Accounting to David Hume in Of Personal Identity: “Had we no memory, we shou’d have any notion of causation, nor consequently of that chain of causes and effects which constitute our self or person.” (g. 328, paragraph 2)
Hume’s ideas can be refactored into such an argument:
1. All human knowledge, including knowledge about the “self”, comes from experience;
2. The most basic unit of experience is “impression”;
3. All “impressions” are the impressions of the moment;
4. The “self” exists not only in the present, but also in time and in the same place;
5. We are unable to obtain an impression of “self” that “has the same time”;
Conclusion: We cannot determine the existence of the self.
Hume divides human intellectual objects into two categories: one is about the relationship between ideas, and the other is about practical things. The former constitutes a reliable and reliable knowledge, but does not involve empirical content, and is a pure form proposition, such as a mathematical proposition. The latter is a reasoning about empirical facts, and he focuses on the latter. He believes that people can’t completely succumb to what the senses directly perceive. He also thinks and believes that things that are not perceived now, that is, beliefs about things that are not observed. We believe that there is a causal link between what we have observed and what we have not observed and that we believe it is so. With this relationship, we infer one thing from another. Our reasoning about facts is based on beliefs about this relationship. Causality is the only relationship that allows us to go beyond the immediate direct impression and infer the existence of any object or any event. The causal inference is our rationality. Important principle. I agree with this point of view. The causal relationship in Chinese Buddhist philosophy is that all things are changed by the inter-independence, and there is no beginning and no end. It means: Everything is developing and changing, and it has universal connection. We have consciousness in our hearts, but we cannot conclude whether there is an external object as its source, or whether it exists in the self. Even though we have some impressions and ideas, we don’t know where to come, and we don’t know why. There is no necessary causal connection between them; the perception of a bundle is fleeting, they are produced, and they are eliminated. The world is like a shot in a film. Independent, only some lenses have a certain consistency, one after the other more often appear on the screen than others. What we call a distracting impression is that the causal link is the repetition of this coherence. Truly speaking, the world is a messy impression. It is unpredictable and indescribable. We can’t grasp anything and can’t decide what it is. It can’t be worth a dream, let alone know its nature and laws.
498 words
Whatever Comes Up 