Hume on the Self and Personal Identity

✍ Scribed by Dan O'Brien

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2022
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 334
• Series: Philosophers in Depth
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book brings together a team of international scholars to attempt to understand David Hume’s conception of the self. The standard interpretation is that he holds a no-self view: we are just bundles of conscious experiences, thoughts and emotions. There is nothing deeper to us, no core, no essence, no soul. In the Appendix to A Treatise of Human Nature, though, Hume admits to being dissatisfied with such an account and Part One of this book explores why this might be so. Part Two turns to Books 2 and 3 of the Treatise, where Hume moves away from the ‘fiction’ of a simple self, to the complex idea we have of our flesh and blood selves, those with emotional lives, practical goals, and social relations with others. In Part Three connections are traced between Hume and Madhyamaka Buddhism, Husserl and the phenomenological tradition, and contemporary cognitive science.

✦ Table of Contents

Reference Conventions for Hume’s Works
Acknowledgements
Contents
Notes on Contributors
Introduction
Part I: The Self in Book 1 of the Treatise
1: How Sceptical Is Hume’s Theory of Personal Identity?
I
II
III
IV
V
Bibliography
2: Hume’s Bundle
1 Metaphysics or (Just) Epistemology?
2 Ontology or (and) Psychology?
3 Mind and (or) World?
4 Mind and (in) Body?
Bibliography
3: What I Call Myself
1 Introduction
2 The Experience/Experiencer Thesis
3 The ‘Bundle Theory of Mind’
4 ‘When I Enter Most Intimately into What I Call Myself’
5 A Troublesome Ambiguity
6 What is Given in Experience
7 Subject or Subjectivity?
8 Metaphysics and Phenomenology
9 Thetic and Non-Thetic
10 Russell and Foster
11 Is Hume Right About Intimate Entrance?
Appendix
Bibliography
4: Hume and Kames on the Self and Personal Identity
1 Hume and Kames as Philosophical Companions
2 Kames on the Self and on Personal Identity
3 Hume on the Self and Personal Identity
4 Conclusions
Bibliography
Part II: The Self in Books 2 and 3 of the Treatise
5: Character Development in Shaftesbury’s and Hume’s Approaches to Self
1 Hume’s and Shaftesbury’s Philosophical Projects
2 Hume’s References to Shaftesbury
3 Shaftesbury’s Approach to Selfhood
4 Hume’s Approach to Self and the Metaphysics of Personal Identity
5 On the Possibility of Changes of Character in Hume’s Philosophy
Bibliography
6: Sympathy, Self and Others
1 Sympathy
2 Self, Sympathy and Others
3 The Sympathetic Spiral of Self-Creation
Bibliography
7: ‘Scottish Sympathy’: Hume, Smith, and Psychoanalysis
1 Introduction
2 Sympathy
3 Countertransference14
4 Projection
5 Self-Deception
6 Postscript
Bibliography
8: What Is Humean Autonomy?
1 Sympathetic Entanglement and Reflection
2 From Self-Determinacy to Autonomy
3 Self-Conception Versus Self-Manifestation
Bibliography
9: A Fragmented Unity: A Narrative Answer to the Problem of the Unity of the Self in Hume
1 From Mind to Agency
2 Degrees of Narrative Unity: Alasdair MacIntyre and Galen Strawson
Bibliography
Part III: Hume’s Self and Other Philosophical Traditions
10: Candrakīrti and Hume on the Self and the Person
1 Selves and Persons
2 Skepticism and Realism: The Ontological and Normative Force of Custom
3 The Milindapañha and Candrakīrti on the Self and Person
4 Hume on the Self and the Person
5 Homologies, Differences, and What We Learn
Bibliography
11: Husserl (and Brentano) on Hume’s Notion of the Self
1 Introduction
2 Hume and Brentano’s Early Concept of the Unity of Consciousness
3 Hume’s Self and Husserl’s Early Concept of Consciousness
4 Lipps’s and Pfänder’s Critique of the Bundle Theory and Husserl’s Change of Heart
Bibliography
12: Disguising Change: Hume and Cognitive Science on the Continued Existence of Selves
1 Persistent Persons: A Cognitive Science Perspective
2 Persistent Selves: Cross-Cultural Diversity
3 Narrative Selves and Useful Fictions
4 Conclusion: Natural Belief in Selves
Bibliography
Bibliography
Index