Discussions Of Personal Identity Research Articles

Schopenhauer on the Futility of Suicide

Abstract Schopenhauer repeatedly claims that suicide is both foolish and futile. But while many commentators express sympathy for his charge of foolishness, most regard his charge of futility as indefensible even within his own system. In this paper, I offer a defence of Schopenhauer’s futility charge, based on metaphysical and psychological considerations. On the metaphysical front, Schopenhauer’s view implies that psychological connections extend beyond the death of an individual. Drawing on Parfit’s discussion of personal identity, I argue that those connections have personal significance, such that suicide does not allow one, as Hamlet hopes, simply ‘not to be’. On the psychological front, I argue that a distinction between agents’ intentions and underlying desires makes room for Schopenhauer’s claim that paradigmatic suicidal agents ultimately desire the opposite of what suicide accomplishes. I conclude by showing how this understanding of futility can buttress Schopenhauer’s charge of foolishness. My interpretation still leaves Schopenhauer vulnerable to certain objections, but shows that his account is more defensible than previous commentators have realized.

Discussions of personal identity in genetic counseling supervision.

Fieldwork supervision is integral to genetic counseling students' training and has the potential to impact how included students feel in the genetic counseling field. For example, in related counseling fields, when supervisees and supervisors discuss their personal similarities or differences in ethnicity, supervisees report a stronger supervisory working alliance (SWA) (Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, 2001, 29, 102-113). However, the application of these studies on identity discussions to the genetic counseling field is currently unknown. The objective of this cross-sectional questionnaire-based study was to investigate (a) if genetic counseling students report having discussions of personal identity during fieldwork supervision, (b) who initiated any such discussions, (c) if there was a difference in the supervisory relationship between those who did and did not have discussions of personal identity, and (d) how students perceived the inclusivity of the genetic counseling profession and their genetic counseling programs. Discussions of personal identity were defined in this study as "discussions happening during supervision regarding how one or more aspects of personal identity impacts the provision of genetic counseling services and/or professional interactions" where personal identity included the student or supervisor's gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, religion, disability status or other aspect of identity. Almost 40% of the participants (N = 190) reported discussing personal identity with their supervisor. For students identifying as white, discussions of personal identity were related to a stronger SWA (p = 0.014). However, for those with minoritized identities there was no relationship between the SWA and discussions of personal identity. Therefore, it is unclear from the current research whether discussions of personal identity can be an effective tool in improving inclusivity in the field of genetic counseling. Additional research is needed to explore the direct impact of identity discussions on the supervisory working alliance in genetic counseling supervision.

In a sentimental mood: memories as treasured objects

It is common for people to view memories as ‘treasured objects’ or ‘cherished possessions’. Great care is taken to preserve such memories via scrapbooks, photo albums, or mementos. Despite the widespread nature of this phenomenon in human life, it has received little attention in recent philosophical discussions of personal identity. In this essay I consider the nature of these memories, asking what kinds of memories hold this status and why they are so highly treasured. I argue that at least one version of this phenomenon involves memories of autobiographically significant events that are experientially rich and evoke complex, multi-valanced affect. I then investigate the way in which such memories can be connected to a sense of personal identity and continuity, which explains their value. The conclusions reached are preliminary, and directions for further development are discussed

Looking at the self: perspectival memory and personal identity

Both Marya Schechtman and Galen Strawson appeal to autobiographical memory in developing their accounts of personal identity. Although both scholars share a similar conception of autobiographical memory, they use it to develop theories of personal identity that are radically distinct. Memories that are relevant for personal identity are generally considered to be personal (autobiographical) memories of those events in one’s lifetime to which one can gain first-personal access: memories from-the-inside. Both Schechtman and Strawson base their discussion of personal identity on exactly this type of memory. Empirical evidence shows, however, that personal memory imagery is not only visualised from-the-inside, from a “field” perspective. Personal memories may also involve “observer” perspectives, in which one sees oneself from-the-outside in the remembered scene. Both Schechtman and Strawson appeal to the notion of remembering from-the-inside, but they remain silent on the phenomenon of observer perspectives in personal memory. I suggest that accounts of personal identity that appeal to memory should consider observer perspectives as one aspect of personal memory. I explore the implications that the acknowledgment and inclusion of observer perspectives would have for both Schechtman’s and Strawson’s accounts. Even though autobiographical memory is not their theoretical target, both Schechtman and Strawson base their accounts of personal identity on their understanding of autobiographical memory. Therefore, their depictions of the nature of personal identity are founded upon an incomplete picture of autobiographical memory.

