I have no clue what this is and I struggle to understand it…
Ans why is this a good theory against the brave officer example from Reid?
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Grice’s theory is a modification of Locke’s on the role of memory in creating/establishing the self. Locke said (very basically) if you remember an experience, the self of that experience is the same self that is remembering, providing a measure of continuity.
Reid set up a paradox: the soldier remembers an experience of the boy, and so the soldier and the boy are the same self. The general remembers the experience of the soldier, so the general and soldier are the same self. If the boy and the soldier are the same, and the soldier and the general are the same, then the boy and the soldier must be the same. But the general doesn’t remember the experience of the boy, so by Locke’s definition they aren’t the same self and we have a contradiction.
Grice says that the self is really just a series of temporary mind-states, of all the thoughts and experiences you’re having in a given moment. Included in that state is a memory of the state you were just in. So if you just got to work and sat down at your computer, you remember walking in the door; when you were walking in the door you remembered getting out of the car; when you were getting out of the car you remembered parking, and so on.
As long as the link to the previous state exists, you are the same self through the whole chain of states. The self who just sat at the computer is the same self who parked the car. To return to Reid, the general-tts remembers the soldier-tts, and the soldier-tts remembers the boy-tts. Thus even if the general-tts doesn’t remember the boy-tts, they are still linked by the soldier-tts and are the same self.
To try a rough analogy, Locke says that the self is like a story in a book-that it contains all the events of the story, all together that can be flipped through and referenced and remembered-and if its not in the book, its not part of the story.
Reid says well, what if there are three books-the second references the events of the first and the third the events of the second but not the first. Clearly they’re one single story, but by your rule since the third one doesn’t talk about the first they can’t be the same story.
Grice says the self is more like a comic book series. The Stories of the Stupendous Self #87 is a continuation of #86, which is a continuation of #85 and so on all the way back to #1. It doesn’t have to have references to all the intervening parts of the story to be the same story.
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