Hume believes the self is an illusion because he believes it impossible for there to be a single unified “self”. He argues that all we are made up of is a series of moments and occurrences, and it is impossible to string all of those moments into a version of our identity that is accurate. He says that we are merely a “bundle of different perceptions which succeed each other with inconceivable rapidity” and that “identity is nothing really belonging to these different perceptions…merely a quality, which we attribute to them”. The bond that we feel between the separate perceptions in our lives is merely felt, it doesn’t actually exist. He believes that memory, specifically resemblance and causation, are the cause of why we feel that bond. Our memory causes us to believe that we have a unified sense between each moment in our lives, and therefore a continued identity. However, Hume believes the truest form of ourselves is only the version that exists in this exact moment in time, and there is no identity before or after this moment.

I can’t say I find his argument entirely convincing. I believe that although the truest version of ourselves is indeed who we are in the present, the person I am in this present moment came about as a result of the experiences I have had in the past. It’s pretty difficult to deny someone’s entire sense of identity because there is no tangible bond between the experiences they have lived. There is nothing constant in this world, and that in and of itself just isn’t a good enough reason to deny my sense of self. I believe that someone is shaped and molded by the experiences that change them. Identity is indeed a quality, it is something that we attribute to ourselves. It is impossible to understand, and yet everyone has a pretty good idea of who they are, whether or not that is accurate.

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