A Mind or Thinking Person

Abstract

AbstractThe idea of self and personal identity defines an internal world, complementing the external one. This idea is not representational. The self is not an impression or object. Internal reflection represents our minds only as a flux of perceptions. The imagination produces the idea of self and personal identity by forming the idea of the identity of the successive internal perceptions, related by resemblance or by causation; and then that of a self that persists across their succession. The process is marked by the problematic idea of identity and the corresponding principles of the imagination, but Hume seems to endorse its conclusions. Surprisingly, Hume later in the text recants his theory, without clarifying in what respects it is defective. I suggest that the problem could be a dim recognition of his failure to provide a first-personal idea of self and thus to enable an intimate consciousness of ourselves.