Write a paper of 3-4 pages (1000-1400 words) in response to one of the questions posed below.
- John Locke says that personal identity is determined by sameness of consciousness over time. In our class we have considered a number of different objections that might be raised against Locke's account. Write an essay in which you explain Locke's view of personal identity, raise a potential objection to Locke's view, and then form the strongest possible response to that objection on Locke's behalf.
- “I died in Auschwitz, but no one knows it.” (Charlotte Delbo) Susan Brison suggests that a good theory of what a person is should be able to make sense of this paradoxical remark, and similar remarks made by others in the aftermath of significant trauma. Write an essay in which you use Brison’s holistic, relational view of the self to explain Delbo’s remark (and others like it). Does Brison’s view allow us to do justice to what Delbo and others seem to be trying to say, and why or why not?