Hume’s philosophy of the self – A.E. Pitson
Pages: 196 + xii
Pitson’s
book is built around two connected ideas. One idea is that Hume’s account of
personal identity falls directly out of Hume’s more general ‘atomistic’
approach to epistemology and philosophy of mind. The other idea is that it’s a
mistake to take Hume’s account of personal identity to be complete by the end
of Book One of the Treatise. Pitson’s view on this—compare
So it would be
ironic if Pitson’s readers were tempted by force of
habit to read only the first half of his book, the part that deals with Treatise Book One. And not only ironic,
but regrettable; for the second half of Pitson’s book
makes a strong case for his main thesis.
Central to Pitson’s argument is a distinction made by Hume at Treatise 1.4.6, between “personal
identity, as it regards our thought or imagination, and as it regards our
passion or the concern we take in ourselves.” On Pitson’s
reading, this passage distinguishes what he calls the agency and the mental
aspects of the self; and Hume is traduced if we take his account of the mental
aspect to be his whole story about the self. There is surely something right
about this; the agency aspect, consideration of which perhaps more naturally leads
our thoughts in a ‘forensic’ direction, has indeed too often been ignored by
previous writers on the subject (p.1, p.160). Pitson’s
discussion of Montaigne’s relevance to Hume in this
connection (see e.g. p.105) is especially illuminating.
In the rest of
this review, let me briefly indicate four lines of thought that Pitson’s book opened up for me.
Contemporary relevance. Pitson promises to show the
“significant relevance to contemporary discussions of the self” of Hume’s
discussion (p.1). What he says about this is interesting, but tantalising. For example: Pitson
compares Hume’s scepticism about the realizability of our ambition to solve the mind-body
problem, with Thomas Nagel’s and Colin McGinn’s scepticism about that ambition. But Pitson’s
discussion (for which see, especially, his p.56) left me wanting much more—for
instance, about whether Hume really has the resources to render intelligible
even extension, never mind extension and its relation to thought; and about the
Cartesian and Humean roots of McGinn’s
and Nagel’s approaches.
In the Appendix
to the Treatise, Hume tells us that
the issue of personal identity is the “one article” in which he has been able
to discover a “very considerable mistake” in his reasoning. Pitson
comments that this “shows that whatever the source of Hume’s second thoughts
about personal identity might be, it is not something that infects his
treatment of the other issues with which he is concerned in Book 1 of the Treatise”. Does not in fact infect Hume’s other treatments; or does not in Hume’s view – does not to Hume’s knowledge -- infect his other
treatments? If Hume’s thought is as seamless a cloth as Pitson
takes it to be, we might doubt whether Hume’s first thoughts about other issues
can be thus insulated from his second thoughts about personal identity—even if
Hume did not see the problems.
Philosophy and psychopathology. Can “melancholy and delirium” be separated from Hume’s
philosophy? (From any serious philosophy?) Pitson describes how the unity of consciousness can be
taken as a given—“perhaps one should add, normally” (p.52). It seems a pity that,
in a monograph on Hume and the self, psychopathology enters in only in ways
such as this: parenthetically, in the margins. For there is now in philosophy an
increasing willingness to discuss the (alleged) pathologies of philosophy and
what we might, after the model of ‘philosophical psychology’, call
‘philosophical psychopathology’—a development Hume would surely have welcomed.
Moreover, a number of Hume’s own views are text-book symptoms of serious
psychopathologies: for instance, believing that there is “no absurdity in
separating any particular perception from the mind” (quoted on p.167).)
Buddhism. In a book-length treatment of Hume’s philosophy
of the self, it might have been interesting to explore the striking parallels between
Hume and Buddhism. At Treatise 1.4.6
Hume argues that “If any impression gives rise to the idea of self, that
impression must continue invariably the same, thro’ the whole course of our
lives; since self is suppos’d to exist after that
manner. But there is no impression constant and invariable.” Compare the
Buddhist arguments for a thorough and continual undermining of any substantial
or objectual notion of the self, and for the
conclusion that a strong impression of self is only found in the deluded—i.e. in
most of us, most of the time, especially those afflicted with serious
psychopathologies.
Pitson writes engagingly (if briefly) of the contrast
between “the atomistic view of experience to which Hume is committed” and
James’s “continuous stream” view of consciousness (p.75). He adds that to reject Hume’s atomism about
experience “would be to reject the whole framework within which his account of
human nature…is developed.” Quite right, I think; though here Hume might retreat
to an atomism which is merely methodological. This is exactly what some
versions of Buddhism (e.g. Soto Zen) offer.
Was Hume looking in the wrong place for ‘personal identity’? The main thought I have after reading Pitson is a suspicion that Hume simply searched in the
wrong place for personal identity. It looks sometimes, for example in his “second
thoughts”, as if Hume is moving towards something like a transcendental view of
the self, as something that has to be presupposed in our thinking. Maybe Pitson would have at least some sympathy with my suspicion;
maybe he would even favour a project of bringing Hume’s
views on personal identity into closer relations with Kant’s and Wittgenstein’s.
Be that as it
may, this is a thorough and impressive monograph, a resolutely scholarly work
in the philosophical history of philosophy. It will probably be for some time
the definitive treatment of this topic in the literature.
Rupert Read