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Full Idea
I believe Hume offers an interesting if sketchy theory of personal identity, a causal theory, disguised as the revolutionary discovery that there is no such thing as personal identity
Gist of Idea
Hume gives us an interesting sketchy causal theory of personal identity
Source
comment on David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.IV.6) by John Perry - Introduction to 'Personal Identity' Intro
Book Ref
'Personal Identity', ed/tr. Perry,John [University of California 1975], p.170
A Reaction
There is certainly a theory there, even though Hume ceased to believe in it, which is nowadays covered by the idea that personal identity is a 'fiction', an arbitrary idea that reifies the focus and direction of a bundle of mental events.
| 3819 | Hume's 'bundle' won't distinguish one mind with ten experiences from ten minds [Searle on Hume] |
| 1317 | A person is just a fast-moving bundle of perceptions [Hume] |
| 1331 | The parts of a person are always linked together by causation [Hume] |
| 1388 | Hume gives us an interesting sketchy causal theory of personal identity [Perry on Hume] |
| 21297 | A person is simply a bundle of continually fluctuating perceptions [Hume] |
| 5323 | Experiences are logically separate, but factually linked by simultaneity or a feeling of continuousness [Ayer on Hume] |
| 5326 | Qualia must be united by a subject, because they lead to concepts and judgements [Ayer] |
| 5325 | Is something an 'experience' because it relates to other experiences, or because it relates to a subject? [Ayer] |
| 5172 | If the self is meaningful, it must be constructed from sense-experiences [Ayer] |
| 3820 | The bundle must also have agency in order to act, and a self to act rationally [Searle] |
| 3539 | Personal identity is just causally related mental states [Parfit, by Maslin] |
| 1394 | Can the mental elements of a 'bundle' exist on their own? [Carruthers] |
| 1395 | Why would a thought be a member of one bundle rather than another? [Carruthers] |