Belief of a future Reward and Punishment. For the stress being laid wholly here, if this Foundation come to fail, there is no further Prop or Security to Mens Morals. And thus Virtue is supplanted and betray’d. (Characteristicks, I I.iii.3, 2:39–40; C 188–9)

He is even more outspoken in a letter to Ainsworth, dated 3 June 1709, and explicitly criticizes Locke’s moral thinking: ’Twas Mr. Locke, that struck the home Blow: For Mr. Hobbes’s Character and base slavish Principles in Government took off the Poyson of his Philosophy. ’Twas Mr. Locke that struck at all the Fundamentals, threw all Order and Virtue out of the World, and made the very Ideas of these (which are the same as those of God) unnatural, and without Foundation in our Minds.  (Several Letters, 39)

Despite Shaftesbury’s criticism of moral theories that are based on the ex­pect­ ation of divine sanctions, he does not entirely deny the usefulness of reward and punishment. It would be naïve to assume that humans are always virtuous. Indeed, Shaftesbury is aware that lust and various other ill passions and

262  Locke and his Early Critics and Defenders affections, as well as superstitious and fanatic beliefs, can get into the way of the pursuit of virtue.49 This is because virtue requires reason and reflection, but rationality can come in degrees and it requires mental strength and practice to act virtuously. Yet he is confident that through proper practice someone who used to be inclined to pursue self-­interest can start to endeavour virtue and become more virtuous.50 In particular, Shaftesbury argues that reward and punishment can be useful tools in the education of children insofar as they can temporarily be employed to bring others onto the path of a virtuous life: Yet the same Master of the Family using proper Rewards and gentle Punishments towards his Children, teaches them Goodness; and by this help instructs them in a Virtue, which afterwards they practice upon other grounds, and without thinking of a Penalty or Bribe. And this is what we call a Liberal Education and a Liberal Service: the contrary Service and Obedience, whether towards God or Man, being illiberal, and unworthy of any Honour or Commendation. (Characteristicks, I III.i.3, 2:37; C 187)

Along similar lines, Shaftesbury acknowledges that a theistic religion can support morality, because it creates stability in ways that atheism cannot.51 Proper religion can offer guidance when humans are at risk of being governed by ill passions and affections and help them return to virtue. The important point for Shaftesbury is that ‘sound Theism’ acknowledges that virtue has an independent foundation in nature and is considered ‘to be naturally good and advantageous’ (Characteristicks, I III.i.3, 2:41; C 190) rather than being derived from arbitrary divine laws and the associated rewards and punishments. It is time to consider how Shaftesbury’s moral views inform his approach to self and personal identity.52 There are passages in which Shaftesbury is willing to take the existence of a self for granted.53 Moreover, he is willing to accept that a self is a substance and continues to exist over time.54 However, when Shaftesbury criticizes a Lockean account of personal identity, he does not criticize Locke for failing to explain personal identity in terms of substance, but rather he emphasizes that the Lockean view is not stable enough and draws attention to the importance 49  Such issues are the focus in A Letter concerning Enthusiasm, in vol. 1 of Characteristicks. See also Shaftesbury, Characteristicks, I I.iii.3, 2:34–44; C 185–92. 50  See Shaftesbury, Characteristicks, I I.iii.3, 2:38; C 187–8. 51  See Shaftesbury, Characteristicks, I III.i.3, 2:38–44; C 187–92. 52  One challenge that interpreters of Shaftesbury face is that his views about persons and personal identity are scattered throughout Characteristicks. Relevant texts include Shaftesbury, Characteristicks, S I.1–2 (C 70–85), III.1 (C 125–35); M II.1 (C 247–57), II.4 (C 272–88), III.1 (C 296–316); MR IV (C 419–33). 53  See Shaftesbury, Characteristicks, MR IV.1, 3:118; C 421. 54  See Shaftesbury, Characteristicks, M III.1, 2:197–8; C 301–2.

Moral Personhood  263 of developing a stable character.55 Shaftesbury similarly criticizes bodily accounts of personal identity due to their lack of stability.56 His criticism of the Lockean view intimates that Shaftesbury would regard a substance account of personal identity at best as incomplete and in need of supplementation. A substance by itself is an empty vessel, and thus a pure substance view would not be of practical importance, because it would not help us improve our lives. However, if instead of considering a substance in isolation, we additionally consider the character that is realized by a substance, there is scope for supplementing a substance view with the normative and practical questions that interest Shaftesbury.57 In contrast to Locke, questions of moral accountability are not at the forefront of Shaftesbury’s thinking. Rather than offering an account of personal identity that is suitable to address questions of reward and punishment for individual actions, Shaftesbury believes that reward and punishment play only an instrumental role and should merely be employed for limited periods of time to help a person become virtuous. Since he criticizes moral views that are based on self­interested fear of punishment and believes instead that morality should focus on advancing virtue and aims at goodness and happiness, I propose that Shaftesbury’s approach to selfhood is best interpreted as developmental.58 My proposal is that Shaftesbury believes that each person is on a developmental journey. Personal development is not a fixed state, but rather it is an ongoing process that takes place over time and involves several different phases.59 The individual phases help us progress in our personal development, or they enable us to look from new perspectives at questions such as who we really are and how we can improve our 55  At this stage I distance my interpretation from Thiel’s, who argues that ‘Shaftesbury falls back on the notion of a simple mind as that which guarantees personal identity through time’ (The Early Modern Subject, 245). For further details see Boeker, ‘Shaftesbury on Persons, Personal Identity and Character Development’. See also Laurent Jaffro, ‘Cyrus’ Strategy: Shaftesbury on Human Frailty and the Will,’ in New Ages, New Opinions: Shaftesbury in his World and Today, ed. Patrick Müller (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2014). 56  Shaftesbury’s criticism of bodily views of personal identity can be found in Characteristicks, S III.1, 1:176; C 127; M II.1, 2:143, III.1, 2:196–7; C 254, 300–1.  57  Further evidence that Shaftesbury is not merely interested in questions concerning a person’s existence, but rather in giving informative accounts of a person’s constitution and character can be found in his criticism of the Cartesian cogito:  ’Twill not, in this respect, be sufficient for us to use the seeming Logick of a famous Modern, and say “We think: therefore We are.” Which is a notably invented Saying, after the Model of that like philo­soph­ic­al Proposition; That “What is, is.”—Miraculously argu’d! “If I am; I am.”—Nothing more certain! For the Ego or I, being establish’d in the first part of the Proposition, the Ergo, no doubt, must hold it good in the latter. But the Question is, “What constitutes the We or I?” And, “Whether the I of this instance, be the same with that of any instant preceding, or to come.”  (Characteristicks, MR IV.1, 3:118; C 420)   58  This interpretation builds on Boeker, ‘Shaftesbury on Persons, Personal Identity and Character Development’; Boeker, ‘Shaftesbury on Liberty and Self-­Mastery’. 59  Although Shaftesbury does not explicitly use the language of ‘phases’, I believe that presenting his view in terms of phases is helpful for reconstructing how various passages in which he speaks about self, persons, and personal identity, and which at first appear unconnected, can be integrated into a coherent view about personal development.

264  Locke and his Early Critics and Defenders character and lives. When I speak of the developmental dimension of Shaftesbury’s approach to persons I mean a gradual process that enables personal growth and development and aims at the realization of one’s true self.60 According to the developmental interpretation, all persons are on a developmental journey that ideally brings them closer towards attaining happiness, but this is not to say that all persons progress equally quickly, or that all reach the more intellectually demanding phases of personal development. Moreover, we cannot assume that all persons enter the various phases that contribute to their development in the same order. I now sketch one possible way how a Shaftesburean developmental journey can progress.61 This journey can begin in a passive state where a human being is governed by their passions. For example, erotic love or fanatic religious beliefs and practices may drive one’s behaviour. Shaftesbury refers to such states as ‘enthusiasm’.62 Since humans in states of enthusiasm lack the desire or power to step out of this state, it commonly requires external criticism, ideally in the form of wit and humour, to expose the ridiculousness of enthusiasm.63 Shaftesbury believes that good humour is an effective remedy against enthusiasm; humour can make fun of enthusiasm and offers individuals the space to laugh about their own behaviour. He considers wit and humour as more effective than the creation of laws that prohibit and suppress various forms of enthusiasm. Once external criticism has helped humans to take a critical stance towards their own behaviour, they can take this criticism to a new level and engage in inner self-­examination.64 During this phase of inner criticism one looks inward and tries to acquire self-­knowledge. Shaftesbury, following ancient philosophers, 60  Shaftesbury does not explicitly distinguish between the terms ‘person’, ‘human being’, ‘self ’, and ‘soul’, but he also does not equate all of them and argues that there can be two souls/persons in a human being/self. Relevant passages include the following: ‘I have in reality within me two distinct separate Souls’ (Characteristicks, S I.2, 1:115; C 83), ‘our doctrine of Two Persons in one individual Self’ (Characteristicks, S I.2, 1:115; C 83). Note, though, that he also speaks of a ‘natural Self’, a ‘better Self’, or ‘nobler Self’, and ‘[o]ur real and genuine Self’ (Characteristicks, S III.1, 1:174–175; C 126), which suggests that he does not sharply distinguish the terms ‘person’ and ‘self ’. In the following I use the terms ‘self ’ and ‘person’ interchangeably. Since Shaftesbury’s view aims at empowering the better or nobler self so that it becomes active and takes a governing role, ultimately the division into different selves is meant to vanish and thereby human beings become their better selves and fully realize who they are. 61  The order in which I present the phases roughly follows the arrangement of the different works within Characteristicks, but there is no single work that presents all of the phases. 62  Shaftesbury engages closely with enthusiasm and questions how it can be overcome in A Letter concerning Enthusiasm. It is worth noting that he uses erotic love as a metaphor for enthusiasm. For instance, see Shaftesbury, Characteristicks, S I.2, 1:110–15; C 80–3. For further discussion, see Boeker, ‘Shaftesbury on Liberty and Self-­Mastery’; Jaffro, ‘Cyrus’ Strategy’. 63  See Shaftesbury, Characteristicks, LE II–IV, 1:6–24; C 7–20. 64  Inner self-­examination is an important topic in Shaftesbury’s work Soliloquy, or Advice to an Author. This work invites readers to follow an intellectual journey, to look inward, and to enter into an inner dialogue with themselves with the aim of acquiring self-­knowledge and improving themselves. Soliloquy is written as an inner dialogue and literally addresses authors, but metaphorically it is an invitation to everyone to improve their character and manners.

