Hume Studies

Hume Studies Volume 30, Number 1, April 2004, pp. 191-197 A. E. PITSON. Hume's Philosophy ofthe Self. London: Routledge, 2002. Pp.196. ISBN 0-415-24801-9, cloth, £50. A. E. Pitson's Hume's Philosophy ofthe Self is an ambitious study of the issues of self-awareness, self-reflection, agency, and the awareness of one's being one self among others. Although uneven in results, Hume's Philosophy ofthe Self offers admirable depth in its analyses. Argumentation is sustained by careful attention to the relevance of the entire philosophical corpus of Hume. Because ethical theory is interrelated with philosophy of mind, we need the sort of work Pitson undertakes. I will be using the chapter titles to give one possible tour of this wide-ranging new work. "The self and human nature" (chapter 1) pulls a lot together on multiple fronts—developments in contemporary philosophy of mind, along with scholarship on Book 1 and Books 2 and 3 of the Treatise. It is very useful as a current reference for those new to systematic readings of Hume's philosophy. Pitson makes a good case for the Humean model of mind as a system of perceptions. His flow chart will probably become a flashpoint for those differing with him, but it presents his overall map of Hume on mind. More particularly, it helps to show the difficulty one might have with situating volitions. It also presents the direct and indirect passions as a nexus—both a product of multiple mental inputs and causative of judgment and action—prefiguring their importance throughout in the book. "Hume and the idea of self" (chapter 2) presents an insightful summary of current discussions of the self-identity of the self, including some nice work on Locke's contribution to these matters. For Hume, the self is real; it merely lacks strict identity, as do most physical objects. Pitson's own view, that Hume's account allows him to distinguish his perceptions as a subject from his perceptions as a self observer, is also intriguing: In the former case, I may have a perception which is a recollection of some past perception to the extent that it is, in effect, a kind of present awareness ofthat past perception. In the latter case, I have a perception which is not only a kind of reflected awareness of the past perception in question; it is also an awareness of it as part of the succession of perceptions. (34) One problem with the chapter is that it starts a line of criticism which it quickly drops; I would like to see a common critical standard which organizes the chapter . It is simply hard to see what view he is pushing when the argument stalls. For Hume Studies 192 Book Reviews example on 41-2 he takes up Nelson Pike ("Hume's Bundle Theory of the Self: A Limited Defense," American Philosophical Quarterly 4 [1967]: 159-65): "It does seem that insofar as I have a perception of this kind I also have an idea of the various perceptions which make up my mind at a time ... of the self" (Pitson, 42). However in the subsequent footnote he seems to backpedal in response to a counter-argument by Peter Carruthers (Introducing Persons: Theories and Arguments in the Philosophy of Mind [London: Croom Helm, 1986; Albany, N.Y.: SUNY, 1986]). This sort of tentative double embedding of Pitson's own critical claims happens more than once and makes the upshot of critical discussions hard to pin down. In fairness I should say that it is less true in chapters 3 and 5. In "Hume on the mind/body relation" (chapter 3) Pitson says that Hume finds no special problem in the mental/physical relationship. The particular deflation ofthe problem involves throwing out the problem of mental/physical interaction with the bath water of substance ontology. He argues that when Hume rejects both materialism and immaterialism as forms of substance ontology we supposedly see that both kinds of claim about the nature of mind are mistaken. The dispute between materialism and immaterialism is essentially misconceived because it assumes that we may intelligibly employ the notion of substance. (51) But...