>> Welcome back to Intro to Philosophy 1010 for
the summer session 2019, and here's our book,
"Introduction to World Philosophy."
And in this video, we'll
be going over the questions
about David Hume, the British empiricist.
So we talked about John Locke, the
British empiricist, in the previous video.
He was followed by David Hume, who took the
empiricist perspective to the next level.
Empiricism means knowledge comes from sense
perceptions, you know, through sight, or sound,
or smells, or tastes, or touching, or hearing --
so the five senses, that knowledge is not rooted
in some one of your five sense perceptions.
It's just a figment of your imagination.
So, for example, a self -- do I see a self?
Do I see a soul?
I can't see souls.
I can't taste them, or smell them, or
touch them, or hear them, so therefore,
that's a figment of my imagination.
It's a fiction.
So says David Hume, and the exam questions
for exam one that we'll be addressing
in this video are for part B,
questions seven, eight, and nine.
So this is going to be concluding the part
B questions, and then, the next video,
I'll be going over the rest of part A questions.
So question seven in part B -- according
to Hume's empiricist philosophy,
what conditions would be required
for the existence of a self?
In other words, what conditions
would have to be met in order
for him to accept the idea of a self?
So what is a self?
That's the fundamental question that
we're going over here, and Rene Descartes,
in line with Plato and the Hindus,
say a self is a soul unextended
in space, yet is capable of thinking.
And according to the Hindus
and Plato, the self --
the soul is eternal, and it's
filled with absolute knowledge.
And when the body dies, the self continues.
The soul continues from one body to the next
until you escape the cycle of reincarnation.
For Rene Descartes, he did not accept the
theory of reincarnation, and he didn't accept
that any other animals except the
human animal had souls in them.
But he also agreed there's a soul, and
the quality of the soul is thinking.
It's a thinking substance
that's not extended in space.
So Hume, an empiricist -- he's
saying, "I'm going to reject that,
because I can't perceive
what you're talking about."
So let's just get into Hume on page 284,
David Hume, from "A Treatise of Human Nature."
So he starts out by saying,
"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 both
of its perfect identity and simplicity."
So those two words are important for philosophy,
and for this video, identity and simplicity.
Identity means it's the same
thing now as it was in the past,
and it will be identical
to itself in the future.
If that can be the case, then you have something
that is identical to itself
from moment to moment.
And simple means not made of
parts, not compounded of parts.
It is one uncompounded thing.
So it'd have to have no extension in space,
because if it did have extension in space,
then you could imagine it
being composed of parts.
You could imagine dividing it.
So indivisible and simple mean the same
thing, and as long as we're on it --
and so, this was the very first
sentence, and it's an important one.
Discussion -- or the potential exam question
number nine from part B for exam one,
"In what ways are Hume's theory about
the self different than Plato's?"
So Plato said the self is one simple,
indivisible, unchanging entity,
and we'll get to that as we go through that.
But that is what Hume is
addressing, that definition of a self.
And then, Rene Descartes -- he kept at least the
idea of a simple, unextended thinking substance.
This is also what Hume is addressing.
So -- but continuing with David Hume on
page 284, he says, "The strongest sensation,
the most violent passions, say they,"
like people like Plato, and Descartes,
"instead of distracting us from this
view, only fix it the more intensely,
and make us consider their influence on
self, either by their pain or pleasure."
We must have a self, because we
experience pain and pleasure.
It's obvious.
It's self-evident.
"To attempt a farther proof of
this were to weaken its evidence,
since no proof can be derived from any fact
of which we are so intimately conscious,
nor is there anything of which we
can be certain if we doubt of this."
That is what Hume's opponents will say.
He goes on to say, 'Unluckily, all
these positive assertions are contrary
to that very experience which is pleaded
for them, nor have we any idea of a self
after the manner it is here explained."
So then, here's his question.
"As an empiricist, knowledge comes from a
sense organ, one of the five sense organs.
Well, then, from what impression
could this idea be derived?"
From what sense impression could
the idea of a self be derived?
Can you see it, smell it,
touch it, hear it, taste it?
If the answer is no, then it's
a figment of your imagination.
