Hume on identity and personal identity

Abstract

Hume’s account of personal identity is defended against the criticism that it incorrectly supposes that the numerical identity of a person presupposes his qualitative identity–granted Hume’s “bundle” conception of a person, this supposition is quite acceptable. It is also argued that, given his accounts of the ideas of identity and time, there can be no genuine ascriptions of the former, and that this makes his argument in “treatise” i, iv, 6 for rejecting genuine personal identity redundant.