Ontology, or the Theory of Being

by P. Coffey

So far as English philosophy is concerned such theories appear to have had their origin in Locke's teaching on person and personal identity. Discussing the notions of identity and diversity,[312] he distinguishes between the identity of an individual substance with itself in its duration throughout time, and what he terms personal identity; while by identity in general he means not abstract identity but the concrete permanence of a thing throughout time ([34]). On this we have to call attention to the fact that just as duration is not essential to the constitution of a substance, so neither is it essential to the constitution of a complete subsisting individual substance or person ([64]); though it is, of course, an essential condition for all human apprehension whether of substance or of person. Locke was wrong, therefore, in confounding what reveals to us the abiding permanence, identity or sameness of a subsisting thing or person (whether the “self” or any other subsisting thing or person) throughout [pg 278] its duration in time, with what constitutes the subsisting thing or person.

Furthermore, his distinction between substantial identity, i.e. the sameness of an individual substance with itself throughout time, and personal identity or sameness, was also an error. For as long as there is substantial unity, continuity, or identity of the subsisting individual substance, so long is there unity, continuity, or identity of its subsistence, or of its personality if it be a rational substance. The subsistence of a complete individual inorganic substance is changed as soon as the individual undergoes substantial change: we have them no longer the same subsisting individual being. So, too, the subsistence of the organic individual is changed as soon as the latter undergoes substantial change by the dissolution of life, by the separation of its formative and vital substantial principle from its material substantial principle: after such dissolution we have no longer the same subsisting plant or animal. And, finally, the subsistence of an individual man is changed, or interrupted, or ceases by death, which separates his soul, his vital principle, from his body. We say, moreover, that in the latter case the human person ceases to exist when the identity or permanence of his subsisting substance or nature terminates at death; for personal identity we hold to be the identity of the complete subsisting substance or nature with itself. But Locke, who practically agrees with what we have said regarding the abiding identity of the subsisting individual being with itself—whether this individual be an inorganic individual, a plant, a brute beast, or a man[313]—distinguishes at this point between identity of the subsisting individual substance and personal identity.

Of identity in general he says that “to conceive and judge of it aright, we must consider what idea the word it is applied to stands for; it being one thing to be the same substance, another the same man, and a third the same person, if person, man, and substance, are three names standing for three different ideas”.[314] And, struggling to dissociate “person” from “substance,” he continues thus:—

To find wherein personal identity consists, we must consider what person stands for; which, I think, is a thinking, intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing in different times and places; which it does only by that consciousness which is inseparable from thinking, and, as it seems to me, essential to it. When we see, hear, smell, taste, feel, meditate, or will any thing, we know that we do so. Thus it is always as to our present sensations and perceptions, and by this every one is to himself what he calls self; it not being considered in this case whether the same self be continued in the same or divers substances. For since consciousness always accompanies thinking, and it is that which makes every one to be what he calls self, and thereby distinguishes himself from all other thinking things; in this alone consists personal identity, i.e. the sameness of a rational being: and as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of that person; it is the same self now it was then; and it is by the same self with this present one that now reflects on it, that that action was done.[315]

The definition of person in this passage as “a thinking, intelligent being,” etc., is not far removed from our own definition; but surely conscious thought is not “that which makes every one to be what he calls self,” seeing that conscious thought is only an activity or function of the “rational being”. It is conscious thought, of course, including memory, that reveals the “rational being” to himself as a self, and as the same or identical self throughout time; but unless the “rational being,” or the “thinking, intelligent being, that has reason and reflection,” etc.—which is Locke's own definition of “person”—were there all the time identical with itself, exercising those distinct and successive acts of consciousness and memory, and unifying them, how could these acts even reveal the “person” or his “personal identity” to himself, not to speak of their constituting personality or personal identity? It is perfectly plain that these acts [pg 280] presuppose the “person,” the “thinking, intelligent being,” or, as we have expressed it, the “subsisting, rational, individual nature” already constituted; and it is equally plain that the “personal identity” which they reveal is constituted by, and consists simply in, the duration or continued existence of this same subsisting individual rational nature; nor could these acts reveal any identity, personal or otherwise, unless they were the acts of one and the same actually subsisting, existing and persisting substance.