So he goes on to say, "This
question 'tis impossible to answer
without a manifest contradiction
and absurdity, and yet,
'tis a question which must necessarily
be answered if we would have the idea
of self pass for clear and intelligible.
It must be some one impression
that gives rise to every real idea,
but self or person is not any one impression,
but that to which our several impressions
and ideas are supposed to have a reference."
So he's saying there is no single,
uninterrupted sense impression
that correlates to the idea of a self.
We have sights, different sights,
different sounds, different tastes,
different thoughts, different emotions.
None of them are connected.
They're all discrete, unconnected, and yet,
they're occurring so rapidly
they give the illusion
of one continuous flow, he'll go on to say.
But if you're going to have a self, all of those
impressions would have to be simultaneously
in front of your eyes, as he'll go on to say.
So he says, "It must be some one impression
that gives rise to every real idea,
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,
since self is supposed to
exist after that manner.
But there is no impression
constant and invariable.
Pain and pleasure, grief and joy,
passions and sensations succeed each other,
and never all exist at the same time.
It cannot, therefore, be from any of
these impressions, or from any other,
that the idea of self is derived, and
consequently, there is no such idea."
That's his argument in a nutshell.
He's an empiricist.
He doesn't believe in absolute ideas or
absolute forms of knowledge imprinted on a soul,
because he can't perceive them
with his sense impressions.
This is exactly the opposite
of Plato, as we will see,
but I wanted to continue going
over Hume's argument here.
He says, "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 can never catch myself at
any time without a perception,
and never can observe anything
but the perception.
When my perceptions are removed for any time,
as by sound sleep, so long as I am insensible
of myself, and may truly be said not to exist."
Okay, so if he has no sense impressions, he
doesn't exist, and he goes on to say that,
"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
required to make me a perfect nonentity."
When the body dies, you're gone, because
knowledge comes from sense perceptions.
Our consciousness is what we
more or less identify with.
It is rooted to sense perceptions,
rooted in sense perceptions,
so no body, no sense perceptions.
No sense perceptions, no
illusion of a continuous self.
Thus, you're utterly annihilated.
We saw the Indian materialist philosopher,
Charvaka, say the same thing on page 231.
He doesn't believe in an afterlife.
He is similarly an empiricist.
Show me the self.
It isn't there.
So if you refer back to page
231, you can read that again.
I am going to read now -- so
I've gone over question B7.
I mean, I've mentioned it.
I'm still going to go over it, which
is, "What would you have to have,
according to Hume, for there to be a self?"
And question nine, "How is Hume's
theory different than Plato's?"
Question eight is, "In what
way is Hume's argument similar
to Nagasena's Buddhist argument
in questions to King Milinda?"
So like the Buddhists, Hume
is saying, "There is no self."
Anatman, say the Buddhists, no atman, no little
individual atomic self that transmigrates.
Yes, they believe in reincarnation, but what's
reincarnating is this vicious cycle of illusion,
of karma, of karmic reaction
identifying itself falsely with a self.
So it's a -- it's a difficult
philosophical point for Buddhists to explain.
How can there be a reincarnation without a soul?
But they do explain that, and their goal,
ultimately, is to realize you don't exist,
and then you won't have any more desires.
And if you don't have any more desires,
you won't accrue any more karma,
and you can merge back into nirvana,
the impersonal, blissful ground of being
that cannot be described with words adequately.
So David Hume is not like the
Buddhists in that respect.
He doesn't believe in some transcendental
spiritual energy, but he is like the Buddhists
in the respect that he says,
"There's no individual self.
Nothing stays the same from moment to moment.
It's just fleeting sense impressions
and ever-changing body parts
that -- it's just a name.
That's what a self is.
It is merely a denomination."
As long as we're on it, I
might as well go to the --
near the end of Hume's article on page 289.
On the right-hand column, the bottom paragraph,
he says, "The whole of this doctrine leads us
to a conclusion which is of great
importance to the present affair --
that all the nice and subtle questions
concerning personal identity can never possibly
be decided, and are to be regarded rather as
grammatical than as philosophical difficulties.
