Is David Hume just a bundle in my mind? Or just a petard hoisting?

 I'm of course talking about his bundle theory of impressions.

I've often called Hume the first modern(ish) psychologist. He was on more solid ground than a Freud or Jung, at least, and definitely for the limitations of his day.

But?

He was partially right about the self, but not totally, and not close to right on why. The bundle theory is weak. Hume flirts with the land of Berkeley, though he would never admit it. In reality, something like Dennett's subselves is probably a much better explainer of both how and why we don't have a unified, consistent self.

Beyond that, of course, Hume was operating from the typical "blank slate" paradigm of British empiricists. And, of course, this is wrong. Human minds evolved to, on average, have and develop certain conceptions and preconceptions. A baby's brain isn't blank, and while a current subself may be just whichever current set of conceptions and preconceptions are in the saddle, all subselves have those.

Let's look at modern neuroscience. 

GQ, of all places, has a surprisingly good, and in-depth, interview with Lisa Feldman Barrett. A key takeaway, from the first "half chapter" of her new book, is the hot new idea in neuroscience — that, contra "old Hume" and 90 percent of thinkers before 2000, the brain did not develop "for" either thinking or feeling or other things as much as it did for running a body budget.

While I think it can be overblown, there is a generally good core there. That's why the brain has those conceptions and preconceptions — they save energy, and the brain itself is of course the hungriest part of the body.

Along with conceptions and preconceptions come predictions, which also save brain energy.

She noted that some of these come from social learning and that to some degree, "predictions come from a world that curates you." To riff on Hume, thus, we're only not a blank slate, but we're also not in a blank classroom.

However, beyond modern neuroscience, there's a more elemental problem when we look at Hume as Hume on this issue, in his own words.

It's called "petard hoisting," and one of his most famous statements, known in general outline by a fair amount of the non-philosophical world, is a dandy on this.

“For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception…. If any one, upon serious and unprejudic'd reflection thinks he has a different notion of himself, I must confess I can reason no longer with him. All I can allow him is, that he may be in the right as well as I, and that we are essentially different in this particular. He may, perhaps, perceive something simple and continu'd, which he calls himself; tho' I am certain there is no such principle in me.”

As they say on Twitter? #Boom! 

In essence, to riff on Gertrude Stein's bon mot about Oakland, Hume is saying there's no "I" at the core of "my/him-self."

BUT? He says that:

“For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other …”

Who? Who's this "I," le bon David, if you're just a perception, or a bundle of them, and nothing more?

Now, defenders of Hume would probably say we should treat this the same way as we do his thoughts on causation. Problem? He never really gives the indication of doing that himself in this case. Nooo ... since that was from the Treatise? He just repudiated it along with the rest.

Now, why?

Here, other than "atheism" for a denial of a permanent self being seen as equivalent to denying the soul, I think it was the other big issue leveled at Hume from the publication of the Treatise to the end of his life

Pyrrhonism, in a word.

Being a skeptic, in general, was problematic enough in his day and age.

Being seen as a Pyrrhonic, not an Academic, Skeptic, within the two schools, was far worse.

In the past, I got into arguments with Dan Kaufman, a philosophy prof in Missouri, over what type of Skeptic, to go with the capital for the schools, Hume was, or if he even knew the difference.

Well, to the degree other men of letters and clergymen distinguished "Pyrrhonic" from "Skeptic," they did, and certainly Hume did.

So, my ideas that he was "confused or ignorant on this?

Not at all.

Rather, this was another part of him repudiating the Treatise — he was repudiating any Pyrrhonic-type skepticism.

This may also be why, in his essays on four schools of philosophy in his "Essays Moral and Political," the essay "The Sceptic" doesn't discuss the Academic-Pyrrhonic difference.