Arif Ahmed on David Hume’s Disturbing Conception of the Self

Ralston College presents a lecture by Arif Ahmed on David Hume’s conception of the self in Book I of his ‘Treatise of Human Nature.’ The idea of ‘the self’ or ‘soul’ as an enduring subject of experience seems very natural, indeed almost inevitable. Hume, however, argues that it is a mistake; and he gives a novel account of what it means for you or me to exist at any one time or across different times. In his lecture, Dr Ahmed assesses Hume's central argument and discusses whether it sheds any light on related questions concerning responsibility, the morality of life and death, and the nature and rationality of 'self-interest.'

This lecture and discussion were recorded with a live online audience on May 19th, 2022.


Authors, Ideas, and Works Mentioned in this Episode

David Hume, ‘A Treatise of Human Nature,’ Book 1, Part 4, Section 6
Empiricist tradition: Aristotle, Roger Bacon, Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, George Berkeley, David Hume, John Stuart Mill, Bertrand Russell, A. J. Ayer
Humean causality
Descartes and the Cartesian cogito
Milinda Pañha, simile of the chariot
Commissurotomy, split-brain experiments of Roger Sperry and Michael Gazzaniga
Derek Parfit, ‘Reasons and Persons’
Julian Jaynes, ‘The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind’
Ludwig Wittgenstein, ‘Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus’
Immanuel Kant, ‘Critique of Pure Reason’
Extended mind thesis
Daniel Dennett, 'The Self as a Center of Narrative Gravity', in Kessel, F. S. et al. (ed.) Self and Consciousness: Multiple Perspectives
Alfred North Whitehead
Carl Gustav Jung


Links of Possible Interest:

Dr Arif Ahmed's profile at Ralston College and Cambridge
https://www.ralston.ac/people/arif-ahmed
https://www.phil.cam.ac.uk/people/teaching-research-pages/ahmed

Dr Stephen Blackwood
https://www.stephenjblackwood.com

Ralston College
https://ralston.ac

Ralston College Short Courses
https://www.ralston.ac/humanities-short-courses

Ralston College Humanities MA
https://www.ralston.ac/humanities-ma


Timeline

0:00 – Introduction
5:07 – Ahmed’s lecture: an overview of moral and practical consequences of understanding selfhood
17:32 – Hume’s Empiricist background
22:21 – Hume’s reaction to Descartes’ certainty about the self
29:59 – Hume’s positive thesis: the self as a bundle of sensations
35:16 – Commissurotomy experiments, Jaynes, and other problems with the persistent self
41:00 – Hume’s conception of the self applied to our lives
48:41 – The gap between Hume’s views in private and in public
*Discussion*
53:46 – From whence do ethics arise for Hume?
56:09 – How far does the mind extend?
58:15 – How are bundles constructed according to Hume?
1:02:22 – Despite ‘Wittgenstein’s rope,’ don’t we still have a sense of the whole?
1:05:00 – Should we disregard Humean causality when we build societies?
1:08:26 – What can we say about the mind that attributes or opposes unifying realities?
1:12:46 – Consciousness in Hume; connection to Locke
1:18:52 – Importance of memory and language in self
1:22:05 – Was Hume hypocritical for not acting on his philosophical assumptions?
1:27:15 – Difference between humans and animals; understanding of death
1:33:00 – Relating Hume to Whitehead and Jung
1:37:50 – Hume on meditation and ‘always-on’ consciousness

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