Identity depends on the relations of ideas,
and these relations produce identity by means
of that easy transition they occasion."
So you have this memory of all these sense
impression, and you imagine ideas of --
that connect them, like cause and effect, and
this smooth and easy transition of your ideas
from your whole past life gives the
illusion of one continuous thing.
But really, the idea of a self is just a word.
It doesn't apply to any empirically real thing.
So continuing here, he says -- all right, so,
"Identity depends on the relation of ideas,
and these relations produce identity by
means of that easy transition they occasion.
But as the relations and the easiness of the
transition may diminish by insensible degrees,
we have no just standard by which we can
decide any dispute concerning the time
when they acquire or lose a
title to the name of identity."
So, memories -- are you the same person
you were when you were five years old?
Well, you can remember when you were five,
a little bit, but then, that memory fades.
So there's no just standard by which
we can determine when did that memory
of my five-year-old self become
me, and then stop being me.
If it gets interrupted, can I -- is it
the same me when I remember it again?
It seems like my self gets interrupted
every time I forget something.
If you look up at the top of page 289
on the right-hand column, he says,
"As a memory alone acquaints us with the
continuance and extent of this succession
of perceptions" -- all of your
sense perceptions and emotions.
That's what you are, and it's memory
alone that acquaints you with them.
"Tis to be considered upon that account
chiefly as the source of personal identity."
That's why memory is the source of who you are.
We saw John Locke say the same
thing, if you look back on page 277.
Knowing who you are right now,
self-reflection, plus memories, equals the self.
But the problem is, he says, we forget
who -- what we've done occasionally.
So that has to be dealt with.
Well, Hume's dealing with it, and he's saying,
"Yep, that's a fatal problem with the theory
of identifying the self with memory, and
what it really means is, there is no self."
So continuing here at the top of 289, "Had
we no memory, we never should have any notion
of causation, nor consequently of
that chain of causes and effects
which constitute our self or person."
So, okay, he'll say, "Granted," he says
over on the left-hand column, "I --
what I did in the past isn't happening
right now, and my memory might come and go.
But what doesn't change is the fact that,
historically, each event in my life is connected
to the event that followed by
a chain of causes and effects.
So this chain of cause and effects,
which is continuous, constitutes myself."
So he responds to that by saying, "Okay,
show me this chain of cause and effect.
Where is the actual link?
I experience emotions.
I experience different sights,
sounds, smells, touches, and tastes,
but none of them are connected
in any tangible way,
in any way that makes an
impression on my sense organs.
So what you're saying is cause and effect --
it's really just you're accustomed to seeing
that sequence of events, and then because
things always happen -- you know, I eat food.
Then I feel full.
So therefore, eating food
must cause me to feel full."
He'll say, "Well, yes, that is the way it has
always been in the past, but you can't be sure
that that will always be the way in the future.
There's no invariably unchanging universal law
that's connecting this eating and feeling full.
That's just -- you're accustomed
to seeing that, and so,
you assume there's some actual connection,
but really, that's just a relationship
that you've discerned in your mind.
It's not empirically observable."
So if cause and effect is
just an idea of relationships
between empirically observable things
-- eating food, feeling full --
and if it's therefore just
an idea, it's not real.
And if the idea of a self is the causal link
between all of your memories, well, then,
there's no self, because the
causal link is imaginary.
So if we look -- I want to go back here to page
285, and he says, on the left-hand column --
it's speaking to the people
who believe in a self.
He says, "He may perhaps perceive something
simple and continued, which he calls himself,
though I am certain there
is no such principle in me.
But setting aside some metaphysicians of this
kind, I may venture to affirm of the rest
of mankind that they are nothing but a
bundle or collection of different perceptions
which succeed each other with
an inconceivable rapidity,
and are in a perpetual flux of movement.
Our eyes cannot turn in their sockets
without varying our perceptions.
Our thought is still more variable than
our sight, and all our other senses
and faculties contribute to this change,
nor is there is any single power of the soul
which remains unalterably the
same perhaps for one moment."
Then he says, "The mind is a kind of a theater.
Thoughts come and go.
