I offer the following tips in the hope they may be of assistance in addressing the discussion questions raised in my previous post:
Hume's epistemology (his theory of knowledge) is based on his definitions of impressions and ideas, which he has given earlier in A Treatise of Human Nature, of which "Of Personal Identity" is one short chapter.
Impressions: "Those perceptions which enter with most force and violence we may name impressions; and under this name I comprehend all our sensations, passions, and emotions, as they make their first appearance in the soul."
Ideas: "By ideas I mean the faint images of these [impressions] in thinking and reasoning; such as, for instance, are all the perceptions excited by the present discourse, excepting only those which arise from the sight and touch, and excepting the immediate pleasure or uneasiness it may occasion."
In "Of Personal Identity," Hume talks about objects. These are the impressions and ideas that constitute our mental activity. The key question to ask in reading the piece is, How are these objects, to employ a more modern term, processed? Does the "process" afford a true sense of personal identity to the individual? Or do the many changes in our perceptions through time, and our difficulty in summarizing past perceptions at any given time, undermine the sense of personal identity? Think of Heraclitus's river: Is it the same or constantly changing?
Hume asks, Can our mind change and still be the same?
No comments:
Post a Comment