A question about consciousness

Georges Rey

pp. 5-24

in: Herbert Otto, James Tuedio (eds), Perspectives on mind, Berlin, Springer, 1988

Abstract

In this well-known passage, Hume raises a particular kind of criticism against a primitive notion of the soul. That criticism might be put this way: once we attend to the full details of our mental lives, the notion of a simple soul, of some piece of our mentation that remains unchanged through all changes of our lives seems unacceptably crude and simplistic. It has no place in the ultimate story about ourselves. We would seem merely to be imposing it upon the really quite diverse portions of our lives in an effort to underwrite metaphysically the special concern we feel towards our futures and our pasts. [1]