Moral Personhood  265 believes that when we properly introspect and reflect on who we are, we will ­realize that there are two persons within one human being.65 He uses the metaphor of surgery to illustrate the relation between the two persons: one is patient and the other agent. We can also think of the relation between the two persons in analogy to the relation between pupil and teacher or between advisee and advisor.66 According to Shaftesbury, the better or nobler self, which is one of the persons within ourselves, has a certain authority and is meant to guide the other base or lower self.67 It is worth noting that the two persons within ourselves that we discover when we introspect, following Shaftesbury and the ancients, are not two distinct persons in Locke’s sense, because one can be aware of the other and they can interact. Moreover, Locke’s place-­time-­kind principle precludes the presence of two persons at the same place and time.68 Rather it may be better to think of them as two inner voices, or a reflective process. If upon reflection one realizes, for example, that staying in bed regularly until lunchtime conflicts with one’s long-­term happiness, then the better or nobler self (or our better inner voice), is meant to intervene and guide the lower self to change manners so that one can achieve happiness in the long term. Discovering two persons within one human being is for Shaftesbury just a step within the developmental journey. The process is still incomplete, because we have not yet given a positive characterization of what constitutes a person.69 We find an attempt to address this question if we turn to the traveller example that I introduced above.70 This example focuses on someone who travels to foreign countries and during the journey radically changes their character. It can be seen as the proposal that a person should be identified with a stable character. Yet now a potential tension arises. If we take seriously that a person will not any longer be the same person after radical changes of character, then one may worry that this proposal undermines the introspective efforts and the advisory role of the better self, which presuppose that the base or lower self has the possibility of changing their character. Does this apparent tension undermine Shaftesbury’s project? I do not think so. Instead it can reinforce how important it is for Shaftesbury that the lower self listens to the better self and aims to approximate the better self. Only if the lower self approximates the better self can others encounter the better character. Since the lower self will have more stability when 65  See Shaftesbury, Characteristicks, S I.1, 1:72, I.2, 1:106–7, 115; C 72, 77, 83. 66  See Shaftesbury, Characteristicks, S I.1, 1:97–100, I.2, 1:106–7; C 70–2, 77. 67  See Shaftesbury, Characteristicks, S I.2, 1:106; C 77. 68  See II.xxvii.1. I introduced the place-­time-­kind principle in chapter 2. 69  We can assume that this question is important for Shaftesbury, because he criticizes the Cartesian cogito for not addressing the questions that he regards as important, namely ‘the Question is, “What constitutes the We or I?” And, “Whether the I of this instant, be the same with that of any instant preceding or to come” ’ (Characteristicks, MR IV.1, 3:118; C 420). 70  See Shaftesbury, Characteristicks, S III.1, 1:176; C 127.

266  Locke and his Early Critics and Defenders it approximates the better self, one has a further incentive for taking the guidance of the better self seriously, as this will likely make friendships more stable and prevent scenarios such as the one described in the story of the traveller. Thus, the traveller example can be seen not merely as offering a description of the constitution of persons and their identity over time, but also it is meant to provide prac­ tical guidance by directing one’s focus towards the development of a stable character. These reflections lead to further developmental phases that concern the improvement of one’s moral character. Those who have followed the developmental journey so far will face a further question, namely whether it is important to develop a particular stable character or whether one can choose the stable character that one cultivates, or intends to cultivate, from a plurality of options. Shaftesbury, through the voice of Theocles71— one of the dialogue partners in The Moralists, a Philosophical Rhapsody—proposes that we will reach greatest stability and happiness if we cultivate the character of a genuine friend. Genuine friendship, as Theocles understands it, is love of humanity.72 This suggests that the best way to improve one’s moral character is to become a friend of humanity. However, Philocles73—another dialogue partner—doubts whether we are able to be friends of humanity in the abstract. He emphasizes that we can love individual persons, whom we can meet, see, hear, touch, and whose company we can enjoy, but he worries that love of humanity in the abstract seems inaccessible to most people.74 Philocles’s doubts concerning the possibility of attaining moral perfection show how hard and intellectually demanding it can be to devote one’s life to happiness and character development and to fully realize one’s true self. For Shaftesbury the developmental journey is not restricted to the improvement of one’s own moral character, but those who have reached the more intellectually demanding phases of the journey are further invited to reflect on their place in the order of the universe as a whole.75 Shaftesbury, through the voice of Theocles suggests that the order, unity, and coherence in nature presupposes an underlying system or whole. Theocles is convinced that there is a larger whole, or a self of nature, and that individual selves are ‘copy’d from another principal and original Self (the Great-­one of the World)’ (Characteristicks, M III.1, 2:201; C 304). Just as a human mind creates order and unity and governs different parts of the human body, the universal mind of the world creates unity and order in nature 71  Theocles is portrayed as a highly educated, intellectual genius, who devotes his life to the study of the arts, culture, and morality. See Shaftesbury, Characteristicks, M II.1, 2:126; C 248. See also Michael B. Gill, ‘From Cambridge Platonism to Scottish Sentimentalism’, Journal of Scottish Philosophy 8 (2010). 72  See Shaftesbury, Characteristicks, M II.1, 2:127–39; C 249–57. 73  In contrast to Theocles, Philocles often takes a sceptical stance and presents more mundane views that bring the dialogue back down to earth. 74  See Shaftesbury, Characteristicks, M II.1, 2:136–7; C 256. 75  See Shaftesbury, Characteristicks, M II.4, III.1; C 272–88, 296–316.

Moral Personhood  267 and among individual selves. This insight, Shaftesbury maintains, leads an individual self to ‘endeavour to be really one with [the self of the world], and conformable with it, as far as [an individual self is] able’ (Characteristicks, M III.1, 2:201; C 304). Once an individual self understands its place in the order of the universe, a ‘particular Mind should seek its Happiness in conformity with the general-­one, and endeavour to resemble it in its highest Simplicity and Excellence’ (Characteristicks, M III.1, 2:201; C 304). Although the cosmological reflections on the self of nature can be seen as the pinnacle of the developmental journey, there is recognition in Shaftesbury’s writings that these highly intellectual views are far removed from ordinary life. Rather than concluding that only those who have reached highest intellectual perfection are persons, I believe that the back and forth between Theocles and Philocles offers support for a developmental reading.76 According to this reading, it is not necessary that one has reached a state of intellectual perfection, but rather it is important that one is on a developmental journey, listens as best as one can to the advice of one’s better self with the aim of improving one’s character and achieving moral integrity, and ultimately living in harmony with the universe. Yet Shaftesbury is well aware that the developmental journey can be a demanding, long, and difficult process. Shaftesbury’s developmental approach to selfhood shifts the focus of trad­ ition­al debates about personal identity. Indeed, one may wonder whether questions of character development have anything to do with traditional questions concerning personal identity. In this vein, Thiel maintains that ‘[q]uite unlike Locke, Shaftesbury falls back on the notion of a simple mind as which guarantees personal identity through time.’77 However, as already noted, I do not believe that Shaftesbury’s thinking about personal identity can be reduced to an immaterial substance view.78 Rather, given his criticism of purely speculative metaphysics, he has little interest in merely considering bare substances or substrata. Instead, he aims to make philosophy practically relevant and shifts the focus towards the character that is realized by a substance and asks how it can be improved. Thereby he intertwines metaphysical questions of personal identity with normative ones.79 I acknowledge that he does take the continued existence of a substance for granted, but for Shaftesbury questions of personal identity involve considerations of personal development and improvement. He regards personal development as 76  Here I distance my interpretation from Jaffro, who maintains that Shaftesbury holds a ‘very ambitious conception of selfhood’ (Jaffro, ‘Cyrus’ Strategy’, 159). For further discussion, see Boeker, ‘Shaftesbury on Persons, Personal Identity and Character Development’; Boeker, ‘Shaftesbury on Liberty and Self-­Mastery’. 77 Thiel, The Early Modern Subject, 245. 78  I defend this view at greater length in Boeker, ‘Shaftesbury on Persons, Personal Identity and Character Development’. 79  For further discussion, see Boeker, ‘Shaftesbury on Persons, Personal Identity and Character Development’; Jaffro, ‘Cyrus’ Strategy’.

268  Locke and his Early Critics and Defenders an ongoing practical project and insofar as personal development aims at the realization of one’s true self, selfhood is something that we actively create. His developmental approach is inherently normative; it repeatedly pushes a self to gain self-­knowledge and to improve their character so that they become more virtuous, attain happiness, and live in harmony with the universe as a whole. Since Shaftesbury’s moral philosophy puts the emphasis on virtue and character development, it offers an interesting example of how moral selfhood can be approached if Locke’s moral views are rejected.

11.2.2  Hume on Selves, Passions, and Sociability Like Shaftesbury, Hume is another critic of moral views that are grounded in divine law. However, Hume’s moral views differ from Shaftesbury’s and Hume takes a more critical stance towards religion than Shaftesbury. Thus, we can expect that Hume’s positive approach to moral selfhood will differ from both Locke’s and Shaftesbury’s views. Hume challenges religious beliefs in an afterlife. In his essay ‘Of the Immortality of the Soul’,80 he presents metaphysical, moral, and physical arguments that question the possibility of an afterlife and the immortality of the soul. With regard to metaphysical arguments, Locke and Hume agree that the immortality of the soul cannot be proven a priori, and they share a certain metaphysical agnosticism, but nuanced differences come to light when we turn to Hume’s physical arguments. As we have seen, Locke makes clear that we cannot know whether thinking takes place in material or immaterial substances, but he maintains that it is more likely that thinking substances are immaterial.81 Hume, on the contrary, draws attention to the analogies between human beings and non-­human animals and the interdependencies between mind and body. On this basis, he argues that it is more likely that human souls are mortal material beings.82 Hume’s disagreement with religious views, such as Locke’s, is even more upfront in his moral arguments.83 Hume argues that the idea of a last judgement does not make sense for a number of reasons. First, it is unjustified to ascribe intentions to God that are not grounded in actual experiences. Second, it is unclear what a divine standard of reward and punishment could be. According to Hume, human standards for punishment are grounded in sentiments, but ‘[s]hall we suppose, that human sentiments have place in the deity?’ (‘Immortality of the

80  References are to David Hume, ‘Of the Immortality of the Soul,’ in Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1994). 81  See II.xxvii.25. 82  See Hume, ‘Immortality of the Soul’, 596–7. 83  See Hume, ‘Immortality of the Soul’, 592–6.

