Abstract

Many think John Locke's account of personal identity is inconsistent and circular. It's neither of these things. The root causes of the misreading are [i] the mistake of thinking that Locke uses 'consciousness' to mean memory, [ii] failure to appreciate the importance of the ‘concernment’ that always accompanies ‘consciousness’, on Locke's view, [iii] a tendency to take the term 'person', in Locke's text, as if it were only some kind of fundamental sortal term like ‘human being’ or ‘thinking thing’, and to fail to take proper account of Locke's use of it as a forensic term. It's well known that Locke uses 'person' as a forensic term, but the consequences of this have still not been fully worked out