Locke Vs Hume

John Locke and David Hume are both philosophers who were very concerned with the inner workings of the human mind and how they operated. The asked question such as, “Where did our personalities come from?” and “How do we go about forming our SELF?” While Locke and Hume came to some similar conclusions on how the mind works they also came to some different conclusions on how we form our SELF and they took different paths to get there.

John Locke was a philosopher who was active around the late 1600’s to very early in the eighteenth century (Editors). He studied at the University of Oxford, served in the military and was eventually exiled to Holland where he wrote the four book long essay called “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding”, where

Hume believes that human knowledge comes from sense experience and nothing else unlike his colleges. In his writing “ A Treatise of Human Nature” he states, “There are some philosophers who imagine we are every moment intimately conscious of what we call our SELF; that we feel its existence and its continuance in existence; and are certain, beyond the evidence of a demonstration,” and “Unluckily all these positive assertions are contrary to that very experience, which is pleaded for them, nor have we any idea of self, after the manner it is here explained” to describe the philosophic idea that the human SELF comes from sense-experience and something beyond that to be incorrect and that your SELF comes specifically from the sense-experience (Hume). He then goes to state, “But self or person is not any one impression, but that to which our several impressions and ideas are supposed to have a reference. If any impression gives rise to the idea of self, that impression must continue invariably the same, through the whole course of our lives;” (Hume).Hume uses the previous quote to prove that although we construct our own SELF we are not solely responsible for the factors that influence us and his colleagues have not identified the fact that SELF is

For example, they both contend that people physical form have little to nothing to do with the influencing of their personalities. They also assert that the thing around them can influence their personalities or SELF. However Hume asserts that experiences can influence the creation of your SELF while Locke does not. Hume is correct in his assertion. As mentioned previously the quote, ““But self or person is not any one impression, but that to which our several impressions and ideas are supposed to have a reference. If any impression gives rise to the idea of self, that impression must continue invariably the same, through the whole course of our lives;” (Hume).Which serves to prove that people need experiences in order to shape the thing referred to as SELF or personality. This assertion can be furthered by his statement, ““ Hume adds that the causal relationship between any two objects is based on experience, and is not known a priori (e.g., if Adam were created with perfect rational faculties, prior to experience he still could not tell from the properties of water that it would suffocate him.) Yet all that experience establishes concerning causal relationships is that the cause is prior in time to and contiguous with its effect …That is, because we have seen in the past that B frequently follows A and never occurs without it, our mind associates B with A such that the presence of one