The Grounds of Personal Identity in Hume

Abstract

In his theory about personal identity, Hume says that we are nothing but a bundle of perceptions. What does that mean? As a first step to answer this question, I propose an analysis of the section Of the immateriality of the soul (Treatise of Human Nature, 1.4.5), where the concepts of representation and causality play a crucial role in Hume’s rejection of the soul as a metaphysical notion. The paper defends a realist interpretation of causality, attributing to Hume the thesis of the necessary connection between thought and matter. As an auxiliary tool of this analysis, I compare Reid’s and Hume’s views about the nature of the mind, representation and causality: while to Reid thought is only arbitrarily conjugated to physical processes, to Hume thought, or perception, is a fundamentally physical phenomenon. The mind is, therefore, a bundle of causally united physical events.