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PHILOSOPHERS IN DEPTH

Hume on the Self

and Personal Identity
Edited by Dan O’Brien
Philosophers in Depth

Series Editor
Constantine Sandis
Department of Philosophy
University of Hertfordshire
Hatfield, UK
Philosophers in Depth is a series of themed edited collections focusing
on particular aspects of the thought of major figures from the history of
philosophy. The volumes showcase a combination of newly commis-
sioned and previously published work with the aim of deepening our
understanding of the topics covered. Each book stands alone, but taken
together the series will amount to a vast collection of critical essays cov-
ering the history of philosophy, exploring issues that are central to the
ideas of individual philosophers. This project was launched with the
financial support of the Institute for Historical and Cultural Research at
Oxford Brookes University, for which we are very grateful.
Constantine Sandis
 Dan O’Brien
Editor

Hume on the Self

and Personal Identity
Editor
Dan O’Brien
School of History, Philosophy and Culture
Oxford Brookes University
Oxford, UK

ISSN 2947-552X     ISSN 2947-5538 (electronic)

Philosophers in Depth
ISBN 978-3-031-04274-4    ISBN 978-3-031-04275-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04275-1

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2022
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and trans-
mission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or
dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
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All the fives crock Henrietta
She’s a mean go-getter
Gotta write her a letter…
Reference Conventions for Hume’s Works

T A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. D. F. Norton and M. J. Norton. 2

vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press (2007). (‘T 1.2.3.4’ refers to Book 1,
Part 2, section 3, paragraph 4; ‘T Intro. 1’ refers to the Introduction,
paragraph 1.)
EHU An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, ed. T. L. Beauchamp.
Oxford: Clarendon Press (2000). (‘EHU’ 1.2 refers to section 1,
paragraph 2.)
EPM An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. T. L. Beauchamp.
Oxford: Clarendon Press (1998). (‘EPM 1.2’ refers to section 1,
paragraph 2.)
DP A Dissertation on the Passions in A Dissertation on the Passions; The
Natural History of Religion, ed. T. Beauchamp. Oxford: Oxford
University Press (2008). (‘DP 1.2’ refers to section 1, paragraph 2.)
E Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. E. F. Miller. Indianapolis:
Liberty Fund (1985).
MOL ‘My Own Life’ in Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. E. F. Miller.
Indianapolis: Liberty Fund (1985).
LDH The Letters of David Hume, 2 vols., ed. J. Y. T. Greig. Oxford:
Clarendon Press (1932). (‘LDH 1.2’ refers to volume 1, page 2.)
NLH New Letters of David Hume, ed. R. Klibansky and E. C. Mossner.
Oxford: Clarendon Press (1954).

vii
 Acknowledgements

Back in December 2018 I organised the 7th Oxford Brookes International

Hume Conference on Hume and the Self, and I thank all the contribu-
tors to the workshop and to this volume for encouraging me to put
together a collection on this topic. This workshop and particularly the
non-­socially-­distanced dinner and drinks now seem an age away….
Thanks also to my research students, Shamsa Khan and Dan Brown,
who were and are writing theses on Hume on personal identity; discus-
sions with them were influential on my choice of topic for the 2018
workshop and on my own thoughts on Hume and the self. Philosophy
can be a ‘moaping recluse Method of Study’, but not with the Oxford
Hume Forum for support: in particular, (old) hardcore members, Peter,
Lorenzo, Carolyn, and Gabriel, and (new), Kate and Gudrun. I am grate-
ful to Brendan George and Constantine Sandis for commissioning the
book, to Eliana Rangel at Palgrave and to the Philosophy Team at Brookes
and our zoom-corridor meets over the last year. Thanks to Lupus Music
Co. Ltd. and the Barrett estate for allowing me to quote lyrics from Syd
Barrett’s song ‘If It’s In You’ ©1969. For Henrietta.
For keeping me and Lucy sane through these difficult times, invaluable
help has been provided by the Birmingham Greenways map; Barbara and
Tom’s vegetable pies; Jackson’s, Sennelier and Golden; The Wine Society;
and a special thanks to Bradleys.

ix
 Contents

Part I The Self in Book 1 of the Treatise   1

1 How
 Sceptical Is Hume’s Theory of Personal Identity?  3
Andrew Ward

2 H
 ume’s Bundle 21
Donald C. Ainslie

3 W
 hat I Call Myself 47
Galen Strawson

4 Hume
 and Kames on the Self and Personal Identity 85
Josef Moural

Part II The Self in Books 2 and 3 of the Treatise 105

5 Character
 Development in Shaftesbury’s and Hume’s
Approaches to Self107
Ruth Boeker

xi
xii Contents

6 Sympathy,
 Self and Others131
Dan O’Brien

7 ‘Scottish
 Sympathy’: Hume, Smith, and Psychoanalysis153
Louise Braddock

8 What
 Is Humean Autonomy?177
Anik Waldow

9 A
 Fragmented Unity: A Narrative Answer to the Problem
of the Unity of the Self in Hume201
Lorenzo Greco

Part III Hume’s Self and Other Philosophical Traditions 223

10 Candrakīrti
 and Hume on the Self and the Person225
Jay L. Garfield

11 Husserl
 (and Brentano) on Hume’s Notion of the Self251
Hynek Janoušek

12 Disguising
 Change: Hume and Cognitive Science on the
Continued Existence of Selves275
Mark Collier

B
 ibliography295

I ndex313
 Notes on Contributors

Donald C. Ainslie is Professor of Philosophy at the University of

Toronto, where his teaching and research focus on early modern philoso-
phy and bioethics. His book, Hume’s True Scepticism (OUP, 2015), won
the Journal of the History of Philosophy prize in 2016. He is also the co-­
editor (with Annemarie Butler) of the Cambridge Companion to Hume’s
Treatise (CUP, 2015).
Ruth Boeker is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at University
College Dublin and a member of the UCD Center for Ethics in Public
Life. Her research interests in early modern philosophy lie at the inter-
section of metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and ethics. She is author
of Locke on Persons and Personal Identity (OUP, 2021) and guest editor
of a special issue on ‘New Perspectives on Agency in Early Modern
Philosophy’ (International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 2019).
Additionally, she has published several journal articles and book chap-
ters on early modern debates about personal identity and agency. Her
more recent research focuses on early modern women philosophers
and she is currently preparing a short online and print book on
Catharine Trotter Cockburn for the Cambridge Elements series on
Women in the History of Philosophy. She received her PhD from the
University of St Andrews.

xiii
xiv Notes on Contributors

Louise Braddock researches and publishes on topics in philosophy and

psychoanalysis. She trained as a psychiatrist before gaining her PhD in
philosophy from the University of Reading in 2000. From 2006 to 2017
she was a Bye-Fellow at Girton College at the University of Cambridge
where she taught philosophy. She lectured on philosophy of mind and
the philosophy of psychoanalysis and also attended the long-standing
Cambridge Psychoanalysis Reading Group. She is currently an associate
member of the Philosophy Faculty at the University of Oxford where she
formerly taught and lectured on the philosophy of social science, and an
academic associate of the British Psychoanalytical Society. In 2000 she
co-founded the London Philosophy-­Psychoanalysis Group, and since
2005 has co-convened a regular interdisciplinary seminar in psychoanaly-
sis at Oxford. Between 2011 and 2020 she was Director of Research for
the Independent Social Research Foundation, funding social science
research.
Mark Collier is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota,
Morris and Affiliate Faculty Member at the University of Minnesota
Center for the Cognitive Sciences. His areas of interest include the his-
tory of modern philosophy (especially Hume), philosophy of mind, and
moral psychology. Mark received his doctorate in cognitive science and
philosophy from the University of California, San Diego. He previously
served as a faculty member at Stanford University, University of
Pittsburgh, Peking University, and Pomona College.
Jay L. Garfield is Doris Silbert Professor in the Humanities at Smith
College, Visiting Professor of Buddhist Philosophy at the Harvard
Divinity School, Professor of Philosophy at Melbourne University and
adjunct Professor of Philosophy at the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan
Studies. Garfield’s research addresses topics in cognitive science and the
philosophy of mind, metaphysics, ethics, the history of modern Indian
philosophy, the philosophy of the Scottish enlightenment, and topics in
Buddhist philosophy, particularly Indo-Tibetan Madhyamaka and
Yogācāra. His most recent books are Losing Yourself: How to be a Person
Without a Self (Princeton, 2022), Knowing Illusion: Bringing a Tibetan
Debate into Contemporary Discourse (with The Yakherds) (OUP, 2021),
Buddhist Ethics: A Philosophical Exploration (2021), What Can’t Be Said:
 Notes on Contributors xv

