Mr. Okafor and the Limits of the Memory Criterion
Priya, a 17-year-old IB Philosophy HL student, volunteers at a care home and is drafting a 1,400-word essay on personal identity for a timed assessment. She wants to use a resident, Mr. Okafor, 78, who has advanced Alzheimer's disease. Mr. Okafor cannot recognize his daughter, Ada, and cannot recall his own name, but when Ada visits he smiles, holds her hand, and says, 'You look like my Ada.' Priya's teacher has warned that her draft uses Mr. Okafor as a 'clear case' of lost identity and that the example is doing too much work. Priya has 90 minutes and two permitted sources: Locke's memory criterion and Parfit's reductionism. Ada has asked Priya, 'Is he still my father?' Priya wants to answer with philosophy, not pity, but she is unsure whether the case supports Locke, refutes Locke, or shows that the question is badly framed.
1. How should Priya apply Locke's memory criterion to Mr. Okafor, and why is her current use of the case philosophically vulnerable?
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Locke holds that personal identity consists in continuity of consciousness, especially memory: a person is the same person insofar as they can remember past thoughts and actions. On a strict reading, Mr. Okafor's inability to recognize Ada or recall his name suggests a break in the consciousness that Locke treats as identity. But Priya's use of the case is vulnerable for three reasons. First, Locke distinguishes the person from the human being: the same man can survive as a different person, so the case does not show that Mr. Okafor is no longer Ada's father in every sense. Second, memory loss is gradual and partial; Mr. Okafor's warm response to Ada may be a form of emotional recognition, not zero continuity. Third, Priya treats the case as a 'clear case' that illustrates a theory, whereas a good HL essay should use it to test the theory. A clear case would need independent criteria for what counts as memory. Using a vulnerable real person also raises ethical questions about consent and dignity. So the case is better treated as ambiguous evidence than as a decisive counterexample.
2. Revise Priya's thesis so that it uses Mr. Okafor to test, rather than illustrate, a theory. Refer to Parfit.
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A stronger thesis would be: 'If psychological continuity is necessary for personal identity, then severe dementia threatens identity; but Parfit's reductionism shows that identity is not what matters most.' Priya can use Mr. Okafor to test this claim rather than decorate it. First, she states Locke's criterion and derives a prediction: where memory continuity is absent, personal identity is absent. Second, she applies the prediction to Mr. Okafor and finds mixed evidence: no autobiographical memory, but some emotional recognition. Third, she introduces Parfit: psychological connectedness comes in degrees; what matters is survival, not strict identity. On Parfit's view, Ada's question 'Is he still my father?' may be less important than 'Is there enough psychological connection for the relationship to continue?' That reframing lets Priya evaluate rather than assert. She should also consider an objection: Parfit's reductionism may be too revisionary about family relationships. The essay can conclude that the case weakens a strict Lockean criterion but does not settle whether identity persists.
3. What should Priya say to Ada, and what should she not say?
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Priya should separate the philosophical question from the pastoral one. She can say: 'Philosophers disagree about what personal identity requires. On Locke's memory criterion, your father's loss of memory is a serious threat to identity. On Parfit's account, identity is not the only thing that matters; what matters is whether some psychological connection survives, and the way he responds to you suggests that something does.' She should not say 'He is not your father' as if philosophy had settled it, and she should not use the case as a prop for a theory in front of Ada. She should acknowledge that the question is also about love, recognition, and relationship, not only metaphysical identity. If Ada wants a philosophical answer, Priya can offer the competing criteria and their limits. If Ada wants comfort, Priya should not pretend that a contested theory is certainty. This is a judgement about intellectual honesty and care: philosophical responsibility includes knowing when a theory should not be used to pronounce on a person's worth.