Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man

Answers

• Q16TRANSCENDENCE

  Would replacing bodily organs with artificial substitutes preserve the identity of the person?

  Yes. bodily parts are not the person. Reid argues that amputation does not divide the person: the enduring self is indivisible even though its thoughts, actions and feelings change.

  A part of a person is a manifest absurdity. When a man loses his estate, his health, his strength, he is still the same person, and has lost nothing of his personality. If he has a leg or an arm cut off, he is the same person he was before. The amputated member is no part of his person, otherwise it would have a right to a part of his estate, and be liable for a part of his engagements. It would be entitled to a share of his merit and demerit, which is manifestly absurd. A person is something indivisible, and is what Leibnitz calls a monad. My personal identity, therefore, implies the continued existence of that indivisible thing which I call myself. Whatever this self may be, it is something which thinks, and deliberates, and resolves, and acts, and suffers. I am not thought, I am not action, I am not feeling ; I am something that thinks, and acts, and suffers. My thoughts, and actions, and feelings, change every moment ; they have no continued, but a successive, existence ; but that self or I, to which they belong, is permanent, and has the same relation to all the succeeding thoughts, actions, and feelings which I call mine.

  OCR corrected

  Essay III, chapter 4, 'Of Identity' · Passage 'a part of a person is a manifest absurdity' confirmed (ummoss.org text); Internet Archive copy listed.