Moral Personhood  269 Soul’, 594). Third, divine punishment lacks a purpose, because it takes place after ordinary life on Earth and therefore cannot lead to any improvements of life and society in this world. Hence, it ‘is inconsistent with our ideas of goodness and justice’ (‘Immortality of the Soul’, 594). Fourth, punishment should be proportional to the offence. Eternal divine punishment fails to meet this requirement, because eternal punishment for finite crimes is disproportional.84 Fifth, a divine last judgement presupposes that human beings can be divided into two different types, namely good and bad, but rather, according to Hume, goodness and badness come in degrees.85 These arguments offer strong evidence that Hume does not accept a religious foundation of morality as we find it in Locke. Having rejected divine law, it is worth considering what, if any, role the two other types of law that Locke acknowledges, namely civil law and the law of opinion or reputation, play in Hume’s philosophy. Hume opposes demonstrative moral theories,86 and, in contrast to many of his predecessors and contemporaries, subordinates the role of reason within moral considerations to that of the passions.87 This means that he would challenge Shaftesbury’s view that virtue presupposes reason and reflection as too intellectual. Instead Hume approaches moral philosophy through an experimental study of human nature.88 He is interested in understanding the principles that govern social interaction and lead to the formation of character traits. His moral philosophy involves detailed accounts of different virtues and vices.89 For Hume, a virtue (or vice) is a quality of mind, or character trait, that generates feelings of approval (or disapproval) when contemplated in an unbiased way.90 This understanding of vice and virtue comes closer to Locke’s law of opinion and reputation, which he also calls ‘Law of Fashion’ (II.xxviii.13) than Shaftesbury’s account of virtue. According to Locke, actions are compared to laws ‘to judge their Rectitude’ (II.xxviii.7). If they are compared to divine law, it is judged whether actions be sins or duties; if compared to civil law, ‘whether they be Criminal’; and if compared to the law of 84  This charge does not apply to Locke’s view, because Locke does not hold the view that divine punishment will be eternal. He makes this explicit in ‘Resurrectio et quae sequuntur’, in Locke, Writings on Religion, 232–7. 85  See Hume, ‘Immortality of the Soul’, 594. 86  See Hume, Treatise, 3.1.1; SBN 455–70. 87  See Hume, Treatise, 2.3.3, 3.1.2; SBN 413–18, 470–6. 88  Indeed, Hume believes that any subject is best approached through the study of human nature. In the Introduction to the Treatise, he claims that his philosophical project is ‘to explain the principles of human nature’ and thereby to ‘propose a compleat system of the sciences, built on a foundation almost entirely new, and the only one upon which they can stand with any security’ (Treatise, Intro 6; SBN xvi). According to Hume, any science, including mathematics, natural sciences, natural religion, morals, politics, has a relation to human nature. Hume’s commitment to the experimental method is explicit in the Treatise’s subtitle, ‘Being an Attempt to introduce the experimental method of reasoning into Moral Subjects’. For helpful further discussion of Hume’s method, see Tamás Demeter, ‘Hume’s Experimental Method,’ British Journal for the History of Philosophy 20 (2012). 89  For further discussion, see Baier, A Progress of Sentiments, ch. 9. 90  See Hume, Treatise, 3.3.1.3, 3.3.1.30; SBN 574–5, 591.

270  Locke and his Early Critics and Defenders opinion or reputation, ‘whether they be Vertues or Vices’ (II.xxviii.7). Locke understands virtue to be ‘everywhere that, which is thought Praise-­worthy; and nothing else but that, which has the allowance of Public Esteem, is called Vertue’ (II.xxviii.11). Although Locke’s understanding of virtue and vice comes close to Hume’s account, one important difference is that Hume distinguishes between artificial and natural virtues.91 Artificial virtues produce approval in light of conventions that have been established in society and are meant to help the effective functioning of society.92 Natural virtues, by contrast, are character traits inherent in human nature that produce approval independent of social conventions.93 Artificial virtues in Hume’s sense resemble civil laws in Locke’s philosophy. This suggests that Hume operates with a broader notion of virtues and vices than Locke does and that Hume’s philosophy has scope to accommodate both civil law and the law of opinion and reputation in Locke’s sense. Since Locke’s approach to persons and personal identity focuses on questions of moral accountability it is worth considering, what, if any role, considerations of moral accountability play in Hume’s moral philosophy. Humean virtues and vices generate praise and blame respectively, or approval and disapproval. Thus, the question may be rephrased as the question of when praise and blame are appropriate. The following passages offer helpful insight into Hume’s thinking on questions of moral responsibility: Actions are by their very nature temporary and perishing; and where they proceed not from some cause in the characters and disposition of the person, who perform’d them, they infix not themselves upon him, and can neither redound to his honour, if good, nor infamy, if evil. The action itself may be blameable; it may be contrary to all the rules of morality and religion: But the person is not responsible for it; and as it proceeded from nothing in him, that is durable or constant, and leaves nothing of that nature behind it, ’tis impossible he can, upon its account, become the object of punishment or vengeance. (Treatise, 2.3.2.6; SBN 411, italics added for emphasis) If any action be either virtuous or vicious, ’tis only as a sign of some quality or character. It must depend upon durable principles of the mind, which extend over the whole conduct, and enter into the personal character. Actions themselves, not proceeding from any constant principle, have no influence on love or hatred, pride or humility; and consequently are never considered in morality. (Treatise, 3.3.1.4; SBN 575)

91  See Hume, Treatise, 3.1.2.7–11; SBN 473–6. Part 2 of Book 3 of the Treatise focuses on artificial virtues, and Part 3 of Book 3 on natural virtues. 92  See Hume, Treatise, 3.2.1.1; SBN 477. 93  See Hume, Treatise, 3.3.1.1; SBN 574.

Moral Personhood  271 These passages reveal important differences between Locke’s and Hume’s thinking about moral responsibility. While Locke’s theory focuses on moral accountability for individual actions and a person’s ability to be conscious of them, Hume argues that it does not make sense to hold subjects responsible for ‘temporary and perishing’ actions, but rather, responsibility can only arise for actions done from ­stable and durable character traits. We do not have any explicit textual support that Hume would agree with Locke’s view that sameness of consciousness is a necessary condition for moral accountability, but it is clear that Hume shifts the focus towards the social dimension of praise- and blameworthiness. Rather than focusing on the conditions of just accountability from an internal first-­personal perspective, Hume puts more emphasis on considerations of when it is appropriate for others to approve or disapprove of a person’s character traits. As will become clearer in a moment, Hume goes even further and argues that interaction with others plays an important role in the development of stable character traits and thereby others contribute in making a person the person she is. Before we can consider how others contribute to the constitution of selves, it is worth asking, whether and how a Humean person can develop stable character traits. In Book 1 Hume introduces a self, as it is given in experience, as a bundle of rapidly changing perceptions. This Book 1 account lacks resources for ascribing stable character traits to a person. Thus, it is time to examine whether and how personal identity ‘as it regards our passions or the concern we take in ourselves’ (Treatise 1.4.6.5; SBN 253) offers resources for explaining the creation of durable character traits and what role stable character traits play in his Book 2 account of personal identity. In what, if any sense, can a Humean person be concerned for their past and/or their future? Since a Book 1 self, as given in experience, is a bundle of rapidly changing perceptions, it is difficult to explain how a Book 1 self can be concerned in more than the present moment.94 For Locke, concern for happiness ac­com­pan­ ies consciousness.95 In being conscious of pleasure and pain a Lockean self desires ‘that that self, that is conscious, should be happy’ (II.xxvii.26). Momentary pleasures can help a Lockean person to develop concern. However, when Locke speaks of ‘concern for Happiness’, he does not merely focus on momentary pleasures, but rather on lasting future happiness not just in this life, but also in the afterlife. Since Hume does not share Locke’s moral and religious beliefs, Locke’s understanding of concernment holds little attraction to him. Instead Hume believes that we have to turn to the indirect passions, pride and humility, love and hatred to understand how a self becomes concerned with their past and future.96 94 For helpful further discussion, see McIntyre, ‘Hume and the Problem of Personal Identity’, 190–5; McIntyre, ‘Personal Identity and the Passions’, 547–50. 95  See II.i.11, II.xxvii.26. 96  Hume introduces and discusses the indirect passions pride and humility in Treatise 2.1 and love and hatred in Treatise 2.2.

272  Locke and his Early Critics and Defenders The indirect passions pride and humility are both directed towards self and bring self into the focus of attention. However, the mere presence of a self does not by itself cause pride or humility, but rather Hume argues that there has to be an additional cause, since pride and humility are contrary passions and contrary passions require different causes.97 The causes of pride and humility include mental qualities such as wit, good humour, courage, justice, and their opposites, bodily qualities such as beauty or strength, and also external objects such as houses, gardens, dogs, clothes, and children.98 These causes are closely associated with the self. For instance, let us assume that I am the owner of a beautiful garden. The beautiful garden causes pleasure, which in turn generates pride and the pride is directed towards myself as owner of the garden. If instead of a beautiful garden I own a broken shed, the broken shed causes painful sensations, which generates humility, directed towards myself, as owner of the broken shed. Moreover, Hume maintains that in analogy to pride and humility there are two other indirect passions, namely love and hatred, that instead of being directed towards self are directed towards another person.99 Hume calls the mechanism, by which the indirect passions of pride and humility and love and hatred operate a ‘double relation of ideas and impressions’.100 This means that these indirect passions all operate by the same mechanism, namely a particular cause (idea) closely associated with a self [or another person] causes pleasure or pain (impression), which generates pride or humility [or love or hatred] (impression), and pride or humility [or love or hatred] is directed towards self [or another person] (idea) in light of the close association with the cause. Each time a self is proud or humiliated, pride or humility fixes the attention towards self. However, in what way is self the object of pride and humility? Are pride and humility directed towards the self, understood as a bundle of rapidly changing ideas and impressions, which is Hume’s Book 1 account of self?101 It would be too quick to assume that the self in this context is still the rapidly chan­ ging bundle of ideas and impressions, since the Book 1 account is restricted to the thought and imagination and Hume’s focus has now shifted towards the passions.102 Instead, I am in agreement with Donald Ainslie that it is more plausible that pride and humility fix the focus on the self as owner of the beautiful garden, 97  See Hume, Treatise 2.1.2.3–4; SBN 277–8. 98  See Hume, Treatise, 2.1.2.5; SBN 278–9. 99  See Hume, Treatise, 2.2. 100  See Hume, Treatise, 2.1.5–11, 2.2.2, 2.2.9, 2.2.11; SBN 285–324, 332–47, 381–9, 394–6. 101  For instance, McIntyre, ‘Hume and the Problem of Personal Identity’, assumes that pride and humility are directed towards self ‘understood as a connected succession of perceptions’ (192). See also McIntyre, ‘Personal Identity and the Passions’, 549; Terence Penelhum, ‘Self-­Identity and Self-­ Regard,’ in The Identities of Persons, ed. Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 255; J.  L.  Mackie, Hume’s Moral Theory (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 1980), 159–60 n. 1. 102  This is not to deny that in Treatise 2.1.2.2 (SBN 277) Hume still speaks of the self as ‘that succession of related ideas and impressions’. The issue here is whether he still puts emphasis on the rapid change of perceptions.