Paradox and Contradiction in East Asian Thought (with Yasuo Deguchi,

Graham Priest, and Robert Sharf ) (OUP, 2021), and The Concealed
Influence of Custom: Hume’s Treatise From the Inside Out (OUP, 2019).
Lorenzo Greco is Lecturer in Political Philosophy at the University of
L’Aquila. He is also Tutor in Philosophy and Associate Member of the
Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Oxford. His areas of interest
include ethics, moral psychology, political philosophy, and the philoso-
phy of David Hume. He is author of L’io morale: David Hume e l’etica
contemporanea (Liguori, 2008). His work has appeared in journals such as
the Journal of the History of Philosophy, the British Journal for the History
of Philosophy, Utilitas, and in various collections.
Hynek Janoušek is Research Fellow at the Institute of Philosophy of the
Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague and has published a number of
articles on Hume, Husserl, and Brentano. He has recently published the
first Czech translation of Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature. His paper
‘Husserl (and Brentano) on Hume’s Notion of the Self ’ is an outcome of
the project ‘Virtues Old and New: Virtue Ethics in Hume and Mandeville’
(Czech Science Foundation).
Josef Moural teaches philosophy at the University of Jan Evangelista
Purkyně (Ústí nad Labem, Czechia) and West-Bohemian University
(Pilsen). He studied mathematics at Charles University (Prague), worked
as a computer specialist in the 1980s and participated in underground
philosophy study, teaching and samizdat publishing in Prague. Since
1990, he professionalized in philosophy and taught at Charles University,
Central European University (Prague and Budapest campuses), King‘s
College London, UC Berkeley and University of Silesia Katowice. He
publishes and teaches in the areas of ancient and modern philosophy,
classical phenomenology and analytic philosophy.
Dan O’Brien is Reader in Philosophy at Oxford Brookes University,
founder and organizer of the Oxford Hume Forum, and epistemology
editor for The Philosophers’ Magazine. He has published on Hume, phi-
losophy of mind, philosophy of religion, and epistemology, and also on
extra-curricular interests, including Caravaggio, cubism and gardening.
His Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge (Polity, 2006; 2017) has been
xvi Notes on Contributors

translated into Korean, Portuguese and Arabic (forthcoming). He is (with

Alan Bailey) co-editor of the Bloomsbury Companion to Hume and co-
author of the Reader’s Guide to Hume’s Enquiry concerning Human
Understanding (Continuum, 2007) and Hume’s Critique of Religion: Sick
Men’s Dreams (Springer, 2013). His Hume on Testimony (Routledge) will
be published in 2022.
Galen Strawson holds the President’s Chair in Philosophy at the
University of Texas at Austin. He taught at the University of Oxford
from 1979–2000, and at Reading University from 2001–2013. From
2004–2007 he was Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the
Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His publications
include Freedom and Belief (OUP, 1986; 2009), The Secret Connexion:
Realism, Causation, and David Hume (OUP, 1989; 2014), Mental
Reality (MIT, 1994; 2009), Selves: An Essay in Revisionary Metaphysics
(OUP, 2009), The Evident Connexion: Hume on Personal Identity (OUP,
2011), Locke on Personal Identity: Consciousness and Concernment
(Princeton, 2011), The Subject of Experience (OUP, 2017), and Things
That Bother Me (NYRB, 2018). He has held visiting positions at the
Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University,
New York University, Rutgers University, the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, Princeton University, and the École des Hautes Études
en Sciences Sociales in Paris.
Anik Waldow is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney.
She mainly works in early modern philosophy and has published articles
on the moral and cognitive function of sympathy, theories of personal
identity, the role of affect in the formation of the self, scepticism and
associationist theories of thought and language. She is the author of the
monographs Experience Embodied: Early Modern Accounts of the Human
Place in Nature (OUP, 2020) and Hume and the Problem of Other Minds
(Continuum, 2009), the editor of Sensibility in the Early Modern Era:
From Living Machines to Affective Morality (Routledge, 2016), and co-­
editor of Philosophical Perspectives on Empathy (Routledge, 2019) and
Herder: Philosophy and Anthropology (OUP, 2017). Since 2018 she has
been the director of the Sydney Intellectual History Network.
 Notes on Contributors xvii

Andrew Ward has taught for many years in the Department of

Philosophy at the University of York, UK. He is an honorary lifetime
Fellow of the department. He has also taught at the University of Florida,
Gainesville and, from 2014 to 2017, was visiting Professor of Philosophy
at Shanghai’s University of Finance and Economics. His philosophical
papers cover a variety of topics, including scepticism, aesthetics and per-
sonal identity. He is the author of Kant: The Three Critiques in the Polity
Press Classic Thinkers series.
 Introduction

When I teach my Hume module there’s a point in the semester when I

sense that Hume’s strategy has sunk in and the class know what to expect.
In this lecture we’re going to be looking at another deeply sceptical argu-
ment concerning an aspect of the world that we take to be fundamental
to our world-view, accompanied by a psychological explanation of why
we mistakenly take the world to be that way. This strategy plays out with
respect to God, causation, and the existence of the external world. With
respect to this latter scepticism, they’ve been there before—to the bot-
tom, or so they think, of the sceptical abyss, with Descartes and perhaps
others. Scepticism no longer has its shock value.
But then, the final topic of the module: Hume on personal identity.
There must be a change of tack here…Hume’s scepticism couldn’t get any
deeper. There is, I must admit, a perverse pleasure in suggesting that it
does: ‘Remember the one Archimedean point that Descartes discovers in
Meditation Two—I think therefore I am—well…’.
It is to Hume’s apparent scepticism with regards to the self and per-
sonal identity in Book 1 of the Treatise that the contributors to this vol-
ume turn first—in Part I. We seem to have the idea of an enduring self. I
planted the pumpkin seeds in May and it’ll be me that eats the pumpkin
pie in November. I think of myself as having identity across time. Hume,
though, applies his strict empiricist principles to such thoughts of iden-
tity. All simple ideas must have their origin in experience and so what is
xix
xx Introduction

the experience from which the simple idea of my self is derived?

Well…there isn’t one! Hume does not find an impression of the self when
he introspects and he doesn’t think we will either. Two things follow from
this. First, we should not therefore believe that we have identity across
time. Second—and this is a claim that is sometimes missed—we do not
even possess an idea corresponding to such an enduring entity as the self.
How, though, can we be so wrong about ourselves? Hume has an
answer, in the form of a psychological explanation for why we falsely
think we have personal identity and why we falsely think we have a deter-
minate idea corresponding to a simple self. I think of this pencil as the
same pencil as the one I was editing with yesterday. I know the pencil
won’t last forever; after a number of sharpenings it will be destroyed, but
for a few weeks or months this pencil will be my companion. There is,
though, a (metaphysical) mistake being made here. This pencil is not
identical to the one I brought from the stationary shop. It’s shorter, some
of the paint has chipped and the eraser has been worn down. But these
changes have been gradual and we have a tendency to gloss over such
changes, and think of objects as identical across time. There isn’t, really,
any strict identity across time for pencils or pumpkins. There is, though,
a pencil in my hand—not the very same one as yesterday, but a pencil
nonetheless, and this pencil can be described in terms of the properties it
possesses and what it is composed of. There’s nothing deeper, no core, as
it were, no essence, no pencil-soul. This pencil is merely an object with a
black painted surface, gold lettering and a 2B lead. That’s it.
Well, for Hume, the same goes for us. I am just a ‘bundle of percep-
tions’, a collection of conscious experiences, thoughts, emotions and feel-
ings. There is nothing deeper to me, no core, no essence, no soul. Hume
is therefore sometimes said to have a ‘no-self ’ theory. I am, however, fooled
into thinking that I have a unitary self, just as I am fooled into thinking
that I have the same pencil as yesterday. Recurring sequences of thoughts
and emotions make regular appearances in my stream of consciousness
and this consistency across time inclines me to think that these are the
experiences of an enduring self. This, at any rate, is the standard interpre-
tation of what Hume has to say about the self in Book 1 of the Treatise.
However, eighteen months after Book 1 was published, Hume issued
an Appendix (to Book 3) in which he admits to being dissatisfied with his
 Introduction xxi

