Hume on Identity

[@fin5197]

on behalf of everyone needing studying help, thank you Brandon

[@darealzy3404]

This was so easy to understand didn't even notice it was 30+minutes I was so interested the whole way through!!

[@mylesburris312]

I was present here, and so were you.

[@alagoaalex]

Such a helpful and clear overview of Hume's notion of identity! Thank you so much for the tremendous effort and time put into this! I truly hope your videos get more attention.

[@orlando5682]

Thanks a lot for this lecture, it was incredibly helpful. Subscribed :)

[@ninjazhu]

I don't have a concept of personal identity, I have never needed it nor care for such a concept. I don't even get why other people say they have such, it makes no sense.

[@DESTOVIAC]

I disagree with one thing. Anger is a response to a perceived damage to self; emotional, physical, whatever. Pain is physical and wouldn't necessarily involve the self. Anger, I believe, is directly connected to self, as emotion is an extension of self. That's all, great video.

[@shelovewazz]

When Hume talks about "other philosophers" view on the self, what does he think their view is? Which philosophers is he responding to? Descartes?

[@brandongillette6463]

When it comes to the idea that there is a notion of personal identity that persists through time and over change, Hume is replying to pretty much everybody. The idea that memory undergirds personal identity is Locke's view, so that part of the criticism is directed at him. Hume rejected Descartes' view of an immaterial self on more fundamental ground than its effect on views of personal identity.

[@idan4848]

thanks! very intersting!

[@starstudentjake2996]

Hey Brandon. I disagree when it comes to a lack of "feeling" oneself. Sure, the self is transient and it isn't a feeling the same way anger or sadness is. I think the self lies more in the way that those emotions are named, interpreted, and experienced by an individual. Experiences and their categorization are greatly informed by one's own opinions and emotional, and mental landscape - a landscape that lends itself to one creating a framework and interpretive intellect that categorizes experiences/places/people/things based on its (the framework's) qualities. So, would the self not be the constructed interpreter of one's life inherent to and as formed by their experiences? Curious to hear what you think. Best. :-)

[@brandongillette6463]

I think that we do commonly regard the self as something like you describe. I think it is easy to get the idea that Hume does not think there is a self. I think Hume's idea of the self may well be something like what you describe (if i am reading it as you intend). Hume's point in the material covered in this lecture is that there is no personal identity over time and theough change. To think that there is is to confuse similarity with sameness. If the self is the perspective that tells a coherent story of our experiences (psychologists like Danny Kahneman call this the "remembering self"), then that is something that does change over time. The similarity of my self today with my self yesterday does not entail an identity relation between the two selves. In other places in the Treatise and in the Enquiries, it looks to me like Hume takes seriously the idea of a punctate mind, that is, a mind that contains only one thought at a time. This is a matter of interpretation, but if he really thought that way, then he might deny even the idea of an overall framework, as nothing really "holds together" the totality of our experiences; they just occur in series. Whether his view (whatever it really was) is correct or not is another question. I have found it to be more convincing over time.

[@Notmehimorthem]

It's been a few decades since I read Hume but I think Hume's work is devestating to the idea that there is something fundamentally emprically real about the Self. I think somewhere he refers to a "bundle theory" of self. There was a lot of talk about "substance", "what things were in gthemselves". Leibniz had created the idea of Monads as some kind of fundamental entity. I think both empricism and their discussion of substance fails. As soon as you postulate a Mind and a Body as being absolutely fundamentally two different substances, your in trouble when you try and explain how they relate. The rationalists hung themselves on this hook. Anyhow Hume is an empricist and would have rejected much of Bishop Berkeley, who stated that all we can know is ideas. Hume talked about a bundle theory. Sometimes I see this as if it were a thread or rope. Any fibre in the rope has a short length but gives it's strength to the body of the rope. No fibre continues from the beginning to the end. There is no requirement for either "constant - ness" of each thread, or invariability - each thread is different. The rope as a whole can still be identified and has properties that are not possessed by any particular thread. In this way it constitutes, rightly, the idea of being a "thing". My particular view is the self is a virtual object. We are much more accustomed to the virtual worlds of computers now, these concepts were unimaginable for the rationalists - at least in detail. We know much more about the nature of the world we sense now and know that there are things we cannot sense - for example ultravbiolet light. Our senses provide information to the brain/mind from a very narrow spectrum of reality. Our senses are sculpted by evolution and have many biases and (literally) blind spots. Any narrative that seeks to explain our "impressions" (as the Rationalist names it) must take account of this radical poverty and forever give up on discovering a whole truth. For me truths are valid frames of references, no more. The may have utility, there may be good and bad frames but the data from which we construct must always be partial. Therefore, if we are to examine the consequences of our conclusions, we must be modest and very circumspect.

