PHI-111-60X Discussion Question Assignments J.Warshaw
Please prepare a typed response of no more than 400 words for each of the following questions. Your
work will be discussed and collected on the dates indicated.
In most cases, it would be possible to give a response of much greater length, but for the purpose of these
exercises, you should strive to craft responses that are crisp, concise, and give clear expression to your
thinking about the questions and the relevant assigned readings.
You should take care not to leave out any important details that would detract from the completeness of
your responses. You should address your responses to an audience of interested persons who are eager to
consider the outcome of your efforts to think carefully and critically about the specific question given -
and other directly related issues.
I will be looking for a clear demonstration that you have done the assigned readings. This will be made
evident in responses that show that you have a working understanding of the descriptions, explanations,
and/or relationships between the relevant issues, ideas, and concepts. Working out your responses to
these questions in this manner ought help bring more focus and increased participation to at least some
parts of our class discussions.
Your scores on these assignments will be calculated as part of the 'Quizzes/Assignments/Activities'
portion of your overall course grade as described in the syllabus.
Please ask me to clarify any confusion you may have regarding any of the questions, or the feedback you
will receive on these assignments.
If you fail to turn in your assignment on the date that it is due, please contact me as soon as possible.
I expect you to check this page frequently to find out when new questions have been added to the list.
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For Tuesday 10/7:
I think it's safe to say that most people have an idea of the self as some kind of essential entity that continues to
exist over time, that the 'my self' is that which we refer to when we use the term "I". Hume suggests what we call
'self' is better described as a bundle of perceptions; and that to look for any particular kind of entity (kernel, ego,
etc.), that exists apart from those perceptions, is like looking for a chain apart from the links that it is made up of.
Hume observed,
"... 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. When my perceptions are removed
for any time, as by sound sleep; so long am I insensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist. And were
all my perceptions removed by death, and could I neither think, nor feel, nor see, -nor love, nor hate after the
dissolution of my body, I should be entirely annihilated, nor do I conceive what is farther requisite to make me
a perfect non-entity. If any one, upon serious and unprejudiced reflection thinks he has a different notion of
himself, I must confess I call reason no longer with him. All I can allow him is, that he may be in the right as
well as 1, and that we are essentially different in this particular. He may, perhaps, perceive something simple
and continued, which he calls himself; though I am certain there is no such principle in me."
Hume continued,
