The Evident Connexion Hume on Personal Identity

by Strawson, Galen

• ISBN13: 9780199608508
• ISBN10: 0199608504
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-07-01
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The Evident Connexionpresents a new reading of Hume's 'bundle theory' of the self or mind, and his later rejection of it. Galen Strawson argues that the bundle theory does not claim that there are no subjects of experience, as many have supposed, or that the mind is just a series of experiences. Hume holds only that the 'essence of the mind [is] unknown'. His claim is simply that we have noempirically respectablereason to believe in the existence of apersisting subject, or a mind that is more than a series of experiences (each with its own subject). Why does Hume later reject the bundle theory? Many think he became dissatisfied with his account of how we come to believe in a persisting self, but Strawson suggests that the problem is more serious. The keystone of Hume's philosophy is that our experiences are governed by a 'uniting principle' or 'bond of union'. But a philosophy that takes a bundle of ontologically distinct experiences to be the only legitimate conception of the mind cannot make explanatory use of those notions in the way Hume does. As Hume says in the Appendix to theTreatise of Human Nature: having 'loosen'd all our particular perceptions' in the bundle theory, he is unable to 'explain the principle of connexion, which binds them together'. This lucid book is the first to be wholly dedicated to Hume's theory of personal identity, and presents a bold new interpretation which bears directly on current debates among scholars of Hume's philosophy.

Author Biography

Galen Strawson is Professor of Philosophy at Reading University. Prior to that he was Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at Jesus College, Oxford (1987-2000). From 2004 to 2007 he was also Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at CUNY Graduate Center in New York. He has held visiting positions at the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University (1993), New York University (1997), Rutgers University (2000), and MIT (2010). Strawson received his degrees from the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford, and studied at the Ecole normale superieure and the Sorbonne in Paris (1977-1998).

Table of Contents

Preface	p. vii
Acknowledgements	p. ix
Epistemology, Semantics, and Ontology
The necessity of metaphysics	p. 1
The [E]-[S]-[O] move	p. 13
The [E]-[S]-[O] move and physical objects	p. 16
Hume's definitions of cause	p. 21
Hume's Philo	p. 27
Hume and Wittgenstein	p. 30
Mind, Self, and Person
Introduction	p. 33
'Perception', 'experience'	p. 37
'An experience is impossible without an experiencer'	p. 40
Epistemology, semantics, ontology, and the self	p. 46
Where is Hume?	p. 53
Mental geography; the science of man	p. 55
Mind and cause: a comparison	p. 61
Three theses	p. 63
Berkeley's bundle	p. 66
The Simple Fiction view	p. 68
The Vegetable Fiction view	p. 68
The Outright Bundle view	p. 71
Where is Hume?	p. 73
'When I enter most intimately into what I call myself' 1	p. 74
'When I enter most intimately into what I call myself' 2	p. 84
Awareness of awareness; self-awareness	p. 88
Is Hume right about intimate entrance?	p. 94
Hume and James	p. 95
The brain	p. 97
Hume's Appendix
What is Hume's problem?	p. 101
Real continuity	p. 108
Sources of confusion	p. 112
The I-Principles	p. 114
Bundles are just bundles	p. 118
Garrett's objection	p. 121
Placeless perceptions	p. 122
Unity and connection, real and Imaginary	p. 129
Interim summary	p. 132
The Problem of Detail	p. 135
Type-token trouble	p. 138
Variation 1: the Identity Feeling	p. 142
Variation 2: the One and the Many	p. 144
'Explain'?	p. 147
Reprise	p. 152
Was Hume unclear?	p. 154
References	p. 157
Index	p. 163
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