A Research On Hume's Self-identity

As one of the core themes of western philosophy,the concept of “self” is expounded by Locke,Berkeley,Hume,and other empiricist philosophers.Unlike Locke and Berkeley's reservation of spiritual entities,Hume goes further on substantive issues where he completely abolishes the philosophical concept of “entity”,arguing that“entity” is neither basic nor unreasonable,thus he cancels "material entity" and "spiritual entity".Based on his knowledge atomism,Hume's definition of “self” is a collection of perceptions,or a flow of perceptions.The radical empiricism is inevitable because Hume's negation of the substantive existence of “self”,however,he encounters to face a major problem the issue of self-identity after the spiritual entity is dispelled.The equivalence of minds to consciousness aggregates makes the mind neither simple nor time-identical,so that “self-identity” becomes a virtual impression that cannot be proved and no corresponding basis to support.Even so,“self-identity” is still the belief that people generally agree with,so Hume explains its source from the standpoint of naturalism.Nevertheless,Hume's naturalistic solution does not satisfy many philosophers,even he realized that problems still existed.The question of “self-identity”caused countless disputes and countless philosophers fascinated by its birth.Parfit's more extreme thoughts experiment in the book Reasons and Persons make this issue even more conspicuous and outstanding under modern science and technology.He attempts to replace it with relationship R under his basic position of reductionism to achieve resolution of this problem.This article attempts to start with Berkeley's criticism of abstract idea,because the criticism of abstract idea is the core of dispelling the concept of the entity,and Hume carries out the dissolution of the whole entity philosophy on the basis of Berkeley's criticism of abstract idea.This article focuses on the two key words spiritual entity and self identity and begins Hume's theoretical elucidation on why “self identity” is established and how it is understood.It aims to explore how Hume's critical substantive concept impact “self identity” and what the “self-identity” suffers and the difficultiesencounters after the entity is eliminated in addition to Parfit's reflection on the problem of "self-identity" resolution.Therefore,this paper will study according to the following structure: First,Hume's criticism of abstract idea: from its ideological origin of anti-abstract theories and the process of criticizing abstract idea;Second,Hume's critique of the entity of “mind”:through the theory of impressions and ideas based by the analysis and usage of its physical concepts to grasp Hume's argumentation process of denying spiritual entities.Third,the analysis of the problem of self-identity: with Hume' s refutation of the “ego entity” to deconstruct self-identity,from two aspects of affirmation and negation,we come out two dimensions of self-identity and analyze its theoretical dilemma;Fourth,the reflection on self-identity: by combing Parfit's ideological experiment proposed in Reasons and Persons and the problems solution that replacing the once-critical self with the relationship R and eliminate the self identity issue,and reflect on the importance of the self identity issue,and hope the analysis of its theory provide some help for the study of this issue.