For Locke, 'self' exists only within a coherent, diachronic consciousness. For Hume, there is no 'self'.
This essay describes Locke's 'unity of consciousness' by examining the underlying premises, and comparing the concept to Hume's 'bundle theory' with reference to the unconscious and memory.
An opinion is given at the end using the benefit of contemporary knowledge.
Locke's theory holds several notions.
Identity is an object possessing a single, unique beginning[1] and existing on its own, at one time and place.[2] If you find something to be the same in two places at two different times, it shares identity.[3] Identity is observed both in the present (synchronic) and across time (diachronic).
By contrast, a single entity with multiple successive streaming beginnings (motion) defines diversity.
So what defines identity of living things when their bodies are in motion, and diverse? Locke thinks unlike inanimate objects (e.g. a watch) which require motion from without to achieve their end, living things have unified motion from within.[4] But what unified motion?
He identifies man as a living thing (animal)[5] - and therefore observing continued identity.
Man’s identity is ruled out as consisting in the body through the phenomena of physical diversity (growth, aging), and the rational parrot anecdote seeks to demonstrate rationality insufficient also.[6]
It seems the notion of man sits distinct and above this.
So Locke examines person as a place for man's identity. In the prince and cobbler thought experiment, the prince’s soul enters a cobbler and is the same person, but not considered the same man.
Soul substance has a determined beginning and therefore identity.[7] However, if a soul defines a man, then body would be irrelevant – with Castor and Pollux,[8] Locke shows us two bodies, one soul…but still two persons because each body is unaware of the others actions. Locke cannot help but conclude for the soul to think and the man not perceive it; there are two persons within the one man.[9]
Hence we look to the body for personal identity. The one-body Castor and Pollux scenario is given a new angle with day-man/night-man, however two persons still exist because each is still unaware of the others actions.[10] If this scenario is too far fetched, then we can observe how personal identity endures despite the changing particles of body matter.[11] Cut off our hand and personal identity stays with the rest of the body unaffected.[12]
Locke has now demonstrated that personal identity is distinct from both the body and the soul, for when consciousness is split we have two people - therefore what of consciousness?
Where a man can observe and recognise himself, there he discovers his person.[13] A person must have thought, reflection, and underlying self-recognition always in mind across time and space. This is consciousness.[14]
Locke states it is one thing to be the same soul substance, another the same man, another the same body, and another the same person,[15] so how does he deny personal identity exists within anything but the person?
He understands consciousness as activity in the mind that man can perceive.[16]
Thinking being inseparable from consciousness, when we think we recognise the self; and this “sameness of rational being” is wherein we find personal identity.[17]
Self is the conscious object,[18] and self-aware subject. It is this diachronic identity of conscious self, that leads to concern for past present and future and the underlying notion; 'unity of consciousness'.
The logic for Locke is that as far across time as we can recognise this 'sameness', is as far as our thinking goes, which is as far as our consciousness goes, which is as far as our personal identity goes.[19] Personal identity is defined by identity of consciousness, which requires a unified narrative of self - a 'unity of consciousness'.
If you could transfer consciousness, body and soul would both be irrelevant.[20]
The implications for morality and accountability are the person concept we now understand has conscious identity not only in the present - but the past, and future too. We can reflect upon past and future actions, adjudge them right or wrong, and understand how different choices would lead to difference outcomes.[21]
So how does this compare with Hume?
Locke and Hume are, seemingly, both of the empiricist tradition. They both reject innate ideas, favouring our senses as the source of all understanding - the “two … fountains of knowledge” (internal and external sense)[22] a common concept between them.
Locke believes knowledge is forced upon our minds through external sense, and this seeds a variety of ideas through internal sense, or reflection,[23] starting at the very first sensation we experience.[24]
Hume shares this understanding, stating our abilities in existence go no further than what we can make of our senses and experience.[25] He agrees knowledge is forced upon us, and can actually never find himself without a perception. But herein lies the difference - he can never find a perception of self.
