Locke's Pyrrhic Victory Henry E. Allison; Nicholas Jolley Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 42, No. 4. (Oct. - Dec., 1981), pp. 672-674. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-5037%28198110%2F12%2942%3A4%3C672%3ALPV%3E2.0.CO%3B2-4 Journal of the History of Ideas is currently published by University of Pennsylvania Press.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/journals/upenn.html. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission.
JSTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact
[email protected].
http://www.jstor.org Tue May 22 07:19:26 2007
LOCKE'S PYRRHIC VICTORY J OLLEY* BY HENRYE. ALLISONA N D NICHOLAS After reviewing the relevant passages in the Essay and in the correspondence between Locke and Molyneux, I have come to the conclusion that Professor Helm is correct with regard to his factual claim. Contrary to my original assumption, in his final statement regarding the justifiability of punishing a drunkard for criminal acts, Locke did not capitulate t o Molyneux; that is, he did not admit a case where moral responsibility extends beyond consciousness. Nevertheless, the defense of Locke's consistency presented by Professor Helm does not address the real philosophical issues raised for Locke's theory of personal identity by the example of the drunkard. In fact, it makes Locke's overall position and response even more unsatisfactory than it is generally assumed to be. Specifically, it suggests that in his final response to Molyneux, Locke not merely conflates two distinct issues but also, more importantly, loses sight of the whole point of his theory. Rather than capitulate to Molyneux, Locke is prepared to throw out the empiricist baby with the Cartesian bath-water. Let us first consider the question of fact, which is virtually the sole focus of Professor Helm's concern. In response to Molyneux's suggestion that he distinguish between the case of a drunkard and that of a frantic, he states simply: "I agree with you, that drunkenness being a voluntary defect, want of consciousness ought not to be presum'd in favour of the drunkard. But frenzy being involuntary, and a misfortune, not a fault, has a right to that excuse, which certainly is a just one, where it is truly a frenzy"' I had initially taken the claim that "want of consciousness ought not to be presumed in favour of the drunkard" to mean that the drunkard's lack of consciousness, in contrast to a similar lack in a frenzied person, ought not to excuse any criminal acts committed while in that state. I had also assumed that Locke's justification for this claim is that drunkenness, but not frenzy, is a voluntarily induced state. Professor Helm shows, however, that what Locke is actually saying here is that the law ought not to assume lack of consciousness in the case of the drunkard. Although Helm is correct in this claim, his analysis is marred by a curious misinterpretation of Locke's example. Helm writes as if the sole point at issue were whether the drunkard, or more precisely, the accused person who was drunk at t,, and sober at t,, was conscious at t , when he allegedly performed the act. It must be admitted that Locke's language is ambiguous, and that much of what he says, especially in response to Molyneux, is compatible with such an interpretation. Nevertheless, it is clear that the real issue raised for Locke's theory by the example of the drunkard is whether a man who performed a criminal act when drunk at t, can justifiably be punished for this act at some later date (t,) even though he has no recollection of the act. This is the question that raises the challenge to Locke's
* Although this note is co-authored, the first person singular pronoun is used in those places in which reference is made to Allison's original paper. 26 May, 1694, The Correspondence of John Locke, ed. E . S. De Beer (Oxford, 1979), V, 58.
