The Connection Between Person, Memory, And Identity

The connection between person, memory, and identity should be explained by the psychological state criterion. Briefly, by psychological state criterion, we can say a person from time T1 to time T2 shares the same identity if, and only if the person P2 at T2 remembers successive memories that the person P1 at T1 has had. To discuss the topic more deeply, it is necessary for me to defines what person and identity mean.

According to John Locke, person is a thinking intelligence being. A person is a being that can perceive its own existence. The self-consciousness is a necessary condition for being a person. A person should understand that his memories are the events that he has been experienced by himself. Moreover, he can be firm that he is
A person’s memory may not always be what the person has experienced by himself. A person may have apparent memories which are not caused by the event they record. X seeming to remember some events that Y experienced does not mean X and Y have the same identity. Accordingly, the ‘memory’ in the continuity of memory criterion should mean ‘genuine memory, ' i.e., the memory which is caused by the event it records only. And this brings us back to the connection between person and memory which I have mentioned before. Saying a being is a person, the being should notice its genuine memory are events which have been experienced by itself before. If a being never thinks about the cause of its memory, it could not be called as a person as it does not show intelligent
‘Quasi-memory’ is like genuine memory, yet it is possible for someone to quasi-remember an event without being identical to the person who experienced or witnessed that event. In ‘quasi-memory’, the event that the memory records must in fact happens, and the memory is possible to be caused by the owner of the memory or any other people. Therefore, the word ‘memory’ used in the continuity of memory criterion need not to be the memory which is experienced or witnessed by the memory owner himself. It can also be the person’s apparent memory which is caused in the right way by some person who experienced or witnessed the event. Hence, the continuity of memory criterion should be P2 at T2 is the same person at P1 at T1 just in case there is continuity of quasi-memory between P1 at T1 and P2 at T2, i.e., there is an overlapping chain of