Online research in philosophy

‘What am I’ is the question which is generally asked and answered differently , since the history of thought. It is related to one’s identity, so everyone gives different answer according to their personal history, physical features and circumstances. For Hume self is neither a body, nor a mind, nor a combination of both, nor an unknown substance as some thinkers generally say and defend. It is only a series of experiences, a strew of feelings, sensations, desires, thoughts, beliefs etc After that he considers the problem of personal identity by adopting the classical exposition of the positivist’s theory of personal identity. It is the view of those thinkers, who adopted sceptical view and also think that the idea of self can be described in the empirical or linguistic formula. It is common to all positivist that they think self is an abstraction from the facts with no ontological status of its own. Hume is against those philosophers, who believe in the conception that we have an idea of a permanent, independent and immaterial self and its continuous identity. He is not satisfied with this thinking that the idea of self is the foundation of all our emotions, passions, thoughts and desires etc. He thinks that all these are different and separate from each other and may be separately consider and exist. Hume says there should be one impression that gives rise to every real idea. But we don’t have any such impression about the self. Hume refutes the existence of all material and immaterial substances. Hume argued that if we can directly know, we know nothing but the object of our sense experience as ideas and impressions only. He says these are all different and separable so, there is no need for their support. When we examine we found nothing, what we call it a self or any certain principle. Our mind is like a stage of a theatre in which thoughts and ideas come in a procession. All thoughts are transitory and temporary. The only reason for suspecting the existence of self is that the rapidity of their change causes an illusion. He says we should try to be clear that we are just concentrating mind on only successive perceptions, not where they are presented. So, self is merely a composition of successive impressions. We can compare this idea of Hume with Buddha. He also rejects commonly believed conception of self though he does not deny the continuity of the stream successive states that compose life. The self or the ego denotes nothing more than this collection and the existence of man depends on this collection and it dissolves when the collection breaks up. But there is much difference between above conception of the self and Hume’s conception of self. Now, here a problem arises about this view that if we have not any permanent self, then how can we explain personal identity ? And how can we justify this conception? Firstly, John Locke introduced problem of personal identity in his b