Madness as method: on Locke’s thought experiments about personal identity

ABSTRACTJohn Locke is famous for popularizing the method of the philosophical thought experiment in discussions of personal identity; the cases introduced in the second edition of An Essay Concerning Understanding (1694) are still employed by contemporary philosophers. Here I argue that Locke’s method is nonetheless importantly different from later efforts in ways that can help us better appreciate his larger projects. Rather than pumping the reader’s intuitions in support of his preferred account, Locke’s thought experiments serve to illustrate common errors in assessments of identity that he sees as particularly prevalent and problematic. Locke defends his idea of ‘person’ otherwise, through what I call his ‘lived experiments’: observations about linguistic usage that serve to illustrate the term’s role in practical reasoning. I focus especially on Locke’s example of the forensic status of the madman. Examples like these do not, for Locke, demonstrate the intuitiveness of his analysis, but rather bolster his case that it is the right analysis, given his broader commitments. They serve to illustrate why Locke’s preferred criterion for the identity of persons – sameness of consciousness – contributes to a demonstrative science of morality, where a rival account – sameness of substance – falls short.

Character and Causation: Hume's Philosophy of Action by Constantine Sandis

Reviewed by: Character and Causation: Hume's Philosophy of Action by Constantine Sandis Elizabeth S. Radcliffe Constantine Sandis. Character and Causation: Hume's Philosophy of Action. New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 2019. Pp. 148. Cloth ISBN 9781138283787, $140. In Character and Causation: Hume's Philosophy of Action, Constantine Sandis takes Hume's empiricist tenet that all meaningful ideas copy impressions as the key to understanding his general philosophy. Sandis then applies "the Copy Principle" to Hume's view of persons and their actions. Portraying Hume's approach (at least in the Treatise) as one of conceptual revision, the result, Sandis says, is that our ideas of persons, reasons, causality, agency, free will, and other related concepts have ordinary meanings (not the abstruse philosophical ones) without ontological implications. The author describes his book as a series of connected essays. The chapters work together to present an anti-metaphysical, naturalistic, and nonskeptical picture of Hume's action theory. Each chapter is readable and trim, but the book covers a great deal of territory in a short space. At times, I craved more detailed arguments and help understanding the views in Sandis's original portrait of Hume. However, both Hume scholars and action theorists will surely find this book thought-provoking and worth grappling with. A brief epilogue discusses how Hume's "soft revisionism" bears on contemporary discussions of agency and action. Sandis takes Hume's project to be one of establishing what we ordinarily mean in using the terms that stand for problematic concepts like necessity and self. It is not a project of determining what we can properly mean, since expressions just have meanings; they are neither correct nor incorrect. (There are echoes of Wittgenstein throughout the book, and Sandis invokes him explicitly in Hume's [End Page 139] defense in chapter 3, "Necessity, Power, and Freedom.") Furthermore, Hume's is not a project of investigating the ontology of causation, agency, and so on. Consequently, Sandis suggests, debates, such as the "new Hume" debate, which revolve around questions like whether Hume was a realist, anti-realist, quasi-realist, or skeptical realist, are misguided. Causation involves the idea of necessary connection, of which we have no impression. So, Sandis argues, since we cannot meaningfully say anything about necessary connection, we have no idea to project onto the world and nothing to affrm or to deny. "Hume's conceptual revisionism about necessity thus tempers both skepticism and metaphysical realism in a move made routinely [by Hume] in relation to every major philosophical controversy of his day" (47). In much of the book, Sandis applies this revisionist interpretation of Hume to topics of free will, substance, self, identity, and motivation and morality. At the heart of Sandis's reading of Hume's action theory is the notion of agency, which is rarely emphasized in analyses of Hume. Sandis develops this conception of agency, first, via discussion of necessity and freedom. Necessitation of action and liberty are easily compatible because of the way Hume defines each within his practice of conceptual reform. He describes cause in terms of constant conjunction of experiences, and necessity in terms of human expectation. Liberty, in his terms, is the ability to do as we will (desire), not the capacity to do anything regardless of the will. Thus, I am free when my motives are regularly conjoined with actions such that observers can predict certain behaviors on my part. Second, agency is tied to the self (mind) and personal identity. In the case of self (and substance), we have no idea of it apart from the ideas of varying qualities; the notion of an uninterrupted self or substance over time is a fiction. However, Sandis argues, Hume offers revised ideas of the self, of substance, and of identity, which follow from Hume's own "theory of meaning" (69). I cannot trace all the twists Hume's discussion of personal identity takes, but in the end, Sandis thinks it "allows us to talk of 'self' and 'identity' in a way that requires nothing beyond the sort of casual observations that he allows for across all his works" (69)—simply as qualities we suppose are tightly connected by relations of contiguity and...

