David Hume...

 

Nonduality Nuggets…(Miranda Warren)

Philosopher David Hume

"David Hume pointed out that we do not have an impression of the self. No matter how closely I attend to my own experience, no matter how fully I notice the mental operations presently occurring "in my mind," I am never directly aware of "I." What I do experience is a succession of separate and individual ideas, associated with each other by relations of resemblance and causality. Although these relations may be extended through time by memory, there is no evidence of any substantial ground for their coherence. The persistent self and the immortal soul are philosophical fictions.

To suppose otherwise, Hume held, is to commit a category mistake: the self is just a bundle of perceptions, like the railroad cars in a train; to look for a self beyond the ideas would be like looking for a train beyond the cars. Our idea of a persistent self is simply a result of the human habit of attributing continued existence to any collection of associated parts. Like our idea of the necessary connection of cause with effect, belief in our own reality as substantial selves is natural, but unjustifiable.

Hume supposed, our belief in the reality of an external world is entirely non-rational. It cannot be supported either as a relation of ideas or even as a matter of fact. Although it is utterly unjustifiable, however, belief in the external world is natural and unavoidable. We are in the habit of supposing that our ideas have external referents, even though we can have no real evidence for doing so."

----From the Britannica Encyclopedia online philosophy pages