earlier account of the self and, ever since, much ink, toner and pencil lead
have been spent attempting to work out why he was dissatisfied. This is
far from clear, and it’s one of the questions that the papers in Part I
address.
Andrew Ward argues, at odds with the standard interpretation, that
the Appendix does not express Hume’s dissatisfaction with the bundle
theory or with his scepticism concerning personal identity. The Appendix,
rather, is designed to clarify and strengthen Hume’s scepticism: after pub-
lishing the Treatise Hume realises that there is not only no introspectable
evidence for realist accounts of personal identity, but that such accounts
are self-contradictory. This is the message of the Appendix.
Don Ainslie turns to the bundle problem. Hume identifies the mind
with a bundle of perceptions and claims that our belief in its unity and
identity across time is generated solely by the imagination (as is the case
with pencils and pumpkins). One influential interpretation of the
Appendix is that Hume came to recognize that he is unable to explain
how perceptions come together in a bundle. Why is this particular set of
perceptions bundled together into me, and another set bundled together
into you? Why is this experience of seeing red in my bundle and not in
yours? Ainslie argues, however, that Hume did not recognize a bundling
problem since his empiricism allows him to accept such bundles as
brute facts.
Galen Strawson agrees that Hume is not concerned with the bundle
problem. Hume is too much of a sceptic to make any metaphysical claims
concerning the constitution of the mind. A bundle of perceptions may be
the only empirically respectable account of the mind, but its true meta-
physical nature is unknown. Strawson also rejects the no-self interpreta-
tion. Selves cannot be purged from the bundle of perceptions because it’s
a necessary truth that perceptions must be had by perceivers. It’s therefore
perceivings-by-perceivers that are bundled together in experience and not
mere standalone perceptions. Hume’s scepticism, though, means that the
nature of these perceivers or selves is hidden from view: there may, for all
we know, be a series of short-lived selves, or perhaps all perceptions may
be perceived by the same enduring self.
Part I closes with Josef Moural’s suggestion that new light may be cast
on the Appendix by considering Henry Home’s criticisms of the Treatise.
xxii Introduction

The Appendix deals mainly with two topics—the nature of belief and
personal identity—and Home (later to be Lord Kames) published essays
on both. Moural investigates Hume’s intriguing comment in a letter to
Home that ‘I lik’t exceedingly your Method of explaining personal iden-
tity as more satisfactory than any thing that had ever occur’d to me’.
The papers in Part II turn to Hume’s treatment of the self in Books 2
and 3 of the Treatise. There he moves away from consideration of a simple
self—that we (falsely) believe remains identical across time—to the more
complex ideas we have of our ever-changing, flesh and blood selves, those
with emotional lives, character traits of which we may be proud or
ashamed, practical goals, and social relations with others.
Ruth Boeker examines the role that character development plays in
Shaftesbury’s and Hume’s approaches to self. Shaftesbury offers a devel-
opmental approach to self that aims at character development and self-
improvement, and in Books 2 and 3 of the Treatise, perhaps influenced
by Shaftesbury, Hume recognizes the importance of developing stable
character traits which contribute to the formation of selves. There are,
though, differences in how they understand character development and
selfhood: Shaftesbury’s view involves intellectual reflection, whereas
Hume’s approach is closely intertwined with his account of sympathy
and how we are deeply embedded in our social community.
Dan O’Brien focuses on the role that sympathy plays in Hume’s
account of how we come to share the emotions and thoughts of others,
and how it is involved in our coming to have a sense of ourselves as per-
sons. We are praised by others for our virtues, achievements and standing
in society (and criticized for our vices and shortcomings), and this leads
to our feeling proud (or ashamed). Such passions are self-directed and
Hume’s account of the generation of these passions is in turn an account
of how we come to conceive of and experience our selves. We feel the
approval of others via sympathy, and the proud self that I am now—will,
in turn, go on to sympathize with future approval (or disapproval) of my
life and actions. My existence is constituted by a spiral of self-creation
into the future, constantly fed by the reactions of others.
Louise Braddock also focuses on sympathy—’Scottish sympathy’; that
which plays a central role in the philosophies of Hume and Adam Smith.
She argues that this is an important philosophical resource for
 Introduction xxiii

understanding contemporary psychoanalysis. This is not an anachronistic

speculation, given that the Scottish philosophers stand in a tradition of
thought about emotional communication going back to Classical antiq-
uity, Hume in particular being influenced by the writing of Cicero. On
from the early modern period, sympathy resurfaces in nineteenth century
German aesthetics and psychology as Einfühlung, the capacity to put
oneself imaginatively into another’s shoes, and today—translated into
‘empathy’—it informs discussion of mind-reading and emotional
communication.
Anik Waldow suggests a Humean account of autonomy, one opposed
to Kantian approaches that involve freeing oneself from the influence of
others. Given the deep sympathetic embedding of the Humean self
within society, a Kantian account cannot be sustained. Waldow aligns her
Humean account with relational concepts of autonomy, and does so by
proposing a Humean account of reflection that enables us, both to resist
the coercive influences of others (despite our deep sympathetic connect-
edness with them), and also, via engaging with their points of view, to
articulate views that we reflectively endorse and, as a consequence, per-
haps outgrow and transform our previous self-conception.
Lorenzo Greco defends a Humean narrative interpretation of the self.
By appealing to pride and humility Hume explains how we are able to
trace a connection between the events of our past and our present, and to
project ourselves into the future. Greco compares this account to two
opposing models: Alasdair MacIntyre’s strong conception of a narrative
self dependent on tradition or community, on the one hand, and Galen
Strawson’s complete dismissal of narrative identity, on the other. For
Greco, MacIntyre’s narrative self is too dependent on the community to
which it belongs, and on the role played within the tradition of which it
is a part. A Humean narrative self, in contrast, is grounded in the pride
or humility one feels in the present, but, contrary to the episodic life of
Strawson, our self-directed passions infuse a temporal dimension to this
‘fragmented’ narrative self.
In Part III connections are traced between various aspects of Hume’s
account of the self and traditions far removed from his early modern
European milieu.
xxiv Introduction

Jay L. Garfield explores similarities and differences between Indian

Madhyamaka Buddhist accounts of the person and the self and those of
Hume. Both Candrakīrti, a sixth century Buddhist thinker, and Hume
distinguish the person from the self; both argue that the very idea of a
simple, enduring self is incoherent, although both agree that persons are
real. These similarities reflect Candrakīrti’s and Hume’s shared commit-
ment to the importance of custom or convention in the construction of
identity and the essentially social nature of personal identity.
Hynek Janoušek turns to the phenomenological tradition and Husserl’s
Logical Investigations. Husserl’s phenomenology does not include either a
unitary experienced self or a Kantian transcendental self, and he describes
the self as a bundle. Husserl’s discussions of Hume form part of a wider
appreciation of Hume in the German speaking world at the end of the
nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. There are, however,
important differences between the constituents of our bundles for Hume
and Husserl. For Husserl, the conscious contents of experience have
intentionality, that is, they are experienced as directed at pumpkins and
pencils, trees and patches of red, whereas for Hume, such impressions
and ideas are described according to their intrinsic character. In the sec-
ond edition of Logical Investigations, Husserl abandons Hume entirely, as
he there comes to accept the existence of a pure unitary ego.
The final paper, that of Mark Collier, brings us to the present day.
Collier considers recent empirical work that shows there is a widespread
tendency to regard selves as subterranean or hidden essences that remain
fixed and immutable through change; everyday beliefs in personal persis-
tence are therefore the by-product of a natural tendency towards psycho-
logical essentialism. Cognitive science provides support for the Humean
proposal that our everyday beliefs in persistent selves depend on implicit
psychological biases rather than introspective awareness or rational
insight. If such natural beliefs are false and personal persistence is ficti-
tious, they appear, however, to be useful fictions, since studies suggest
that those who regard themselves as immutable essences or ongoing nar-
ratives tend to report higher levels of well-being.
 Part I
The Self in Book 1 of the Treatise
 1
How Sceptical Is Hume’s Theory
of Personal Identity?
Andrew Ward

It is generally accepted that in the section of A Treatise of Human Nature

entitled ‘Of personal identity’, David Hume defends a bundle theory of
the self and, then, in the Appendix to the Treatise, he admits to being dis-
satisfied with his theory. I will challenge this standard interpretation,
arguing that while there are some misleading expressions in his original
account of the bundle theory, he displays, in the Appendix, no dissatis-
faction with the theory itself and, more particularly, with the scepticism
which it implies. On the contrary, he there reinforces his sceptical posi-
tion by showing that, once two key principles of his philosophy are
accepted, it is self-contradictory to defend either of the realist theories of
personal identity known to him.