John Locke in the Twenty-First Century

John Locke in the Twenty-First CenturyEtienne Balibar, Identity and Difference: John Locke and the Invention of Consciousness, translated by Warren Montag and Introduced by Stella Sandford (London/Brooklyn: Verso, 2013)Poor Descartes. The seventeenth-century French tried to naturalize the mind by doubting everything and restarting from what he thought was unarguable: I think, therefore I am. The mind was a thinking substance with innate a priori ideas, while the body was a separate extended substance whose senses supplied us with less reliable a posteriori ideas. Since the Cartesian cogito began in an individual mind, the problem immediately arose as to how to connect that interiority to an exteriority: its own body and a world of other minds and bodies. So, while Descartes is credited for starting a modern psychology incorporating a conscious self, he is blamed for generating modern dualism and a corresponding state of alienation between mind and body, subject and object-a breach every subsequent philosophical innovation has addressed one way or another. An early effort was that of British empiricist John Locke, who declared the mind a tabula rasa; our ideas were all acquired a posteriori through lived impressions.Locke is also known as the architect of the liberal revolution that substituted an atomistic individualism and bourgeois property rights for divinely ordained land-based feudal aristocracy. Nonetheless, in Identity and Difference: John Locke and the Invention of Consciousness, Marxist Etienne Balibar has now withdrawn credit from Descartes for conceiving our modern notion of consciousness and a rationalist psychology, to instead bestow it on Locke! Balibar justifies his ironic choice in an intriguing analysis of Locke's discussion of personal identity in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Of Identity and Diversity, Book II, xxvii, 1694 edition). Balibar's essay is sixteen years old, but has now been translated into English by theorist Warren Montag and ably introduced by British philosopher Stella Sandford. The book contains a new preface and significant appendices, including a detailed Philosophical and Philological Glossary and a second essay on Spinoza and Locke.We attend particularly closely not only since Balibar is Professor Emeritus of moral and political philosophy at Universite de Paris X and Distinguished Professor of Humanities at the University of California, Irvine, but because he is embedded in the critical post-structuralist pantheon as co-author with Louis Althusser of Reading Capital (1965) and, like Althusser and Montag, a distinguished Spinoza scholar. The other rationalist, Spinoza, born in 1632, the same year as Locke, had argued in the opposite direction when answering Cartesian dualism: the universe was one Substance Absolutely Infinite conceived as either mental or material and incorporating everything. He called it God or Nature and defined our chaotic emotions as bodily affects resulting from our situations within this larger matrix. In the essay on Spinoza and Locke, Balibar suggests that after Descartes, psychology had two radical naturalistic possibilities: Spinoza's rationalistic materialism or Locke's rationalistic empiricism.Balibar's further purpose is to find points of contact between the Anglophone and Continental philosophic traditions in response to the rift that developed after the Second World War between European critical philosophy (phenomenological, existentialist, and Marxist), which allows for theoretical questions of Being, desire, and political engagement, and the analytic school (positivist, empirical, emphasizing the use of symbolic logic). Despite the latter's important sources in 1920s Middle Europe, the two strands developed independently with little crossover and much alienation. Analytics dominated in Britain and America during the Cold War, but the critical theorists ascended in Europe after 1968. …

