Abstract

Hume argues that the person is a “bundle” of perceptions, rather than, as Locke supposes, a superintending subject that is conscious of its identity through time. This chapter shows that this conception of mind rests on Hume’s prior rejection of modern philosophy and the primary–secondary quality distinction, where access to an inner world of perceptions is taken to be more secure than access to the external world. Hume rejects this analysis of mind and world because it yields “extravagant” scepticism, and the loss of the external world entirely. Instead, he sees our access to the external and internal worlds as depending on the imagination’s associative reaction to our external or internal observations. The belief in the unity of the mind results from the association of introspective “secondary” ideas of perceptions. And, for Hume, perceptions are best understood as mental episodes rather than as objects of some kind of inner awareness.