A. Ward (*)
University of York, York, UK
e-mail: [email protected]
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 3
D. O’Brien (ed.), Hume on the Self and Personal Identity, Philosophers in Depth,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04275-1_1
4 A. Ward

I
What is Hume’s bundle theory? It is the view that the identity of the self
consists in—or, at any rate, can only be known to consist in—a series of
conscious states (or ‘perceptions’, as he calls them) with nothing genu-
inely unifying the serial perceptions. Of course, Hume acknowledges that
we believe that all the perceptions of that series, which each of us calls his
or her own, do belong to a single self, mind, or person (he uses these three
terms interchangeably). But this belief, he holds, lacks any justification
and results merely from the way in which the disparate perceptions are
felt to be unified when we reflect on them in the memory.
In the Treatise section entitled ‘Of personal identity’, Hume attacks
two realist accounts of personal identity, not one as it is sometimes main-
tained. He first attacks a substance (or Cartesian) account, according to
which our identity is constituted by the continuous existence of a sub-
stance that underlies the whole series of perceptions. He does not, how-
ever, stop there; for he also attacks a real connection account, according
to which our identity is secured by connections that hold between the
serial perceptions. His attack on both accounts is very similar and comes
down to the claim that, when we examine the series of perceptions
(through recollecting them in memory), all we can ever discover is a suc-
cession of perceptions which, although their ideas feel unified in the
memory, are not found to have anything underlying or really connect-
ing them.
Accordingly, after having rejected the substance account─on the
grounds that all our perceptions are distinct and separable
existences─Hume allows that the ascription of identity to the mind
would still be warranted provided there was something really connecting
or binding these distinct perceptions together:

[E]very distinct perception, which enters into the composition of the

mind, is a distinct existence, and is different, and distinguishable, and sepa-
rable from every other perception, either co-temporary or successive. But,
as, notwithstanding this distinction and separability [thus ruling out a
common substance of inhesion], we suppose the whole train of perceptions
to be united by identity, a question naturally arises concerning this relation
 1 How Sceptical Is Hume’s Theory of Personal Identity? 5

of identity; whether it be something that really binds our several percep-

tions together, or only associates their ideas in the imagination. (T 1.4.6.16)

But although Hume allows that, even without a common substance of

inhesion, we could justifiably acknowledge an identity to the mind if
there really were connections between the perceptions, he denies that any
such connections are discoverable. In this regard, he thinks there is a close
analogy between the identity that we all naturally ascribe to plants (or
vegetables) and animal bodies, on the one hand, and the identity of the
self, on the other:

[W]e must…account for that identity, which we attribute to plants and

animals; there being a great analogy betwixt it, and the identity of a self or
person. (T 1.4.6.5)

As Hume notes, with plants and animal bodies, we accept that, over
time, the form as well as the substance making them up can undergo a
total change (through growth, decay, and replacement). But while, in
such cases, ‘we do not give rise to such a fiction [as that of a common
substance of inhesion]…we are apt to imagine something unknown and
mysterious, connecting the parts…and this I take to be the case with the
identity we ascribe to plants and vegetables’ (T 1.4.6.6). So, as Hume sees
it, when identity is not ascribed on the basis of a belief in a common
substance of inhesion, we may still be drawn to ascribing identity to an
object because of a belief in something that is really connecting the
object’s parts together—and this is precisely what occurs in the case of
our ascription of identity to plants and animal bodies. Yet, although we
believe that there really is something connecting the changing parts of
such organisms, all that is observable is a succession of varying parts
together with the association of their ideas in our imagination. That is
why Hume thinks that the identity we ascribe to organisms is fictitious
and that is why, analogously, he thinks that our ascription of identity to
the mind or person is equally fictitious:
6 A. Ward

The identity, which we ascribe to the mind of man, is only a fictitious one,
and of a like kind with that which we ascribe to vegetables and animal bod-
ies. (T 1.4.6.15)

Despite drawing these analogies between the mind and certain organ-
isms, it is not easy to decide which view of the self Hume does ascribe to
us. Thus, when he first discusses how it is we come to ascribe identity to
the succession of perceptions, he says that ‘we’ feign ‘a soul, and self, and
substance’ to disguise the variations in our perceptions (T 1.4.6.6): appar-
ently suggesting, therefore, that we naturally believe in a substance view
of the self ’s identity. Yet, as I have just indicated, Hume also maintains
that ‘the identity we ascribe to the mind…is of a like kind to that which
we ascribe to plants and vegetables’—which is the ascription of ‘some-
thing unknown and mysterious, connecting the parts’. And there are sev-
eral other references in the section to the analogy between the mind’s
supposed identity and that of plants and animal bodies. On balance, I am
inclined to think that Hume supposes that some of us do accept a sub-
stance view, while others, especially those who have been influenced by
John Locke’s analogy of the identity of a person with that of plants and
animal bodies,1 are drawn to a real connection view. The essential point,
however, is that Hume holds that both views are unwarranted.
In short, the position that Hume is arguing for in the main body of the
Treatise is intended to be a thoroughly sceptical one. Personal identity
would be secured if there were either a substance in which all the serial
perceptions inhere (the Cartesian view) or a real connection coming
between each successive perception (as we suppose the changing parts of
plants and animals are really connected). Since, however, neither is dis-
coverable, we lack any justification for the belief in our own identity.

II
At the same time, given Hume is in no doubt that, in our daily lives, we
do believe in the identity of the self, he needs to produce a convincing
psychological story of the generation of our belief, and one that does not
presuppose the continued existence of the self. Many have doubted that
 1 How Sceptical Is Hume’s Theory of Personal Identity? 7

he is successful in this task, claiming that it is his failure to provide a

convincing psychological story that is at the root of his own expressed
dissatisfaction in the Appendix. Let us, then, examine what, in the main
body of the Treatise, Hume says about how our belief in personal iden-
tity arises.
He explicitly holds that the belief depends on the relations of resem-
blance and causation. But he does not mean by this that the original suc-
cession of perceptions—the succession to which we ascribe our
identity—is invariably found to exhibit either resemblances between suc-
cessive perceptions or constant conjunctions among given pairs of adja-
cent perceptions. As Hume himself points out, perceptions ‘are in a
perpetual flux and movement…and mingle in an infinite variety of pos-
tures and situations’ (T. 1.4.6.4). Our waking lives are obviously replete
with chops and changes in the objects of our consciousness, making it
implausible to maintain that our perceptions, as they originally come to
us in succession, are invariably related by resemblance and/or constant
conjunction.
Rather, the belief in personal identity arises from the way that the
original succession of perceptions passes smoothly through the memory.
Hume had earlier argued that ‘the impressions of the memory never
change in any considerable degree; and each impression draws along with
it a precise idea, which takes its place in the imagination as something
solid and real, certain and invariable. The thought is always determin’d to
pass from the impression to the idea, and from the particular impression
to the particular idea without any choice or hesitation’ (T. 1.3.9.7).2
Consequently, by the ‘frequent placing’ of a series of memory-­impressions
in the thought, the imagination will be conveyed with increasing smooth-
ness along that series, until it will seem ‘like the continuance of one
object’ (T. 1.4.6.18). Since each recall of a given series of perceptions will
resemble every other recall of that series, it follows that, as a result of its
frequent recall, successive memory-impressions will become constantly
conjoined in the imagination, thereby—on Hume’s theory of the associa-
tion of ideas—making it feel that each memory-impression is connected
with its immediately adjacent memory-impressions even though nothing
is discoverable that really connects the original succession of
perceptions.
8 A. Ward

