Hume says that that the self is an illusion. His argument is that we are unable to feel all the of our emotions and our memories at one time. We use these memories as the building blocks of the thing we call the ‘Self’. They are all fleeting moments thus, the self that we create with these building blocks are a sham and not a true representation of the ‘True Self’. And when we stop and reflect on our “Self” that it is the farthest removed from the “true Self”’ because that we are only seeing our self at that moment. He says, “Mind is a kind of theater.” he is saying that our feelings and memories put on a little show and that’s how we see our self-till we fall asleep that’s when we find the most attainable form of the True Self but since we are asleep thus, we are unable to achieve it.
I do find it convincing because I am a long-time subscriber of this philosophy even before I found out about David Hume. I always have felt that our memories are the key to finding the true personality (aka the True Self). Think of it this way, have you ever forgotten a span of time then that version of you no longer exist. Thus, we are self are flawed in being able to sus out the True Self. If we were able to look at back on our memories without the telephone affect that our brains do when we look back the we would be able to find the True Self. I also feel that if you were able to falsify some one’s memories then you would be able to create a “fake” True Self for that person till they forgotten those fake memories Ala Total Recall (1990).
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