There's an infinite variety of postures.
There is properly no simplicity
in it at one time,
nor identity indifferent whatever
natural propension we have
to imagine that simplicity and identity."
Again, this is relating to
Plato's "Phaedo," and since one
of the potential exam questions
is comparing Hume to Plato --
part B, number nine for exam one -- let
us look to page 254 in Plato's "Phaedo."
So Plato is depicting now his teacher
Socrates in jail, having been arrested
for corrupting the youth and
believing in gods of his own invention,
and he's getting ready to be executed.
So his friends, Simmias and Cebes, are
distraught, and why are you so happy, Socrates?
Aren't you worried you're going to die?
He goes, no, I'm not going to die.
I'm an eternal soul.
I'll live on.
Prove it to us.
So they engage in conversation.
So now he's just discussing
what a soul is, and he's --
in this part, he's saying,
"It's not a compound of parts.
It's got to be a simple, unchanging thing."
That's what David Hume is talking about.
This perfect identity and simplicity doesn't
exist, because it's not empirically observable.
So here's what Plato says in the "Phaedo."
He says, "'Now, the compound or composite
may be supposed to be naturally capable
of being dissolved, just as it was compounded.
But what is uncompounded, and that only,
must be indissoluble, if anything is.'
'Yes, that's what I'd imagine,' said Cebes, 'and
the uncompounded may be assumed to be the same
and unchanging, where the compound is
always changing and never the same.'
'That I also think,' he said.
'Then now, let's return to the previous
discussion, and that idea or essence which,
in the dialectical process, we define
as the essence of true existence,
whether essence of equality,
beauty, or anything else.'
'Are these essences,' I say, 'liable
at times to some degree of change,
or are they each of them always what they
are, having the same, simple, self-existent
and unchanging forms, and
not admitting of variation
at all, or in any way, or at any time?'
'They must be always the same,
Socrates,' replied Cebes."
All right, so, he's talking about the absolute
ideas, the idea of beauty, the idea of justice.
Any time you see individual instances of
beauty or justice in the material world --
you know, of somebody paying more money than
they should, and then somebody else says, "Oh,
you overpaid me," and giving it back -- why?
That's just.
It's just fair, or a beautiful person, you know.
What is it that makes that person called
beautiful, and that person called beautiful,
and this landscape -- what
is the idea of beauty itself?
What's that absolute standard of perfect
beauty that you're referring to, or justice?
Plato, famously a rationalist, who says,
"Knowledge comes from these
absolute ideas imprinted on the soul,
not from sense perceptions, which actually
confuse you more than they help you,"
and that's absolutely the
opposite of David Hume.
He says, "These absolute ideas
are imprinted on the soul."
He also says, in the "Phaedrus," the
other dialogue we read in this book,
that those ideas are specifically
located at the outermost sphere
of the universe, which we'll come to.
But the idea of a simple and unchanging
self -- that we see with Plato.
As the absolute ideas are simple and
unchanging, and the soul is invisible like them,
then the soul's probably
also unchanging and simple.
That's his argument.
It's called the argument by analogy.
The soul's more like the ideas,
the absolute forms of knowledge,
than it is like material objects, so
it's probably simple and unchanging
like those unchanging, perfect ideas.
It seems the soul is simply the
collection of all of the absolute ideas,
which are located in what Plato calls the idea
of the good, and the soul's kind of like a spark
from that supreme source of light.
And therefore, each soul has
all of these absolute ideas.
All right, so, that was part of the
"Phaedo" that we can compare to David Hume.
Another part, if you look back on page 252 --
here's where Plato is depicting
Socrates attacking empiricism.
So he says, "Well, but there's
another thing, Simmias.
Is there or is there not an absolute justice?
Assuredly there is, and an absolute
beauty, and absolute good, of course.
But did you ever behold any
of them with your eyes?
Certainly not.
Or did you ever reach them
with any other bodily sense?
And I speak not of these alone, but of
absolute greatness, and health, and strength,
and of the essence or true nature of everything.