Crossing the bridge: the first-person and time

Personal identity theory has become increasingly sensitive to the importance of the first-person perspective. However, certain ways of speaking about that perspective do not allow the full temporal aspects of first-person perspectives on the self to come into view. In this paper I consider two recent phenomenologically-informed discussions of personal identity that end up yielding metaphysically divergent views of the self: those of Barry Dainton and Galen Strawson. I argue that when we take a properly temporally indexical view of the first-person perspective, and thereby resist the assumption that phenomenally-figured and theoretically-figured identity claims must have a common object, the metaphysically awkward accommodations each of these authors is compelled to make cease to be necessary.

Lost and Found: Selfhood and Subjectivity in Love

AbstractSartre's conception of bad faith suggests that every desire to be someone in love is self‐deceptive in the attempt to define my factual being. Departing from İlham Dilman's discussion of personal identity, I argue that this view on selfhood is inattentive to the kind of personal and moral reflection inherent in asking who I am. There is a temptation in love to deceive myself and you by renouncing responsibility. Yet the concept also embodies demands that allow me to continuously shape myself into a loving subject by scrutinising my responses and by asking whether they are expressive of love or not.

Choices Chance and Change: Luck Egalitarianism Over Time

The family of theories dubbed ‘luck egalitarianism’ represent an attempt to infuse egalitarian thinking with a concern for personal responsibility, arguing that inequalities are just when they result from, or the extent to which they result from, choice, but are unjust when they result from, or the extent to which they result from, luck. In this essay I argue that luck egalitarians should sometimes seek to limit inequalities, even when they have a fully choice-based pedigree (i.e., result only from the choices of agents). I grant that the broad approach is correct but argue that the temporal standpoint from which we judge whether the person can be held responsible, or the extent to which they can be held responsible, should be radically altered. Instead of asking, as Standard (or Static) Luck Egalitarianism seems to, whether or not, or to what extent, a person was responsible for the choice at thetime ofchoosing, and asking the question of responsibility only once, we should ask whether, or to what extent, they are responsible for the choice at thepoint atwhich weare seekingto discoverwhether, or towhat extent, the inequalityis just, and so the question of responsibility is not settled but constantly under review. Such an approach will differ from Standard Luck Egalitarianism only if responsibility for a choice is not set in stone—if responsibility can weaken then we should not see the boundary between luck and responsibility within a particular action as static. Drawing on Derek Parfit’s illuminating discussions of personal identity, and contemporary literature on moral responsibility, I suggest there are good reasons to think that responsibility can weaken—that we are not necessarily fully responsible for a choice for ever, even if we were fully responsible at the time of choosing. I call the variant of luck egalitarianism that recognises this shift in temporal standpoint and that responsibility can weaken Dynamic Luck Egalitarianism (DLE). In conclusion I offer a preliminary discussion of what kind of policies DLE would support.

RETENTION OF INDEXICAL BELIEF AND THE NOTION OF PSYCHOLOGICAL CONTINUITY

A widely accepted view in the discussion of personal identity is that the notion of psychological continuity expresses a one–many or many–one relation. This belief is unfounded. A notion of psychological continuity expresses a one–many or many–one relation only if it includes, as a constituent, psychological properties whose relation with their bearers is one–many or many–one; but the relation between an indexical psychological state and its bearer when first tokened is not a one–many or many–one relation. It follows that not all types of psychological continuity may take a one–many or many–one form. This conclusion casts doubt on the Lockean approach to the issue, by showing that the notion of psychological continuity Lockeans rely on may not be available.

