Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:59. HUME ON IDENTITY It is well-known that Hume has a quite unusual theory of personal identity. For him, personal identity is but the identity of mind. But to him mind is just a bundle of perceptions which keeps changing its constituent members; hence a mind is not something constant. In other places he also argues that mind is not a substance which unites all the perceptions which a person may have. His conclusion is that cases of personal identity for ordinary people are not genuine cases of identity for him at all. This probably is a direct consequence of his unusual notion of identity. My concern then is to see what Hume takes identity to be as an idea and as a relation. The idea of identity, according to Hume, is an idea betwixt unity and number. (T 201 J1 So I want to see first how the ideas of number and unity originate. Hume says that; a single object, plac'd before us, and survey 'd for any time without our discovering in it any interruption or variation, is able to give us a notion of identity. For when we consider any two points of this time, we may place them in different lights: We may either survey them at the very same instant; in which case they give us the idea of number, both by themselves and by the object; which must be multiply 'd, in order to he conceiv'd at once, as existent in these two different points of time. (T 201)2 What is surveyed is a single object, i.e., an object which is neither interrupted nor varied. According to Price, "At this stage of [Hume's] inquiry, he ought only to be talking of sense-impressions ( 'perceptions ')," so, here instead of talking about a single object, I shall talk about a single perception, i.e., an uninterrupted, unchanged perception which persists through a certain period of time. Roughly speaking, a perception is interrupted if it is not temporally 60. continuous; it is varied, if it changes either its sensible qualities, or its spatial characteristics, viz., shape, size, pattern. But what is a single perception which is uninterrupted and unchanged? This question as stated is misleading, for it suggests that there may be a single though interrupted or varied perception. The question I am now asking is the question of individuating perceptions. It is clear that for Hume the principle of individuation of perceptions is their invariableness and uninterruptedness through a supposed variation of time. (T 201) Hence there would be no such thing as a single but interrupted or varied perception. Since Hume gives us no example of an uninterrupted and unchanged perception, let us choose an example for ourselves. Suppose we have nothing but twelve eggs in front of us, and suppose that the eggs and their immediate environment do not change during a certain period of time. Then the perception we have of these twelve eggs during this period of time would be an uninterrupted and unchanged perception. Let P be 4 this perception. What Hume wants to do is to consider two points of time t ^ and t2 in this period. Let P1 and P2 i,s the perceptions we have of the twelve eggs at t, and t2, respectively. P ^ and P2 are then two stages of the perception P. Since P is uninterrupted and unchanged, its 'content' at each point of time during this period should remain the same. As Hume puts it, we suppose the change to lie only in... time (T 203); and the change in time, when applied to an unchangeable object, 'tis only by a fiction of the imagination, by which the unchangeable object is suppos'd to participate of the changes of the coexistent objects, and in particular of that of our perceptions. (T 200-201) We now are told to survey P. and P. at once. But this can only be done at a time t- which is 61. later than both t ^ and t 2·How can we survey them after t ^ and t2? Presumably by memory we may recall P1 and P 2 at t3. Now Hume tells...