Personal Identity and the Unity and Uniqueness of the Self

Abstract

A thoroughly “fictitious” notion is how David Hume would characterize personal identity. And to search for it would only lead to despair due to the utter impossibility of precisely and introspectively locating it. Although beginning with a limited view of both experience and reflection, Hume nevertheless attempted to discover the self by attending to his own experiences and tried to catch himself having them. He of course ended up concluding that there was no such thing apart from the stream of experiences that the self was supposed to own.¹ The “I,” he realized, refers not to an ego that owns thoughts, actions, and experiences, but simply to the causally connected series of thoughts, actions, and experiences, whose connections are at best problematic.²