Moral Personhood  273 or as owner of some other object, or as subject of certain character traits, or ­mental or bodily qualities.103 This means that when pride and humility are directed towards the self the self is considered with respect to the particular cause that gives rise to pride or humility and is closely associated with self. On this basis, let us return to the question of how a Book 2 self can be ­concerned with the past and future.104 To begin with concern with the past, let us assume that Carol through regular practice has become an outstanding swimmer and has won a medal in a recent swimming competition. Her achievement makes her proud in her ability as a swimmer. Moreover, Carol does not just feel proud at the moment when she receives the medal, but rather her achievement and her ability as a swimmer continues to give her pleasure, which in turn generates pride directed towards herself as outstanding swimmer. This example illustrates how pride makes it possible that a self continues to be concerned with their past. The important issue is that a self in the present is properly related to past actions or achievements by means of the double mechanism of ideas and impressions. At this stage, it is worth asking whether pride and humility can generate stable ideas of oneself as outstanding swimmer, or as subject of certain mental or bodily qualities, or as owner of particular objects, or whether these ideas are changing like other perceptions. Hume is well aware that feelings can change quickly. For instance, while I may be proud about my achievements as a piano player my pride can vanish quickly and self-­doubts can take its place. Hume speaks to this issue by drawing attention to a secondary cause of pride and humility, namely sym­ pathy.105 Sympathy, according to Hume is a psychological mechanism whereby we make the feelings of others our own feelings.106 According to Hume, to strengthen my own feelings, it is important that other people share them and thereby increase the pleasure (or pain) that I receive from my distinctive mental and bodily qualities, possessions, and other objects associated with me. For ex­ample, when other people take pleasure in my piano performances I receive reassurance and my pride becomes more stable. Or, to turn to another example, assume that Rebecca is inclined to be generous. Hume would argue that it is important that other people take pleasure in her generous actions and the

103  See Donald C. Ainslie, ‘Scepticism about Persons in Book II of Hume’s Treatise,’ Journal of the History of Philosophy 37 (1999): especially 480–3. 104  In the following I build on work by McIntyre, ‘Hume and the Problem of Personal Identity’, 190–5; McIntyre, ‘Personal Identity and the Passions’, 550–6. 105  See Hume, Treatise, 2.1.11.1; SBN 316. 106  See Hume, Treatise, 2.1.11, 2.2.5.21; SBN 316–24, 365. For further discussion of Hume’s account of sympathy, see Annette  C.  Baier and Anik Waldow, ‘A Conversation between Annette Baier and Anik Waldow about Hume’s Account of Sympathy,’ Hume Studies 34 (2008); Jacqueline  A.  Taylor, Reflecting Subjects: Passion, Sympathy, and Society in Hume’s Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), ch. 2; Jacqueline Taylor, ‘Sympathy, Self, and Others,’ in Cambridge Companion to Hume’s Treatise, ed. Donald C. Ainslie and Annemarie Butler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).

274  Locke and his Early Critics and Defenders assurance, praise, and gratitude that she receives from other people will play a significant role in the formation of the stable character trait of generosity. Next, let us consider how Hume may explain concern with the future. A present self has motives, intentions, and various character traits that influence future actions. Hume acknowledges that there are causal relations between motives or intentions and actions, meaning that like actions follow like motives.107 Understanding the causal relations between motives and actions, or character traits and actions, makes it possible to predict a self ’s future actions. This by itself does not make a present self concerned for future selves. In order to understand how concern for future selves can arise, it is helpful to turn to Hume’s account of sympathy. Although paradigm cases of sympathy take place in the present moment when one person enters another person’s feelings and makes the other person’s feelings their own feelings, Hume believes that it is also possible that sympathy extends to a person in the future: Sympathy being nothing but a lively idea converted into an impression, ’tis evident, that, in considering the future possible or probable condition of any person, we may enter into it with so vivid a conception as to make it our own concern; and by that means be sensible of pains and pleasures, which neither belong to ourselves, nor at the present instant have any real existence. (Treatise 2.2.9.13; SBN 385–6)

In anticipating the actions that follow from my present motives, intentions, and character, I can put myself into the situation of the future person. By means of sympathy I can make the feelings of the future self my own present concern. For Hume sympathy comes in degrees and is proportional to the strength of the relations that persons bear to each other. In ‘order to feel sympathy in its full perfection’ (Treatise 2.1.11.8; SBN 320), Hume maintains, not only causal relations must be present, but also relations of resemblance and contiguity. Since the relations with a self in the near future are stronger than with a self in the more distant future,108 our concern for a self in the near future will be stronger than our concern for more distant future selves. Although Hume can explain concern for the future, concern for long-­term happiness in the distant future will commonly be rather faint. In this respect Hume’s view differs from Locke’s, who is more focused on concern for long-­term happiness. Yet this difference is not surprising since Hume does not share Locke’s religiously motivated belief in long-­term happiness in the afterlife.

107  See Hume, Treatise, 2.3.2.2, 2.3.2.4; SBN 408–10. 108  Hume discusses the influence of distance in space and time in Treatise 2.3.7–8 (SBN 427–38).

Moral Personhood  275 In Hume’s philosophy sympathy is a fundamental principle;109 sympathy plays an important role in the formation of stable character traits and sympathy makes it possible to develop concern for future selves. In his Book 2 account approval and disapproval of others, and sympathetic interaction in particular, play an important role in shaping the features that make a person the person she is. Continuous approval of others contributes to the formation of stable character traits. Although Hume would not deny that there can be selves who live in solitude, Hume regards Book 2 selves as deeply social creatures that seek the company of others. Indeed, he writes that ‘[a] perfect solitude is, perhaps, the greatest punishment we can suffer. Every pleasure languishes when enjoy’d a-­part from company, and every pain becomes more cruel and intolerable’ (Treatise, 2.2.5.15; SBN 363). Thus, we may say that selves on Hume’s view are commonly, at least in part, socially constructed. Through interaction with others, some of the features that characterize a person as the person she is become stable, others vanish and may be replaced by new features. The features of a self in solitude are more likely to be fluctuating, while selves that interact with others in society are in a better position to develop stable characters. Insofar as Humean selves are social creatures that seek approval and disapproval of others, it is important to have stable character traits, because praise and blame would not be appropriate if an action does not arise from a stable character trait.110 However, it is worth adding that Hume would not go so far as to claim that a change of character will lead to loss of personal identity. Hume believes that changes of character are possible.111 In Book 1 of the Treatise, he introduces the analogy with a republic or commonwealth to argue that ‘in like manner the same person may vary his character and disposition, as well as his impressions and ideas, without losing his identity’ (Treatise, 1.4.6.19; SBN 261).112 In Book 2 he makes clear that the indirect passions of love and hatred cannot be caused by momentary and fluctuating actions, but only by actions that arise from a stable intention or character. At the same time, he acknowledges that it is possible that a person changes her intentions by ‘repentance or a change of life’ (Treatise, 2.2.3.4;

109  See Hume, Treatise 3.3.1.7, 10–11, 3.3.6.1; SBN 575–9, 618. 110  See Hume, Treatise, 2.3.2.6, 3.3.1.4; SBN 411, 575. 111  See Hume, Treatise, 1.4.6.19, 2.2.3.4, 2.3.2.7; SBN 261, 349, 412. For further discussion, see Boeker, ‘Locke and Hume on Personal Identity’, 123–4; Anik Waldow, ‘Sympathy and the Mechanics of Character Change,’ Hume Studies 38 (2014). It is worth noting that the Treatise contains some passages that, at least prima facie seem to conflict with the possibility of character change. Hume writes: ‘it being almost impossible for the mind to change its character in any considerable article, or cure itself of a passionate or splenetic temper, when they are natural to it’ (Treatise, 3.3.4.3; SBN 608). It is important to note, though, that this passage concerns natural abilities, rather than character traits in general. Another passage that calls into question the possibility of character change can be found in Hume, Treatise, 3.2.5.9 (SBN 521). 112  See Lilli Alanen, ‘Personal Identity, Passions, and “the True Idea of the Human Mind”,’ Hume Studies 40 (2014), for a good discussion how this passage bridges Hume’s discussion of the self in Books 1 and 2.

276  Locke and his Early Critics and Defenders SBN 349), and in such a case the indirect passions that others express towards this person will also be altered. He reiterates this point in the following passage:113 Men are less blam’d for such evil actions, as they perform hastily and unpremeditately, than for such as proceed from thought and deliberation. For what reason? but because a hasty temper, tho’ a constant cause in the mind, operates only by intervals, and infects not the whole character. Again, repentance wipes off every crime, especially if attended with an evident reformation of life and manners. (Treatise, 2.3.2.7; SBN 412)

These passages make clear that Hume wants to accommodate the possibility of changes of character, including radical changes of character that result in ‘an evident reformation of life and manners’, but none of the passages support that changes of character result in loss of personal identity. Although for Hume stable character traits are an important prerequisite for moral responsibility and praiseor blameworthiness, in contrast to Shaftesbury, he does not pursue a normative project that actively guides selves to develop stable character traits. So far we have seen that for Hume others play an important role in contributing to the constitution of selves. However, one may wonder whether Hume can still acknowledge a distinction between myself and another person. For Locke, this difference is grounded in self-­consciousness. I am self-­conscious of thoughts and actions that belong to me, but unable to access the thoughts and actions of others in the same way, since I cannot look into their minds. Insofar as Hume explains a present self ’s concern with her future by means of relations of resemblance, contiguity, and causation, it seems that the difference between myself and another person becomes a matter of degree. If Hume throughout Books 2 and 3 of the Treatise sticks to the methodological tools introduced in Book 1, and continues to restrict explanations to a small number of principles such as the three associative principles, namely resemblance, contiguity, and causation, he may have to accept this consequence. However, there are also indications that Hume in Book 2 of the Treatise tends to take for granted that selves are embodied human beings.114 If this is correct, then the fact that I and another person both have bodies can help distinguish myself from another person, since our bodies will be located in different places, at least at the same time. Yet if Hume adopts this pos­ ition, then the difference between his and Locke’s position becomes even more striking. While Locke introduced a conceptual distinction between persons and human beings in order to make sense of questions of moral responsibility, Hume either cannot easily distinguish one person from another or, if he accepts that 113  See also Hume, EHU 8.3; SBN 98–9. 114  I provide several arguments in support of this reading in Boeker, ‘Locke and Hume on Personal Identity’, 119–21. For further discussion, see Baier, A Progress of Sentiments, ch. 6.

