PHL 201 Chapter 3: Relative Identity
16 May 2016
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Document Summary
Locke maintains that before answering the question of whether some object is identical or the same, we must first be clear what general concept or idea the object is to be placed under. The criteria for deciding whether one thing is identical to another will depend on ( will be relative to) the category of thing we are asking about. Recall the case of gregor samsa: the insect that awoke in gregor"s bed was not the same human being who went to sleep there, since it was not a human being at all. But it might still have been the same person- it might still have been gregor in a different (non-human) body. The terms and human being describe different categories of things, and the requirements for being the same person might differ from the requirements for being the same human being.
