12) pp. Butler was a great favorite of the Tractarians, but the association with them may have worked against his ultimate influence in England, especially since Newman attributed his own conversion to the Roman Church to his study of Butler. Molyneux’s counterclaim does not pose serious threat to Locke, as his argument is more centred around his assertion that any voluntary action and all of its possible outcomes are liable, rather than on the principal of personal identity itself. Butler’s argument for morality, found primarily in his sermons, is an attempt to show that morality is a matter of following human nature. Butler expressed distaste for Oxford’s intellectual conventions while a student at Oriel College; he preferred the newer styles of thought, especially those of John Locke, the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury and Francis Hutcheson, leading David Hume to characterize Butler as one of those “who have begun to put the science of man on a new footing, and have engaged the attention, and excited the curiosity of the public.” Butler benefited from the support of Samuel Clarke and the Talbot family. Butler’s strategy is to naturalize morals and religion. Given these options, Butler thinks there are good practical reasons for accepting the third in practice. Since he does appeal to our ignorance, Butler cannot be said to have produced a theodicy, a justification of the ways of God to us, but his strategy may show a greater intellectual integrity, and may be sufficient for his purposes. I find Reid’s objection a considerable obstacle for Locke’s theory, as it clearly leads to a paradox, and there are no clear ways in which Locke could amend his theory to account for Reid’s counterargument. “Letter of December 23, 1693” in Some Familiar Letters Between Mr. Locke, and Several of His Friends (London: For A. and J. Churchill, 1708), Nimbalkar, Namita. Butler also argues that various other aspects of human nature are adapted to virtue, sometimes in surprising ways. This page was originally posted on 10/17/99; 8:23:12 PM and was last built on 10/17/99; 9:19:56 PM. Butler’s famous encounter with John Wesley has only recently been reconstructed in as full detail as seems possible given the state of the surviving evidence, and we are now left with little hope of ever knowing what their actual relationship was. Given this conception of nature as a moral system and certain proofs of God’s existence, Butler is then in a position to defend religion by addressing objections to it, such as the problem of evil. In general, Butler presents revelation as wholly consistent with, but also genuinely supplemental of, natural knowledge. Butler has become an icon of a highly intellectualized, even rarefied, theology, “wafted in a cloud of metaphysics,” as Horace Walpole said. At first glance this may throw a considerable spanner in the works of Locke’s thesis, but is easily remedied by Locke’s quick counterargument. The sermons on the love of God are rarely read today, but they provide abundant evidence that Butler’s God is not some remote deity who created the world and then lost interest in it. And when we lack sufficient warrant for acting on the presumption of a change, we must act on the presumption of continuance. Copyright by Michael J. The fact that human nature is hierarchically ordered is not what makes us manifestly adapted to virtue, rather, it is what Butler calls “conscience” that is at the top of this hierarchy. Locke also holds that if a person’s consciousness was moved to the body of an animal, they would no longer be a man, but they are still the same person. Charles Babbage (1837) eventually showed why Hume had no valid objection to Butler. [2] Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (II. Butler says he needs to answer objections to personal identity continuing after death, which he certainly must do. [1] Nimbalkar, Locke on Personal Identity (2011). 1897) pp. “Bishop Butler and the Primacy”, Sykes, Norman. In essence, how I know where I am, what I am, and what has happened in my past means that I know I am me, and can separate myself from other living things. Locke then goes on to illustrate the contrary experience of the cobbler’s consciousness inhabiting the prince’s old body. (This is what both Butler and Reid believe that Locke was trying to do). Mossner claims that Butler was widely read in his own time, but his evidence may be insufficient to convince some. Having argued from a standpoint which opposed many of Locke’s arguments, there is no denying that Locke’s account of personal identity in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding set the bar for any wishing to discuss personal identity in the times that followed. Some of his language certainly suggests that it is. However, living things are also aware of present mental states at any given point in time. What is Locke’s Account of Personal Identity? Lewis White Beck’s exposition (1937) of this neglected aspect of Butler’s philosophy has itself been generally neglected, and both friends and foes frequently assert that Butler “assumed” that God exists. In his Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel (1729), Butler argues against Hobbes’s egoism, and in the Analogy of Religion (1736), he argues against Locke’s memory-based theory of personal identity.