Moral Personhood  277 persons are embodied human beings, has limited resources within the context of his moral philosophy for acknowledging a conceptual distinction between persons and human beings. Hume may not be too concerned about this result, since he replaces divine law with a social dimension.

11.2.3  Alternatives to Divine Law Locke’s account of persons and personal identity is deeply rooted in his moral and religious views. Both Shaftesbury and Hume question Locke’s view that morality is grounded in divine law and presupposes a superior lawmaker who has the power to enforce divine law by reward and punishment. Moreover, they are crit­ ic­al of Locke’s Christian beliefs in the resurrection and a last judgement. Taking seriously that Shaftesbury and Hume hold moral and religious (or irreligious) views that differ from Locke’s moral and religious background beliefs explains why they each offer approaches to moral selfhood that are not only different from Locke’s, but also from each other. Since Locke regards divine law as the true foundation of morality, for him moral rightness and wrongness concern actions’s conformity to divine law. Thus, it is not surprising that he is particularly interested in questions of moral accountability for actions and develops an account of personhood, according to which persons are subjects of moral accountability. Rejecting divine law, or more generally moral views that focus on the conformity of actions to certain moral laws or standards, opens space for alternative moral views and alternative approaches to moral personhood. Shaftesbury goes so far as to highlight the dangers of moral theories grounded in divine law and sanctions. Instead Shaftesbury believes that we should return to ancient ideals and focus on virtue, namely promotion of goodness. Shaftesbury’s virtue-­ethical moral views, which fundamentally diverge from Locke’s moral thinking, prompt him to offer a developmental approach to selfhood, which is practical and normative, and guides a self to realize their true self and to improve their character with the aim of reaching happiness. Although he does not neglect the difficulties and challenges that individuals face while they are on a developmental journey, Shaftesbury is overall optimistic that through proper practice the more advanced and demanding phases of personal development can be reached. This optimism is grounded in moral realist beliefs and teleological and cosmological beliefs about the structure and organization of the universe. Thus, the specific developmental approach that he offers, will not appeal to philosophers who do not share his moral realism or his teleological and cosmological views. Yet, Shaftesbury’s developmental approach is not meant to be the only way to spell out how moral personhood can be understood within a virtue-­ethical framework. Rather I decided to focus on his view, because it illustrates how our thinking about persons and personal identity changes when we alter underlying moral and religious beliefs.

278  Locke and his Early Critics and Defenders Hume is not only an outspoken critic of divine law and the belief in a last judgement, but he would also question Shaftesbury’s teleologically grounded understanding of happiness. In contrast to Locke and Shaftesbury, Hume puts more emphasis on social interaction and regards sympathy as a fundamental moral principle. In Hume’s philosophy virtues (or vices) are character traits that generate approval (or disapproval) when considered from an unbiased perspective. Humean selves in Book 2 are social creatures that seek approval and disapproval of others and sympathetic interaction with others plays an important role in the formation of stable character traits. Thereby social interaction with others contributes to the constitution of selves. Hume’s philosophy illustrates how philo­ sophers who reject divine law and religious beliefs in an afterlife can shift the focus towards the social dimension of human interaction. Had Locke mainly focused on the law of opinion and reputation, possibly supplemented by civil law, and removed divine law from his moral theory, he could have developed an approach to persons and personal identity similar to Hume’s views in Books 2 and 3 of the Treatise.

Concluding Remarks Locke cleverly advances debates about persons and personal identity. By bringing together moral debates about personhood with metaphysical and religious debates about personal identity, he takes on a task that Hobbes left off. Locke regards his account of personal identity in terms of sameness of consciousness as ideally suited for addressing questions of moral accountability. Moreover, his view can make sense of the possibility of the afterlife without requiring a metaphysical stance on debates concerning the materiality or immateriality of thinking substances. Throughout this study I emphasized the moral and religious dimensions of Locke’s thinking about persons and personal identity. Examining Locke’s view in its philosophical and historical context helped to bring to light that his account of persons and personal identity has multiple layers. Taking seriously Locke’s kind­dependent approach means that in principle there are multiple ways how the term ‘person’ can be defined and before we can examine the persistence conditions for persons it is important to clarify what ideas we associate with being a person. Moreover, for Locke persons can exist in addition to human beings and the persistence conditions for persons can differ from the persistence conditions for human beings. Locke’s kind-­dependent approach to questions of identity over time differs from approaches to personal identity in twentieth- and twenty­first-­century metaphysical debates. In these debates it is not uncommon to assume that philosophers have to decide whether persons are, for instance, psychological subjects of experience, human animals, or immaterial souls. Moreover, they tend to assess the advantages of psychological accounts of personal identity by comparing them with biological accounts of personal identity or immaterial substance accounts, assuming that one of them offers the correct account of personal identity at the exclusion of the other options. For Locke, personal identity does not exclude human identity, but rather it is important that we make explicit how we understand the ideas of person and human being and then we can examine persistence conditions for persons or humans respectively in a next step. Realizing that Locke operates within the kind-­dependent framework means that, rather than turning directly to an analysis of the persistence conditions for persons, as present-­day philosophers often tend to do, it is important to examine his account of personhood first. Taking seriously the kind-­dependent framework adds an explanatory layer that is absent in neo-­Lockean debates about personal identity. As I suggested in chapter  4, moral considerations have explanatory Locke on Persons and Personal Identity. Ruth Boeker, Oxford University Press (2021). © Ruth Boeker. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198846758.003.0012

280  Concluding Remarks priority in Locke’s thinking about persons and personal identity. Locke’s particular moral thinking helps explain why he argues that sameness of consciousness is necessary for personal identity. Moreover, given the emphasis that Locke puts on the importance of distinguishing between the ideas of person, man, and substance, it is fair to enquire why he introduces these distinctions. I believe that an explanation can be found if we take seriously the religious dimension of his thinking, and argued for this in chapter 7. The religious belief in the resurrection and an afterlife makes it attractive to distinguish between the ideas of person and man and since we care to be in a ‘state of sensibility’ it is further important to distinguish between ideas of person and substance. Acknowledging the explanatory layers of Locke’s view and the role of the moral and religious dimensions does not make it redundant to ask further whether sameness of consciousness is suitable to provide persistence conditions for personal identity, or to ontologically ground personal identity. I addressed these questions in chapters 5, 6, and 8 by examining Locke’s understanding of sameness of consciousness and by showing that he has resources for overcoming circularity and insufficiency worries and that he can accommodate insights of both transitive and non-­transitive interpretations. By taking seriously Locke’s philosophical corpus as a whole and the historical and philosophical debates of his day, I hope to have shown that Locke has good reasons for claiming that ‘person’ is a forensic term, for distinguishing the ideas of person, man, and substance, and for arguing that personal identity consists in sameness of consciousness. However, in contrast to some neo-­Lockean in­ter­pret­ ations, I do not think that Locke’s account of personal identity is psychological per se, but rather I argued that we need to turn to the underlying moral, religious, metaphysical, and epistemic background beliefs to properly explain why Locke prefers his account of personal identity. Taking his underlying background beliefs into considerations has the further advantage that it not only sheds light on why many of his early critics do not adopt Locke’s view, but also why his view cannot be as easily dismissed as some of his critics assume.

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Index For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–53) may, on occasion, appear on only one of those pages. accountability, accountable  1–3, 9–11, 54, 57–8, 70–6, 91, 93–4, 96–8, 100–3, 121–3, 128, 164–5, 181–2, 184–5, 187, 189, 191, 194, 196, 202–4, 220–1, 252, 258–60, 263–4, 270–1, 277, 279 subjects of accountability  2–3, 9–10, 70–1, 73–6, 91, 124–7, 202–5, 220–1, 252, 256–9, 277 action  1–3, 5, 7–10, 55, 57–68, 71–8, 82, 84, 87–105, 108–13, 115–16, 121–3, 126, 129–31, 137–46, 153, 164–5, 167–70, 172–200, 202, 204, 220–1, 240–1, 243–5, 250–2, 256–8, 260–1, 263–4, 269–71, 273–7 voluntary action  71–2, 97–9, 101–3, 112, 121–2, 142–3, 167–70, 181 afterlife  1–8, 11, 50, 120–1, 130–1, 140, 147, 150–3, 155–6, 158–60, 163, 167–8, 170, 172–3, 182–4, 188, 195, 198, 203–5, 207–11, 244–5, 247–8, 258, 268, 271, 274, 278–80 agency, agent  55–8, 64, 67, 70, 93–4, 134–5, 194–5, 233, 258–9, 264–5 agnosticism  4–5, 12, 38–40, 47, 51, 129–30, 140, 167, 170, 201, 204–5, 213, 215, 224–5, 227–8, 232, 244–5, 268 Ainslie, Donald C.  254n.31, 272–3 Alanen, Lilli  275n.112 Alston, William P.  26n.37, 51n.61 Anstey, Peter R.  17n.11, 44n.43, 45n.44, 48n.49, 125n.5, 148n.4, 148n.5, 158n.38 animal  23, 43, 51–2, 104, 109, 130, 135, 148, 154, 157–8, 163, 169–70, 233, 248–9, 254–5, 258–9, 268 human  39–40, 49–50, 148–9, 256–9, 279 non-human  17, 94–5, 169–70, 268 appropriation  10, 55, 57–8, 71–2, 77–8, 87–8, 92–103, 112–13, 121–3, 167–70, 182, 190–1, 194, 196–7, 200 Astell, Mary  208n.6, 209–10, 223–4, 226–9 atheism in Shaftesbury  262 Atherton, Margaret  78n.3, 88n.38, 88n.40, 89n.42, 104n.94, 104n.97, 125n.5, 128n.15, 128n.16, 148n.5