It is ‘the smooth and uninterrupted progress of the thought’ along a

series of memory-impressions (T. 1.4.6.16) that leads to the belief that
the recalled perceptions themselves are parts of the same entity, viz. the
same self. As we have noted, Hume thinks that the belief may take one of
two forms. According to the first, it takes the form of believing that the
self is a simple substance in which the whole succession of perceptions
inheres. This is the belief in a Cartesian self, and it arises when the mind
notices that the contents of the succession of perceptions are not, as it
initially seems, the manifestation of one continuous and invariable object.
To begin with, the smooth and uninterrupted transition between the
serial memory-impressions, engendered by the frequent placing of a suc-
cession of perceptions in the memory, leads to the supposition that these
successive perceptions are parts of one continuous and invariable object.
When it is realized that the contents are, in fact, variable (by comparing
the differences between earlier and later perceptions), the tension—
between the tendency to run the contents of the different perceptions
together (into one continuous and invariable object) and the recognition
of the variations in their contents—is overcome by affirming that there is
one simple substance underlying all the variable perceptions.3 According
to the second form, the belief that the self is an underlying simple sub-
stance is replaced with the belief that connections really exist between the
adjacent perceptions themselves. Even though some of us have rejected a
common substance of inhesion, we may still be deceived, by the smooth-
ness with which the succession of perceptions is felt to pass through
memory, into believing that the members of that succession form a chain
in which each member (each perception) really is connected with its
immediate predecessor and successor. Those who adopt this latter form of
the belief in personal identity are holding that our identity is analogous
to the identity that, according to Hume, we all naturally hold with respect
to the identity of plants and animal bodies, viz. where we imagine not a
common substance of inhesion, but the existence of something unknown
and mysterious connecting their changing parts. Nonetheless, both forms
of the belief result from the same basic psychological operation: the pas-
sage through memory of an original, and frequently recalled, succession
of perceptions and the consequent feeling of a smooth and uninterrupted
transition between those serial memory-impressions.
 1 How Sceptical Is Hume’s Theory of Personal Identity? 9

III
Although I have maintained that Hume’s psychological explanation of
the genesis of belief in personal identity fits into his theory of the associa-
tion of ideas, it may seem open to the objection that it cannot be employed
in defence of a sceptical account of personal identity. For, it may be urged,
his psychological story, relying as it does on memory, must presuppose
the existence of a continuously existing mind (first to lay down traces
deriving from the original succession of perceptions and, later, to bring
the stored traces to consciousness as memory-impressions). Without such
a continuant, the a priori probability of a series of memory-impressions
matching an original succession of perceptions would be extremely low;
whereas, by presupposing such a continuant, this matching is entirely
unsurprising. Hence, the objection concludes, Hume cannot reasonably
remain sceptical about personal identity, given his own psychological
story of the generation of belief in that identity.4 There is a further, related
objection which runs as follows. On Hume’s version of empiricism, there
is no way in which he could presuppose a continuously existing mind. To
do so, he would have to appeal to an idea which, by his own lights, he
could not conceivably have. Since Hume affirms that there are no rele-
vant impressions from which the alleged idea answering to the term ‘a
continuously existing mind’ can be derived, that term must be dismissed
by him as without descriptive meaning. Consequently, he has ruled out
any determinate reference to the very resource which would have enabled
him to explain how his principles of association, and thereby his psycho-
logical story of the generation of our belief in personal identity, could
possibly come into play.5
Despite their plausibility, both objections fail. To see why, let us con-
sider the first objection. It is true that Hume, like the realist, is taking for
granted that memory-impressions will (generally) be an accurate repre-
sentation of earlier perceptions; for both parties agree that it is by using
memory that we come to the belief in our continuous existence. However,
even on the assumption that there is a continuously existing mind, in
which traces deriving from the original perceptions are laid down and
stored, the a priori probability that the resultant memory-impressions
10 A. Ward

will match the earlier perceptions is no greater than the a priori probabil-
ity that, if there is no such continuant between the original past percep-
tions and the later memory-impressions, these impressions will match the
earlier perceptions. Either way, the a priori probability of a match between
the original perceptions and the later memory-impressions is correspond-
ingly small. It is correspondingly small because, a priori, there are just as
many ways in which memory traces might, accurately or inaccurately, be
laid down and stored in the mind as there are ways in which, without any
continuously existing mind, the later memory-impressions might, accu-
rately or inaccurately, resemble the original perceptions. There is, conse-
quently, nothing to favour the realist’s claim that, on the evidence, we
have good reason to accept a continuously existing mind rather than a
mere series of discrete perceptions. After all, the only datum both sides
have to go on is that belief in the self ’s identity arises from our reflecting
on memory-impressions as they pass smoothly through consciousness
(and which are taken to be accurate representations of earlier percep-
tions). And this datum is as consistent with the non-existence as with the
existence of a continuously existing mind.
Of course, if it is assumed that, on the supposition of a continuously
existing mind, the memory-impressions are bound to match the contents
of the earlier perceptions, it would be more reasonable to believe in a
continuously existing mind rather than a mere series of perceptions. It
would be more reasonable because, without the existence of such a mind,
the a priori probability of the memory-impressions matching the earlier
perceptions is exceedingly low; whereas, if there is a continuously existing
mind—which, ex hypothesis, is accurately laying down and reliably stor-
ing traces of the earlier succession—the matching of memory-­impressions
with original perceptions is precisely what one would expect. However,
on the evidence available, there is no more reason to suppose that, if there
is a continuously existing mind, the way in which the traces have been
laid down and stored will enable the later memory-impressions to match
the original perceptions than there is reason to suppose that, without a
continuously existing mind, the later memory-impressions will match
the original perceptions. In both cases, the a priori probability is equally
low. Hence, the fact that the memory-impressions do match the original
perceptions (as both parties are taking for granted) does not favour the
 1 How Sceptical Is Hume’s Theory of Personal Identity? 11

realist hypothesis. Contrary to the first objection, therefore, Hume’s psy-

chological story of why we believe in the identity of the mind does not
rest on presupposing the actual existence of a continuously existing mind.
Since, on the evidence available, there are no grounds for preferring
the realist’s account to Hume’s sceptical account in respect of providing a
psychological explanation of our belief in personal identity, it follows that
Hume is not under any pressure to employ a term (‘a continuously exist-
ing mind’) to which, on his empiricist principles, he can assign no
descriptive meaning. The second objection lapses once it is recognized
that Hume has no need to refer to a continuously existing mind in order
to give as defensible an explanation of the generation of our belief as the
realist.

IV
Before turning to my own view of why Hume wrote the Appendix on
personal identity, I will briefly consider one further attempt to explain
Hume’s misgivings about his original discussion.
Hume, it is alleged, became dissatisfied because his psychological
explanation of the belief in personal identity already requires perceptions
to be placed into separate bundles. The idea is that, for the belief to be
generated, Hume needs to presume that, out of all the mass of percep-
tions that exist, the only perceptions to which we each have access are
those that we come to think of as belonging to or constituting our own
mind. And, for this to be possible, the perceptions we ascribe to our mind
must, from the outset, be partitioned from the mass of other perceptions.
What, on this criticism, Hume is acknowledging (and bemoaning) in the
Appendix is just this realist requirement, viz. that the mass of perceptions
must be parceled into individual bundles before his psychological mecha-
nism can produce the belief that the perceptions of any given bundle are
unified. The requirement is problematic for him because he cannot accept
any principle of connection that could provide the necessary parceling;
hence, his attempt to explain the belief in personal identity must fail.6
Not only is there, as far as I can see, no explicit evidence to suggest that
Hume is worried by his alleged failure to restrict the range of perceptions
12 A. Ward

to those that we do in fact call our own, there is strong evidence that this
would not be a source of worry to him. For, in the earlier section of Book
1, Part 4 of the Treatise, ‘Of scepticism with regard to the senses’ (T 1.4.2),
and, again, in the concluding section, ‘Conclusion of this book’ (T 1.4.7),
Hume takes it that the belief in personal identity arises logically prior to
any belief in external objects, let alone to any belief in the existence
of other centres of consciousness (which would be inferred from the
behaviour of certain of these external objects). He does not begin with a
large mass of perceptions (only some of which make up the bundle which
we come to believe belongs to or constitutes our own mind). If that were
his starting point, there might, indeed, be a question of why or how some
perceptions of this mass are divided from the rest, i.e. are bundled
together.
Instead, according to Hume’s sceptical strategy in Part 4 of Book 1 of
the Treatise, all that can be taken initially to exist is that succession of
perceptions which we come to believe, albeit illegitimately, belongs to or
constitutes a single, continuously existing, self or mind. Once this belief
has been formed, we go on to believe (again, without legitimate ground)
in the existence of external objects by ‘breaking off’ certain of these per-
ceptions from the mind and supposing them to have a continuous and
distinct existence from the mind (see ‘Of scepticism with regard to the
senses’; T 1.4.2). Following production of the belief in external objects,
the mind can then, on the basis of behaviour, seek to infer (legitimately
or not) the existence of further centres of consciousness associated with
certain external objects (human and animal bodies). The belief in the
existence of these other centres of consciousness is entirely dependent on
the belief in external objects. It is no part of Hume’s strategy to take it as
a given that there is a mass of perceptions, over and above that succession
that we believe belongs to or constitutes one continuously existing mind.
Far from it: we are only able to form the belief in other centres of con-
sciousness when they are inferred from, and tied to, certain external
objects. In fact, the very idea of our own mind, together with that of other
minds, can only be formed once we have come to believe in external
objects and inferred the existence of further centres of consciousness from
the behaviour of some of these external objects.
 1 How Sceptical Is Hume’s Theory of Personal Identity? 13

