Quotation
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“I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception.”
David Hume · Empiricism · Enlightenment · 1739
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the passage as an empirical check on a simple identical self: looking in, he finds heat or cold, love or hatred, pain or pleasure, and never a bare subject that has them. The mind is a bundle, or a kind of theatre of perceptions. A rival reading says the looking already assumes a looker, so the self was used in the act of not finding it. The section criticises an inner Cartesian substance; In the appendix he later worries whether the account holds together.
Did David Hume really say this?
The library’s label is Well attested. Hume's own English in A Treatise of Human Nature, book one, part 4, section 6, Of personal identity. Introspection finds perceptions, not a simple owner behind them. The wording is secure.
Where it comes from
A Treatise of Human Nature I.4.6
Approximate date: 1739.
How to use it
Asked to point to the self that is angry about a delayed train at Clapham Junction, a person can point to the anger, the platform, and the memory of yesterday, and not to an extra item that owns those moments. Hume thinks the extra item is feigned from the resemblance of perceptions over time. The train is still late; A hidden owner does not change the timetable.
A mindset reading
The bundle is not a proof that persons are unreal, and it is not a therapy for detachment. Ordinary life will go on feigning identity, and he thinks the feigning has causes in association. Quoting the section as a reason to ignore a promise, because the promiser was a fiction, leaves out the passions that make promises feel binding; The metaphysics does not cancel the rest of the Treatise.
Understand the philosophy
The key term is the bundle of perceptions, what introspection delivers, as against a simple soul. He warns that the theatre comparison must not suggest a place where the scenes occur, since we have no idea of such a place. Section 6 is the classic empiricist attack on personal identity as a substance. The English is his; The appendix records his own later discomfort with the section.
- self
- mind
- knowledge
FAQ
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the passage as an empirical check on a simple identical self: looking in, he finds heat or cold, love or hatred, pain or pleasure, and never a bare subject that has them. The mind is a bundle, or a kind of theatre of perceptions. A rival reading says the looking already assumes a looker, so the self was used in the act of not finding it. The section criticises an inner Cartesian substance; In the appendix he later worries whether the account holds together.
Did David Hume really say this?
Well attested. Hume's own English in A Treatise of Human Nature, book one, part 4, section 6, Of personal identity. Introspection finds perceptions, not a simple owner behind them. The wording is secure.
Which work is it in?
A Treatise of Human Nature I.4.6 Approximate date: 1739.