Yet Locke thinks he can divorce personal identity from identity of substance, and account for the former independently of the latter. In face of the obvious difficulty that actual consciousness is not continuous but intermittent, he tries to maintain that the consciousness which links together present states with remembered states is sufficient to constitute personal identity even although there may have intervened between the present and the past states a complete change of substance, so that it is really a different substance which experiences the present states from that which experienced the past states. The question

Whether we are the same thinking thing, i.e. the same substance or no ... concerns not personal identity at all: the question being, what makes the same person, and not whether it be the same identical substance, which always thinks in the same person: different substances, by the same consciousness (where they do partake in it), being united into one person, as well as different bodies by the same life are united into one animal, whose identity is preserved, in that change of substances, by the unity of one continued life ... [for] animal identity is preserved in identity of life, and not of substance.[316]

Here the contention is that we can have “the same person” and yet not necessarily “the same identical substance,” because consciousness may give a personal unity to distinct and successive substances in the individual man just as animal life gives an analogous unity to distinct and successive substances in the individual animal. This is very superficial; for it only substitutes for the problem of human personality the similar problem of explaining the unity and sameness of subsistence in the individual living thing: a problem which involves the fact of memory in animals. For scholastic philosophers unity of life in the living thing, involving the fact of memory in animals, is explained by the perfectly intelligible and will-grounded teaching [pg 281] that there is in each individual living thing a formative and vital principle which is substantial, a forma substantialis, which unites, in the abiding self-identical unity of a complete individual composite substance, the material principle of the corporeal substances which thus go, in the incessant process of substantial change known as metabolism, to form partially, and to support the substantial continuity of, the living individual. While the latter is thus in constant process of material, or partial, substantial change, it remains, as long as it lives, the same complete individual substance, and this in virtue of the abiding substantial formative and vital principle which actuates and animates it. The abiding permanence or self-identity of the subsisting individual substance which feels or thinks, and remembers, is an intelligible, and indeed the only intelligible, ground and explanation of memory, and of our consciousness of personal identity.

But if we leave out of account this abiding continuity and self-identity of the subsisting individual substance or nature, which is the subject, cause and agent of these acts of memory and consciousness, how can these latter, in and by themselves, possibly form, or even indeed reveal to us, our personal identity? Locke felt this difficulty; and he tried in vain to meet it: in vain, for it is insuperable. He merely suggests that “the same consciousness ... can be transferred from one thinking substance to another,” in which case “it will be possible that two thinking substances may make [successively] one person”.[317] This is practically his last word on the question,—and it is worthy of note, for it virtually substantializes consciousness. It makes consciousness, which is really only an act or a series of acts, a something substantial and subsisting. We have seen already how modern phenomenists, once they reject the notion of substance as invalid or superfluous, must by that very fact equivalently substantialize accidents ([61]); for substance, being a necessary category of human thought as exercised on reality, cannot really be dispensed with. And we see in the present context an illustration of this fact. The abiding self-identity of the human person cannot be explained otherwise than by the abiding self-identical subsistence of the individual human substance.

If personal identity were constituted and determined by consciousness, by the series of conscious states connected and unified by memory, then it would appear that the human being [pg 282] in infancy, in sleep, in unconsciousness, or in a state of insanity, is not a human person! Philosophers who have not the hardihood to deny human personality to the individual of the human species in these states, and who on the other hand will not recognize the possession of a rational nature or substance by the subsisting individual as the ground of the latter's personality and personal identity, have recourse to the hypothesis of a sub-conscious, or “sub-liminal” consciousness in the individual, as a substitute. If by this they merely meant an abiding substantial rational principle of all mental activities, even of those which may be semi-conscious or sub-conscious, they would be merely calling by another name what we call the rational nature of man. And the fact that they refer to this principle as the sub-conscious “self” or “Ego” shows how insistent is the rational need for rooting personality and personal identity in something which is a substance. But they do not and will not conceive it as a substance; whereas if it is not this, if it is only a “process,” or a “function,” or a “series” or “stream” of processes or functions, it can no more constitute or explain, or even reveal, personal identity, than a series or stream of conscious states can.[318]