Memories without Survival: Personal Identity and the Ascending Reticular Activating System.

This article critically examines Lockean views of personal identity, which hold that persons persist over time through psychological continuity—specifically, the persistence of mental states. It presents a novel objection based on neurophysiological evidence concerning the ascending reticular activating system (ARAS), a brainstem structure essential for wakefulness and thus consciousness. The author argues that damage to the ARAS can irreversibly eliminate consciousness while leaving the neural correlates of mental states intact in the cerebral hemispheres, creating a scenario where psychological continuity persists despite the permanent absence of conscious experience. This challenges Lockean accounts, as it implies that a person could be considered to persist even when irreversibly comatose and incapable of any conscious mental activity. The article concludes that Lockean theories must incorporate an accessibility condition—requiring that the mental states constituting psychological continuity remain accessible to consciousness—to align with human neurophysiology and avoid untenable implications.