For Locke, Justin Trudeau is the same human being as the guy who got first elected as prime minister of Canada in 2015 as long as he remembers what he did in 2015.

Question

BlackTom AI · Accepted Answer

The statement presents a version of Locke's memory criterion for personal identity, but it oversimplifies what Locke actually argued.

First, we restate the question: For Locke, Justin Trudeau is the same human being as the guy who got first elected as prime minister of Canada in 2015 as long as he remembers what he did in 2015.

Option analysis:
- If we were to take the claim at face value, it relies on the idea that remembering past actions alone guarantees numerical identity across time. Locke, however, ties personal identity to the continuity of consciousness and memory of past experiences, not merely to factual memory of deeds. This subtle distinction matters: one must remember having had those past experiences, i.e., there must be a continuous stream of consciousness linking the present self to the past self. 
- A potential misstep here is to think that knowing or recalling one’s actions is enough. Locke would push back by emphasizing that it is the possession of the same conscious experiences and memories of those experiences that constitutes sameness, not just knowledge of the events. Memory can be imperfect, fragmented, or even fabricated in thought experiments, yet the core idea remains that the chain of conscious experiences is what matters. 
- Another nuance is that even if Trudeau remembers his 2015 actions, there could be scenarios involving false memories or memory transfer that complicate identity in the Lockean framework. The statement glosses over these caveats, which reveals why it is not an airtight summary of Locke’s position.

Therefore, the claim that remembering what he did in 2015 alone makes him the same person is an oversimplified and potentially misleading rendering of Locke’s account. It conflates the broader notion of continuous consciousness with a narrower memory of past actions, which is not exactly how Locke framed personal identity.

In short, Locke’s theory centers on the continuity of consciousness and memory of past experiences rather than simply remembering deeds; the given statement does not capture the full condition and thus is not accurately stated according to Locke's view.

PHL210Y5 Y LEC0101 quiz 13

For Locke, Justin Trudeau is the same human being as the guy who got first elected as prime minister of Canada in 2015 as long as he remembers what he did in 2015.

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