人格の同一性についてのヒュームによる再考

Abstract

In the Appendix to the Treatise, Hume confesses dissatisfaction with his own account of our belief in personal identity, but he does not say explicitly what is bothering him. Why does he retract his own account that a mind is nothing but a bundle of perceptions and that, by finding resemblance and causation between perceptions, we only mistakenly ascribe identity through time to a mind? According to one interpretation, Hume confesses that our belief in resemblance and causation between perceptions is not sufficient for us to pick out the perceptions making up our own minds. And according to another interpretation, Hume confesses that his account demands a genuinely identical self that finds resemblance and causation between perceptions and by mistake ascribes identity to a mind. But I argue against these interpretations. I then suggest an interpretation that Hume intends to account for our belief in personal identity naturalistically, and thus confesses dissatisfaction with his account because it states that our ascriptions of identity to our own minds are only the result of mistakes. I defend this interpretation by answering the following questions: 1. Hume's account of our belief in the identity of bodies also states that our ascriptions of identity to bodies are only the result of our mistakes. Why does Hume in the Appendix express dissatisfaction only with his account of our belief in the identity of our own minds? 2. How is this interpretation textually supported in the Appendix? 3. Hume's account of our belief in causation states that our ascriptions of causation are the result of our imagination. Why does Hume not express dissatisfaction with his account of our belief in causation? Finally I explain why he gives up trying to dissolve the dissatisfaction with his account of our belief in personal identity within his system in the Treatise.