Personal identity: the two analogies in Hume

Abstract

The aims of the paper are to show that Hume rejects the distinction usually made between identity when ascribed to persons and identity when ascribed to non-persons; that he argues that both in the case of persons and of non-persons we have imperfect identity, or identity which is ascribed through change, and, finally, that this imperfect identity is a thoroughly respectable notion and is, in fact, our ordinary notion of identity. Thus Hume defends, rather than attacks, our ordinary notion of identity.