Hume, then, is not confronted with having to partition a mass of per-

ceptions into separate bundles before addressing the question of how we
come to believe that a succession of perceptions belongs to or constitutes
a unified mind. The very possibility of believing in other centres of con-
sciousness only arises after we have formed the belief in one continuously
existing mind (which we subsequently come to think of as our own) and
the existence of external objects.

V
But if none of these objections explain Hume’s expressed dissatisfaction
with the original section on personal identity, what grounds could he
have had for later composing an Appendix to that section?
The point of the Appendix is not to indicate any inherent difficulty
with his bundle theory. It is, to the contrary, aiming to do two things.
First, to reiterate briefly and clearly the grounds for his rejection of both
the realist accounts he had discussed in the main body of the Treatise: that
is, not only a substance (or Cartesian) account of the self but, also, a real
connection account, according to which the serial members of the origi-
nal succession of perceptions are taken to be really connected amongst
themselves (analogous to the way we suppose that the changing parts of
plants and animal bodies are so connected). Why should Hume wish to
provide a summary of these grounds? Because when, at the end of the
section on personal identity, he considers how it comes about that we
believe the succession of perceptions to be united by identity, despite
there being no justification for supposing that the succession inheres in a
common substance, his words and analogies can readily be misconstrued
as suggesting that he thinks the successive perceptions really are con-
nected or tied together. The second aim of the Appendix is to reveal—
what he had formerly not recognized himself—that he has the materials
to hand for concluding that it must be self-contradictory to attempt to
defend either of these two realist accounts and not merely, as he had, in
reality, formerly held, that there is insufficient evidence for justifying
either of them. So understood, the Appendix seeks to clarify and
strengthen his sceptical position, not to weaken or reject it.
14 A. Ward

Let me start by making a general observation before turning to more

specific issues. At the opening of the Appendix discussion, Hume says he
had hoped that ‘however deficient our theory of the intellectual world
might be, it would be free from those contradictions, and absurdities,
which seem to attend every explication, that human reason can give of
the material world’ (T App. 10). Note that the contradictions and absur-
dities in the material world are, for Hume, difficulties in realist accounts
of our belief in external objects. He does not think that there are any in
his own sceptical account of that belief. Hence, on analogy, one would
expect the contradictions and absurdities, which Hume sees in the intel-
lectual world and, in particular, with regard to personal identity, to refer
to realist claims about the self ’s identity—not to refer to claims made by
the sceptic. Yet, according to the various standard ways of interpreting
the Appendix discussion, Hume is there expressing dissatisfaction with
his own, earlier, sceptical account of personal identity and not with any
realist account. This, I submit, would make the comparison of the diffi-
culties encountered in his discussion of personal identity with those in his
discussion of the material world singularly inappropriate.
Now to more detailed matters. When, towards the end of the section
on personal identity, Hume turns to consider how belief in the identity
of the self is formed, he claims that ‘the true idea’ of the human mind is
not that of a substance of inhesion but of ‘a system of different percep-
tions or different existences, which are linked together by the relation of
cause and effect, and mutually produce, destroy, influence, and modify
each other’ (T 1.4.6.19). And, in the next paragraph, he adds:

As memory alone acquaints us with the continuance and extent of this suc-
cession of perceptions, ’tis to be considered, upon that account chiefly, as
the source of personal identity. Had we no memory, we never should have
any notion of causation, nor consequently of that chain of causes and
effects, which constitute our self or person. (T 1.4.6.20)

In both these passages, the implication appears to be that although the

original succession of perceptions has been falsely taken to inhere in a
substance, the successive perceptions themselves can truly be taken as
linked together, as forming a chain of causes and effects. But, given
 1 How Sceptical Is Hume’s Theory of Personal Identity? 15

Hume’s repeated declaration that the understanding never discovers any

real connection among objects, such an implication must be unjustified.
The most that Hume could be justified in asserting is that the true idea of
the human mind consists of different past perceptions that are felt to be
linked together by the relation of cause and effect, and which are felt
mutually to produce, destroy, influence, and modify each other: that is,
as a result of the union of their ideas (the memory-impressions) in the
imagination. Again, there can be no justification for suggesting that
memory acquaints us with that chain of causes and effects constituting
the self. The most that Hume could be justified in asserting is that the
action of memory makes it seem as if the succession of past perceptions
forms a chain or connection of causes and effects, i.e. by producing a feel-
ing of connection between the corresponding memory-impressions.
Given Hume’s former reasoning, memory cannot possibly assure us that
the perceptions constituting the original succession are linked together or
connected by cause and effect: it can only produce a feeling of connection
between the serial memory-impressions which we mistakenly take to be
indicative of a series of causal connections between the original percep-
tions themselves.
More notable still, sandwiched between these two passages, we are
offered an analogy that seems strongly to suggest that Hume wishes to
defend the view that the members of the original succession of percep-
tions really are tied or connected together by causation. He compares
what he calls ‘the true idea of the human mind’ to a republic or
commonwealth:

In this respect, I cannot compare the soul more properly to anything than
to a republic or commonwealth, in which the several members are united
by the reciprocal ties of government and subordination, and give rise to
other persons, who propagate the same republic in the incessant changes of
its parts. (T 1.4.6.19)

This analogy is intended again to stress the similarity between the

belief some of us form concerning the identity of the human mind and
the belief we all form concerning the identity of vegetables and animal
bodies—or, equally, republics and commonwealths—according to which
16 A. Ward

we ‘suppose’ (n.b.) that their various parts ‘bear to each other, the recipro-
cal relations of cause and effect in all their actions and operations’ (T
1.4.6.12). For Hume, we can no more really discover ‘reciprocal ties’
between the parts of a commonwealth or republic than we can discover
‘reciprocal relations of cause and effect’ between the parts of a vegetable
or animal body. Yet, it looks as if, by employing the analogy of a republic
or commonwealth, Hume is contending that the human mind does truly
form a whole: not, of course, because its serial perceptions inhere in a
common substance, but because they bear among themselves the recipro-
cal ties of cause and effect, and in a parallel way to how a republic or
commonwealth forms a whole because its changing members ‘are united
by the reciprocal ties of government and subordination’. However, by
employing the analogy of a republic or commonwealth, Hume cannot be
intending to imply that the human mind is genuinely united by means of
the reciprocal ties of cause and effect. His point, with regard to the earlier
analogy of plants and vegetables, on the one hand, and the later analogy
of a republic or commonwealth, on the other, must be that, on the avail-
able evidence, we are mistaken in supposing that the changing parts of
these phenomena are connected by any reciprocal ties of cause and effect.
Remember that, earlier, Hume had said that the identity we ascribe to
vegetables and animal bodies is a fiction; and if that ascription is a fiction,
so too must be the identity we ascribe to a republic or commonwealth
(since the ascription, in both cases, is made on the same ground). Far
from the analogy of a republic or commonwealth corroborating any gen-
uine connections, ties, or links between our serial perceptions, its inten-
tion, like the analogy with vegetables and animal bodies, is to point out
how such supposed connections are unjustifiably ascribed in other cases
too. But, owing to the smoothness with which their changing parts are
felt to pass through memory, we are beguiled into believing in the exis-
tence of reciprocal causal connections in the case of both these analogies
just as we are beguiled, by the ‘smooth and uninterrupted progress’ of the
succession of perceptions in the memory, into believing in the existence
of reciprocal causal connections between the succession of perceptions
themselves.
In sum, what I am suggesting is that in the section ‘Of personal iden-
tity’, Hume starts by attacking both a substance (or Cartesian) account
 1 How Sceptical Is Hume’s Theory of Personal Identity? 17