atom  14–17, 21–2, 26n.37, 51–2, 51n.60 Avramescu, Cǎtǎlin 154n.28 Ayers, Michael  2n.5, 93n.58, 94n.60, 104n.94 Baier, Annette  255n.37, 269n.89, 273n.106, 276n.114 Balibar, Etienne  89n.42 Ball, Bryan W.  4n.10 Barresi, John  249n.17 belief as opposed to knowledge  151, 194–5 religious  1–2, 4–5, 143–4, 183–4, 198, 202–5, 207, 212–13, 226, 246–9, 257–9, 264, 268, 271, 274, 277–80 Bennett, Jonathan  26n.37, 51n.61, 136n.45 Bible  61, 63, 151–2, 156, 183–4, 194–5, 197–8, 211 Bishop of Worcester, see Stillingfleet body  6, 13–15, 17, 36–7, 39, 50, 59, 70, 72–3, 95–6, 105–10, 134–5, 141, 143, 148–50, 152–9, 161–2, 166–8, 179, 204–5, 211–12, 214, 216–18, 223–32, 236, 238–41, 267–8 Bolton, Martha Brandt  27n.39, 28n.43, 35n.17, 45–6, 48n.49, 51n.57, 51n.58, 51n.59, 51n.60, 52, 62n.37, 69n.65, 104n.94, 224n.68 Boyle, Robert  10n.22, 13n.3, 39n.30, 166 Broad, Jacqueline  108n.104, 211n.27, 211n.28, 213n.33, 214n.36, 226n.70, 228n.82, 230n.95 Brody, Baruch  27n.38, 88n.40, 91n.51 Brown, Deborah  165–6n.65 Buckle, Stephen  3n.8, 93n.59, 95n.65, 95n.67, 96n.70, 96n.71 Burnet, Elizabeth Berkeley  208–9, 211–12, 217 Burns, Norman T.  150n.10 Burthogge, Richard  13n.2 Butler, Joseph  10–11, 19n.17, 31n.9, 104n.94, 114–16, 124–9, 201n.1, 209–10, 235, 242–3, 242n.142 Cambridge Platonism  107–10, 163 cannibalism  154, 167–8

298 Index Cartesian, Cartesianism  11, 39, 43, 47, 77, 108–9, 147–50, 160–3, 169–70, 208–9, 217, 220, 223–4, 228–31 see also Descartes cause, causation in Clarke  240 in Hume  248–9, 254–8, 270, 272–4, 276–7 in Locke  134–5, 138–9, 143, 256–7 in Reid  233 causal relations  134–44, 146, 256–8 Chappell, Vere  29n.2, 30n.4, 32n.12, 34–6, 37n.24, 39n.27, 39n.28, 43n.37, 44n.41, 51n.58, 80n.10, 119n.133, 138n.57 character  4–5, 198–9, 202–3 in Hume  269–76, 278 in Shaftesbury  247–8, 251–3, 259–60, 262–8, 276–7 circularity charge  2–3, 7–8, 10–11, 124–9, 139–41, 280 Clarke, Samuel  194–5, 202n.2, 208n.7, 209–10, 233n.104, 235–45 Cockburn, Catharine Trotter  125n.5, 208–10, 213–15, 217, 221–4, 226 cogito  83–4, 263n.57, 265n.69 coincidence  8–9, 29–30, 32–49, 51–3 Collins, Anthony  115n.121, 172n.1, 194–5, 202n.2, 208n.7, 209–10, 234–43 Colman, John  61n.30 composition  201–2, 209–10, 224, 235–45 Conn, Christopher Hughes  18n.12, 19n.17, 22n.27, 26n.37, 27n.39, 32n.12, 48–51, 88n.40, 104n.94, 119n.133 Connolly, Patrick J.  61n.28, 61n.29, 132n.31, 224n.68 concern for happiness  93–4, 113, 271, 274 conscience  73, 167–8, 183–4 consciousness higher order theories of  10, 78–80, 85–6 sameness of  1–2, 9–11, 50–1, 54, 70–8, 87–131, 136–9, 144–8, 165–73, 175, 177, 188–94, 198, 203–5, 241–2, 248–9, 251–2, 257, 259, 271, 279–80 same order theories of  78–9 transfer of  130–1, 163–5, 170, 204–5 Copenhaver, Rebecca  90n.49 Coreanu, Sorana  93n.57 Cottrell, Jonathan  257n.39 Coventry, Angela  79–80, 218n.53 Cudworth, Damaris, see Masham Cudworth, Ralph  107–10 Darwall, Stephen  67n.60, 69n.65 day of judgement, see last judgement death  1–2, 6–7, 50, 119–21, 140, 147, 150, 152–60, 163, 166–7, 169–70, 184–6, 208, 211, 215, 221–2, 242, 244–5, 261

Della Rocca, Michael  232n.103 Demeter, Tamás  269n.88 Descartes, René  43, 83–4, 107–10, 114, 151n.15, 217, 223, 226, 229–30 desire  58–9, 64–9, 137–8, 141–3 as opposed to volition  64–6 suspension of, see suspension deterrence  188, 202–3 Downing, Lisa  234n.111 dream  106–7, 219–20 drunkenness  71–4, 183, 203–4 Duncan, Stewart  234n.108 duration  10, 77–8, 87–8, 91–2, 111–23, 129, 199 Emes, Thomas  208–9, 215n.43, 217–18 enthusiasm 264 epistemic humility  201, 205, 222 essence  224, 226–31 in Astell  226–9 in Cockburn  222–3 in Descartes  217, 223–4, 226, 228–30 in the Remarker  221–2 nominal  16–17, 20–4, 26–8, 41–5, 202, 224, 226, 230–1 real  3, 43–7, 224, 226, 230–1, 244–5 faith  151–2, 183–4, 207, 213, 257 feelings  58–9, 65–6, 83–4, 107–8, 110–11, 118–19, 139–40, 143 in Cudworth  108–10 in Descartes  108–10 in Hume  248, 269–70, 273–4 Flew, Antony  88n.40, 90n.48, 128n.15, 241n.140 Foisneau, Luc  5n.15, 6n.20 forensic, forensicality  57–8, 176–7, 205 ‘person’ being forensic term  1–5, 1n.2, 9–10, 12, 54–5, 55n.3, 57–8, 69, 93–4, 205, 248–9, 256–8, 280 forgetfulness  74, 89n.42, 177–8, 180, 182, 186, 192–4, 219–20 Forschner, Maximilian  4n.9 Forstrom, K. Joanna S.  108n.104 four-dimensionalism 48–51 freedom  56–7, 64–7, 97–8, 204 of action  64 Garrett, Don  72n.74, 88n.38, 93n.57, 128n.15, 129n.17, 137n.49, 140n.58, 254n.31, 255n.37 Geach, P. T.  29n.2, 30–1 Gill, Michael B.  246n.2, 247n.4, 260n.44, 260n.46, 266n.71 God  1–3, 15, 42, 52, 58, 60–8, 94–5, 140–2, 144–5, 154, 156–8, 164–5, 173n.4, 184–5,

Index  299 187–200, 205, 209–12, 216, 225–9, 231–2, 234, 237–8, 257–8, 261–2, 268–9 as creator  58, 61–2, 135, 137, 141–2, 226, 257 as designer  61–2, 64–6, 135, 157–8 as lawgiver  60, 205 God’s existence  60, 66–7, 69, 129–30, 205, 244–5 God’s goodness  187–8, 195–6, 199–200 Kingdom of God  184, 197 golden rule  62–4, 67–8 Gordon-Roth, Jessica  16n.8, 88n.38, 88n.40, 104n.94, 125n.5, 148n.5, 172n.1, 213n.35, 214n.39 Gorham, Geoffrey  119n.131 Grant, Ruth W.  60n.24, 94n.60 Grean, Stanley  260n.43 Griffin, Nicholas  27n.38, 29n.2, 36n.20, 37n.23 Grotius, Hugo  95–6 Guyer, Paul  44n.41 Haakonssen, Knud  3–4n.8 Hamou, Philippe  218n.53 happiness and misery  1–2, 55, 58–9, 63, 65–70, 93–4, 113, 130–1, 161, 258–9, 271 eternal happiness  68–9, 184–5, 199–200 future happiness  60, 66–7, 69, 113, 184, 271, 274 in Shaftesbury  246–7, 252, 260, 263–8, 277–8 Harris, James A.  65n.49, 138n.57 Harrison, John R.  108n.104 Helm, Paul  88n.40, 104n.94 Hobbes, Thomas  4n.9, 5–6, 13, 150n.12, 261, 279 Hody, Humphrey  154–5, 158–9 Hoffman, Joshua  27n.39, 28n.43, 28n.44, 35n.17, 36, 119n.133, 120n.134 Homogeneity Principle  237–40, 242–5 Hughes, M. W.  137n.49 Hume, David  12, 31n.9, 127n.13, 201n.1, 203–4, 246, 248–9, 253–9, 268–78 Hutton, Sarah  108n.104, 109n.106 Hyperaspistes 160n.44 idea abstract  19–21, 23–6, 55–6, 75, 230 complex  100–1, 105, 131–2, 227–30 confused 24 distinct  23–4, 99n.78, 230n.95 innate  161–2, 208–9, 215–17, 244–5 simple 229 identity absolute  31–5, 177 kind-dependent  2–3, 8–10, 20–9, 31–5, 37–8, 40–2, 46–8, 52–5, 75, 127, 147–8, 201–2, 207–8, 210, 230–1, 279–80 perfect or strict  31, 34, 127, 201–2, 253–4 relative  8–9, 29–43, 45–9, 125, 177

immateriality  1–2, 11, 31, 33–4, 39–40, 47, 49–50, 52–3, 74, 108–9, 111, 127, 129–31, 140, 147–51, 160–7, 169–70, 178, 193, 201–5, 209–10, 212–13, 215–16, 222–9, 231, 233, 235–7, 241–5, 267–8, 279 immortality  130–1, 207–10, 212–14, 221, 226, 231–2, 236–7, 268 individuation  6–8, 13–18, 28, 124, 221–4 in Cockburn  222–3 in Hobbes  6, 13 in Leibniz  216 in Molyneux  13–14 in the Remarker  221–2 in Sergeant  124 in Stillingfleet  16–17 indivisibility 31 in Astell  226 in Butler  242 in Reid  243 insufficiency worry  10–11, 125, 128–9, 144–6, 241, 280 interaction mind-body  108–9, 137–8, 226 social  248, 269–71, 275, 278 Jaffro, Laurent  249n.17, 253n.26, 263n.55, 264n.62, 267n.76, 267n.79 Johnston, Mark  156n.35 Jolley, Nicholas  119n.133, 137n.49, 173n.3, 183n.44, 224n.68 Jones, Jan-Erik  44n.41, 44n.43 Jorgensen, Larry M.  218n.51 Kant, Immanuel  235n.112 Kaufman, Dan  29n.2, 34n.14, 44n.41, 44n.43, 48n.48, 48n.49, 51n.57, 119n.133, 120n.134 Kim, Han-Kyul  224n.68 kinds of being  6n.18, 15–35, 37–8, 40–2, 44–8, 48–49n.49, 51, 54–5, 69–71, 76, 141–2, 172–3, 201–2, 230 knowledge demonstrative  60–2, 64, 67, 100, 137–8, 142–3, 150–1, 205, 244–5 intuitive  67, 82–3, 85–6, 137–8, 142–3, 150–1, 226–7 limitations of  10–11, 43–6, 134–6, 150–1, 164, 222, 247 metaphysical 129–30 of co-existence  226–8 of morality  3, 60–4 of our own existence  3, 82–6, 114 sensitive  83–4, 84n.28, 99n.78, 150–1 Kriegel, Uriah  79–80, 79n.5, 218n.53 Kulstad, Mark  78n.4

