Locke on Personal Identity : A Critical Analysis

Locke says that it is the consciousness that it is the consciousness that constitutes personal identity, for example, the same me, the same person, though and despite the passage of time. He argues that consciousness is inseparable from thinking. Only by this consciousness each of us can consider himself as himself, as one persisting thinking thing. It is by this consciousness that our different senses and percepts and thoughts and desires at any time belong to one self and accounts the sameness of the self at different time. Since, consciousness always accompanies thinking, and it is that which makes everyone 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.