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Hume's Theory of the Self and its Identity*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2010

Lawrence Ashley  and
Michael Stack
Lawrence Ashley
Affiliation:
State University of New York at Cortland
Michael Stack
Affiliation:
University of Manitoba
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Extract

It is a widely held view among philosophers that Hume's doctrine of personal identity is seriously mistaken, that he makes claims about the existence and nature of personal identity that are clearly false. The strongest statement of this view is to be found in Terence Penelhum's “Hume on Personal Identity.” According to Penelhum:

What he (Hume) is actually claiming is that we are constantly making a mistake in referring to a person from day to day as the same person … or in this way to anything that has changed in the slightest. For, strictly speaking, a changed person would be literally another person. A little effort of the imagination is enough to indicate just how much chaos would result from adopting Hume's diagnosis as the source of a prescription and using a different proper name whenever we noticed the slightest change, even in ourselves.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , June 1974 , pp. 239 - 254
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1974

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References

1 Penelhum, Terence, “Hume on Personal Identity” in Hume, Ed. Chappell, V. C., Modern Studies in Philosophy, Doubleday, Anchor, 1966, p. 224Google Scholar.

2 Smith, N. Kemp, The Philosophy of David Hume. Macmillan, 1964, 497–505Google Scholar; Pears, D. F., David Hume: A Symposium. London, 1963, 43–54Google Scholar.

3 Hume, David, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. Selby-Bigge, L. A. (originally published 1888), repr. Oxford, 1965, p. 251Google Scholar. Hereafter passages in the Treatise will be indicated by page numbers immediately following the quotation or reference.

4 For an extended treatment of this point, see Butchvarov's, Payanot “The Self and Perceptions: A Study in Humean Philosophy,” The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. IX, *35, April, 1949, pp. 97–115Google Scholar.

5 The most detailed discussion of imperfect identity occurs in Von Leyden's, W. “Hume and ‘Imperfect Identity’” (Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 7, 1957)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Von Leyden tries to show that Hume could not have really meant to use “imperfect”.

6 Hume, p. 223.

7 Hume, p. 220.

8 Broad, C.D., The Mind and its Place in Nature (Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York, 1929)Google Scholar.

9 Grice, H. P., “Personal Identity,” Mind L (1941) p. 330–350CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Just this type of demand is made by Jones, J. R., “The Self in Sensory Cognition,” Mind, LVIII (Jan. 1949) p. 40–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 “p” designates a particular perception, the letters “a”, “b”, “c”, and “d” indicate the quality or characteristic of the perception, and the numerals indicate the time of the perception.

12 Noxon, James, “Senses of Identity in Hume's Treatise,” Dialogue, vol. 8, 1969, pp. 367–384CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 N. K. Smith, op. cit., v.