Circularity Objection To The Memory View

Memory View is an idea put forward by John Locke suggesting, “Personal Identity is constituted by (genuine) memory-relations” proposing the view that personal identity consists over time in relations of our memory. In relation to Gretchen’s Challenge this means that Gretchen will survive so long as future person-stages are linked to her past and present person-stages through links of (genuine) memory, in which person-stages are periods of mental activity and/or consciousness . Locke argues that living organisms lose and gain particles of matter throughout their lifetime while still remaining the same organism , for example, a chicken’s egg gains and loses particles of matter as it grows and/or matures into a chicken, yet the egg and the chicken
It can be unclear whether a person’s memory is genuine, or the person only seems to remember the experience. Merely apparent memories can be believed to be genuine through the possibility of reading a vivid account of the experience, or being compelled by a hypnotist to believe that it was actually experienced. A person may claim to have a genuine memory such as “I recall a party on a Friday night, a fight breaking out and the police showed up” while it may be a true memory in the sense that there was a part on a Friday night, and the police did indeed show up to a fight breaking out, for it to be a genuine memory, the person must have genuine recall of the experience, the facts alone about the party is not sufficient enough to prove a genuine memory, the person’s consciousness of the experience is important. This view provides two ways for an apparent memory to not be genuine, the supposed event never actually took place, or the person with the apparent memory did not actually experience that memory. Therefore for an apparent memory to truly be genuine the event/experience must have actually happened, and the person must have truly been there and experienced the