Högre seminariet i teoretisk filosofi: Åsa Carlson

Seminarium

Datum: torsdag 6 februari 2025

Tid: 13.15 – 15.00

Plats: D700

Hume on Identity of Objects: A Medium betwixt Unity and Number

Abstract

In book one, section four of A Treatise of Human Nature, David Hume aims at explaining why we – the vulgar – believe in the existence of external bodies: “What causes induce us to believe in the existence of body?” (T 1.4.2.1). Such beliefs entail beliefs in bodies that continue to exist when unperceived, which in turn entail the idea of identity. Although Hume’s conception of identity comes closest to what we consider as numerical identity, he conceives of identity in the sense of x is identical to x as uninformative: It conveys the idea of unity. Several objects convey the idea of number, no matter how resembling they are, and so does adding a time difference to the identity statement. Either we have to think of x at both points of time at once, or in succession. Hence, on the one hand, to avoid unity there must be some difference between x and the idea with which x is identical.

On the other hand, the introduction of a difference entails many objects. Hume concludes that he needs an impossible medium, “Betwixt unity and number” (T 1.4.2.28). Using a fiction, he solves the problem. But how, exactly, to understand his solution? What, exactly, is the fiction? In opposition to Donald Baxter’s influential interpretation of identity as a switching between unity and number, I argue that Hume defines identity as unity through time, and thereby formulates an idea that substitutes a medium between unity and number. This idea is a medium between epistemic attitudes: Between certainty (“unity”) and uncertainty (“number”) there is potential uncertainty (“identity”). When we know that x at t1 is the same object as x as at t2, but could have been unsure about it, then the proposition is informative and the idea of identity representable: x

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