300 Index labour  65–6, 94–5 cognitive  69, 98–102, 112, 121–2, 167–70 physical  69, 98–9, 101–2, 112, 121–2, 167–70 Lähteenmäki, Vili  78n.4, 79n.5, 80–1, 82n.23, 210n.22, 210n.26 Langton, Rae  133n.35, 136n.44 Langtry, Bruce  32n.12 Laslett, Peter  108n.104 last judgement  4–5, 7–8, 11, 123, 153, 164, 172–3, 182–4, 186–96, 199–200, 202–5, 247–8, 258, 268–9, 277–8 law  55–60, 62–4, 67–71, 98, 258–9 civil  57–8, 94, 183, 191, 202–4, 248, 269–70 divine  9–10, 12, 57–8, 60–3, 67–9, 94, 183, 191, 194–5, 198–200, 202, 205, 247–8, 251–2, 259–60, 262, 268–70, 276–8 moral  61–3, 277 natural  3–4, 62 of opinion and reputation  57–8, 248, 269–70, 278 Law, Edmund  4–5, 51n.57, 148n.5 Lee, Henry  78n.4, 124n.3, 124n.4, 125n.5, 207n.2, 208n.6, 209–10 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm  9–10, 74, 78n.4, 80n.7, 195–6, 202, 205, 208–10, 216–21, 231–3 Levanon, Tamar  115n.121, 116n.126 LoLordo, Antonia  4n.14, 48n.48, 51n.57, 59n.21, 60n.26, 65n.49, 66n.55, 67n.60, 67n.61, 88n.37, 93n.58, 101n.86, 102n.91, 125n.5, 132n.29, 137n.49, 138n.57, 148n.5, 229n.87, 229n.94 Lowe, E. J.  48n.48, 48n.49, 51n.57, 88n.40, 91n.51, 138n.57, 175n.7 Lycan, William  79n.5 Mackie, J. L.  88n.38, 104n.94, 128n.16, 137n.49, 173n.3, 175n.8, 272n.101 Martin, Raymond  249n.17 Masham, Damaris Cudworth  108n.104, 109, 209–10, 231 materialism  11, 33–4, 39–40, 47, 49–50, 120–1, 129–31, 140, 147–60, 163–4, 166–8, 170, 201, 204, 209–10, 215, 223–45, 268, 279 Mattern, R. M.  138n.52 Mautner, Thomas  96–7 McCann, Edwin  104n.94, 137n.49, 234n.111 McIntyre, Jane L.  74n.81, 254n.34, 271n.94, 272n.101, 273n.104 McMurrich, J. Playfair  10n.22 mechanical, mechanism  45–6, 52, 56–7, 108–9, 165–6, 234 in Leibniz  231, 233 in Reid  233

memory  10, 71–4, 77–8, 83–5, 87–92, 98–103, 106–7, 111–13, 115–16, 120–3, 129–31, 140–1, 161–2, 164, 169–70, 175–81, 184–94, 197–8, 202–3, 215, 217, 220, 241–2, 248–53, 257–8 episodic 90 genuine  90n.48, 129n.17, 241–2 in Clarke  241 in Collins  240–2 in Hume  248–9, 253–8 in Leibniz  74, 196, 202 in Reid  116 in Shaftesbury  249–53 in Watts  219–20 memory continuity theory  177–81, 193–4 seeming  90n.48, 129n.17, 241–2 semantic 90 simple memory theory  177, 179–81, 185 mental transparency  217 Mercer, Christia  109n.106 Milton, John  150n.12 Milton, John R.  149n.9, 246n.2 mineness  10, 77–8, 87–8, 92–3, 103, 112–13, 122–3, 167–8, 182, 188 minimal sense of  87–8, 92–3, 102n.89, 103, 112, 122–3, 182, 188 robust sense, see appropriation modes  4–5, 15, 51–2, 100–1, 131–2, 134, 223–4, 229–30 in Astell  228–9 in Descartes  229–30 in Law  4–5 Molyneux, William  9–10, 13, 61, 71n.70, 72–4, 102n.90, 202–4 More, Henry  4n.11, 108–9, 109n.106, 163 mortalism  140–1, 150 names  6, 19–25, 37–8, 69 sortal  6, 20–1, 37–8 natural law tradition  3–7, 93, 95–6 Newman, Lex  19n.17, 127n.12 Noonan, Harold  2n.5, 79n.5, 175n.7 Nuovo, Victor  62n.38, 173n.4 Odegard, Douglas  29n.2, 32n.12 Olivecrona, Karl  93n.59, 95n.67, 96n.71 organism  14–15, 21–2, 34–5, 39, 43, 49–50, 104–7, 130, 147–8, 152, 155–60, 167–8, 204, 234 Ott, Walter R.  132n.33, 133n.35, 134n.39, 136, 136n.48 Overton, Richard  150n.12 Owen, David  44n.41, 44n.43

Index  301 Parfit, Derek  2n.5, 101n.88, 137n.49, 176–7 Penelhum, Terence  272n.101 perception  10, 77–93, 98–102, 106–7, 112, 118–19, 121–3, 137, 144–5, 161, 178–9, 182, 217–18, 220–1, 235 animal  169–70, 217n.49 in Butler  242 in Emes  217–18 in Hume  253–7, 271, 273–4 in Leibniz  218–20 in the Remarker  235–6 Perry, John  88n.40, 91n.51 persistence conditions  8–10, 18–22, 25–8, 31–5, 37–8, 40–1, 43, 46–8, 54, 70–1, 74, 76, 102–3, 127, 147–8, 155–6, 163–4, 167–8, 170, 172–3, 201–4, 279 personal identity bodily views  74–6, 130, 203–4, 262–3, 279 immaterial substance views  11, 33–4, 74, 111, 130, 163–5, 170, 203–4, 243, 262–3, 267–8, 279 neo-Lockean views  2n.5, 101n.88, 279–80 psychological views  2–3, 12, 203–4, 249, 255, 259, 279–80 Phemister, Pauline  44n.41, 44n.43 place-time-kind principle  16, 265 pleasure and pain  58–9, 63, 65–9, 83–4, 93–4, 187, 271 in Hume  272–5 power  64–6, 84–5, 89–90, 144–5, 159–60, 187, 198, 215–16, 227–8, 233 active  138, 142–3 in Butler  242 in Clarke  237–40 in Collins  237–41 in Leibniz  218, 231–2 in the Remarker  224, 225 of lawmaker  9–10, 60–1, 64, 199–200, 205, 259–60, 277 passive  138, 142–3 supernatural  135, 159–60, 167–8 to do otherwise  67 to suspend, see suspension pre-existence  50, 134, 163–5, 170, 250 in Shaftesbury  250 Priest, Graham  172n.2 Priestley, Joseph  209–10, 233 principle of individuation, principium individuationis  13–18, 28, 48n.49, 124 in Hobbes  13 Principle of Sufficient Reason in Leibniz  232 Priselac, Matthew  78n.4, 86n.31

probability  10–11, 40, 111, 130–1, 135, 143–4, 150–2, 160, 162, 164, 169–70, 183–4, 189–90, 194–5, 200, 212, 244–5, 247, 257 property as one’s own  94–7 as metaphysical entity  221–4, 226–7, 229, 234, 237–9 providence  65–6, 154, 157–9 psychological connectedness  176–7, 185, 188 psychological continuity  101n.88, 176–7, 187–94, 203–4 psychopannychism  150, 163 punishment, see reward and punishment Purviance, Susan M.  247n.4 reason  55, 57, 59–62, 64, 68–71, 94–5 in Hume  269–70 in Shaftesbury  259–62, 269–70 recreation  120–1, 154, 166–8, 212 reflection  10, 55, 57, 59–60, 64, 68–71, 78–82, 90, 106–7, 114–19, 121–2, 129, 144–5, 218, 220, 244–5 in Butler  126 in Emes  217–18 in Reid  116 in Shaftesbury  259–62, 264–5, 269–70 Reichman, Edward  10n.22 Reid, Thomas  19n.17, 31n.9, 78n.4, 81n.17, 88–9, 104n.94, 114–17, 119, 121, 127, 172, 174, 182–3, 201n.1, 202n.2, 209–10, 231, 233, 235, 242–3, 242n.142 relations  10–11, 14, 19, 30–2, 34–5, 75–8, 87–8, 130–46, 159–60, 167–8, 173, 175, 177, 182, 189–91, 220–1, 229–30, 251–2, 256–8 in Hume  255–8, 274, 276–7 Relative Identity interpretations of Locke  8–9, 25n.34, 29–33, 35–6, 38–43, 45–9, 125, 177 see also identity Renz, Ursula  251n.21 repentance  11, 173, 195–200 in Hume  275–6 resurrection  1–7, 11, 50n.55, 120–1, 137n.49, 140–1, 147, 150, 152–60, 163–8, 170, 182–96, 200, 207–8, 211–12, 215, 221–2, 277, 279–80 in Clarke  240 in Collins  240–1 revelation  61, 63, 151–2, 183–4, 194–5, 211–13 reward and punishment  1–2, 9–10, 55n.3, 57, 60, 63, 67–9, 71–3, 75, 95–7, 100, 116, 126–7, 147, 153, 164–5, 167–8, 176–7, 182–4, 187–9, 191, 194–200, 202–5, 247–8, 252, 258–60, 263–4, 277 in Collins  195