and a real connection account. But then, in the closing paragraphs, he

inadvertently gives the impression that he does, after all, accept a real
connection account. Most conspicuously, his description of ‘the true idea
of the human mind’, together with his comparison of the mind with a
republic or commonwealth, makes it look as if he thinks there really are
causal connections or ties between the members of the original succession
of perceptions themselves. Whereas Hume’s intended position through-
out is that the belief in the mind’s identity is a feeling only (not a well-­
grounded belief ), produced by the frequent placing of the succession of
perceptions in the memory and the consequent association of their ideas
in the imagination.7
Moreover, there is, in my view, no case for holding that Hume, in the
Appendix, is expressing dissatisfaction with his original psychological
explanation of our belief in personal identity. Indeed, if he did now think
that this psychological story is unsatisfactory—whether because it pre-
supposes the existence of a continuously existing mind or for some other
reason—it is difficult to see how he could, in the Appendix, plead the
privilege of a sceptic (which he does). The success of his sceptical enter-
prise depends on his ability to provide a psychological explanation that
both accounts for the generation of our belief and does not presuppose
the very type of entity or tie which Hume is calling into question. Given
he acknowledges that we all believe in our own identity, he needs to pro-
vide a convincing psychological explanation of how that belief arises.
Unless he can offer such an explanation—one that is compatible with
scepticism about personal identity—this obviously leaves open the pos-
sibility that this universally held belief does, after all, have a justified
ground, even if he himself has failed to spot it. But, in fact, rather than
making any attempt to replace his original psychological explanation, the
Appendix concentrates entirely on reiterating his rejection of the two
ways by which, as he sees it, a realist account of personal identity would
be justified. These ways he sums up in the following words: ‘Did our
perceptions either inhere in something simple and individual [the sub-
stance view] or did the mind perceive some real connection between
them [the real connection view], there would be no difficulty in the case’
(T App. 21). Obviously, neither realist account would allow Hume to
give a sceptical explanation of our belief in personal identity. Quite the
18 A. Ward

reverse: it would completely undermine his attempt to explain why we

believe in our own identity while simultaneously holding that the belief
is unjustified. Hence, the ‘difficulty’ alluded to in the quotation cannot
be any issue with his original psychological explanation.
On the other hand, if he is using the Appendix in order, first, to rectify
the earlier impression that he is defending a real connection account and,
second, to reinforce scepticism about personal identity, his pleading the
privilege of a sceptic is entirely comprehensible. Since, at the very end of
the section on personal identity, he had appeared to be accepting a real
connection account, he is now using the Appendix to highlight the absur-
dity of seeking to defend either of the two realist theories of personal
identity. A Cartesian theory cannot be justified, once Hume’s principle is
accepted that all our distinct perceptions are distinct existences (since this
rules out any requirement for a common substance of inhesion); and a
real connection theory cannot be justified unless it is possible to show
that the original succession of perceptions forms a whole by means of
connections between the perceptions. Yet, granted Hume’s further prin-
ciple that no connections among distinct existences are ever discoverable
by human understanding, this must be impossible for us to show. How
absurd, in fact self-contradictory, therefore, to think that one could justify
either realist account of the self, once his two principles are accepted.8
Scepticism alone emerges unscathed from these considerations. That is
the final message of the Appendix.
But if Hume thinks that anyone who accepts his two principles will
find it impossible to defend either of the realist accounts of personal iden-
tity, why should he add that he does not pronounce this difficulty ‘abso-
lutely insuperable’?

Others, perhaps, or myself, on more mature reflection, may discover some

hypothesis, that will reconcile those contradictions. (T App. 21)

Of course, it is possible, even granting his two principles, that some

other theory—different from either a Cartesian or a real connection
one—may be found that will succeed in genuinely uniting the serial per-
ceptions. So it would be too hasty to pronounce the possibility of a ratio-
nal defence of realism about personal identity to be absolutely out of the
 1 How Sceptical Is Hume’s Theory of Personal Identity? 19

question in the face of the difficulties Hume has uncovered. Still, I doubt
whether this consideration is foremost in his thought if it is present at all.
Rather, I take his closing comment to be, first and foremost, a piece of
Humean irony. To engage in more mature reflection requires a further act
of consciousness; and so, on Hume’s own theory, the person currently
reflecting cannot be the same person—or, at least, cannot be known to be
the same person—who will be giving the matter more mature consider-
ation. By his own theory, therefore, neither I myself nor anyone else,
presently existing, will be around—or, anyhow, can be known to be
around—to consider, whether with greater maturity or not, the problem
of personal identity.

Notes
1. Locke (1975, 2.27 [‘Of Identity and Diversity’], sections 4, 5, and 10).
This chapter was first published in the second edition (1794).
2. Strictly, what Hume here refers to as ‘impressions of the memory’ are
ideas; but owing (in general) to their greater force and liveliness than the
ideas of the imagination, he often terms them ‘impressions’ (see
T. 1.1.3, 1.3.5).
3. See (T 1.4.6.6, 22). Cf. ‘Of the ancient philosophy’ (T 1.4.4.2–4) where
a parallel account is offered of belief in material substance.
4. For a clear statement of this well-known objection, see Mackie (1976,
200–201).
5. See Strawson (2011, 2012).
6. Among those who have argued along these lines, see especially Stroud
(1977, 118–40) and Garrett (2011).
7. The general point at issue here is summed up in a very clear passage in his
later Enquiry concerning human understanding: ‘The first time a man saw
the communication of motion by impulse, as by the shock of two billiard
balls, he could not pronounce that the one event was connected: but only
that it was conjoined with the other. After he has observed several instances
of this nature, he then pronounces them to be connected. What alteration
has happened to give rise to this new idea of connexion? Nothing but that
he now feels these events to be connected in his imagination, and can read-
ily foretel the existence of the one from the appearance of the other’ (EHU
20 A. Ward

7.28). It is not, I suggest, of any relevance that, with the self, we are con-
cerned with the conjunction of perceptions (frequently recalled) rather
than the conjunction of material objects (frequently observed). In each
case, we believe we are acquainted with a causal connection between the
given data; whereas all that is discoverable is one event regularly following
another, together with the association of their ideas in the imagination.
That we talk of a cause having the power to produce an effect is no proof,
Hume adds, that ‘we are acquainted, in any instance, with the connecting
principle between cause and effect’ (EHU 7.29n17.2).
8. As a number of commentators have pointed out, Hume had previously
denied that there are any difficulties or contradictions in the theories con-
cerning the nature of the mind: see the opening paragraph of ‘Of the
immateriality of the soul’ (T 1.4.5).

Bibliography
Garrett, D. (2011) ‘Rethinking Hume’s Second Thoughts about Personal
Identity’ in The Possibility of Philosophical Understanding: Essays for Barry
Stroud, ed. J. Bridges, N. Kolodny, and W.-H. Wong. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 15–40.
Mackie, J. L. (1976) Problems from Locke. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Strawson, G. (2011) The Evident Connexion: Hume on Personal Identity. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Strawson, G. (2012) ‘“All My Hopes Vanish”: Hume on the Mind’ in The
Continuum Companion to Hume, ed. A. Bailey and D. J. O’Brien. London:
Continuum, 181–98.
Stroud, B. (1977) Hume. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
 2
Hume’s Bundle
Donald C. Ainslie

In the personal identity section of A Treatise of Human Nature (T 1.4.6),

Hume famously rejects the view that we are self-conscious subjects of
thought. Instead he finds ‘nothing but a bundle or collection of different
perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity,
and are in a perpetual flux and movement’ (T 1.4.6.4)—the so-called
‘bundle theory’. His discussion has spawned an enormous amount of
secondary literature mostly because a little less than two years after it first
appeared—in the Appendix published alongside Book 3 of the Treatise—
he admits that his treatment of personal identity contains his single ‘very
considerable mistake in the reasonings deliver’d’ in Books 1 and 2 (T
App. 1). And yet, when he goes on to explain the ‘contradiction’ that he
finds in his original presentation, he points to two principles that are
neither contradictory nor restricted to the discussion of T 1.4.6 (T App.
21). To put it mildly, there is no scholarly consensus on what Hume takes
to be his mistake.

