Abstract

This chapter deals with the views and arguments of thinkers who treat the issues of personal identity and self-consciousness from the perspective of an immaterialist theory of the mind. Standard arguments in support of the immaterial nature of the mind or soul appeal to the unity of the soul and consciousness, and to the diachronic identity of the soul required for the afterlife. Neither unity nor diachronic identity is said to be compatible with the extension of matter and with a multiplicity of material particles. Personal identity on this view requires an immaterial core of the self that is not subject to change. There is, however, a considerable variety of views about personal identity from within immaterialist positions on the nature of the mind. This chapter focuses on British thinkers in the first half of the eighteenth century, examining the Cartesian position of Thomas Emes, Samuel Clarke and Henry Grove, as well as Isaac Watts with his rather modern emphasis on language for dealing with this issue. Shaftesbury, the last thinker considered in this chapter, links the unity of the human soul to that of a universal or world soul, appealing to neo-Platonist metaphysics.