302 Index reward and punishment (cont.) in Hume  268–70, 275, 277 in Leibniz  74 in Shaftesbury  247–8, 252, 259–64, 277 Rickless, Samuel C.  61n.30, 62n.39, 65n.49, 66n.55, 79n.5, 88n.40, 91n.51, 91n.52, 125n.5, 126n.8, 130n.21, 131n.28, 132n.29, 132n.30, 132n.33, 133n.35, 136n.42, 136n.43, 138n.57, 148n.5, 173n.4 Rogers, G. A. J.  108n.104, 148n.4 Rosenthal, David M.  79n.5 Rossiter, Elliot  61–2 Rosner, Fred  152n.22, 156n.35, 159n.40, 159n.41 Rovane, Carol  2n.5 Rozemond, Marleen  238n.122 Schachter, Jean-Pierre  236n.113 Scharp, Kevin  78n.4, 82n.21 Scripture, see Bible self-consciousness  10, 77–8, 83–90, 92–3, 96–7, 103, 106–7, 112, 121–3, 137, 139–45, 167–8, 178–9, 189–90, 211, 276–7 sensation  59, 80, 83, 85–6, 106–8, 110–11, 117–19, 149 animal 163 in Clarke  237–8 in Collins  237–8 in Cudworth  110 in Descartes  108 sensibility state of  1–2, 130–1, 209–10, 279–80 Sergeant, John  15n.6, 19n.17, 124, 124n.3, 124n.4, 133n.35, 207n.2, 208n.6 Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of  12, 199n.79, 202–5, 246–53, 259–70, 276–8 Sheridan, Patricia  60n.26, 69n.65, 200n.82 Shimokawa, Kiyoshi  94n.60, 94n.61, 95n.63, 96–7 Siderits, Mark  141n.62 signification  20–5, 70–1 immediate  24–5, 55–6, 70–1 simplicity  209–10, 224, 235 in Clarke  235, 240 in Hume  253–4 sleep  71–3, 115, 119–21, 140, 150, 161–3, 169, 183–5, 187, 208, 213, 215, 217, 220 in Collins  240–1 in Leibniz  219 in the Remarker  214, 221 in Watts  219–20 sleepwalking  72–3, 98–9 in Leibniz  74 Slowik, Edward  119n.131 Smith, John  108n.104

Smith, Matthew  149n.9, 163n.58 sort, sortal  6, 15, 20–6, 30–2, 34–5, 37–8, 41–2, 51–2, 202, 230 see also kinds of being soul  6–7, 11–13, 15–17, 20, 70, 110–11, 125, 130–1, 140–1, 147–50, 166, 207–9, 227–8, 230–2, 250, 268, 279 Cartesian views of  11, 77, 148–9, 160–3, 169–70, 208–9 immaterial  1–2, 11, 33, 39, 108–10, 148–50, 163–7, 169–70, 201, 204–5, 209–10, 222–3, 225–6, 236–7 material  148–50, 152–60, 166–8, 170, 201, 225, 236–7 perpetually thinking  12, 148, 208–24, 244–5 rational  17, 149, 167 sensitive  149, 165–7 soul sleepers  150 species, see kinds of being Spector, Jessica  57n.12 spirit, see soul Sreedhar, Susanne  57n.13, 60n.26, 61–3, 248n.10 Stanton, Timothy  94n.60 Stillingfleet, Edward  16–18, 22n.28, 107n.103, 129–30, 131n.28, 152–4, 157, 170, 207, 208n.7, 209–11, 213, 226–7, 231–2 Strawson, Galen  4n.14, 11, 71n.69, 88n.40, 91n.51, 104n.97, 119n.133, 127n.14, 137n.49, 173, 176–7, 182, 182n.43, 184n.50, 185–6, 185n.52, 185n.54, 185n.55, 190–2, 194, 195n.68, 196–200, 196n.69, 254n.31 Stuart, Matthew  11, 15n.7, 27n.39, 29n.2, 30n.4, 31n.8, 32n.12, 33n.13, 34n.14, 35–8, 39n.27, 44n.41, 44n.43, 48n.48, 51n.57, 52n.62, 54n.2, 65n.49, 66n.55, 88n.36, 88n.40, 91n.51, 91n.53, 98, 101n.88, 119n.133, 120n.136, 125n.5, 131–2, 132n.33, 136, 137n.49, 140–1, 173, 176–82, 185–6, 185n.52, 190–4, 192n.64, 207n.3, 207n.4, 224n.68, 229n.87, 234n.111 Stuart-Buttle, Tim  260n.43 succession  70, 114, 116–19, 121–2 in Hume  256 in Reid  116–17, 119 substances  1–2, 4–7, 14–15, 17, 20, 39–40, 42–4, 49–52, 75–6, 87–8, 93, 100–1, 104–5, 107–8, 110–12, 124–32, 134, 137, 139, 141, 143–4, 146–9, 170–1, 184, 186, 189–90, 204, 207–10, 212, 220–2, 224–8, 230–1, 236, 243–6, 248–9, 256–7, 279–80, 229–31 immaterial  1–2, 31, 33–4, 39–40, 47, 49–50, 52, 74, 107, 111, 127, 130–1, 147–8, 150–1, 160–7, 169–70, 178, 193, 201–5, 209–10, 212, 222, 225–6, 233, 235, 241–5, 267–8, 279 in Astell  226–9

Index  303 in Clarke  237–8, 241–2 in Cockburn  222–3 in Descartes  223, 226, 229 in Leibniz  218, 231–2 in Reid  233, 243 in Shaftesbury  262–3, 267–8 material  120–1, 150–60, 164, 167–8, 209–10, 222–4, 227 thinking  11, 39–40, 47, 52–3, 110–11, 120–1, 130, 140, 148–51, 167, 170, 178, 193, 201, 204, 209–10, 215, 220–1, 224–5, 268, 279 superaddition  209–10, 226–7, 232, 234 in Collins  237–8 in Leibniz  232 suspension 65–8 Tabb, Kathryn  4n.14 Talbot, Ann  154n.28 Taylor, E. Derek  226n.72 Taylor, Jacqueline A.  273n.106 temporality  10, 77–8, 87–8, 111–23, 129, 142–3, 169, 199, 251–2 theism in Shaftesbury  262 Thiel, Udo  3n.8, 4n.14, 4n.9, 5n.15, 8, 10n.22, 13n.3, 15n.6, 16n.10, 29n.2, 30n.4, 32n.12, 36n.20, 39n.27, 48n.48, 49n.52, 54n.2, 75–6, 78n.4, 79–80, 79n.5, 80n.9, 82n.21, 88n.40, 94n.60, 104n.94, 108n.104, 119n.133, 124n.4, 125, 126n.8, 127n.14, 152n.22, 156n.35, 157n.37, 163n.60, 174n.6, 183n.44, 183n.45, 195n.68, 197n.71, 198, 198n.77, 207n.1, 208n.10, 210n.26, 218n.53, 233n.105, 247n.6, 249n.16, 249n.17, 251–2, 263n.55, 267–8 thinking matter  12, 150–1, 208–10, 222–45 Thomas, Emily  119, 222n.64 thnetopsychism  120n.138, 150, 215 transitivity objection  2–3, 7–8, 11, 123, 172–7, 182–96, 200, 205, 280 Trinity 207 Trotter, Catharine, see Cockburn uneasiness  59, 65–6, 68 union in nature  105 mind and body  11, 16–17, 39–40, 47, 49–50, 105–10, 147–9, 165–7, 204–5, 209–10 vital  104, 107–11 unity as aspect of same consciousness  10, 71–2, 77–8, 87–8, 92, 103–13, 121–3, 129–31, 137, 139, 143–6, 167–9, 189–93, 201–2, 241–2, 244–5, 251–2, 257 experience of  106–7, 110–11, 137, 144–5, 244–5

of body  105–6, 159 of consciousness, perception, or thought  105–7, 139, 209–10, 224, 235, 239–40, 244–5, 257 of ideas  105 of substance  17, 130–1, 201–2, 231, 233, 241–2 Uzgalis, William L.  32n.12, 51–2, 51n.57, 115n.121, 210n.26, 234n.109, 237n.116, 238n.122, 242n.142 Vailati, Ezio  237–8, 239n.130 Vidal, Fernando  10n.22 virtue and vice  202–3, 251–2, 261, 268–70, 277 in Hume  248, 269–70, 278 in Shaftesbury  205, 252, 259–64, 267–70, 277 social virtue  63 volition  64–6, 98–9, 101–2, 137–8, 141–3, 169–70, 181 voluntary, voluntariness  71–2, 97–103, 112, 121–2, 142–3, 167–70, 181–2 Waldow, Anik  273n.106, 275n.111 Walmsley, J. C.  208n.9 Watts, Isaac  208–9, 215n.43, 217, 217n.50, 219–20, 221n.60 Waxman, Wayne  254n.31 Wedeking, Gary  29n.2 Weinberg, Shelley  10, 19n.17, 54n.2, 65n.47, 78n.3, 78n.4, 79–80, 81n.14, 82n.22, 83–4, 85n.30, 86n.31, 86n.32, 88n.38, 88n.39, 88n.40, 102n.91, 104n.94, 104n.96, 107n.101, 112n.112, 112n.113, 113n.115, 119n.133, 121n.139, 128n.15, 137n.49, 140n.58, 145–6, 189n.60, 191n.63, 194n.66, 218n.53 Whiting, Jennifer  2n.5 Wiggins, David  31n.5, 32n.11, 32n.12 Williams, Bernard A. O.  88n.40 Willis, Thomas  149n.9, 151n.15 Winkler, Kenneth P.  4n.13, 44n.41, 88n.37, 90n.48, 93n.58, 102n.91, 128n.15, 128n.16, 175n.7, 241n.139, 247n.4, 249n.17, 252–3, 254n.31 Wolfe, Charles T.  233n.105 Wood, Joshua M.  234n.111 Wright, John P.  210n.26, 233n.104 Wunderlich, Falk  233–4, 234n.107 Yaffe, Gideon  15n.7, 16n.8, 29n.2, 31n.8, 32n.12, 66n.55, 66n.57, 67n.60, 75, 76n.84, 78n.3, 88n.39, 88n.40, 102n.91, 112n.112, 114n.118, 118n.128, 118n.129, 119n.133, 246n.2 Yolton, John W.  210n.26, 224n.68 Zack, Naomi  93n.59, 95n.67, 96n.73