Stephen asked:

First off I'm a member of the USAF National Guard, employed full time and a part time college student
working on my AA degree in general studies in order to move into a Business program. But first I
have to pass my Philosophy class. Our class essay has me stumped, I'm not trying to fool you into
thinking that I understand Philosophy at all but I do need to pass the class, and am willing to work
hard to do so. Here is the topic.

Compare and contrast the strengths and weaknesses of the following four theories of personal
identity. Defend the theory that you think is closest to the truth, and explain which theory you think is
farthest from it:

*(Descartes, Reid) The self is an indivisible spiritual (immaterial) atom.

*(Locke) The self is a stream of conscious memories.

*(Hume) The self is a constantly changing bundle of ideas and impressions.

*(Kant) The self is the organizing principle of our experiences.

— I don't even know where to begin. The essay is due in three weeks. All I'm asking for is a friendly
voice with some friendly advice. All I get from my teacher is criticism and negativity. Any specific
readings that you could suggest would also be greatly appreciated.

SRA Stephen M. Libertini, USAF

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At first, this looks a very difficult question to give to General Studies students, looking for detailed
knowledge of the philosophies of Descartes, Reid, Locke, Hume and Kant. In fact, it is possible to
contrast the different philosophers' views in a simple and graphic way.

The way to approach this question is dialectically,not in the Marxist but in the Socratic sense: what
we are looking for are the specific points at which Locke, Hume and Kant disagreewith the Cartesian
view of the soul.

Locke, Hume and Kant each describe a vivid thought experimentwhere Descartes' view of the self as
an 'immaterial substance' is put to the test, and rejected:

Locke imagines the following possibility. Suppose that, during the night, the soul of a beggar was
interchanged with the soul of a Prince. The beggar's soul is put 'in' the Prince's body and the Prince's
soul is put 'in' the beggar's body. But suppose that the mischievous demon who engineers the soul
swap alsotransfers the beggar's memories into the Princes' old soul, which is now in the body of the
beggar, and the Prince's memories into the beggar's old soul, which is now in the body of the Prince.
The result is, that when the beggar and the Prince wake up, neither they, nor anyone else will ever
know that anything has happened. Locke concludes that the self or person cannot be identical with a
'soul substance' which could be swapped about in this way without anyone knowing the difference.
The criterion for the 'same self' or 'same person' is continuity of memory. not continuity of unknowable
soul substance. This is Locke's theory of the self.

Hume proposes an experiment which he says he has tried on himself and which he invites the reader
to undertake. The experiment is to try to catch sight of the self, through introspection. The result is
that when you inspect the inside of your mind, you do not see a selfas such but only individual
thoughts, feelings and sensations: "I can never catch myself at any time without a perception, and
never observe anything but the perception" (Treatise On Human NatureBook I, pt. iv, sect vi). This
leads to Hume's radical proposal that the self is just a compound of those same thoughts, feelings
and perceptions, a mere 'bundle of ideas'.

Kant's theory also arises from a thought experiment which criticizes Descartes, but his is the most
mind-blowing of the three. In the wonderfully titled 'Paralogisms of Pure Reason' in the Second Part
of his Critique of Pure ReasonKant imagines the following scenario. Let's say that as I type these
words, my soul substance is totally annihilated, but at the very moment that it is destroyed another
soul substance is created and given all of the first soul substance's mental properties. The same
process is repeated from moment to moment, so that my mental states are passed from one soul
substance to another like the motion in a line of colliding billiard (or 'pool') balls. Kant explains the
illusion or 'paralogism' of belief in a soul substance in the following way: we wrongly interpreting the
necessary unity of consciousnessas the consciousness of unity.Kant's theory is that for experience
to be possible at all, experiences must be capable of being strung together to make a coherent
account of a unitary subject occupying a single point of view moving about in a world of objects. The
identity of the self is the organizing principle that turns a barrage of impressions intoa world.

Geoffrey Klempner