Personal identiy: John Locke and the arguments in favour of the psychological criterion

Abstract

This essay is about personal identity. That is, this essay concerns itself with the question of what makes it the case that one and the same person might continue to exist through time in spite of all the changes in the properties that she has (someone who 80 years ago was a child is now an old lady; even so, the child and the old lady are the same person). Examining this question is a way of trying to shed some light into the more general question: what is a person? Personal identity is linked to moral responsibility and also to the expectations that one has about what will happen to oneself in the future. We will see that there are two opposing criteria that both try to explain what determines personal identity: the psychological criterion and the body criterion. We will present some of the main arguments that have been offered to support the psychological criterion, and we will see how a proponent of the body criterion might reply to them and actually use them as arguments against the very psychological criterion. By contrasting these two perspectives, this essay seeks to provide the reader with tools that will help him or her to develop her own personal opinion regarding the issue of personal identity.

Key words: personal identity, person, metaphysics, psychological criterion, body criterion, John Locke.