PHIL 1550 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Derek Parfit, Personal Identity
17 Mar 2015
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February 25, 2015: david hume"s perception of the self: david hume, 1711-1776 empiricist best known for a treatise of human nature, enquiries concerning human. Idea includes ordinary things that we perceive: hume claims that we don"t have any idea of a self", because the self" cannot be derived from any sort of impression. But self or person is not any one impression, but that to which our several impressions and ideas are supposed to have a reference. Thus, cause/effect cannot be perceived: all of the perceptions that we have are different, even from moment to moment. Thus, because all perceptions are different, they are distinguishable: our eyes cannot turn in their sockets without varying our perceptions. Our thought is still more variable than our sight. Mental states and their constituents follows the psychological criterion for personal identity (x at t1 is the same person as y at t2 if and only if y is uniquely psychologically continuous with x. )