[@jameswalker2873]

I find these comments very interesting. I'd like to add that Hune was an empiricist and believed reality could only be derived through the senses. Unfortunately, our senses deceive us. A very pragmatic example of this would be a marshmallow that is dry, vs. one that is applied to heat. According to Hume, the physical substance becomes altered solely because we experience a different type of sensory data (but the substance itself has not changed in terms of its chemical composition, but rather just in terms of its qualitative form. This doesn't change the reality of the substance, but only our perception of it. This is why the rationalist, like Rene Descartes, John Locke, and Leibniz, and before then, plato, with his theory of forms, claimed that there needed to be a way of comprehending why our experiences were as such. Logic is unchanging, while our experiences are fluid and dynamic; it's known as the apriori. It's true that all science grew out of empiricism, since the first people on earth were using their senses to understand the reality they lived in, but again, our senses never allow us to grasp the pure essence of reality, only our perception of it, due to a deception of our senses. Regarding the important to distinguish between persona and identity. I think it is important to note that ones' persona only consists of temporary thoughts, feelings, perceptions, etc., required in specific situations and to fulfill specific tasks like school or work. Hume was also an atheist, so he was fundamentally opposed to the metaphysical concept of intuition. He rejected the idea of causation and essentially believed that every second of existence was a new reality. He uses his skepticism of an objective reality to oppose the idea of being governed under divine control. Unfortunately, though, just because something can not be quantified doesn't mean it's non-existent. To Hume, all that is metaphysical os out of the realm of possibility. Metaphysics is its own field of philosophy that deserves equal merit since it deals with different types of phenomenonology. While Hume mentions that the self ceases to exist while sleeping, this is simply not true. This assertion Hume made was greatly respected as being a product of his culture, as all credible ideas are, but psychoanalysis and modern science have debunked this idea. The brain enters another realm of conscious awareness that is known as the subconscious mind. We can be affected by things we are not even aware of due to a repression of experiences, etc.. If there was no self, we would not be affected by our past and our memories. It would cease to affect us. The fact that we still possess feelings towards the past signifies that something still remains active within us. The psyche, according to Sigmund Freud and Carl jung is the area in the brain responsible for storing these experiences. Also, in most traditional cultures, dreams are a manifestation of the future. They also represent the unique qualities that each person posesses, a d how to go about reaching their potential. This is a form of anthropomorphism, found especially in Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and jainism, and many traditional philosophies. I do agree with what you guys are asserting. However, the issue itself is more complex and needs to be considered from not only a philosophical perspective but a psychological and theological one too. It's a muti disciplined debate,

[@jameswalker2873]

