John Locke Research Paper

707 Words3 Pages
Mind, Soul and Body With the far advancements of technology and science, the idea of a plausible brain transplant arises. Now although, the idea of a brain transplant has been around for centuries with philosophers like, John Locke; whom brought up the notion of a soul following a person's body in a brain transplant procedure. Locke presented the theory that the “personal identity (of a person is) to be founded on memory and not on the substance of the body.” With this theory presented, I agree with Locke that a soul determines who the person is and not the physical body. This idea is possible because of the effectiveness of split-brain procedures, situations like Phineas Gage and qualitative and. quantitative identity. Locke, introduced the topic of personal and bodily identity. He believed that personal identity is a person's soul and memories; while bodily identity is someone's physical body. According to Locke, “there is personal identity without bodily identity (Perry 103).” Recently, we discussed the topic of…show more content…
Phineas Gage went through severe head trauma after a metal pole went through his left cheek, completely blinding his left eye and then through his left frontal lobe. Besides the injury to his eye that permanently blinded him, there were no external visible injuries to Gage; unfortunately, it wasn’t the same outcome for the internal changes that began to occur. Following the accident, Gage “ started to behave inappropriately in social situations, some reports state that became violent and "uncontrollable", and even that he started to molest children.” The damages done to his left frontal lobe all related to what he now lacked as a person i.e self control and restraint. This goes to show that the personality or the qualitative identity that Gage once possessed was changed because of damage done to his brain not to his physical
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