Immunity to Error and Subjectivity

Since Sydney Shoemaker published his seminal article ‘Self-Reference and Self-Awareness’ in 1968, the notion of ‘Immunity to Error through Misidentification’ (IEM) has received much attention. It crops up in discussions of personal identity, indexical thought and introspection, and has been used to interpret remarks made by philosophers from Wittgenstein to William James. The precise significance of IEM is often unspecified in these discussions, however. It is unclear, for example, whether itconstitutesan important status of judgments, whether itexplainsan important characteristic of judgments, or whether it merelymarksan important characteristic of judgments. Nevertheless, reference to IEM abounds, making this obscure notion seem all the more significant.

Hume and The Self: A Critical Response

In the discussion of personal identity, from his Treatise of Human Nature, David Hume reaches a famous, if notorious conclusion: there is no self. We are “nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions” (T 252). My argument is that Hume's thesis on the self rests on a questionable rejection of a rival view that appears to commit the fallacy of equivocation. Along the way I identify a few possible problems with Hume's overall analysis of the self. My argument is that these diffi culties center around the conceptual apparatus Hume relies on to explain and analyze consciousness.

HYLEMORPHIC DUALISM

To the extent that dualism is even taken to be a serious option in contemporary discussions of personal identity and the philosophy of mind, it is almost exclusively either Cartesian dualism or property dualism that is considered. The more traditional dualism defended by Aristotelians and Thomists, what I call hylemorphic dualism, has only received scattered attention. In this essay I set out the main lines of the hylemorphic dualist position, with particular reference to personal identity. First I argue that overemphasis of the problem of consciousness has had an unhealthy effect on recent debate, claiming instead that we should emphasize the concept of form. Then I bring in the concept of identity by means of the notion of substantial form. I continue by analyzing the relation between form and matter, defending the traditional theses of prime matter and of the unicity of substantial form. I then argue for the immateriality of the substantial form of the human person, viz. the soul, from an account of the human intellect. From this follows the soul's essential independence of matter. Finally, although the soul is the immaterial bearer of personal identity, that identity is still the identity of an essentially embodied being. I explain how these ideas are to be reconciled.

Locke's Man

Much attention has been paid to Locke's discussion of personal identity, his concept of person, the distinction between man and person. In fact, in that discussion there are four terms or concepts: man, self, person, and agent. Around those terms a number of themes, aspects of Locke's thought, are clustered, some more directly related to those terms, others more tangential but still important for our understanding of the thought of Locke. If possible, some sorting out of those four terms could be helpful in reaching an appreciation of the nature and function of man in Locke's account. If we can determine who the agent of action is, find the locus of agency in acting, the source of the power, that nature may be explicated. There are some similarities between the body-mind relation and the man-person relation, similarities which may raise some question of materialism. I think we can say that Locke's man is not born a person, that the man can become a person, develop into one. The boy, the child, grows into a man through education, acquiring the necessary attributes of virtue and rationality. There is a rough analog between the education of a child and the emergence of personhood from a man. Also in Locke's discussion of man there is a firm suggestion of an underlying constitution from which the properties come as their causal source, an intriguing parallel between the constitution of man and the corpuscular structure of body.

What was Hume's Problem with Personal Identity?

