The Ego Trick (baggini, Julian) / quote 39 of 254
Locke's memory criterion of personal identity
Similar thoughts informed one of the first modern advocates of psychological continuity as the key to personal identity, the seventeenth-century philosopher John Locke. Such was the emphasis he placed on memory that he has been widely attributed with holding a ‘memory criterion’ of personal identity. Locke defined ‘person’ in psychological terms, as a ‘thinking intelligent being that has reflection and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing in different times and places’. The key to personal identity is therefore consciousness: ‘For since consciousness always accompanies thinking, and ’tis that, that makes every one to be, what he calls self; and thereby distinguishes himself from all other thinking things, in this alone consists personal Identity, i.e. the sameness of a rational Being: And as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past Action or Thought, so far reaches the Identity of that Person.’