Have you ever perceived the reality of
them through your bodily organs, or rather,
isn't the nearest approach to the knowledge
of their several natures made by one
who so orders his intellectual vision
as to have the most exact conception
of the essence of that which he considers?
Certainly, and he attains to the knowledge of
them in their highest purity who goes to each
of them with the mind alone,"
meaning not the body.
"He does not allow, when in the act of thought,
the intrusion or introduction of sight,
or any other sense in the company of
reason, but with the very light of the mind
in her clearness, he penetrates
into the very light of truth.
So he has got rid, as far as he can, of
eyes, and ears, and of the whole body,
which he conceives of only as a disturbing
element, hindering the soul from the acquisition
of knowledge when in company with her.
Isn't this the sort of man
who, if ever a man did,
is likely to attain the knowledge of existence?"
That's the absolute opposite of David Hume.
David Hume does not believe there is anything
simple, and continuous, and unchanging.
Yes, there are simple things, sense
impressions, but they don't continue.
They're under constant flux.
They're gone as soon as they start, and
they're not connected in any other way
than by imaginary ideas of
relations, such as cause and effect,
which the Buddhists also point
out, as I'll demonstrate.
So back here, on page 286
with David Hume, he says,
"In order to justify ourselves this absurdity
of a continuing self, we often feign some new
and unintelligible principle that
connects the objects together
and prevents their interruption or variation."
So invent some unintelligible
principle that connects them.
"Thus, we feign the continued existence
of the perceptions of our senses
to remove the interruption, and run
into the notion of a soul, and self,
and substance to disguise their variation.
But we may further observe that where
we do not give rise to such a fiction,
our propension to confound identity with
relation is so great that we are apt
to imagine something unknown and mysterious
connecting the parts besides their relation."
A little lower on the left-hand column, he says
that we have a propensity to such fictions.
There's a common human instinct to
create imaginary connecting principles
in order to provide the ground of a self.
Something must connect our unconnected
memories to constitute a self, he says.
You know, even if -- if you can't prove it
empirically, then you'll just make up something.
Well, I'd imagine that is what David Hume would
say about Plato's "Phaedrus," where he talks
about the outer sphere of the universe,
where all the absolute ideas exist.
So before we turn to the "Phaedrus," back in the
"Phaedo," after disrespecting sense perception
on page 254 in the right-hand column, the next
paragraph down, he says, "But when returning
into herself" -- he's talking
about the soul -- "she reflects.
Then she passes into the realm of purity, and
eternity, and immortality, and unchangeableness,
which are her kindred, and with them, she
ever lives when she is by herself, unhindered.
Then she ceases from her erring ways, and being
in communion with the unchanging, is unchanging,
and this state of the soul is called wisdom."
Or he asks, "And this state
of the soul is called wisdom?"
So he's in communion with the unchanging,
absolute ideas when the soul comes into herself.
Well, where is it where the
soul comes into herself?
If you look now in the "Phaedrus," on page 257,
the right-hand column, down at the very bottom,
he says, "But of the heaven
which is above the heavens" --
so above the outermost sphere of
fixed stars that revolve once a day,
there's another heaven he's imagining.
"What earthly poet ever did,
or ever will sing worthily?
I'll describe it, for I must dare to
speak the truth when truth is my theme.
There abides the very being with
which true knowledge is concerned.
The colorless, formless, intangible
essence, visible only to the mind,
the pilot of the soul -- the divine intelligence
being nurtured upon mind, and pure knowledge,
and the intelligence of every soul capable
of receiving the food proper to it rejoices
at beholding reality, and
once more grazing upon truth.
She's replenished and made
glad until the revolution
of the world brings her round
again to the same place.
In the revolution, she beholds justice,
and temperance, and knowledge absolute,
not in the form of generation or of relation
which men call existence, but knowledge absolute
in existence absolute, beholding
the other true existences."
And he goes on.
So, that's exactly the opposite of David Hume.
He would say, okay, that idea of this
outermost cosmic horizon containing all
of the absolute ideas, and the soul merges
with it and becomes simple and indivisible --
poppycock, fiction, typical human fiction.
