Hume's Labyrinth Concerning the Idea of Personal Identity

Hume Studies Volume XXIV, Number 2, November 1998, pp. 203-233 Hume's Labyrinth Concerning the Idea of Personal Identity DONALD L. M. BAXTER I. Introduction. In A Treatise of Human Nature Hume argues that the self is really many related perceptions, which we represent to ourselves as being one and the same thing. In a perplexing Appendix he repudiates this account. Scholars have found various reasons for repudiation, but none that are certiflably Hume's. I propose that his reason is an inconsistency between his skeptical arguments that the self is really many perceptions and his naturalist explanation of how we come falsely to attribute identity and simplicity to these many perceptions—how we come to have an idea of a simple, identical self. The inconsistency threatens the delicate alliance between Hume as skeptic and Hume as mental naturalist. As I read the Appendix, the main points are these: the self is many distinct perceptions. We think of these distinct perceptions as one and the same thing. Hume had hoped this thought could be explained by the fact that we merely feel a connection between the perceptions when reflecting on them. But he discovers that this won't work and he can think of only two possible explanations that will: either the perceptions have a real connection that can be copied in the ideas reflecting them, or only the reflecting ideas themselves have a real connection. But this real connection is identity. So either our many perceptions are identical as are the ideas reflecting them, or only the many ideas reflecting them are identical. Either option is inconsistent. Donald L. M. Baxter is at the Department of Philosophy, University of Connecticut, Storrs CT 06269-2054 USA. email: baxter@uconnvm.uconn.edu 204 Donald L. M. Baxter The source of this inconsistency is left implicit. I suggest that the source is an often-implicit part of Hume's theory of representation. Concerning perceptions and their objects he holds that, roughly, representation requires resemblance. It will turn out that only a many can represent a many and only a one can represent something as one. So for the many distinct perceptions to be represented as one and the same, the many distinct ideas that reflect them must be one and the same. But the distinct cannot be identical, so Hume cannot both posit a self that is many and an idea of the self as one. Even worse, his account of such an idea turns out to be an affirmation of the unitariness of the self. The idea itself would be the self. So Hume the skeptic says the self is many and Hume the naturalist says it isn't. I have said that in the Appendix Hume finds himself committed to the following: the ideas reflecting some successive past perceptions have to be connected into a simple identical self in order to represent the past perceptions as connected into a simple identical self. Whether this is really what Hume thought, I don't know. That it is the only possible good reading, I don't pretend. But of the extant interpretations mine is the one most faithful to the text of Hume's Appendix and the one most careful to explain why Hume used the words he did, or so I will argue.1 The main trouble with most other interpretations is that they focus on the question "What is the problem Hume found in his bundle theory of the self?" The various answers, though illuminating, stray from the specific concern of the Appendix, which is better revealed by asking "What is the problem Hume found in his bundle theory of the idea of the self?"2 The focus on the former question is understandable. At Treatise 635,3 when announcing the problem, Hume draws attention to the "principle of connexion" that binds the "loosen'd" perceptions together. It is natural to think the locus of concern is how some relation between the perceptions, or their relation to something else, bundles the perceptions into a self. This is reinforced by the emphasis in I iv 6, "Of personal identity." There he explains how, when reflecting upon the perceptions, their relations...