Analysis of Hume on personal identity / with Cole Nasrallah

[@KaneB]

Hume text: oll.libertyfund.org/titles/hume-a-treatise-of-human-nature#lf0213_label_189 As with the previous analysis video, this was made for Cole's class, which is why we sometimes refer to "the class".

[@JCResDoc94]

*☼ you know what i love about this the most? that it is so long.* thats what i love about all philosophy.

[@JackPullen-Paradox]

If something is becoming, that does not mean that it is not. So, the Self can exist. We may have to specify, like Self[2023-2025]. But we could consider ourselves as converging to an unchanging Self. If we think of it mathematically, we might find that various facts about our physical and mental life "become and remain" arbitrarily "near" the same state. Physically, this is less true, I would say, than mentally. We get older and reflect on our history. We have an emotional reaction to our recollections: sometimes amazement; sometimes familiarity. Possibly we have become tame, or mature; possibly we are exactly the same in some regard. The Self should not remain the same if it receives experiences and other data. It must necessarily change because it is an active thing. To be the Self is to be a changing thing. If the Self were locked up and never received a perceptible input, it would still change because of the activity that is inherent. Consider most of us: we tend to like the music we grew up with. Period. Many tend to prefer the political party of their parents. Period. If the Self has also a set of Preferences--important tendencies (weights) that control thought and action-- one cannot say that there is no substance to the Self. I would say that most of us have a built-in direction, personality, and philosophy to our lives that changes little. While we change in many ways, we also maintain a core. Consider a complex computer program, say Grok. Even with the same training at each point it will appear different at each employment. If we were to list its weights at each employment, they would all agree with the training result. But if we were to ask Grok a given question, the surrounding discussion would change the answer. Possibly the answer may change even with the same discussion points. Likewise the Self may show signs of instability. Yet Grok maintains its weights and, possibly, so does the Self.

[@fadhilideche2831]

At the end, was Cole referring to Parfit's "Reasons and Persons"?

[@ColeNasrallah]

Yes. The textbook my class uses has a selection from Reasons and Persons.

[@captainzork6109]

I also love polemicism between scholars c: Makes me feel like it's actually people doing the academic work

[@justus4684]

19:41 But that would suppose that there is an "I", which Hume rejects

[@squatch545]

Filmed with a potato

[@ColeNasrallah]

I am currently in an Airbnb that has ALL THE PLANTS. I actually moved several out of view, for this video. You wouldn't believe the plants this place has. lol.

[@squatch545]

@@ColeNasrallah Interesting. Thanks. I didn't realize the blurriness was from plant mist. (I'm not even going to ask what kind of plants). Stay safe, Cole.

[@ColeNasrallah]

@@squatch545 Well now I'm confused. I thought you mistook the plant in the second half of my video for a potato plant. But clearly that's not the case. I get that there is a joke in here, but would you mind, please, explaining it to me?

[@squatch545]

@@ColeNasrallah Oh..okay. The video quality seems to be blurry/fuzzy on all the videos you do with Kane (I'm not necessarily blaming you for that). The joke is that there is an internet meme for blurry videos called: "filmed with/through a potato", meaning the quality is so bad it looks like it could have been made with some random vegetable (i.e. surreal hyperbole). So I just repeated that joke meme.

[@ColeNasrallah]

@@squatch545 Thanks for explaining! I am really letting my meme game slip. I have a touch screen; it seems likely that I should just clean my grubby screen before doing another video. lol.

[@JXZX1]

Clean-shaven? You don't seem like the same person without the neck-beard.

[@KaneB]

It was a difficult decision. I explain the situation in this video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/eKHGgoaLpLx_aLs