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Single Idea 21311

[filed under theme 16. Persons / D. Continuity of the Self / 2. Mental Continuity / b. Self as mental continuity ]

Full Idea

Is the self the same with substance? If it be, how can that question have place concerning the subsistence of self, under a change of substance? If they be distinct, what is the difference between them?

Gist of Idea

Are self and substance the same? Then how can self remain if substance changes?

Source

David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature, + Appendix [1740], Appendix)

Book Ref

Hume,David: 'A Treatise of Human Nature', ed/tr. Selby-Bigge/Nidditch [OUP 1978], p.635

A Reaction

Locke seems to think there is a characterless substance which supports momories, and the latter constitute the self. So if my substance acquires Nestor's memories, I become Nestor. Hume, the stricter empiricist, cares nothing for characterless things.

Related Ideas

Idea 12509 If the soul individuates a man, and souls are transferable, then a hog could be a man [Locke]

Idea 12512 If someone becomes conscious of Nestor's actions, then he is Nestor [Locke]

The 22 ideas with the same theme [Self as the continuity of our conscious existence]:

1650 For Socrates our soul, though hard to define, is our self [Vlastos on Socrates]
21828 A person is the whole of their soul [Plotinus]
5511 For Locke, conscious awareness unifies a person at an instant and over time [Locke, by Martin/Barresi]
12509 If the soul individuates a man, and souls are transferable, then a hog could be a man [Locke]
1376 Identity must be in consciousness not substance, because it seems transferable [Locke]
12512 If someone becomes conscious of Nestor's actions, then he is Nestor [Locke]
12513 If a prince's soul entered a cobbler's body, the person would be the prince (and the man the cobbler) [Locke]
12514 On Judgement Day, no one will be punished for actions they cannot remember [Locke]
1397 Locke sees underlying substance as irrelevant to personal identity [Locke, by Noonan]
12973 We know our own identity by psychological continuity, even if there are some gaps [Leibniz]
21306 Causation unites our perceptions, by producing, destroying and modifying each other [Hume]
21311 Are self and substance the same? Then how can self remain if substance changes? [Hume]
7546 A man is a succession of momentary men, bound by continuity and causation [Russell]
7946 The memory criterion has a problem when one thing branches into two things [Williams,B, by Macdonald,C]
1393 One of my future selves will not necessarily be me [Parfit]
5521 If my brain-halves are transplanted into two bodies, I have continuity, and don't need identity [Parfit]
5522 Over a period of time what matters is not that 'I' persist, but that I have psychological continuity [Parfit]
5351 We only have a sense of our self as continuous, not as exactly the same [Flanagan]
23547 It seems absurd that there is no identity of any kind between two objects which involve survival [Fine,K]
5504 Maybe we should see persons in four dimensions, with stages or time-slices at an instant [Martin/Barresi]
5503 Maybe personal identity is not vital in survival, and other continuations would suffice [Martin/Barresi]
7947 In continuity, what matters is not just the beginning and end states, but the process itself [Macdonald,C]