(no subject)
Long time no post...I have only one issue to address:
Philosophers claim that at every moment each of us feels or inuits the existence, continuance, perfect identity, and simplicity of our self, with the result that each of us, at every moment, has an impression or her or his simple, unchanging self. If this claim is correct, then out idea of the self is nothing more than a copy of such impressions of the self. This account of the matter is contrary to the fact. If there were a direct impression of a simple unchanging self, this impression would need to be simple and unchanging. But even when we reflect on our selves, even when we attempt to turn out attention onto such an impression of the self, we find that we encounter only a quick succession of ordinary impressions and ideas. However quick we may be, we can never catch an unattended self, as it were; it is never the self, but only some perception, that we encounter. Moreover , there are periods (during sleep for example) when we appear to have no perceptions at all. Consequently, it is false to say that we at every moment intuit our selves. Whatever the philosophers may say, most of us find our selves to be nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with inconceivable rapidity, and are in perpetual flux and movement. So far as we can determain by attending to our selves, the mind is, with one important exception, like a theatre with a constantly changing show. The exception? We have no information whatever about the putative "theatre".
Philosophers claim that at every moment each of us feels or inuits the existence, continuance, perfect identity, and simplicity of our self, with the result that each of us, at every moment, has an impression or her or his simple, unchanging self. If this claim is correct, then out idea of the self is nothing more than a copy of such impressions of the self. This account of the matter is contrary to the fact. If there were a direct impression of a simple unchanging self, this impression would need to be simple and unchanging. But even when we reflect on our selves, even when we attempt to turn out attention onto such an impression of the self, we find that we encounter only a quick succession of ordinary impressions and ideas. However quick we may be, we can never catch an unattended self, as it were; it is never the self, but only some perception, that we encounter. Moreover , there are periods (during sleep for example) when we appear to have no perceptions at all. Consequently, it is false to say that we at every moment intuit our selves. Whatever the philosophers may say, most of us find our selves to be nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with inconceivable rapidity, and are in perpetual flux and movement. So far as we can determain by attending to our selves, the mind is, with one important exception, like a theatre with a constantly changing show. The exception? We have no information whatever about the putative "theatre".