An appreciation of Hume's psychology of object identity allows us to recognize certain tensions in his discussion of the origin of our belief in personal identity-tensions which have gone largely unnoticed in the secondary literature. This will serve to provide a new solution to the problem of explaining why Hume finds that discussion of personal identity so problematic when he famously disavows it in the Appendix to the Treatise. It turns out that the two psychological mechanisms which respectively generate the ideas of object and of personal identity are mutually incompatible. It is this sort of conflict within Hume's introspective or subjectivist psychology which is the source of his worry. Hume's views about identity tend to be interpreted without much attention being paid to the psychological concerns of the Treatise. It is important, however, to have a good grasp of Hume's psychology of identity ascriptions in order to interpret properly his metaphysical views about identity. By keeping his psychology in view, we are less likely to make the mistake of attributing to Hume a temporal parts view of identity through time.' The focus of this paper will be a further dividend of this interpretive strategy. I contend that an appreciation of Hume's psychology of object identity allows us to recognize certain tensions in his discussion of ascriptions of personal identity. This will serve to provide a new solution to the perennial problem of explaining why Hume finds that discussion of personal identity so problematic when he famously disavows it in the Appendix to the Treatise. It turns out that the two psychological mechanisms which respectively generate the ideas of object and of personal identity are mutually incompatible. It is

Going Topless

The view that people go where their brains go remains popular in discussions of personal identity. But since the brain is only a small part of the body, defenders of that view need to provide an account of what it is that makes the brain specially relevant to personal identity. The standard answer is that the brain is special because it is the carrier of psychological continuity. But Peter van Inwagen has recently offered (in Material Beings) an alternative account of the brain' special relevance. Those who reject the view that we go with our brains obviously need to respond to this new account. According to van Inwagen, there is an important difference between the life‐support requirements of a severed head and those of a headless body: whereas a severed head would need only a pump to survive, a headless body would need the functional equivalent of a computer in its life‐support system. It follows, according to van Inwagen, that we go with our brains. In this paper I argue that van Inwagen's argument is doubly defective: the inference from his premisses to his conclusion is dubious; and in any case his premisses misrepresent the relevant physiological facts.

Causation, Extrinsic Relations, and Hume's Second Thoughts about Personal Identity

Causation, Extrinsic Relations, and Hume's Second Thoughts about Personal Identity Louis E. Loeb According to the account offered in Treatise 1.4.6, "Of personal identity," the identity of a mind over time consists in a sequence of perceptions related by causation. In both ofHume's two definitions of cause, causation is an external or extrinsic relation. Hume is explicit that this result is tolerable. If causation is an extrinsic relation, and personal identity is analysed in terms of causation, then personal identity is an extrinsic relation. I suggest that Hume finds this consequence intolerable, and that his finding it so is the source ofhis famous misgivings in the appendix in regard to his section on personal identity.1 In the appendix, Humeindicates that "there wou'dbe no difficulty" in regard to his section concerning personal identity, if the mind perceived some "real connexion" among perceptions.2 In book 1, however, Hume maintains that causation does not involve a real connection, and that personal identity depends on causation; and he seems content with the result that personal identity does not involve a real connection. At 1.3.14, "Ofthe idea ofnecessary connexion," Hume insists that there is no "real connexion" between causes and effects and, more generally, that there is no "real intelligible connexion" between external objects (T 168; cf. T 103). At T 169-70, he offers two ("exact") definitions of the relation of cause and effect. Hume thinks there are causes and effects, even though there are no real connections. At 1.4.6, Hume writes that whether or not the relation ofpersonal identity is a "real bond" or "real connection" among perceptions is a "question we might easily decide, ifwe wou'd recollect whathas been already pro^d at large, that the understanding never observes any real connexion among objects, and that even the union of cause and effect, when strictly examin'd, resolves itselfinto a customary association ofideas" (T 259-60). A mere three paragraphs later, Hume writes that "the true idea of the human mind, is to consider it as a system of different perceptions or different existences, which are link'd together by the relation ofcause and effect, and mutually produce, destroy, influence, and modify each other" (T 261). So Hume's view, at 1.4.6, is that personal identity requires causation, but does not require a real connection. It is curious that in the appendix Hume takes the claim Volume XVIII Number 2 219 LOUIS E. LOEB thatthereis noreal connectionbetween perceptions toruinhis account of personal identity, whereas in book 1 he treats this result with equanimity. Thispuzzlecan begeneralized somewhat. Hume observesin 1.3.14 that "the terms of efficacy, agency, power, force, energy, necessity, connexion, andproductive quality, are all nearly synonimous" (T 157). His principal negative claim in that sectionis that(takingefficacy, and the other nearly synonymous concepts, to require something in objects over and above constant conjunction) there is no efficacy, necessity, or connection in causation. Hume targets a number of the nearly synonymous notions not only in 1.3.14, but also at T 246-51 of 1.4.5, and T 632-33 ofthe appendix. In the discussion ofpersonal identity in the appendix, Hume seems to be in search of the sort of bond or connection that he has forcefully rejected, as if he has a lingering commitment to real connections, or to necessity, despite himself. From this perspective, his misgivings easily appear to constitute a retrogression, orlapse, into amode ofthought, or metaphysical picture, that he has taken pains to reject. This is not an attractive explanation ofHume's misgivings. It has the consequence that Hume simply changes his mind, or is of two minds, inregard to therole ofreal connections in an account ofpersonal identity. Although I do not think these possibilities are to be dismissed outofhand, much oftheir support would have to derive from the failure of alternative accounts of what is bothering Hume. At the same time, a solution ought in some way to relate to Hume's thinking about real connections. Hume does write in the appendix, In short there are two principles, which I cannot render consistent; nor is it in my power to...

