Joseph Butler, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
Consciousness presupposes the identity; it cannot make it. I should think it self-evident that consciousness of personal identity presupposes, and therefore cannot constitute, personal identity, any more than knowledge, in any other case, can constitute truth, which it presupposes.1 When I reflect on that which is myself now and that which was myself twenty years ago, I discern that they are not two but one and the same self.2
The comparison discovers an identity; it does not manufacture one, just as comparing two triangles shows that they are alike and does not make them so. Consider what Mr. Locke's doctrine would require. To say that consciousness makes personal identity, or is necessary to our being the same persons, is to say that a person has not existed a single moment, nor done one action, but what he can remember.3
A man would then be no longer the same person than his memory reached, and would not be the same who did whatever he has forgotten. Yet present consciousness of what we now do and feel is necessary to our being the persons we now are; present consciousness of past actions is not necessary to our being the same persons who performed them.4 I suspect the error arose because consciousness is inseparable from the very idea of a person, so that it was loosely said that consciousness makes personality, and from this it was concluded that it makes personal identity.4
Mr. Locke's own observations upon this appear hasty, and he seems himself dissatisfied with some of his suppositions. But others have carried them to a strange length: that personality is not permanent but transient, that it lives and dies continually, and that consciousness being successive cannot be the same in any two moments, nor consequently the personality constituted by it.5
From this it must follow that it is a fallacy upon ourselves to charge our present selves with anything we did, or to think ourselves interested in what will befall us tomorrow, since the person of tomorrow would be no more to me than any other person.5 Such a notion is absurd in our temporal concerns, as everyone sees and feels, and if anyone can take it up in religion, this cannot proceed from the reason of the thing but from an inward unfairness and secret corruption of heart.6
The ground of the difficulty is that our successive consciousnesses are not one and the same act. But it is surely conceivable that a person should know some object to be the same now which it was when he contemplated it formerly, though the perceptions are different. So our successive consciousnesses are not the same, yet they are consciousnesses of one and the same thing, the same person, self, or living agent.7
The truth is plain. It is a being, and not an abstract notion or quality, that is capable of life and action, of happiness and misery. A living being now existing must have done and suffered what it formerly did and suffered, this being and not another, and prior to all consideration of its remembering or forgetting, since remembering or forgetting can make no alteration in the truth of past matter of fact.8
And if you ask wherein personal identity consists, I answer as I would of similitude or equality: all attempts to define would but perplex it, though there is no difficulty in having the idea.9
Personal identity is identity in the strict and philosophical sense: the same person is the same being, not a series of beings that resemble one another. Consciousness of having done an action presupposes that I am the one who did it, and so cannot make me that one, any more than knowledge makes the truth it knows.10 Plants and bodies are the same only in a loose and popular sense, because their parts change; persons are not, and the self that continues through the change of the body may continue through death.11121314
one should really think it self-evident, that consciousness of personal identity presupposes, and therefore cannot constitute personal identity, any more than knowledge, in any other case, can constitute truth, which it presupposes.The Analogy of Religion, with the Dissertations Of Personal Identity and Of the Nature of Virtue
by reflecting upon that which is myself now, and that which was myself twenty years ago, I discern they are not two, but one and the same self.The Analogy of Religion, with the Dissertations Of Personal Identity and Of the Nature of Virtue
to say that it makes personal identity, or is necessary to our being the same persons, is to say, that a person has not existed a single moment, nor done one action, but what he can rememberThe Analogy of Religion, with the Dissertations Of Personal Identity and Of the Nature of Virtue
present consciousness of what we at present do and feel, is necessary to our being the persons we now are; yet present consciousness of past actions, or feelings, is not necessary to our being the same persons who performed those actions, or had those feelings.The Analogy of Religion, with the Dissertations Of Personal Identity and Of the Nature of Virtue
That personality is not a permanent, but a transient thing: that it lives and dies, begins and ends, continuallyThe Analogy of Religion, with the Dissertations Of Personal Identity and Of the Nature of Virtue
If, therefore, any can take up with it in the former, this cannot proceed from the reason of the thing, but must be owing to an inward unfairness, and secret corruption of heart.The Analogy of Religion, with the Dissertations Of Personal Identity and Of the Nature of Virtue
though the successive consciousnesses, which we have of our own existence are not the same, yet are they consciousnesses of one and the same thing or object; of the same person, self, or living agent.The Analogy of Religion, with the Dissertations Of Personal Identity and Of the Nature of Virtue
since remembering or forgetting can make no alteration in the truth of past matter of fact.The Analogy of Religion, with the Dissertations Of Personal Identity and Of the Nature of Virtue
when it is asked wherein personal identity consists, the answer should be the same as if it were asked, wherein consists similitude or equality — that all attempts to define would but perplex it.The Analogy of Religion, with the Dissertations Of Personal Identity and Of the Nature of Virtue
For this might be expressed inaccurately thus — that consciousness makes personality; and from hence it might be concluded to make personal identity.The Analogy of Religion, with the Dissertations Of Personal Identity and Of the Nature of Virtue
In a loose and popular sense, then, the life, and the organization, and the plant, are justly said to be the same, notwithstanding the perpetual change of the parts. But in a strict and philosophical manner of speech, no man, no being, no mode of being, no anything, can be the same with that with which it hath indeed nothing the same. Now, same ness is used in this latter sense when applied to persons.The Analogy of Religion, with the Dissertations Of Personal Identity and Of the Nature of Virtue
And the solution of these difficulties hath been stranger than the difficulties themselves. For personal identity has been explained so by some, as to render the inquiry concerning a future life of no consequence at all to us, the persons who are making it. And though few men can be misled by such subtleties, yet it may be proper a little to consider them.The Analogy of Religion, with the Dissertations Of Personal Identity and Of the Nature of Virtue
Here, then, is a notion equally applicable to religion and to our temporal concerns; and every one sees and feels the inexpressible absurdity of it in the latter case. If, therefore, any can take up with it in the former, this cannot proceed from the reason of the thing, but must be owing to an inward unfairness, and secret corruption of heart.The Analogy of Religion, with the Dissertations Of Personal Identity and Of the Nature of Virtue
And thus, though the successive consciousnesses, which we have of our own existence are not the same, yet are they consciousnesses of one and the same thing or object; of the same person, self, or living agent. The person of whose existence the consciousness is felt now, and was felt an hour or a year ago, is discerned to be, not two persons, but one and the same person; and there fore is one and the same. Mr.The Analogy of Religion, with the Dissertations Of Personal Identity and Of the Nature of Virtue
The classic statement of the circularity objection to Locke, still taught as such; answered by Shoemaker and set aside by Parfit, and read apart from the argument about a future life it was written to serve.