Rene Descartes postulated that if a scientist used a brain vat to represent the world through sensory data, we would have no other way of comprehending our experiences, and thus believe that our experiences corelated perfectly with reality. But without logic, it ultimately leads to skepticism and therefore infallibility. If we cannot agree on certain basic, fundamental principles, such as logic, then there really is no point in trying to understand reality. The fact that we study philosophy is precisely because we believe, subconsciously, that something does exist universally. Or the fact that I'm responding to your guys' comments, is a manifestation of the teleology that I possess to persue truth itself. Same with you guys. If we truly percieved reality as being unknown, and therefore held skepticism, then it wouldn't matter anymore and we would therefore stop pursuing these fundamental questions. My point is that we believe we will get somewhere by pondering reality, and this persuit of a unified truth is why we are not content with skepticism itself, otherwise, the philosophical tradition would have ceased to exist thousands of years ago. The fact that it hasn't, I'd because most of us believe we are manifestors of our own destiny. We are not just mere passive observers of the cosmos, we are active participants. We are made from reality and also form reality as well. That's what's unique about humans. We are the only specie that possess the will to trancend our instinctual essence and attain conciousness. Animals cannot understand why they are doing what they are doing. I'm not asserting, however, that we are more valuable than animals, as this is anthropocentrism and i happen to align my views with pantheism, not dualism. I'm simply saying that we have a greater capacity to act, both for good and for evil.

[@jameswalker2873]

I want to say that I really appreciate this stimulating discussion. And the reason I'm sending other comments is because it won't let me type everything in one. It exceeded the required length.

[@kendosa1]

humans are mammals. and all mammals are animals.

[@paulmoore9553]

This is sooo silly. If there is no self, then who is it that is denying that there is a self? Hume’s self, that’s who!! This self is a continuous process that lasts from birth ‘til death.

[@brandongillette6463]

By virtue of what is the person that wrote the first paragraph of the Enquiry the same as (and NOT merely similar to) the person that wrote the last paragraph? Each of those people would have acknowledged the similarity, but denied the sameness required to account for a continuous self.

[@paulmoore9553]

I conceive of a process ontology not a moving but separate snapshot “thing by new thing’ moments in time ontology. There is one person with one self from the first moment in time to the last moment in death: that’s life; that’s one’s self.

[@carlosvelasco6707]

There are few philosophers that are as mistaken, clumsy, superficial, and banal as Hume. Why the self should be considered an idea? Why should not the self change? How many experiences and knowledges do we have without impressions, are part of our lives, and also are ideas or part of ideas? The worst thing is, though, that someone thinks he is right about something.

[@brandongillette6463]

Hume might be all of those things, or might be none of them; it would not affect whether he is right or wrong about personal identity. Your first question reveals a misunderstanding. Hume does make a distinction between the self and the idea of the self, otherwise his argument wouldn't work. He means to appeal to our idea of the self in order to explain why, even though it is obvious that there is nothing constant and unchanging about the actual self (and a great many other things) we find it so easy to think of the self as constant and unchanging. As to the second question, Hume is on board with a self that changes over time. That would be a self that does not retain qualitative identity over time. Hume only points out that we can't have it both ways. We can't have a self that remains constant and unchanging (the way we tend to think about it) while changing (as we see, upon reflection, it must).

[@carlosvelasco6707]

@@brandongillette6463 Dear Brandon, thank you for your contribution. Either Hume is all of those things, or not. We need clarity and precision. The fact of whether he is right or wrong is decisive. And regarding what you say that it´s a misunderstanding on my part, it doesn´t matter if he distinguishes between the idea of the self and the actual self, of course he does the distinction (necessarily if he thinks it doesn't exist, it must be an idea and not a real thing). But we must return to clarity and precision, not speculation (except when it is strictly necessary). The function of an idea, as it is for a theory, is to match reality, otherwise mistakes or misleads. It looks like Hume cares too much for what we find easy to think, he moves himself in this ambience. That is one of the reasons his thought is not any deep. Of course, Hume is always very busy pointing out what we cannot do, and the limitations of our mind. Particularly if he thinks that impressions are the blocks with which we construct knowledge, the impression doesn´t go too far. Precisely it is when we renounce impressions and we start to rely on measured data (for example), far from our sensations, when we start to achieve scientific knowledge. The funny thing is that he is the empiricist! Hume´s theory is a theory based in the immediate, in the short term, in the sensitive, the impressionistic and the materialistic. And nothing valuable, much less regarding knowledge and science, has been built upon such narrow-mindedness. As I said before, what is indignant, is the good press he has, even since Kant, among the same philosophers and scholars!

