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Somehow we think of ourselves as having a history. I think of myself as having been born, having grown up, being here now and heading for the Big Crash at some time in the future.
Is this way of thinking defensible?
It seems to be very important to us. Partly this is because I think what I do now will affect me in the future. Partly it is because I and others hold me responsible to some extent anyway for I did in the past.
Is a different assumption possible, namely that I don't have a history? I am here now, but just for now. Is that thinkable?
The question arises: what is it that makes me the same person as I was in the past and will be in the at least immediate future?
Suppose you make the assumption that a human being is a (complicated) bit of 'matter', like a pebble, let us say, only more complicated. Would that give us an answer?
Let's look at this. Physical things too have a history and a future. They 'endure'.
If we are just talking about physical things like pebbles, what is it that makes this the same pebble as it was - the same pebble as it will be?
If there wasn't such a thing as time, nothing would be the same thing as another. You could have two things that were exactly alike maybe, but they would be two things not one.
So identity is something that comes with time.
Can you conceive of there being time but not identity? A whole new shooting match coming into existence and passing out of it at every moment?
This is the only sort of change that would be possible I guess - this wholesale pulsing of the totality of existence... A thing couldn't change any of its properties, because for that to happen the thing would have to be the same thing in at least two moments - in the first to have the property before the change, in the second to have the changed property.
So you can't have that kind of change unless you have identity... You can't have everything in flux! - unless you mean the pulsing of the whole shooting match. (Which isn't anything actually in flux - there is nothing staying the same from pulse to pulse.)
If we look, as we always ought, for help from Hume, his idea is this:
He takes it to begin with that our experience is like a motion picture. Just as the movie consists of a succession of still images, so our experience consists of a sequence of mental 'perceptions'.
So a key feature of perceptions as Hume thinks of them, and one that makes any Humean account of objectivity and objective endurance highly involved is their fleeting character. They exist in the mind, as Hume thinks of them, momentarily. They arrive and are gone all but immediately: they are not themselves extended in time. Experience, Hume thinks it is clear, takes place in the present, and the present doesn't last.
So even when we look out to sea, we are not getting one perception that lasts as long as we keep our gaze absolutely steady but a multiplicity of perceptions, all of them alike, but appearing and disappearing in rapid succession. It is out of perceptions thought of in this way that our belief in an objective world, furnished with objects that continue in existence over periods of time, must, if Hume is right, be conjured by our minds.
The first stage of the conjuring that is taking place, Hume thinks, is that when there are a number of perceptions which are exactly like each other, as there would be if I gaze unblinking at the ocean, the mind mistakes the multiplicity for just the one.
The mind he thinks is misled by the resemblance between all the different perceptions into thinking that there is in fact just the one perception.
So as we look out to the ocean though we actually experience a succession of numerically different perceptions we think we are experencing just the one perception which is extended in time.
What we have so far then is the claim that the mind can mistakenly think there is one perception when in fact there are several in succession.
Now Hume's explanation of how we come to believe in things that are independent and enduring.
Think of what I might report as 'seeing the ocean' as I gaze out from the clifftop. Imagine that I 'see the ocean', then turn away (eg to the cornfield stretching out to my left), and then turn back to gaze at the ocean again. So I experience at least three perceptions: the perception of the ocean, then the perception of the cornfield (as it may be), and then, as I turn back, the perception of the ocean again. The two perceptions of the ocean, says Hume, are exactly like each other: they are not numerically the same perception, but they are entirely similar perceptions.
Hume then calls into play the thesis I have already put on the table - the thesis that in general the mind has a tendency to mistake two closely resembling perceptions for just the one.
Gazing out to sea we have what appears to us to be a perception of the ocean. Turning away and then back to it, we appear to have another.
These two perceptions (as we take them to be) are separated from one another. But because they are exactly like each other, we mistake them for a single continuing perception.
