Abstract

The paper critically analyzes Hume’s view that human persons are "nothing but a bundle of different perceptions" in order to find out which one of the two possible interpretations of this view, the mentalistic or the physicalistic, is the more probable and free from serious difficulties. First, I examine Hume’s view of personhood from the mentalistic perspective only to discover that his all-important distinction between ideas and impressions is logically untenable. If ideas indeed resemble impressions, as Hume claims, then ideas should be present to our mind at the same time as impressions so we could compare them in order to find out whether there is any resemblance between the two kinds of perceptions and whether the impressions are indeed more forceful or vivacious than the ideas corresponding to them. But this is logically impossible because by the time we have an idea, its impression is gone, and if we think that we are comparing an idea with its impression, we are in fact comparing an idea only with a memory of its impression. But a memory of an impression is, in Hume’s view, already an idea. So we are comparing only two ideas, not an idea with an impression. Second, since ideas and concepts have no logical standing, we are forced to interpret the realm of ideas as an extension of the realm of impressions, coping with various problems arising from this interpretation as best we can.