[@jameswalker2873]

I find these comments very interesting. I'd like to add that Hune was an empiricist and believed reality could only be derived through the senses. Unfortunately, our senses deceive us. A very pragmatic example of this would be a marshmallow that is dry, vs. one that is applied to heat. According to Hume, the physical substance becomes altered solely because we experience a different type of sensory data (but the substance itself has not changed in terms of its chemical composition, but rather just in terms of its qualitative form. This doesn't change the reality of the substance, but only our perception of it. This is why the rationalist, like Rene Descartes, John Locke, and Leibniz, and before then, plato, with his theory of forms, claimed that there needed to be a way of comprehending why our experiences were as such. Logic is unchanging, while our experiences are fluid and dynamic; it's known as the apriori. It's true that all science grew out of empiricism, since the first people on earth were using their senses to understand the reality they lived in, but again, our senses never allow us to grasp the pure essence of reality, only our perception of it, due to a deception of our senses. Regarding the important to distinguish between persona and identity. I think it is important to note that ones' persona only consists of temporary thoughts, feelings, perceptions, etc., required in specific situations and to fulfill specific tasks like school or work. Hume was also an atheist, so he was fundamentally opposed to the metaphysical concept of intuition. He rejected the idea of causation and essentially believed that every second of existence was a new reality. He uses his skepticism of an objective reality to oppose the idea of being governed under divine control. Unfortunately, though, just because something can not be quantified doesn't mean it's non-existent. To Hume, all that is metaphysical os out of the realm of possibility. Metaphysics is its own field of philosophy that deserves equal merit since it deals with different types of phenomenonology. While Hume mentions that the self ceases to exist while sleeping, this is simply not true. This assertion Hume made was greatly respected as being a product of his culture, as all credible ideas are, but psychoanalysis and modern science have debunked this idea. The brain enters another realm of conscious awareness that is known as the subconscious mind. We can be affected by things we are not even aware of due to a repression of experiences, etc.. If there was no self, we would not be affected by our past and our memories. It would cease to affect us. The fact that we still possess feelings towards the past signifies that something still remains active within us. The psyche, according to Sigmund Freud and Carl jung is the area in the brain responsible for storing these experiences. Also, in most traditional cultures, dreams are a manifestation of the future. They also represent the unique qualities that each person posesses, a d how to go about reaching their potential. This is a form of anthropomorphism, found especially in Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and jainism, and many traditional philosophies. I do agree with what you guys are asserting. However, the issue itself is more complex and needs to be considered from not only a philosophical perspective but a psychological and theological one too. It's a muti disciplined debate,

[@jameswalker2873]

Rene Descartes postulated that if a scientist used a brain vat to represent the world through sensory data, we would have no other way of comprehending our experiences, and thus believe that our experiences corelated perfectly with reality. But without logic, it ultimately leads to skepticism and therefore infallibility. If we cannot agree on certain basic, fundamental principles, such as logic, then there really is no point in trying to understand reality. The fact that we study philosophy is precisely because we believe, subconsciously, that something does exist universally. Or the fact that I'm responding to your guys' comments, is a manifestation of the teleology that I possess to persue truth itself. Same with you guys. If we truly percieved reality as being unknown, and therefore held skepticism, then it wouldn't matter anymore and we would therefore stop pursuing these fundamental questions. My point is that we believe we will get somewhere by pondering reality, and this persuit of a unified truth is why we are not content with skepticism itself, otherwise, the philosophical tradition would have ceased to exist thousands of years ago. The fact that it hasn't, I'd because most of us believe we are manifestors of our own destiny. We are not just mere passive observers of the cosmos, we are active participants. We are made from reality and also form reality as well. That's what's unique about humans. We are the only specie that possess the will to trancend our instinctual essence and attain conciousness. Animals cannot understand why they are doing what they are doing. I'm not asserting, however, that we are more valuable than animals, as this is anthropocentrism and i happen to align my views with pantheism, not dualism. I'm simply saying that we have a greater capacity to act, both for good and for evil.