Amy Kindmemory. Episodic memory involves memories of events that were personally experienced, and
it thereby contrasts with purely factual memory. When taking a geography test you’re likely
to be relying primarily on your factual memories – all those state capitals and river names
that you’ve previously memorized. In contrast, when writing your autobiography you’re likely
to be relying primarily on your episodic memories – all those life experiences that you’ve
previously undergone.
With this distinction in place, we can see why episodic memory might naturally be described
as a backward extension of consciousness. We can also see why episodic memory might naturally
be invoked to explain personal identity over time. It seems plausible that we’re each connected
to our past selves by our episodic memories of those selves’ experiences. Consider an example.
On November 2, 2004, someone was elected as the United States senator representing Illinois.
On January 20, 1999, someone was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States. And
on January 13, 2016, someone gave a State of the Union address. What makes it the case that
each of these three “someones” is the very same person, the person known as Barack Obama?
According to Locke’s theory, it’s due to the fact that they share the very same consciousness. The
person giving the State of the Union address can remember being sworn in as President, and
can remember being elected as the senator from Illinois, and it’s in these connections of episodic
memory – in the sharing of consciousness – that personal identity consists.
Of course, in an ordinary case like this one, not only do the three someones share the same
consciousness but they also share the same body. So we might wonder why a theorist like Locke
would privilege sameness of consciousness over sameness of body in accounting for personal
identity. Here it’s perhaps most helpful to consider hypothetical cases in which sameness of con-
sciousness and sameness of body come apart. Many such cases are presented to us in fiction and
film, and they tend to involve the transfer of consciousness from one human body to another (or
from one human body to some other kind of body altogether). In thinking about these cases, it
may be helpful to keep in mind an analogy used by Locke: Just as we wouldn’t think that some-
one becomes a different person by changing their clothes, we also shouldn’t think that someone
becomes a different person just by changing their bodies.
Take Freaky Friday, for example – be it the 1972 book by Mary Rodgers or any of the vari-
ous film versions. Though the details vary somewhat from book to film to remake, the basic
body swap plotline remains the same across all the different versions. Let’s consider the 2003 film
starring Lindsay Lohan as a teenage girl named Anna and Jamie Lee Curtis as Anna’s mother
Tess. One morning, after having received cryptic fortunes while out for dinner the night before,
Tess and Anna awake to discover that Tess’s consciousness is now in Anna’s body, and Anna’s
consciousness is now in Tess’s body. As the plot unfolds, it’s clear that viewers are meant to think
that each of the characters goes where her consciousness goes – that the person with Tess’s body
and Anna’s consciousness is really Anna, while the person with Anna’s body and Tess’s conscious-
ness is really Tess – and indeed, this seems to most people to be the most natural description of
what happens.
Or consider James Cameron’s film Avatar, released in 2009. Jake Sully, a disabled former
Marine, ends up having his consciousness transferred into a different body, while on a mission
in outer space to Pandora. Here there’s an added wrinkle: the body to which his conscious-
ness is transferred is not even a human one. Rather, it’s Na’vi, a species native to Pandora. As in
Freaky Friday, we’re meant to believe – and it seems natural to believe – that Sully goes where
his consciousness goes. Though his human body dies, Sully – the very same person – survives in
the Na’vi body that now houses his consciousness.
Though some philosophers have disputed that we should trust our intuitions in these kinds
of cases (see especially Williams 1970), many philosophers take them to make a strong case that