Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction: diverse ethics
- 2 Darwinism and ethics
- 3 Creation and relation
- 4 Embryo experimentation: public policy in a pluralist society
- 5 Ethical considerations in genetic testing: an empirical study of presymptomatic diagnosis of Huntington's disease
- 6 Identity matters
- 7 The virtues in a professional setting
- 8 Medical ethics, moral philosophy and moral tradition
- 9 Roman suicide
- 10 Women and children first
- 11 Moral uncertainty and human embryo experimentation
- 12 Morality: invention or discovery?
- 13 Quality of life and health care
- 14 Dependency: the foundational value in medical ethics
- 15 Not more medical ethics
- Index
6 - Identity matters
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 April 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction: diverse ethics
- 2 Darwinism and ethics
- 3 Creation and relation
- 4 Embryo experimentation: public policy in a pluralist society
- 5 Ethical considerations in genetic testing: an empirical study of presymptomatic diagnosis of Huntington's disease
- 6 Identity matters
- 7 The virtues in a professional setting
- 8 Medical ethics, moral philosophy and moral tradition
- 9 Roman suicide
- 10 Women and children first
- 11 Moral uncertainty and human embryo experimentation
- 12 Morality: invention or discovery?
- 13 Quality of life and health care
- 14 Dependency: the foundational value in medical ethics
- 15 Not more medical ethics
- Index
Summary
A traditional philosophical problem on which a vast amount of ink has been spilt is that of personal identity. John Locke, in the seventeenth century, rubbished the idea that the persistence of a person over a period of time was to be conceived as consisting in the persistence of an immaterial soul, suggesting instead that it was constituted by the later person's ability to remember actions or experiences of the earlier person:
to find wherein personal identity consists, we must first consider what person stands for; which I think, is a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places; which it does only by that consciousness which is inseparable from thinking, and, as it seems to me, essential to it …; and as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of the person.
As stated, Locke's precise theory generates unacceptably counterintuitive consequences, in particular that identity is nontransitive; for clearly it is possible for A to remember B's actions or experiences, and B to remember C's, without A remembering C's (if A, B and C are persons considered at different, successively earlier times).
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- Medicine and Moral Reasoning , pp. 60 - 74Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994
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