Beyond the Brave Officer: Reid on the Unity of the Mind, the Moral Sense, and Locke’s Theory of Personal Identity

Abstract

Many syllabi for undergraduate courses include “Reid’s Brave Officer”. Here is Reid’s description of the example:

(1) Suppose a brave officer to have been flogged when a boy at school for robbing an orchard, to have taken a standard from the enemy in his first campaign, and to have been made a general in advanced life; suppose, also, which must be admitted to be possible, that, when he took the standard, he was conscious of his having been flogged at school, and that, when made a general, he was conscious of his taking the standard, but had absolutely lost the consciousness of his flogging. (Reid, 2002a, p. 276)