Avec Peter McLaughlin, Département de philosophie, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg.

Cette conférence est présentée par le Département de philosophie de l'Université de Montréal.

Veuillez noter que la conférence sera prononcée en anglais.

Résumé : John Locke’s chapter on identity from the Essay concerning Human Understanding discusses the identity of minds, bodies, organisms and especially persons. Some complain about the neglect of artifacts, islands, stones, and other relevant sortals. Most readers also openly (or in spite of themselves) take persons to be substances of some kind. I offer a different reading of Locke’s chapter by taking seriously the second-order reading instructions that he offers there. Locke’s ontology condones three kinds of “things”: substances, modes and relations. There are thus three and only three different ways in which a “thing” might be identical to itself: same substance, same mode, same relation. A proper name (or deictic gesture) may refer either to a substance, a mode or a relation. This reading requires that we interpret organisms as modes and persons as relations. Locke illustrates (non-trivial) substantial identity on the example of an atomistic version of Descartes’ wax, modal identity on the example of life, relational identity on the example of personality. In this talk I push this reading to the hilt and draw the consequences.