Personal Identity and the Passions

Personal Identity and the Passions JANE L. McINTYRE 1. INTRODUCTION" HUME'S DISTINCTION CONCERNING PERSONAL IDENTITY In two places in the discussion of personal identity in Book 1 of the Treatise, Hume distinguishes personal identity "as it regards our thought or imagination " from personal identity "as it regards our passions."' Only the former is discussed in Book l, and although the self and its passions are the subject of Book 2 of the Treatise, there is no explicit examination of personal identity as it regards the passions. This paper will argue that there isjustification for taking Hume's avowed limitation of his analysis seriously. If we do so, it follows that Hume recognized issues about personal identity that he did not attempt to address within the confines of the account of the imagination in Book 1. And, further, Book 2 of the Treatise, in its account of the passions, provides the resources for supplementing our understanding of Hume's discussion of personal identity. A. Textual Considerations To begin with, it is necessary to recount some of the important features of the argument in Treatise 1.4.6. If Hume employed the distinction he alludes to, we should be able to establish the respective domains of the imagination and the passions in connection with personal identity. Hume rejects the view of "some philosophers" who hold that we are every moment conscious of a simple self David Hume, A Treatiseof Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, 2nd ed. edited by P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), ~5S and 261. All references to the Treatiseare to this edition, and where possible will be given in the body of the paper. The following editions of Hume's works will also be cited in the text: EnquiriesConcerningHuman Understandingand Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, 3rd ed. edited by P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975); Philosophical Works, ed. Green and Grose (1882; reprint, Darmstadt: Scientia Verlag Aalen, 1964). [545] 546 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 27:4 OCTOBER 1989 that remains the same through time. Introspection reveals no impression that could ground such an idea. Hume states: "But setting aside some metaphysicians of this kind, I may venture to affirm of the rest 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" (T 252). And slightly later he says of the mind: "There is properly no simplicity in it at one time, nor identity in different; whatever natural propension we may have to imagine that simplicity and identity" (T 253). It is at this point that Hume first introduces his distinction concerning personal identity. He asks: "What then gives us so great a propension to ascribe an identity to these successive perceptions, and to suppose ourselves possest of an invariable and uninterrupted existence thro' the whole course of our lives? In order to answer this question, we must distinguish betwixt personal identity as it regards our thought or imagination, and as it regards the passions or concern we take in ourselves. The first is our present subject..." (T 253). Book 1 thus focuses on the attempt to explain why we attribute identity, a notion we understand as involving unchanging perceptions, to the self, which is in "perpetual flux." Hume's explanation recapitulates arguments found in Book 1, Part 4, Sections 9 and 3- The imagination associates ideas according to the relation of resemblance. Not only do individual ideas resemble each other, series of ideas may give rise to resembling feelings, and these feelings can be associated. In particular, the perception of an invariable object and that of a related series place the mind in similar dispositions. The idea of identity is thereby associated with the experience of a related sequence of perceptions, and we mistakenly attribute the former to the latter. This natural propensity to confound identity and related succession prompts the mind to "feign some new and unintelligible principle, that connects the objects together" (T 954). Hume therefore takes the belief that we remain the same through time to be mistaken when we attempt to read...