Unlike Locke, he does not recognise the identity of self and subsequent identity of consciousness. Hume finds only numerous atomic elements (perceptions), constantly, rapidly moving.[26]
While Locke holds a triadic viewpoint on perception (object, representation, and mind), Hume sees things from a dyadic perspective (object and mind only).[27] So both believe in sensory perceptions, but differ on how they are compounded – for Hume; this is the bundle, for Locke; the representation.
‘Bundle theory’ looks more incisively, taking Lockean empiricism deeper; if perceptions are the source of all knowledge, and there is no perception of self, then the notion of self becomes an absurdity of pure empiricism as it is contrary to experience.
Hume asks where this impression of self comes from and concludes that as no single perception, necessarily unchanging and persistent, accounts for it - it simply can't exist.[28]
The lack of synchronic simplicity (self) or diachronic identity (person) is illustrated by Hume's example of a theatre and the various acts fleeting by. The notion of self being, like other objects, no more than a bundle of properties in flux; a stream of consciousness[29] held together by memory, and perceived as one through imagination.
Memory is a principle of both theories.
Locke suggests us unable to make sense of anything until memory (being the glue unifying consciousness) registers time,[30] and Hume believes causal effect creates temporal order and takes us beyond our senses.[31]
For Hume, memory is the organising principle; the software to our hardware. People may suggest no innate ideas means no 'formal programme' or 'data input' – but surely we experience these through education and society respectively.
Locke believes memory becomes autobiographical, the unity of consciousness linking present and former actions[32] - whereas Hume thinks the imagination fuels our interpretation of unity by feeding us the idea there is continuity and persistence.[33]
The implications for Locke are that memory becomes the self. Loss of memory amounts to loss of personhood and self.[34] Take the case of Mr Thompson in Oliver Sacks novel[35] and we can see how memory destroyed is conducive to identity destroyed. The narrative lost every few moments; the person lost every time.
Memory is so important to Locke that if we don't remember thinking, then we aren’t conscious of thinking, and therefore aren't thinking - as demonstrated by night-man/day-man.[36]
Of course, Freudian unconscious wasn't yet available to him.
The 'brave officer' may have had to be rethought were this the case; the flogged boy still existing within our general’s unconscious.[37] Indeed, Freud believed childhood defines adulthood.[38]
Ultimately Hume’s case seems more convincing for three reasons.
Firstly, while Locke rationally speculates (admitting we know nothing of the soul during justification of his fantastical thought experiments),[39] Hume observes with pure sceptical empiricism.
The burden of proof is on Locke.
If Locke's reflective self holds primacy to sensation but only manifests as a result of it, then we are back to Descartes rationalist 'cogito'.[40] Indeed the reflective self only accessing representations, suggests perhaps we can observe nothing of this world truly.
Secondly, brain bi-section now has evidence to infer the mind reducible to the physical. Parfit describes how bi-section can lead to “two separate spheres of consciousness”. There become three subjects of experience (left, right, unified consciousness), perception in the right hemisphere separate to perception in the left.[41] In Hume's bundle theory consciousness is reduced to our perceptions, in brain bi-section patients we see the same behaviour - where there is a bundle of perceptions, there is a consciousness. Hume just never went far enough to suggest one man could have many bundles.
Thirdly, we might see 'bundle theory' applicable to Wittgenstein's seeing aspects.[42] If we see people from a particular aspect, then when they change drastically we may still see the same person (“you're still the man I fell in love with”), or on the flip-side, someone may be relatively the same but another person's aspect will see them differently because of the way their interactions have been (“you're a mean person nowadays!”). Even the self, could conceivably believe it has undergone a huge change (hypnosis) when in reality, it's just the way we look at the self. A bundle of perceptions can be seen from whatever aspect we choose, just like any other object.
Locke wants us to separate the notion of person from all substances, and to identify this person across time and space as one entity – the self - glued by memory as the container of personal identity.
