Category: identity
Associated thinker(s): Thomas Reid
Original publication or approximate period: Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785), III.vi
Difficulty: Intermediate
Themes: memory, transitivity, identity
Related experiments: lockes-prince-and-cobbler, fission
Kind: thought experiment
Research checked: 2026-10-30
A boy is punished for stealing fruit. Years later, a young officer remembers the punishment. Still later, an old general remembers his exploit as the officer, but no longer remembers the childhood punishment. If direct memory alone determines identity, the officer is the boy and the general is the officer. Yet the general would fail the memory test for being the boy.
Can a relation that fails transitivity constitute identity, which is transitive?
Identity cannot be treated as an arbitrary feeling of connection. The case shows how a plausible psychological criterion can fail a logical requirement. It also separates evidence of identity from whatever makes identity obtain.
Write B for boy, O for officer, and G for general. Direct recollection links O to B and G to O, but not G to B. Identity, however, requires that B = O and O = G imply B = G. Replacing direct recollection with a chain repairs this logical mismatch because the chain can span forgotten intervals. That repair changes the criterion substantially: the general need not personally recall the boy’s experience. It therefore becomes necessary to explain what kinds of intermediate connections qualify and how the theory handles misleading apparent memories.
Reid regards memory as evidence of an enduring person rather than the source of that person’s identity. Psychological-continuity accounts can replace direct memory with overlapping chains of psychological connections, thereby addressing this particular transitivity problem. Doing so does not automatically resolve circularity, false memory, or branching.
The case is not the claim that forgetting childhood literally ends your existence. It is an objection to an overly simple criterion. Whether that criterion fairly captures Locke’s complete historical position remains debated, so Reid’s target should be described carefully.
Branching cases test the revised chain account: two successors might each have overlapping psychological continuity with one predecessor. Thus solving the brave-officer problem is an improvement, not a complete theory of personal persistence.
Historical association: Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785), III.vi. The sources above support the scenario and its intellectual context. Where an original work was not retrieved in full, its account is mediated by the named academic reference; no claim of full primary-source verification is made. The explanation and reflection questions here are original editorial prose.