Hume on Finding an Impression of the Self

HUME ON FINDING AN IMPRESSION OF THE SELF 47 1 1. Introduction Descartes held that reflection on "the commonest matters", for example our recognition of a piece of wax, reveals our more fundamental awareness of ourselves. And further, if the [notion or] perception of the wax has seemed to me clearer and more distinct, not only after the sight or the touch, but also after many other causes have rendered it quite manifest to me, with how much more [evidence] and distinctness must it be said that I now know myself, since all the reasons which contribute to the knowledge of wax, or any other body whatever, are yet better proofs of the nature of my mind!2 Even if I only seem to see a piece of wax, when I have no eyes to see and there is no wax before me, I still know something. I know myself. When I judge that the wax is soft I am aware of myself as so judging. When I judge that the wax is hard, I am aware that I_ judge it so. I cannot have knowledge of external bodies without having certain knowledge of myself, because even my mere beliefs reveal my self-knowledge. Descartes exploited the insight that he is more intimately conscious of his own mind than anything else to establish that he is "a mind or a soul ... a thing which thinks".3 Philosophers who did not share Descartes' rationalism still held the view that we are intimately conscious of ourselves, and that our awareness of other things enhances our self-awareness, and is epistemically dependent on it. Butler claimed that our awareness of ourselves was beyond doubt, since to doubt that awareness presupposes that we already have it. Whenever we "turn our thoughts upon ourselves" we have 48 "certain conviction, which necessarily and every moment, rises within us" of our personal identity. In A Treatise of Human Nature Hume argues against both the intelligibility of the notion of immaterial substance, and the claim that we have simple awareness of our selves independently of our awareness of other objects. when Hume turns his attention squarely to the topic of personal identity in the Treatise, he has already dismissed the rationalist notion of immaterial substance or soul. He attacks the view which tempted rationalists and empiricists alike, that our awareness of ourselves is distinct from our feeling and thinking, but is often enhanced by such experience. Hume's argument has been and continues to be influential. Recent Wittgenstein interpretation suggests that the Tractatus discussion of the unencounterability of the self in experience is directly borrowed from Hume.5 Chisholm's views concerning self-awareness are motivated in part by problems he locates in Hume's negative argument. Chisholm argues that the report that he finds no impression of self commits Hume to the existence of a subject of experience.6 Most recently, Nozick suggests that Hume did not consider the possibility that our awareness of ourselves might be isolated by employing •7 special techniques, such as yoga or meditation. In this paper I will focus on the passage in the Treatise where Hume reports his failure to find an impression of the self and presents this as an argument against the theory of self-awareness which many philosophers found irresistible. Although Hume's argument has been influential and is often discussed in contemporary literature, the Treatise passage in which it occurs appears confused. The confusion is cleared up only when it is seen that Hume really presents two 49 different arguments against the view that we are intimately conscious of ourselves. Finally I suggest how Hume's actual arguments pave the way for his positive views. 2. The Difficulty Hume's discussion of personal identity in the Treatise begins with his consideration of the view of "some philosophers, who imagine we are every moment intimately conscious of what we call our SELF."8 After characterizing the view, Hume rejects it, having found that we have no idea of self "after the manner it is here explain'd". The unnamed philosophers, as Hume understands them, take the idea of the self to be a simple idea. For Hume, a...