In this paper, I return to the well-known apparent inconsistencies in Hume’s treatment of personal identity in the three books of A Treatise of Human Nature, and try to defend a Humean narrative interpretation of the self. I argue that in Book 1 of the Treatise Hume is answering (to use Marya Schechtman’s expressions in The Constitution of Selves) a “reidentification” question concerning personal identity, which is different from the “characterization” question of Books 2 and 3. That is, I maintain (...) that whereas in Book 1 Hume is using his philosophical empiricism to provide his own version of the problem of how to recognize persons as the same at different times, in Books 2 and 3 he is presenting selves from a different, both sentimental and ethical standpoint, as the focus of people’s concerns. I start by discussing Hume’s notion of personal identity as presented in Book 1 and in the “Appendix.” I then specify the narrative conception of the self Hume relies on when dealing with passions and morality as the self-consciousness persons develop as bearers of characters of or about which they can be morally proud or humble. I finally conclude by distinguishing Hume’s narrative self from the idea of “the unity of human life” that Alasdair MacIntyre puts forward in After Virtue. (shrink)

In this paper, I begin by outlining some basic features of the version of virtue ethics I espouse, and then turn to exploring what light may be shed on our understanding and interpretation of Hume when he is viewed from that perspective.

In a well-known paper, Reginald Jackson expresses a sentiment not uncommon among readers of Locke: “Among the merits of Locke’s Essay…not even the friendliest critic would number consistency.”2 This unflattering opinion of Locke is reiterated by Maurice Mandelbaum: “Under no circumstances can [Locke] be counted among the clearest and most consistent of philosophers.”3 The now familiar story is that there are innumerable inconsistencies and internal problems contained in Locke’s Essay. In fact, it is probably safe to say that there is (...) not another canonical, well-respected, and seminal philosopher whose work is so widely thought to be swarming with inconsistencies. I, however, do not think that the common, unflattering view of Locke is accurate as a general view of the Essay. But despite my wishes to the contrary, I do believe that Locke’s chapter ‘Of Identity and Diversity’ (2.27)4 leads to (at least) one intractable problem, a problem that is the subject of this paper. (shrink)

Our understanding of the philosophers of the past is not always assisted by the attempt to fit them under one or other of the categories that we currently use to map the philosophical landscape. We have grown used to the idea that there are three principal kinds of moral theory—deontological and broadly Kantian, consequentialist and broadly Millian, virtue-theoretic and broadly Aristotelian—and so historical approaches to moral philosophy tend to orientate themselves by assuming that each and every object of study must (...) count as one or other of these kinds of moralist. This is unfortunate. It is particularly unfortunate in respect of the moral philosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Philosophers. (shrink)

LOCKE'S DISCUSSION OF ORGANISMS AND PERSONS IN "ESSAY" II.XXVI HAS LED GEACH AND OTHERS TO ATTRIBUTE THE THESIS OF RELATIVE IDENTITY TO HIM; THAT X IS NEVER IDENTICAL WITH Y "TOUT COURT" BUT ONLY RELATIVE TO SOME SORTAL PROPERTY F: X IS THE SAME F AS Y. I ARGUE THAT THIS ATTRIBUTION RESTS ON A MISUNDERSTANDING OF LOCKE'S POSITION. LOCKE INDEED HOLDS THAT AN OLD TREE MAY BE THE SAME OAK AS THE SEEDLING FROM WHICH IT GREW, WHEREAS THE PARTICLES (...) COMPOSING THE TREE AND THE SEEDLING ARE DIFFERENT MASSES OF MATTER. BUT HE ALSO HOLDS THAT PLANTS AND MASSES OF MATTER ARE DISTINCT ENTITIES TO START WITH, EVEN IF THEY OCCUPY THE SAME PLACE AT THE SAME TIME. AND SIMILARLY WITH PERSONS AND MEN. THE RESULT IS A COPIOUS ONTOLOGY, BUT THERE IS NO REASON TO THINK THAT LOCKE WOULD OR SHOULD HAVE BEEN BOTHERED BY THAT. (shrink)

It is not unusual now for Hume to be read as part of a virtue ethical tradition. However there are a number of obstacles in the way of such a reading: subjectivist, irrationalist, hedonistic, and consequentialist interpretations of Hume. In this paper I support a virtue ethical reading by arguing against all these interpretations. In the course of these arguments I show how Hume should be understood as part of a virtue ethical tradition which is sentimentalist in a response-dependent sense, (...) as opposed to Aristotelian. (shrink)

