David Hume 1711 - 1776

A DISCUSSION OF THE REAL NATURE OF ‘SELF’ Part 2a

derived primarily from COGNITION AND COMMITMENT IN HUME’S PHILOSOPHY by Don Garrett, Oxford, 1997, chapter 8 “Personal Identity”, pages163-186

Hume’s first account and second thoughts

164: Hume’s argument for his analysis of personal identity has five main parts.

First, he argues that the human mind lacks the “perfect identity” –that is, invariability and uninteruptedness—that metaphysicians have ascribed to the self, and so he concludes, via the Copy Principle (“All our simple ideas in their first appearance are deriv’d from simple impressions, which are correspondent to them, and which they exactly represent,” THN 4. “All our ideas or more feeble perceptions are copies of our impressions or more lively ones,” EHU § 13), that we have no idea of the mind as something invariable or uninterrupted.

Perfect identity is the invariableness and uninteruptedness of any object, thro’ a supposed variation of time (THN 201).

It must be some one impression, that gives rise to every real idea. (from the Copy Principle)

There is no impression constant and invariable.

There is no such idea as that of the self, considered as something having perfect identity and simplicity ((from 1-3)

Second, he argues, via the Separability Principle (Unlike the Copy Principle, which has an acknowledged antecedent in Locke’s denial of innate ideas, Hume’s Separability Principle—the second of his two fundamental principles—has no obvious predecessors: He first explicitly states the principle as follows: “We have observ’d, that whatever objects are different and distinguishable, and that whatever objects are distinguishable are separable by the thought and imagination,” THN 18.) and the Conceivability Criterion of Possibility (Hume’s third argument for rejecting indeterminate representations is derived from what I will call his Conceivability Criterion of Possibility that “nothing of which we can form a clear and distinct idea is absurd and impossible,” THN19-20.), that the human mind consists of nothing more than a bundle or collection of perceptions.

4 repeat. There is no such idea as that of the self, considered as something having perfect identity and simplicity.

All our particular perceptions are different, and distinct, and distinguishable, and separable from each other, and may be separately consider’d, and may exist sepately, and have no need of any thing to support their existence. (from the Seperability Principle and the Conceivability Criterion of Possibility) When I enter most intimately into what I call myself , I always stumble on some particular perception or other . . . . I never catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception. The human mind is nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement. (from 4-6)