John Locke (1632-1704) said: “To discover what personal identity consists of, we must consider what the person represents…” (Locke , in a booklet, p. 275). Therefore, to recapitulate Locke's philosophy on personal identity, it is necessary to clarify how he inimitablely used the term "person" and consequently other words, such as "substance" and "man", which he used to form his philosophical ideas. Furthermore, his work on personal identity inspired debates among many later philosophers and motivated disagreements. As such, it is important to counter Locke's views with opposing arguments. The primary way in which Locke argued and elucidated his ideas was through the thought experiment, which Locke carefully crafted as an imaginary scenario to reveal human intuition on a philosophical question. He used them to illustrate the unique way he used certain words, like “substance.” For Locke, “substances” were immaterial or material things that existed independently and there were subcategories within them. A subcategory of this term was immaterial “substance,” such as “soul.” One particular thought experiment he used to explain his ideas about "the soul" concerns Nestor or Thersites; where someone believed that his soul once dwelt one of these men of Trojan legend. Of this he says: “But yet the soul alone, in the change of body, would hardly suffice for anyone… to form the same man” (Locke, in the libretto, p. 277). Establishing that he believed the soul to be an immaterial "substance", although this is not necessarily what constitutes continuous consciousness; a radical idea, because the majority believed during this century that the "soul", bequeathed to man by a divinity, was the continuous consciousness which made...... middle of paper ...... ophie, Milton Keynes, The Open University. “Personal identity”, audio recording, (2011). “The Self”, Exploring Philosophy, Milton Keynes, The Open University. Bennet, J. (2007), paraphrase of Locke, J. (1690) An Essay about Human Understanding, Bk II, ch. 27, paragraphs 17 to 22, in Warburton (2011), “The Self”, Exploring philosophy, Milton Keynes, The Open University, pp. 107-109. Mackie, J.L. (1976) Problems from Locke, Oxford, Oxford University Press, pp. 173-7, in Warburton (2011), “The Self”, Exploring philosophy, Milton Keynes, The Open University, pp. 110-114. Uzgalis, William, “John Locke,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2010). Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .Warburton, N. (2011) “The Self”, Exploring philosophizing, Milton Keynes, The Open University, pp. 7-51.