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Senses of Identity in Hume's Treatise

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 1969

James Noxon
James Noxon
Affiliation:
McMaster University
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Extract

Since philosophers do not write down all they think, there are logical spaces in every text. The commentator's job is to bridge these, relying upon the implications of his author's statements. He usually works on the assumption that his philosopher is a rational and, therefore, a consistent thinker. When he has to contend with statements that are ambiguous, elliptical or apparently inconsistent, or with logical gaps that are unusually wide, he chooses the interpretation that confers the maximum coherence upon the theory under review. There are hard choices to be made, especially when the philosopher has avoided committing himself explicitly on a central point. Where the philosopher has been silent, is the critic allowed to speak? It is presumptuous of him to do so, no doubt, but, I think, warranted if the philosophical theory is thereby strengthened.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , December 1969 , pp. 367 - 384
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1969

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References

1 Selby-Bigge, L. A. (ed.), Oxford, 1888Google Scholar. All parenthetical references are to the pagination of this edition.

2 Cf. Book I, Part III, S. ii, p. 74: ‘We readily suppose an object may continue individually the same, tho' several times absent from and present to the senses; and ascribe to it an identity, nothwithstanding the interruption of the perception, whenever we conclude, that if we had kept our eye or hand constantly upon it, it wou'd have convey'd an invariable and uninterrupted perception. But this conclusion beyond the impressions of our senses can be founded only on the connection of cause and effect; nor can we otherwise have any security, that the object is not chang'd upon us, however much the new object may resemble that which was formerly present to the senses.’ Since causal judgements yield probability, judgements of identity, being founded on the causal relation, must themselves be probable, not certain.

3 The Philosophical Review, Vol. LXIV, 1955, p. 580Google Scholar.

4 Ibid., p. 571.

5 Hume's Philosophy of Belief, Routledge & Kegan Paul, New York, p. 5Google Scholar.

8 Human Understanding: Studies in the Philosophy of David Hume, edd. Sesonske, Alexander and Fleming, Noel, Wadsworth, Belmont, California, 1965Google Scholar, and Hume, ed. Chappell, V. C., Doubleday, Garden City, New York, 1966CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Ed. Paul Edwards, Crowler-Collier, New York, 1968, Vol. VI, p. 95 f.

8 In the Encyclopedia article, as in his earlier paper, Penelhum responds with the following argument, roughly paraphrased. It would be incorrect (a violation of the conventions of ordinary language) to say that one uninterrupted note was the same as a succession of related notes. But it would be quite proper to say that a succession of related notes was the same as one tune. By analogy, there is no mistake in calling a succession of related perceptions one mind. Far from contesting this point, Hume, I imagine, would have welcomed the analogy. The senses of personal identity and of melody both depend upon a system of relations, expressed in laws of association in the one case, and in the laws of harmonics in the other. The view that Hume wants to discredit takes the idea of the self to be derived from an experience comparable to attending to an invariable, uninterrupted note.

9 Hume's Intentions, Cambridge University Press, 1952, p. 79.

10 Ibid., p. 83.

11 Ibid., p. 79.

12 ‘… I may venture to affirm of … mankind, that they are 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. Our eyes cannot turn in our sockets without varying our perceptions. Our thought is still more variable than our sight; and all our other senses and faculties contribute to this change; nor is there any single power of the soul, which remains unalterably the same, perhaps for one moment’ (252). ‘… identity is nothing really belonging to these different perceptions, and uniting them together; but is merely a quality, which we attribute to them, because of the union of their ideas in the imagination, when we reflect upon them’ (260).

13 Hume first takes his stand on Lockean ground, construing memory ‘as the source of personal identity’ (261), but he quickly retreats, perhaps out of deference to Butler's stricture, settling on the position that ‘memory does not so much produce as discover personal identity’ (262). His disagreement with Locke is less serious than he apparently thought. To be made consistent with himself, Locke must be amended to read that memory produces the sense of personal identity, not personal identity, and that claim is compatible with Hume's final decision that memory discovers but does not produce personal identity.

14 Book I, Part I, S. iii: ‘Of the Ideas of the Memory and Imagination.’

15 An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Fraser, A. C., Dover, 1959, Vol. I, p. 448Google Scholar.

16 Ibid., p. 23.

17 Ibid., p. 124.

18 Ibid., p. 448.

19 Hume goes on to say, ‘But all my hopes vanish, when I come to explain the principles, that unite our successive perceptions in our thought or consciousness. I cannot discover any theory, which gives me satisfaction on this head.’ Hume is not seduced by his dissatisfaction into deserting the position with which he has associated himself.