At the same time, however, we know, because of the interruption, that the two perceptions of the ocean are actually not one and the same, but rather two perceptions which resemble each other.
The result is that we are inclined to believe two things which contradict each other - that the two perceptions are one, and that they are two.
Hume says that what the mind does in such a situation is to seek to resolve the conflict.
It does this by camouflaging the fact that the two sequences of perceptions are separated by an interruption. The camouflage is provided by the belief that the perceptions which are interrupted actually continue to exist during the interruption. The mind generates this belief for us. The resolution is thus that there is one continuing perception: only some of the time it is not being 'perceived'...
Voilà!
We thus acquire two beliefs: (a) that some of our perceptions endure and (b) some of our perceptions are independent of us.
This appears to me to be the gist of Hume's explanation of how and in what circumstances we come to believe in enduring distinct objects.
So if we stick to physical things, Hume has had a go at explaining what it is that makes us believe that the object we see now is 'the same' as the one we saw yesterday. It isn't, but we are tricked by our minds into thinking that it is.
But we are primarily interested in what it is that makes us believe that I am the same person as I was. Can Hume stretch his account to cover this case as well?
He starts off with his famous insistence that when he looks into his own mind he finds only perceptions.
That's all the mind is, he concludes - a set of perceptions.
But for Modern thinkers of course we are our minds. So what he is proposing is the 'bundle theory' of the 'self'. The self is a bundle of perceptions.
This way of characterising Hume's theory is a powerfully misleading one however: because the point about the results of his introspection is that there appeared to be nothing holding the 'bundle' together: and in the end he simply had to report that he couldn't find any plausible explanation for what held a set of perceptions together and made them one thing - a single mind.
What is it that holds our perceptions of a physical object together? Hume said it was our mind generating a false belief.
Can't he say a parallel thing here? No! Because it is the very unity of the unifier that is now in question. How might the mind trick us into the belief that it was one thing when in fact it was a multiplicity?
Let's not exaggerate the problem. It is simply this: how might the belief be generated that there was one thing instead of the reality that there were a great number of things?
Have a go.
Hume certainly didn't think he had encountered a problem which showed his whole approach was misconceived. He just couldn't come up with an explanation and hoped others would.
Hume's problem in accounting for our belief that a mind is one thing rather than just a collection of things is this: the perceptions which appear to make up your mind when you introspect are not similar to each other.
If they were, Hume could invoke the principle he invokes in the case of physical objects: he could say, the mind mistakes a plethora of perceptions for just one because they are all similar - like the successive perceptions which we mistakenly think are just one perception of the ocean as we gaze at it.
This is the significance of his insistence that when we look inside ourselves we don't find anything which appears the same even though perceptions and whole sequences of perceptions come and go - nothing that appears to be persisting all the time. If we did look inside our mind and find there a perception that looked as though it were a permanent feature it wouldn't be an enduring perception of course - according to Hume. It would be a series of simliar perceptions which the mind mistook for a single enduring perception because they were all similar. But if the mind were misled in this way, that would be the explanation of why we thought our mind was one thing and not just a set a set of things (perceptions).
In accepting that there is no such a persistent stream of similar perceptions to be found as one looks into one's own mind, Hume is ruling out the explanation he had given for our belief in enduring physical objects. We are led to believe such and such an object endures when our mind mistakes similar perceptions for one and the same perception enduring over time. Without a stream of similar perceptions appearing in our minds, there can be no such mistake.
Could there be another? Could we think of another mechanism which would yield the same result?
Hume himself was stumped.
He couldn't think of an alternative mechanism and invited his readers to find one if they could.
This is something I suggest we take up.
Best idea for a mechanism which fits in as closely as possible with the other mechanisms Hume thinks are at work in the mind wins a bottle of bubbly for Christmas.
We are looking for a possible mechanism which would, in the context of Hume's general picture of mental mechanisms, generate the belief that the mind (or 'self') is one thing rather than a set of things.
Assumptions:
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