ABSTRACT
Of equal importance to the mind/body problem in any theory of the self is the question of personal identity. If the discussion of Descartes' work centres around the relation of the self to the world we experience, then the discussion of personal identity will centre around the relation of the self to time. Hume's empiricism means that he is committed to the thesis that all ideas, notions, concepts etc., are derived from sensory experience, whether directly, as in the case of our impressions of the material objects which surround us in the world, or indirectly, as ideas arrived at by the operation of reason on this raw sensory evidence, ideas like, identity, diversity and continuity. Hume, unlike Descartes, accepts no responsibility to re-establish the ground for commonly held beliefs, and in this respect his work shows more starkly the deficiencies of this kind of theorising about the nature of the self.