This paper argues that the English philosopher John Locke, who has normally been thought to have had only an amateurish interest in botany, was far more involved in the botanical science of his day than has previously been known. Through the presentation of new evidence deriving from Locke’s own herbarium, his manuscript notes, journal and correspondence, it is established that Locke made a modest contribution to early modern botany. It is shown that Locke had close and ongoing relations with the (...) Bobarts, keepers of the Oxford Botanic Garden, and that Locke distributed seeds and plant parts to other botanists, seeds of which the progeny almost certainly ended up in the most important herbaria of the period. Furthermore, it is claimed that the depth of Locke’s interest in and practice of botany has a direct bearing on our understanding of his views on the correct method of natural philosophy and on the interpretation of his well known discussion of the nature of species in Book III of his Essay concerning human understanding. (shrink)

Hume holds that sympathy is both crucial for making moral judgments and a distorting influence that prevents us from assessing the virtue of characters impartially. He writes, When any quality, or character, has a tendency to the good of mankind, we are pleas’d with it, and approve of it; because it presents the lively idea of pleasure; which idea affects us by sympathy, and is itself a kind of pleasure. But as this sympathy is very variable, it may be thought, (...) that our sentiments of morals must admit of all the same variations. We sympathize more with persons contiguous to us, than with strangers: With our countrymen, than with foreigners. This essay will argue that Humean sympathy can play a .. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Self of Book 1 and the Selves of Book 2 Terence Penelhum One ofthe more familiar problems ofinterpretationin Hume's Treatise is that of reducing the sense of shock that arises from the apparent differences between what he says about the selfin book 1 and what he says about it in book 2. One way in which scholars have attempted to reduce it is to take him very seriously (...) when he distinguishes, in the book 1 discussion, "betwixt personal identity, as itregards our thought or imagination, and as it regards our passions or the concern we take in ourselves."1 If one does this, it becomes possible to see that what might seem to be inconsistent positions are compatible, and merely represent complementary aspects of an extended account of how human beings represent their natures and identities to themselves in thought and feeling and choice. This, at least, is now widely believed. The belief has led to very illuminating accounts of Hume's analysis of the emotional life and ita relationship to his more famous theories in epistemology.2 In spite of these, I think there is an egregious gap in Hume's psychology which we should not be tempted to suppose he has filled. Unless I have misread them, two recent authors have yielded to this very temptation. Since I have said Hume's psychology has an important gap in it, I should begin by making clear what the gap is, and emphasize that I do not think I have uncovered an inconsistency in Hume's theories of the self. He has, of course, been accused of such inconsistencies.3 His account in book 1 has itself been said to be inconsistent because he ascribes to the self there a tendency to confuse invariance and succession in telling us how we come to generate the fiction of continuing identity; such a story seems to ascribe a continuing reality to the mind in the very process ofshowing how the beliefin it can come toexistwhen there are onlysuccessive perceptions toconstitute it. This is a special application of a wider charge sometimes levelled against him, thatalthoughhisassociationism appearstoreduce allexplanation to relationships between perceptions, he is bound to depart from this restriction in ascribing tendencies and mistakes to the mind. Given the nature ofthe beliefhe is explainingwhen he discusses self-identity, the special application is troubling.4 He has also been accused of Volume XVIII Number 2 281 TERENCE PENELHUM inconsistencyin assumingat the outset ofhis discussion oftheindirect passions in book 2 that we have an idea, or even an impression, ofthe self, when in book 1 he has appeared to deny this. Many have argued (and I have been among them) that Hume can be acquitted of these charges. Mercer, for example, has made short workofthe last one.5 When Hume introduces the selfin book 2, he says clearly that he is referring to "self, or that succession of related ideas and impressions, of which we have an intimate memory and consciousness" (T 277), not to the idea of the pure ego constructed by rationalist philosophers. The charge of confusion in the argument of Treatise 1.4.6 has been rebutted by several writers, beginning with Nelson Pike.6 In the briefest summary: since the mind is nothing but a series of perceptions, Hume's question in book 1 is not a question about how it is that a mind he tacitly assumes to be more than this comes to think it is more than this, but a question about how the series that the mind actually is, comes to include within it from time to time perceptions ofthe series that represent it as having an identity that it (strictly) lacks. The actual relationship of the mind to its perceptions is one ofinclusion, and Hume's puzzle is how certain perceptionsofthe mind come to be in the mind. This reading ofHume may well leave him with some unattractive problems, but it does not convict him of contradicting himself. If something like this is accepted, we can see Hume in book 1 as combining scepticism about philosophical defences of a natural belief with the assumption of an obUgation to give an account of how... (shrink)