QuestionsWho am I, really?I am what I remember
Who am I, really?My consciousness, my memory

I am what I remember

John Locke 1632 · 1704The mind is born a blank slate; power comes from consent.
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What it claims

Personal identity consists in consciousness, not in the same body or the same substance: as far as my consciousness reaches into the past, so far my person reaches.

Why

I answer only for acts I am conscious of as mine: with the same soul in another body, it is consciousness that makes the person.

In short

"I am what I remember" is an argument by John Locke (Essay, II.27) on the question "Who am I, really?" (answer: my consciousness, my memory). Its claim: Personal identity consists in consciousness, not in the same body or the same substance: as far as my consciousness reaches into the past, so far my person reaches. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P4). AskPhilosophy presents 5 objections, 2 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Essay, II.27
Valid with an implicit premise

My body changes constantly, and nobody sees my soul. So what makes me the same person I was at five? Locke answers: the consciousness I have of my past actions, in other words my memory lived from the inside. This chapter, added in 1694, launched the modern debate on personal identity.

P1"Person" is a legal term: it is to the person that we attribute actions, their merit and their blame.
P2A past action I cannot be conscious of as mine concerns me no more than if it had never happened: it cannot be imputed to me.
P3Conversely, an action I am really conscious of as mine is imputable to me, even one done a thousand years ago, as much as what I just did.
P4 · implicit premiseThis consciousness of the past is not deceptive: if I remember "from the inside" doing an action, I really did it. Here Locke relies on the goodness of God.
P5If a prince's soul, with the consciousness of his princely life, passed into a cobbler's body, everyone would see that it is the same person as the prince, though it is no longer the same body.
Therefore personal identity consists in consciousness, not in the same body or the same substance: as far as my consciousness reaches into the past, so far my person reaches.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P4, the computer finds a case where someone is conscious of an action as theirs, but the memory is not genuine: it cannot be imputed to them, so they are not the same person as the doer, even though they are conscious of it.
The argument is valid with P4. Without it, it no longer follows: a false memory (an action I think I did but someone else did) would make me "conscious" of an action without my being the person who did it. Locke sees the problem himself and settles it only by trusting God. P5 is essential for the second half of the conclusion: without the prince case, nothing shows that the person can come apart from the body.
Analogy. An online account is not the computer you open it on: you can switch machines and it is still the same account, as long as the history follows. For Locke, the person is the account, memory is the history, the body is the machine.

Objections

5

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Objection anticipated by Locke attacks premise 2

If I completely forget part of my life, am I not still the same person who did those actions?

Locke replies
Locke
In this question, "I" refers to the man, that is the living body, not the person. The same man can be two persons: the law does not punish the sane man for what the madman did, nor the madman for what the sane man did.
Objection anticipated by Locke attacks premise 4

What if a thinking substance could represent to itself, as done by itself, an action it never did, as in a dream we take for real?

Locke replies
Locke
We cannot rule it out from the nature of things alone. Until we know thinking substances better, the best is to rely on the goodness of God, who will not transfer from one creature to another a consciousness that brings reward or punishment.
Joseph Butler 1736 · attacks premise 4

The circle is unavoidable: for a memory to be true, it must be me who did the action. Consciousness therefore already presupposes personal identity; it cannot constitute it.

no reply
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
No reply possible: objection raised in 1736, after the author's death (1704).
Thomas Reid (the brave officer) 1785 · attacks the conclusion

A boy is flogged for robbing an orchard. As a young officer he remembers it. As an old general he remembers the officer but no longer the boy. On Locke's view the general is the officer, the officer is the boy, but the general is not the boy. Yet identity cannot work like that: if A = B and B = C, then A = C. (Locke's defenders today reply with a chain of overlapping memories: the general is linked to the boy through the officer.)

no reply
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
No reply possible: objection raised in 1785, after the author's death (1704).
Leibniz 1765 · attacks premise 2

Consciousness reveals moral identity, the kind that matters for responsibility, but it does not make it: behind it there must be a real identity, that of one and the same soul. And a lost memory can be restored by the testimony of others.

no reply
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
No reply possible: objection raised in 1765, after the author's death (1704).