Hume on the Self

Hume on the self

Zack Slankard

Hume’s best argument against Berkeley’s idea that the self is simple and as such holds a perfect identity with its connections is in his copy principle. Hume, who believes all knowledge is derived from sense experience, says the self cannot in its simplicity lack parts because people’s concepts are molded and formed through their sense experiences. These experiences impress upon the mind a certain concept. When one attempts to extract that impression, the mind makes a less clear version of it and forms an idea or concept of that impression. This argument supports the idea that the self is complex because it will have been made up of infinite experiences and concepts, which define it. To Hume the self is something that is collected and bundled through things and concepts we perceive and not something, as Berkeley would argue, that we are always certain of itself. Hume argues against the idea that an impression gives one the idea of self by saying that, using the copy principle’s idea that the mind must use concepts from impressions, no impression is constant and always there. Therefore the sense experiences cannot make up the idea of the self.

Berkeley offers a different view than Hume and believes that the self is simple and always conscious of the self solely because of its simplicity and presence. Berkeley believes that we do not have ideas of minds because they are active and so we are aware of ourselves because the sensations that occur from our minds are separate from the concept of myself. Berkeley claimed that self was a reflex act and those feelings of oneself are nothing more than the active mind knowing itself. Berkeley states that while it is not possible for color to exist without extension, the mind differentiates between the idea of cooler and the notion of its own existence. This difference is key to what Berkeley tries to argue is the fundamental nature of the mind to be immaterial and therefore something...