A person with severe amnesia who retains the same temperament and values lacks the memory-chains Locke requires, yet Williams's criterion would falsely count them as fully continuous.

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Reasons For

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Reason for

1.Locke's memory criterion requires continuous memory chains linking past to present; severe amnesia breaks these chains entirely.
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2.Williams's psychological continuity (temperament/values) persists despite amnesia, making identity judgments conflict between the two theories.
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3.Intuitively, someone who cannot recall their past actions loses a key element of personal identity, even if their personality remains stable.
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Reasons Against

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Reason against

1.Williams's criterion doesn't require memory itself, only continuity of psychological traits—which the amnesiac retains fully.
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2.Calling such continuity 'false' assumes Locke's memory-chain view is correct, but this begs the question against Williams's alternative.
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3.Personality and values shape moral responsibility and agency more directly than episodic memories of specific past events.
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Key Terms

Amnesia(used to describe the hypothetical person in this philosophical example): A condition where someone loses their memories, either of their past or their ability to form new memories.
Bernard Williams(as a defender of Humean philosophy): A late 20th-century British philosopher who wrote influential works on ethics, questioning whether morality can be truly objective and exploring the role of personal projects and desires in a good life.
John Locke(as a later developer of abstraction theory): An English philosopher (1632-1704) who argued that the human mind starts as a blank slate and learns everything through experience and sensory observation rather than being born with built-in knowledge.
Memory-chains(Locke's specific requirement for what keeps someone the same person over time): Locke's idea that your identity is preserved by an unbroken chain of memories linking your past self to your present self.
Williams's criterion(being presented as a competing standard for personal identity that differs from Locke's): Williams's alternative theory about what makes someone the same person—in this case, apparently based on continuity of personality or body rather than just memory.
continuity(Greek: sunecheia; Arabic: ittiṣāl): A property of bodies for which Aristotle provided at least three distinct accounts
personal identity(Philosophy of personal identity): The relation of sameness holding between a person existing at one time and something existing at another time, analyzed here in terms of psychological continuity
temperament(Moral agency and ethical decision-making): A biologically determined disposition that colors a moral agent's distinctive perspective and inclinations toward action.

Connections

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Afterlife & Death1 linked

Calling such continuity 'false' assumes Locke's memory-chain view is correct, bu...Intuitively, someone who cannot recall their past actions loses a key element of...It is clear to us that we will be the same person until a later time by virtue o...Locke's memory criterion requires continuous memory chains linking past to prese...

Details

Type: claim
Perspectives: 2 (1 for, 1 against)
Edits: 1 edit