Hume tells us there is no self, only a stream of perceptions connected by memory, and perceived as one by our imagination.
Locke's argument is thorough, but where his speculative philosophising has left him open to the progress of science and discovery, Hume's scepticism has allowed bundle theory to stand the test of time.
The story says Hume noted in an appendix something sitting uncomfortably with his theory - as long as his scepticism proves reasonably infallible, it'll just have to do.
[1] John Locke, extract from "Of Identity and Diversity", An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, pp.28, L22-24
[2] Locke, "Of Identity and Diversity" pp.328: L15
[3] Locke, "Of Identity and Diversity" pp.328: L3-4
[4] Locke, "Of Identity and Diversity" pp.331: L28-35, p332: 1-3
[5] Locke, "Of Identity and Diversity" pp.333: L6
[6] Locke, "Of Identity and Diversity" pp.335: L3-5
[7] Locke, "Of Identity and Diversity" pp.329: L5-7
[8] Locke, "Of Ideas in general, and their Original" pp.110-111
[9] Locke, "Of Ideas in general, and their Original" pp.115
[10] Locke, "Of Identity and Diversity" pp.344: L18-30
[11] Locke, "Of Identity and Diversity" pp.329: L16-17
[12] Locke, "Of Identity and Diversity" pp.337: L3-8
[13] Locke, "Of Identity and Diversity" pp.346: L24-26
[14] Locke, "Of Identity and Diversity" pp.335: L10-14
[15] Locke, "Of Identity and Diversity" pp.332: L27-29
[16] Locke, "Of Ideas in general, and their Original" pp.115
[17] Locke, "Of Identity and Diversity" pp.335: L18-25
[18] Locke, "Of Identity and Diversity" pp.341: L14
[19] Locke, "Of Identity and Diversity" pp.335: L25-29
[20] Locke, "Of Identity and Diversity" pp.338: L22-27
[21] Locke, "Of Identity and Diversity" pp.346: L30-35
[22] Locke, "Of Ideas in general, and their Original" pp.104: L25
[23] Locke, "Of Ideas in general, and their Original" pp.106: L10-18
[24] Locke, "Of Ideas in general, and their Original" pp.117
[25] The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “David Hume”, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume, Section 5: “Empiricism”
[26] David Hume, extract from "Of Personal Identity," Book I, A Treatise of Human Nature, pp 252
[27] The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “John Locke”, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke, Section 2.2 “The Limits of Human Understanding: Book II”
[28] Hume, "Of Personal Identity" pp251
[29] Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Self-Consciousness”, http://www.iep.utm.edu/self-con, Section 3: “(How) Is Self-Consciousness Possible?”
[30] Locke, "Of Ideas in general, and their Original" pp.106: L26
[32] Locke, "Of Identity and Diversity" pp.346: L20-23
[33] Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Hume: Metaphysical and Epistemological Theories”, http://www.iep.utm.edu/humeepis, Section 2
[34] Locke, "Of Identity and Diversity" pp.342: L24-26
[35] Oliver Sacks, "A Matter of Identity" from The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, pp. 103-110.
[36] Locke, "Of Identity and Diversity" pp.344: L18-30
[37] PHI130 Forum Post (Poster: Jeremy Hunter Subject: “Re:Hume VS Locke (one night only)” Date: 27 October 2009 3:08 PM )
[38] PHI130 Forum Post (Poster: Damion Buterin Subject: “Freud” Date: 2 November 2009 11:32 AM)
[39] Locke, "Of Identity and Diversity" pp.347: L15-18
[40] PHI130 Forum (Poster: Damion Buterin Subject: “Re:Locke's ideas on perception - a contradiction?” Date: 21 October 2009 9:59 AM)
[41] Derek Parfit, extract from "Why our Identity is not What Matters" from his Reasons and Persons. p245
[42] Ludwig Wittgenstein, extract from "Aspect and Image" in The Wittgenstein Reader, pp.181-187
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