PHILOSOPHY NOTES: PERSONAL IDENTITY
HUME’S BUNDLE THEORY OF SELF
‘What is it that makes a person the same over time?’
➢ REDUCTIONIST APPROACHES
The self can be reduced either to psychological relations or to bodies.
Locke (1960) advocated a psychological continuity theory of self, which postulated that
personal identity is constituted by consciousness alone; with memory being its true
criterion.
Animalists, on the other hand, argue that human persons are identical to human animals;
living organisms belonging to the species of Homo Sapiens.
Other physical theorists hold to the brain criterion of personal identity, claiming that the
continuity of this particular bodily organ is responsible for the continuity of the person.
➢ DUALIST ACCOUNT OF SELF
Humans have material bodies as well as immaterial souls.
According to this philosophical position, the continuity of identity is facilitated by the
enduring, eternal soul (Swinburne 1980).
➢ ELIMINATIVE NO-SELF THEORIES
They reject the idea of self as inherently untenable.
HUME’S BUNDLE THEORY OF SELF
Hume was a sceptical empiricist. Empiricism is the doctrine, which claims that all knowledge
comes from experience (Garvey & Stangroom 2012).
Hume described all mental contents associated with thinking and feeling as PERCEPTIONS,
which can be divided into IMPRESSIONS and IDEAS.
1
, • IMPRESSIONS are more vivid and lively than ideas, as they arise from the operations
of the five senses (outward impressions), or caused by inward sentiments (internal
impressions).
• IDEAS always derive from earlier impressions. They can arise as copies of original
impressions in the memory, or as imitations of earlier impressions produced by the
imagination (Warburton 2006:94).
According to Hume, there can be no ideas without impressions, since all our ideas
can on reflection be traced back to some earlier impression.
HUME WAS SCEPTICAL ABOUT THE SELF.
No impression remains the same through the course of our lives. If no such continuous
impression exists, nothing can substantiate our belief in an enduring, uninterrupted self.
Therefore, Hume (1739, Pojman & Fieser 2008:365) concluded that the notion of a continuous
self was merely a fiction:
‘’I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and can never observe anything
but the perception… I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing
but a bundle … of different perceptions, …, nor is there any single power of soul, which
remains unalterably the same …’’
To Hume, the self was not a separate subject of mental states, rather the collection of these
mental states at a given time, the stream of experience itself.
Hume denied the existence of a deeper unity.
HOWEVER, he noted that human beings seem to have a natural tendency to ascribe unified
existence to collections of associated items. He attributed the persistence of people’s false
belief in a unified self to the actions of human memory and imagination, which operate in such
ways as to produce relations of causation, contiguity and resemblance among perceptions
(Robison 1974).
2
HUME’S BUNDLE THEORY OF SELF
‘What is it that makes a person the same over time?’
➢ REDUCTIONIST APPROACHES
The self can be reduced either to psychological relations or to bodies.
Locke (1960) advocated a psychological continuity theory of self, which postulated that
personal identity is constituted by consciousness alone; with memory being its true
criterion.
Animalists, on the other hand, argue that human persons are identical to human animals;
living organisms belonging to the species of Homo Sapiens.
Other physical theorists hold to the brain criterion of personal identity, claiming that the
continuity of this particular bodily organ is responsible for the continuity of the person.
➢ DUALIST ACCOUNT OF SELF
Humans have material bodies as well as immaterial souls.
According to this philosophical position, the continuity of identity is facilitated by the
enduring, eternal soul (Swinburne 1980).
➢ ELIMINATIVE NO-SELF THEORIES
They reject the idea of self as inherently untenable.
HUME’S BUNDLE THEORY OF SELF
Hume was a sceptical empiricist. Empiricism is the doctrine, which claims that all knowledge
comes from experience (Garvey & Stangroom 2012).
Hume described all mental contents associated with thinking and feeling as PERCEPTIONS,
which can be divided into IMPRESSIONS and IDEAS.
1
, • IMPRESSIONS are more vivid and lively than ideas, as they arise from the operations
of the five senses (outward impressions), or caused by inward sentiments (internal
impressions).
• IDEAS always derive from earlier impressions. They can arise as copies of original
impressions in the memory, or as imitations of earlier impressions produced by the
imagination (Warburton 2006:94).
According to Hume, there can be no ideas without impressions, since all our ideas
can on reflection be traced back to some earlier impression.
HUME WAS SCEPTICAL ABOUT THE SELF.
No impression remains the same through the course of our lives. If no such continuous
impression exists, nothing can substantiate our belief in an enduring, uninterrupted self.
Therefore, Hume (1739, Pojman & Fieser 2008:365) concluded that the notion of a continuous
self was merely a fiction:
‘’I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and can never observe anything
but the perception… I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing
but a bundle … of different perceptions, …, nor is there any single power of soul, which
remains unalterably the same …’’
To Hume, the self was not a separate subject of mental states, rather the collection of these
mental states at a given time, the stream of experience itself.
Hume denied the existence of a deeper unity.
HOWEVER, he noted that human beings seem to have a natural tendency to ascribe unified
existence to collections of associated items. He attributed the persistence of people’s false
belief in a unified self to the actions of human memory and imagination, which operate in such
ways as to produce relations of causation, contiguity and resemblance among perceptions
(Robison 1974).
2