LOCKE'S PYRRHIC VICTORY
673
theory, with its identification of personal identity with consciousness and of consciousness with memory. The question of whether or not the person was conscious at t, only bears on the issue insofar as this consciousness is a necessary condition for subsequent recollection. It is here being regarded as a conceptual truth that one cannot (truly) recollect having performed an act of which one was not aware at the time of its performance. In order to see that this is in fact Locke's concern, we need only consider the context in which the case of the drunkard is introduced in the Essay. It follows immediately upon the discussion of the identity of Socrates awake with Socrates asleep, wherein Locke raises the question of the justifiability of punishing "Socrates waking, for what sleeping Socrates thought, and waking Socrates was never conscious of."2 As is required by his theory, Locke denies that such punishment would be justified. Since Socrates awake has (by stipulatiorl) no recollection of his prior state, he cannot be regarded as the same person as Socrates asleep. He, therefore, ought not to be punished for the misdeeds of his dormant counterpart. The case of the drunkard is considered as a possible counter-example to this principle, that is, as a case in which it does seem to be legitimate to punish someone for acts of which he has no recollection. Thus, Locke begins the discussion by asking rhetorically: "But is not a Man Drunk and Sober the same Person, why else is he punished for the Fact he commits when Drunk, though he be never afterwards conscious of it?"3 Here, as in the case of Socrates, Locke's problem is whether it is ever justified to punish a person at t, for acts performed at t,, which the person does not recollect. This is just what Locke's theory of personal identity seems to disallow but which his ethical and legal intuitions appear to require in the case of the drunkard. Given these considerations, what are we to make of the position that Locke finally adopts under pressure of Molyneux's questioning? At first sight Locke might seem to be saying that the voluntariness of getting drunk entails subsequent consciousness of any criminal acts committed in that state. This, of course, would be a straightforward nun sequitur. Fortunately, however, it is possible to interpret Locke so as to avoid this difficulty. We can reconstruct his position in the following manner. Since the courts cannot distinguish between genuine and counterfeit loss-of-consciousness pleas, they are entitled to adopt a methodological assumption akin to the "rationality principle" in economics and the social sciences; there is a presumption that the voluntary actions of agents are always directed towards their own self-interest, and thus, by implication, to avoiding behavior that would result in loss of consciousness. Clearly this is not the basis on which the law actually discriminates between the crimes of drunkards and frantics; Molyneux's account is obviously preferable in this respect. But though Locke is not guilty of anon sequitur, his position seems open to an equally damaging objection. Consider the original motivation of John Locke, A n Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. P. H . Nidditch (Oxford, 1975), 11, XXVII, 19. 11, XXVII, 22. Cf. Locke to Molyneux, 19 January 1694: ". . . the instances you bring justifie not the punishing of a drunken fact, that was totally and irrecoverably forgotten" (Emphasis added). Correspondence of John Locke, IV, 785.
674
HENRY E. ALLISON AND NICHOLAS JOLLEY
Locke's theory of personal identity. As Helms emphasizes in his article, Locke's theory was rooted in his critique of the Cartesian doctrine of the self. According to Descartes, the self is an essentially thinking substance, but since he also held that substance is not directly perceived, it is logically possible that a change of self should take place which could not be detected by consciousness. Conversely, a radical discontinuity of consciousness does not entail a change in the substantial self. If the self is epistemologically inaccessible in this way, then, as Locke saw, we are in no position to make ascriptions of moral responsibility, since the possibility of making such judgments implies that we can establish claims about the sameness of the self or person. In opposition to Descartes, Locke argues that our invincible ignorance of substance is no bar to settling questions of personal identity; he is thus led to detach the concept of a person from the concept of substance. As was also suggested in the article, one of the main attractions of Locke's theory is that it offers an empirical criterion for resolving questions of personal identity, and thus for assigning the limits of moral and legal responsibility. In place of the Cartesian appeal to substance, Locke proposes that A is the same person as B just in case B can remember having the experiences of A, and it seems that verifying whether this condition is satisfied should be a straightforward matter. But in his treatment of the drunkenness example Locke is prepared to forego this advantage of his theory over Descartes's. In order to reconcile his theory with our moral intuitions about such cases, Locke is forced to adopt the expedient of claiming that the courts can never have adequate grounds for believing loss of consciousness pleas. Thus, Locke is driven to erect epistemological barriers in the way of establishing claims about personal identity, yet this was precisely the focus of his quarrel with Descartes. Consistency is purchased at the price of sacrificing one of the chief strengths of his theory. It may be objected that there is still a crucial difference between the positions of Locke and Descartes. In Locke's reasonable view it is a key implication of Descartes's theory that a change of self could not be detected even from a first-personal point of view. It may seem that for Locke, however, there must always be one human being who is in a position to know the truth of the matter: in the drunkenness example, at least the accused himself can tell whether his loss of consciousness plea is bonafide or spurious. But the point of contrast here may be more apparent than real. Certainly the accused has a privileged status regarding his own sincerity, but as commentators have pointed out, the honesty of a memory claim does not entail the genuineness of the recollection. It is thus not clear that on Lockean principles persons are in a privileged position to answer questions concerning their own identity. In any case, the central point is unaffected; viz., Locke is committed to the counterintuitive thesis that, in the case of the drunkard, the issue of responsibility cannot be properly settled by any court of law. Just how little there is to choose between the views of Locke and Descartes from a forensic standpoint is clear if we reflect on Locke's implied contrast between divine and human justice. According to Locke, the courts may be subject to epistemological limitations, but God at least knows the answers. It would seem that Descartes's God enjoys just the same privilege. University of California at San Diego.
