The Problem of Believing in Yourself

Butler, Annemarie; Ainslie, Donald C.

doi:10.1017/cco9781139016100.009

The Cambridge Companion to Hume's &Lt;I>Treatise</I> 2015

DOI: 10.1017/cco9781139016100.009

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The Problem of Believing in Yourself

Annemarie Butler¹,

Donald C. Ainslie²

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Cited by 4 publications

References 153 publications

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Fiction And Content in Hume’s Labyrinth

Ehli

2022

The Philosophical Quarterly

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In the ‘Appendix’ to the Treatise, Hume claims that he has discovered a ‘very considerable’ mistake in his earlier discussion of the self. Hume's expression of the problem is notoriously opaque, leading to a vast scholarly debate as to exactly what problem he identified in his earlier account of the self. I propose a new solution to this interpretive puzzle. I argue that a tension generated by Hume's conceptual scepticism about real ‘principles of union’ and his account of fictions of the imagination is the defect identified in the ‘Appendix’.

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Fiction And Content in Hume’s Labyrinth

Ehli

2022

The Philosophical Quarterly

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Minds, Composition, and Hume's Skepticism in the Appendix

Cottrell

2015

The Philosophical Review

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This essay gives a new interpretation of Hume's second thoughts about minds in the Appendix, based on a new interpretation of his view of composition. In Book 1 of the Treatise, Hume argued that, as far as we can conceive it, a mind is a whole composed by all its perceptions. But—this essay argues—he also held that several perceptions form a whole only if the mind to which they belong supplies a “connexion” among them. In order to do so, it must contain a further perception or perceptions. But when the perceptions in question are all of those belonging to a given mind—as in the section “Of personal identity” and the Appendix—there cannot be a further perception in that mind, and so those perceptions do not form a whole. Hence, Hume's views were inconsistent. This essay argues that, unlike most others, this interpretation explains his retreat to skepticism in the Appendix.

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Hume on Self and Sympathy

Galvão

2023

J Scottish Philosophy

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The paper seeks to contribute to the discussion of Hume's theory of personal identity, by examining a conflict regarding the vivacity of the self in his writings about sympathy. Although the mechanism of sympathy supposes that self is the liveliest perception of thought, when we consider sympathy through the perspective of the ‘desire of company’, we find that self lacks vivacity and, without alterity, it would be in reality nothing. Our objective is to present the conflict and show that, far from being a contradiction in Hume's thinking, it is consistent with how the philosopher conceives personal identity as a product of imagination, that is, a perception that, like any other, exists within the flow of perceptions.

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The Problem of Believing in Yourself

Cited by 4 publications

References 153 publications

Fiction And Content in Hume’s Labyrinth

Fiction And Content in Hume’s Labyrinth

Minds, Composition, and Hume's Skepticism in the Appendix

Hume on Self and Sympathy

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