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1 A Crucial Concept: neo‐Lockean Persons 1.1 John Locke’s concept of a person

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In chapter 27 of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke (1632–1704) discussed the idea of identity, and there he distinguished between the identity of a man – that is, of a human animal – and the identity of a person. As regards the former, Locke’s view was as follows:

This also shows wherein the identity of the same man consists: viz. in nothing but a participation of the same continued life, by constantly fleeting particles of matter, in succession vitally united to the same organized body. (chap. 27, para. 6)

As regards the concept of a person, however, Locke offered a very different account:

… 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 itself as itself, the same thinking thing in different times and places; which it does only by that consciousness which is inseparable from thinking and, as it seems to me, essential to it …. For since consciousness always accompanies thinking, and it is that that makes everyone 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. (chap.27, para. 9)

Not all of this is as clear as it could be, and philosophers have offered slightly different interpretations of Locke’s concept of personal identity, and thus of his concept of a person. What is crucial here, however, are not the details, but simply that, on Locke’s account, a person is an entity that (1) has conscious mental states at some times, (2) has the capacity for thought at some times, and (3) has thoughts at some times that are mentally linked to conscious states at other times.

Locke’s concept of a person is clearly very different from his concept of a human animal. It could turn out, of course, that all human animals, at any time, are in fact persons, in Locke’s sense. We shall see shortly, however, that there are very strong scientific arguments against that possibility.

Bioethics

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