D. C. Ainslie (*)
University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
e-mail: [email protected]
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 21
D. O’Brien (ed.), Hume on the Self and Personal Identity, Philosophers in Depth,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04275-1_2
22 D. C. Ainslie

My concern in this paper, however, is not with the details of Hume’s

second thoughts about personal identity, but rather with the original pre-
sentation. An understanding of it, I suggest, requires the resolution of a
series of challenging issues in interpreting Hume’s philosophy: his scepti-
cism, his account of the mind, his theory of perceptions, and his view on
the mind-body problem. In the discussion below, I argue that each per-
son’s mind is an isolated ‘universe of thought’ (T 1.4.5.21)—a bundle of
perceptions—lacking intrinsic unity, though with relations between its
elements that generate associations of ideas of the perceptions so that we
believe the mind to be unified. But he is not interested in how the percep-
tions come together into this bundle; he treats the phenomenon as a
brute fact.

1 Metaphysics or (Just) Epistemology?

Not everyone takes Hume to identify the mind with the bundle of related
perceptions; some interpreters take him rather to be primarily interested
in what our idea of the mind is. Udo Thiel (2011, 2016) defends one ver-
sion of this view and argues that Hume’s philosophical project is restricted
to the exploration of such questions as how we come to think of the mind
as unified (at a time and across time); he sees Hume as agnostic on meta-
physical issues. Others, so-called ‘New Humeans’1 such as Edward Craig
(1996) and Galen Strawson (2011), take Hume to be a sceptical realist
who is positively committed to a mind that is more than a bundle; even if
we do not have an idea of such a bundle-transcendent mind, we have a
‘notion’ or ‘supposition’ of it.
There is certainly some textual evidence in favour of these anti-­
metaphysical interpretations. Both Thiel and (especially) Strawson take
inspiration from Hume’s comment in the ‘Introduction’ to the Treatise
that ‘the essence of the mind [is] equally unknown to us with that of
external bodies’ (T Intro. 8).2 We must instead restrict our claims to what
our perceptions reveal to us about the internal and external worlds. In the
case of personal identity, Hume applies this strategy by rejecting the view
of ‘some philosophers’ who hold that ‘we are every moment intimately
conscious’ of the simplicity of the self at a time and its identity through
 2 Hume’s Bundle 23

time (T 1.4.6.1).3 Hume rejects this view in part because of what he finds
when he introspects:

For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always
stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or
shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time
without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the percep-
tion…. If any one upon serious and unprejudic’d reflection, thinks he has
a different notion of himself, I must confess I can reason no longer with
him. (T 1.4.6.3; italics added on ‘notion’)

These interpreters also point to Hume’s identification of the ‘true idea of

the human mind’ as a ‘system of different perceptions or different exis-
tences, which are link’d together by the relation of cause and effect, and
mutually produce, destroy, influence, and modify each other’ (T 1.4.6.19;
italics added). In the ‘Abstract’ to the Treatise (published shortly before
Book 3 appeared, with its accompanying Appendix), Hume says:

the soul, as far as we can conceive it, is nothing but a system or train of dif-
ferent perceptions, those of heat and cold, love and anger, thoughts and
sensations…. As our idea of any body, a peach, for instance, is only that of
a particular taste, colour, figure, size, consistence, &c. So our idea of any
mind is only that of particular perceptions, without the notion of any thing
we call substance, either simple or compound. (T Abs. 28; italics added)

In the Appendix itself, he says: ‘we have no notion of [the mind], distinct
from the particular perceptions’ (T App. 19). Thus Thiel, Strawson, and
similarly minded interpreters are not wrong to find a semantic or episte-
mological strand in Hume’s discussion of the mind, where his focus is
what we can know of the mind or how we can think of it.
That said, Hume also makes many more metaphysically sounding
assertions, sometimes in these very same passages:

[W]hat we call a mind, is nothing but a heap or collection of different

perceptions, united together by certain relations…. Now as every percep-
tion is distinguishable from another, and may be consider’d as separately
existent; it evidently follows, that there is no absurdity in separating any
24 D. C. Ainslie

particular perception from the mind; that is, in breaking off all its relations,
with that connected mass of perceptions, which constitute a thinking
being. (T 1.4.2.39)

[Our minds] are nothing but a bundle or collection of different percep-

tions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in
a perpetual flux and movement. (T 1.4.6.4)

They are the successive perceptions only, that constitute the mind.
(T 1.4.6.4)

[I]t must be our several particular perceptions, that compose the mind. I
say, compose the mind, not belong to it. (T Abs. 28)

’Tis the composition of [perceptions]…which forms the self. (T App. 15)

The annihilation, which some people suppose to follow upon death, and
which entirely destroys this self, is nothing but an extinction of all particu-
lar perceptions; love and hatred, pain and pleasure, thought and sensation.
These therefore must be the same with self; since the one cannot survive the
other. (T App. 17)

In these passages, Hume seems to identify the mind with the bundle of
perceptions, or at least with the bundle of related perceptions (see Sect.
2, below).
Resolving Hume’s ambivalence about how semantic claims relate to
metaphysical ones requires an interpretation of his scepticism, perhaps
the most vexed problem in Hume scholarship. It is notable, however, that
in Part 2 of Book 1 of the Treatise, he starts by discussing the divisibility
of our perceptions of space and time, but then moves quickly to a discus-
sion of the divisibility of space and time themselves. The ‘adequacy’ of
some of our ideas enables precisely this inference (T 1.2.2.1).4 When it
comes to claims about the mind and its perceptions, Hume is similarly
open to a transition from a claim about our ideas of perceptions to claims
about perceptions themselves. For example, his so-called copy principle—
that (almost) all ideas must ultimately acquire their content from prior
simple impressions (T 1.1.1.7)—is not hedged by the suggestion that
 2 Hume’s Bundle 25

this is merely a claim about our idea of ideas and ideas of impressions.
Rather, throughout the Treatise, he reaches conclusions about the mind
and its operation on the basis of introspective reflection. Indeed, Thiel’s
and Strawson’s interpretations require that Hume be able to successfully
identify our ideas of various kinds of entities.
What of Hume’s claim that ‘the essence of the mind [is] equally
unknown to us with that of external bodies’ (T Intro. 8)? One problem is
that, later in the Treatise, Hume rejects ‘antient’ metaphysical terms such
as ‘substance’, ‘accident’, ‘faculty’, and ‘occult quality’ for being merely
linguistic inventions that mask confusions (T 1.4.3.1, 10); in the
‘Abstract’ he adds ‘essence’ to this list (T Abs. 7). And, as Kenneth Winkler
points out (1991, 547–48), when Hume does seem to be using ‘essence’
in his own voice, he can be read simply as indicating an openness to regu-
larities in objects beyond those we have yet experienced.
I think that a useful lens for understanding Hume’s views on how per-
ceptions of objects relate to the objects themselves is found in the final
portions of his discussion of space and time, when he considers an objec-
tion that, in his account of the vacuum, he has explained ‘only the man-
ner in which objects affect the senses, without endeavouring to account
for their real nature and operations’ (T 1.2.5.25). His response is to ‘plead
guilty’ and to ‘confess that my intention never was to penetrate into the
nature of bodies, or explain the secret causes of their operations’ (T
1.2.5.26). In the Appendix, he indicates that a footnote is to be appended
to this paragraph:

If we carry our enquiry beyond the appearances of objects to the senses, I

am afraid, that most of our conclusions will be full of scepticism and
uncertainty…. Nothing is more suitable to…philosophy, than a modest
scepticism to a certain degree, and a fair confession of ignorance in sub-
jects, that exceed all human capacity. (T 1.2.5.26n12)

Nonetheless, he is willing to side with the ‘Newtonian’ philosophy in

allowing for the existence of a vacuum (when understood properly) (T
1.2.5.26n12).
In the following section, ‘Of the idea of existence, and of external exis-
tence’ (T 1.2.6), Hume clarifies that there are two different ways we can
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