When it’s suddenly gone and there’s nothing left to prove it was ever there
Hume’s account of the self is to be found mainly in one short and provocative section of his Treatise of Human Nature – a landmark work in the history of philosophy, published when Hume was still a young man. What Hume says here (in “Of Personal Identity”) has provoked a philosophical debate which continues to this day. What, then, is so novel and striking about Hume’s account that would explain its fascination for generations of philosophers?
One of the problems of personal identity has to do with what it is for you to remain the same person over time. In recalling your childhood experiences, or looking forward to your next holiday, it appears that in each case you are thinking about one and the same person – namely, you. But what makes this true? The same sort of question might be raised about an object such as the house in which you’re now living. Perhaps it has undergone various changes from the time when you first moved in – and you may have plans to alter it further. But you probably think that it is the same house throughout. So how is this so? It helps in this case that at least we’re pretty clear about what it is for something to be a house (namely, a building with a certain function), and therefore to be the same house through time. But what is it for you to be a person (or self)? This is the question with which Hume begins. He is keen to dismiss the prevailing philosophical answer to this question – (…) that underlying our various thoughts and feelings is a core self: the soul, as it is sometimes referred to. (…)
How, then, does Hume respond to this view of the self? (…) Hume concludes memorably that each of us is “nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions”. We might be inclined to think of the mind as a kind of theatre in which our thoughts and feelings – or “perceptions” – make their appearance; but if so we are misled, for the mind is constituted by its perceptions. This is the famous “bundle” theory of the mind or self that Hume offers as his alternative to the doctrine of the soul.
