Maybe God doesn’t have to do anything in order to bring it about that there be light. Most of us, however, have to perform some sort of act like flicking a switch to do so. But some of the things we bring about do not require such mediating acts. For example, it appears that I don’t have to do anything in order to bring about or cause the arm movements I perform in flicking the switch. I just move my arm. (...) Of course, a number of things will happen when I move my arm: neurons fire, muscles flex. But these are not acts in and of themselves. The only act we have here is the moving of the arm. So my arm movement in this instance is basic in a sense in which my illumination of the room is not. (shrink)

Maybe God doesn’t have to do anything in order to bring it about that there be light. Most of us, however, have to perform some sort of act like flicking a switch to do so. But some of the things we bring about do not require such mediating acts. For example, it appears that I don’t have to do anything in order to bring about or cause the arm movements I perform in flicking the switch. I just move my arm. (...) Of course, a number of things will happen when I move my arm: neurons fire, muscles flex. But these are not acts in and of themselves. The only act we have here is the moving of the arm. So my arm movement in this instance is basic in a sense in which my illumination of the room is not. (shrink)

Hume understands identity as “invariableness and uninterruptedness” through a supposed change in time, something true only of objects he calls steadfast. And Hume discerns nothing steadfast about the mind or self—nothing like a substance or soul underlying the changing and interrupted succession of perceptions we experience in ourselves. I nevertheless think of myself as the same person over time. A central concern of the Treatise discussion of personal identity is to give a psychological explanation of how we arrive at this (...) belief in personal identity. The answer, very broadly, is that it is a fiction of the imagination produced by certain associative principles. Hume notoriously goes on to disavow this .. (shrink)