Philosophy 224
A Recognizably Modern Person
René Descartes
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Descartes was born in 1591 in La Haye, France. He
died in 1650 in Sweden.
Educated by the Jesuits, he was dissatisfied with the
products of what was at the time the best education
possible.
The problem as he saw it was the sterility and conflict
of scholastic (church) philosophy, which was
incapable of fending off skepticism.
He set himself the task of providing an indubitable
foundation for human knowledge
The foundation he found: Cogito, ergo sum.
Modern Philosophy
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Descartes is the first philosopher of what is called
Modern Philosophy.
Though in actuality it is the philosophy of the 17th
and 18th centuries, the era is called “Modern”
because it marks the end of philosophy dominated by
the church and by its concerns, and by the
introduction of a number of themes still operative
today.
These themes include: the struggle against
skepticism, the dominance of science and
mechanism over spiritualism, and a focus on and
confidence in subjectivity.
Treatise On Man
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The Treatise on Man is a conceptual exercise.
Descartes sets out to shed some light on our natures
by describing a creature like a human being that God
could create.
 As he makes explicit, the point of the effort is to
clarify his dualistic conception of the human being
(mind/body dualism) and to discuss how two radically
distinct natures could nonetheless be “joined and
united” in a way consistent with our self-experience.
 In actuality, he doesn’t do all of this, focusing in the
Treatise, and in our section, on a mechanical account
of the body.
Our Bodies, Our Machines
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Descartes mind/body dualism supposed an absolute
distinction between body stuff and mind stuff. In his
more technical philosophical works, Descartes
speaks of two substantial orders: Res Cogitans
(thinking stuff) and Res Extensa (extended/material
stuff).
Here, he speaks of the soul and a “machine made of
earth’ (68c1).
The key feature of this account of the body is that it is
a machine.
That means that every function of the body can be
explained by mechanical interaction.
An Example of Mechanism: Sensation
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The thoroughgoing mechanistic nature of
Descartes’ account of the body is easily seen
in his treatment of sensation.
 The sense organs contain “tiny fibers” which
are stimulated by the objects of sense. The
action of these fibers in turn pull on parts of
the brain, which open the brain to the
influence of the objects of sense, ultimately
producing in the mind the sensed object.
 Cf. 69c2-70.
The Pineal What?
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One of the most surprising features of
Descartes' account is his attempt to link the
mechanical properties of the body to the
rational faculties of the mind or soul.
 He speculate early in the Treatise about a
rarefaction, by contraction, of the blood,
eventually transforming a purely material stuff
into “a certain very fine wind” the “animal
spirits” (68c2) which, in the pineal gland (itself
a mixture of the two substances) enables the
transition between mind stuff and body stuff.
A Modern Philosopher
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Though there is much to be critical of in Descartes
account of mind/body dualism, it is clearly an account
which abandons much of the Greek (and thus
Christian) conception of the soul.
“In order to explain these functions, then, it is not
necessary to conceive of this machine as having any
vegetative or sensitive soul…apart from its blood and
its spirits which are agitated by the heat of the fire
burning in its heart—a fire which has the same nature
as all the fires that occur in inanimate bodies” (74c2).
John Locke
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Locke was born in 1632 in England and died in 1704.
 His life encompassed momentous times in English
history including the Civil War, the formation of the
Commonwealth and the restoration.
 For most of these events, Locke was a mere
observer, hidden away at Oxford.
 Eventually, under the patronage of the Earl of
Shaftesbury, Locke emerged into public life and
became a very important intellectual figure, the
founder of British Empiricism and a prominent poltical
theorist.
The Essay and Personal Identity
Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding was his most significant
philosophical contribution.
 In it he sets out a very influential system of
philosophical empiricism based on a theory of
ideas which accounts for them in terms of
generalization from sense experience.
 For us, its most profound contribution comes
in the form of an account of personal identity.
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Persons and Identity
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Locke starts, reasonably enough, with a definition of
‘person:’ “…a thinking intelligent being, that has
reason and reflection and can consider itself as
itself…which it does only by…[self] consciousness”
(82c1).
Self-consciousness is important here because Locke
insists that perception of any kind requires the
recognition that one is perceiving (apperception).
Thus, consciousness is key to Locke’s account of
personal identity, which he defines initially as “the
sameness of a rational being” (Ibid).
The Poison and The Cure
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Locke makes the advantages and
disadvantages of linking personal identity to
consciousness immediately clear.
 Self-consciousness has built into it an
element of persistence of and to self across
diverse moments and experiences.
 At the same time, however, consciousness
seems inevitably to admit of gaps
(forgetfulness, unconsciousness) that serve
as the moment of a question: am I the same
self?
The Real Confusion
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For Locke, this is more of an apparent
problem than a real one.
 It arises in significant part because of our
mistaken temptation to link personal identity
to persistence of material substance.
 That this is mistaken Locke makes clear by
reflection on our relationship to our bodies.
While our sense of our identity is often tied up
in our bodies, no one of us would insist that if
we lost a limb, the severed part was identical
to us. It would just be a piece of flesh.
The Confusion Explained
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Returning to consciousness we can now
understand the puzzle posed by those gaps.
 The temptation is to think of them like our
severed hand. However, Locke points out, we
know of them as gaps, because they are
gaps between moments of consciousness,
and consciousness of them as gaps is the
basis for recognition that it is one and the
same person conscious before and after.
A couple of implications
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A couple of interesting points follow from
Locke’s account of persona identity in terms
of the continuity of consciousness.
 First, if we could somehow translate
consciousness from one body to another, we
would presumably produce one and the same
person (85c2).
 Second, if one and the same body completely
looses its conscious integrity, it becomes a
different person (86c1-2).
The Payoff: An Account of Moral
and Legal Responsibility
One of the most important benefits of Locke’s
account is its ability to underwrite a theory of
responsibility.
 If we are going to hold someone responsible,
we have to be sure that we have the right
someone.
 The advantage of identifying person with
consciousness is that we are able to assert
continuity of the person over time, and thus
hold people responsible for past acts (86c1).
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