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    Memory is not a sufficient condition for personal identity — Carmelics
    Home/Personal Identity
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    Memory is not a sufficient condition for personal identity

    Personal Identity
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Memory is causally dependent on personal identity rather than constitutive of it, as Reid argued against Locke's circularity.
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    • 2.To remember that I performed an action presupposes that the 'I' who remembers is already identical to the agent, making memory explanatorily derivative.
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    • 3.If memory constituted identity, the logical priority would be reversed: we would need identity to ground the memory claim before memory could establish identity.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Shoemaker and Parfit's cases of fission demonstrate that two distinct persons can share overlapping memory chains, violating the one-one relation identity requires.
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    • 2.Where memory continuity branches into two psychologically continuous successors, identity cannot hold to both, yet memory-criterion proponents cannot principled exclude either.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.Having an episodic memory of an event entails that one existed at the time of the remembered event
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    • 2.It is not the recollection or ability to recall that makes one identical with the person who was witness or agent to the event
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    • 3.One might have performed an action without remembering it, yet still be the person who performed it
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    Topics

    Personal Identity

    Related

    Having an episodic memory of an event entails that one existed at the time of th...If memory constituted identity, the logical priority would be reversed: we would...It is not the recollection or ability to recall that makes one identical with th...Memory is causally dependent on personal identity rather than constitutive of it...
    +4 moreShow less
    One might have performed an action without remembering it, yet still be the pers...Shoemaker and Parfit's cases of fission demonstrate that two distinct persons ca...To remember that I performed an action presupposes that the 'I' who remembers is...Where memory continuity branches into two psychologically continuous successors,...

    Similar

    A criterion for personal identity cannot presuppose the answer to the ...83%The non-identity of different persons depends on the further fact of p...82%Reductionism about personal identity holds that the non-identity of pe...80%Personal identity must consist of something other than a physical or m...80%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: reid-memory-identity
    View source passageHide passage
    According to Reid, memory is neither necessary nor sufficient for personal identity, metaphysically speaking, despite the conceptual and evidential relations memory bears to personal identity. It is not a necessary condition because each us has been agent or witness to many events that we do not now remember. “I may have other good evidence of things which befell me, and which I do not remember: I know who bare me, and suckled me, but I do not remember these events” (Essays, 264). It is not a su
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (2 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit