Body, Mind and Self in Hume’s Critical Realism

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This essay proposes that Hume’s non-substantialist bundle account of minds is basically correct. The concept of a person is not a metaphysical notion but a forensic one, that of a being who enters into the moral and normative relations of civil society. A person is a bundle but it is also a structured bundle. Hume’s metaphysics of relations is argued must be replaced by a more adequate one such as that of Russell, but beyond that Hume’s account is essentially correct. In particular it is argued that it is one’s character that constitutes one’s identity; and that sympathy and the passions of pride and humility are central in forming and maintaining one’s character and one’s identity as a person. But also central is one’s body: a person is an embodied consciousness: the notion that one’s body is essential to one’s identity is defended at length. Various concepts of mind and consciousness are examined - for example, neutral monism and intentionality - and also the concept of privacy and our inferences to other minds. Acknowledgments Note Table of Contents Introduction Chapter OneSelf as Substance (1) The Substance Tradition1 (2) The Metaphysics of Morals (3) Morality and the Substantial Self Untied (4) Human Nature Defended (5) George Grant: Aristotelian Moral Philosophy Made Modern (6) Another Sort of Mind (7) Minds as Bundles Endnotes to Chapter One Chapter TwoNominalism and Acquaintance (1) Individuation and Nominalism (2) The Principle of Acquaintance in Locke and Hume (3) The Appeal to Acquaintance: Empiricism vs. Descartes (4) Hume’s Nominalism (5) Nominalism and Relations (6) Nominalism, Causation, Substances and Things Endnotes to Chapter Two Chapter ThreeFrom the Substance Tradition through Locketo Hume:Ordinary Things and Critical Realism (1) Up to Locke (2) From Locke to Hume9 (3) Hume’s Causal Inference to Critical Realism (4) The System of the Vulgar as False, Inevitable and Reasonable (5) The World of the Philosophers (6) Conclusion Endnotes to Chapter Three The Disappearance of the Simple Self: ItsProblems (1) Substance and Self in Locke1 (2) The Contents of the Humean Mind (3) Explaining Consciousness (4) Privacy and Other Minds (5) The Problem of the Self in Hume Endnotes to Chapter Four Chapter FiveHume’s Positive Account of the Self (1) Mind and Body (2) The Bodily Criterion (3) Humean Persons (4) Becoming Our Selves (5) Conclusion – The Final One Endnotes to Chapter Five Bibliography