Question

Explain and evaluate Reid's argument that psychological characteristics are not sufficient for personal identity.

Answer 1

Explain and evaluate Reid's argument that psychological characteristics are not sufficient for personal identity.

According to Reid, he says that it is not possible for him to remember everything that he has done throughout his life. He says, that the only thing that he would be remembering is that there have been changes over a span of time. Reid explained this with an example of a general, who was once punished for stealing apples and who is now awarded for bravery. According to Reid, the general and the soldier are same but the general and the boy are not same. This is contradictory to the continuum theory of memory. Rather, this proves that personal identity and memory are transitive elements and memory would be changing over time. This coincides with the fact that long term memory is subject to perception and with time, as the stored memory will not be exactly same as the encoded memory. Also, when a person relives they stored information, it would be brief.

In the above example, the boy, soldier and general should all be the same people, but if the personal identity if the boy would have been retained, he could have never turned up to be a soldier. As a result, personal identity does not form psychological characteristics.