All right, well, I would bring up to David Hume
that, according to holographic string theory,
all of the information describing
the past, the present,
and the future of the whole universe is
conserved at every point of the horizon
of the cosmos, where space-time
is expanding at the speed
of light away from Earth from our perspective.
And that that same information radiates
back in with the echo of the Big Bang,
the cosmic microwave background radiation, on
these fundamental elastic threads of energy,
to create the illusion of
three-dimensional space
with the objects, enduring through time therein.
Where is this one place where a sense
perception is continued invariably the same?
At the horizon of the cosmos.
That's what people say they experience
during near-death experiences.
They say -- like Carl Jung, for example,
in "Memories, Dreams, Reflections,"
his autobiography -- in 1944,
he had a heart attack.
He felt his consciousness rise above his
body, above the hospital, above the Earth,
and then eventually, he said, it seemed to him
as if he was interwoven with the whole universe,
and with the past, the present, and the future,
blissfully at the horizon of the cosmos.
And that what we endure here in the volume
of the universe is as if we each live
in a little cube of illusion
tethered to the horizon by a thread.
So that's very, very similar to
Leonard Susskind, the atheist's,
holographic string theory, and it does
provide exactly what David Hume is demanding,
that it's as if any -- on page 284, "If any
impression gives rise to the idea of the self,
that impression must continue invariably the
same through the whole course of our lives,
since self is supposed to
exist after that manner.
But there is no impression
constant and invariable."
When can we ever have the whole chain
of our lives present before our eyes?
John Locke asked the same question on page 277.
He said, "But that which seems to make the
difficulty of believing in a soul is this --
that this consciousness, being interrupted
always by forgetfulness, there being no moment
of our lives wherein we have the whole train
of all our past actions before
our eyes in one view."
So the fact that our memories are always
interrupted implies we're not one,
unchanging, invariable soul.
Well, people who experience --
during these near-death experiences,
"My whole life flashed before
my eyes in an instant."
That's exactly what John Locke
says we don't experience.
We've never -- you know, the whole train of all
our past actions before our eyes in one view.
That's exactly what people say they experience.
That's what Carl Jung said he experienced.
That's what Eben Alexander, the Harvard
neurosurgeon, said he experienced in his book --
"Life After Death," I believe it was.
Let me see here.
I have it open, because I was
looking at it in the previous video.
Eben Alexander, "Proof of Heaven,
A Neurosurgeon's Near-Death Experience
and Journey Into the Afterlife."
Plato wrote about the same thing, another
near-death experience to the cosmic horizon
in "The Republic," where he
even talks about the threads
of destiny coming from the horizon inward.
So is that just an imaginary
principle that people come
up with so they can believe in a self?
Leonard Susskind's an atheist.
He doesn't believe in a self, and
yet, the mathematics took him there,
and the idea of mathematical truths brings
up Plato's theory of absolute ideas.
Hume says, "If it's not rooted to a sense --
rooted in a sense impression,
it's not real knowledge."
Well, what about two plus two equals four?
Is that a human concoction?
Did we create that?
David Hume says yes.
Plato would say no, that's an
eternal, absolute form of knowledge.
The Pythagorean theorem, A-squared
plus B-squared equals C-squared
in a right-angle triangle.
A-squared plus B-squared -- take this
length and this length, square each,
and multiply this by that, multiply
this by itself, add them up.
It equals the length of the hypotenuse.
That's an invariable and
unchanging mathematical truth.
Did humans invent it, or did we discover it?
Plato via the literary character
of Socrates says, "We discover it.
It's imprinted eternally on our souls."
Hume says no, we invent it.
So you get to decide which seems more
reasonable to you, and of course,
you don't have to be aware of any
of the physics that I talk about.
It's just a helpful analogy, I hope, and -- but
going back here to our discussion questions --
so exam one, part B, questions
seven, eight, and nine.
According to Hume's empiricist philosophy,
what conditions would be required
for the existence of a self?
All right.
One, continued, uninterrupted,
simple, uncompounded memory
of everything you've ever done --
that's what you'd have to have.
He doesn't believe in that.
Plato does.
So do the Buddhists.
They talk about the -- not
the Buddhists, the Hindus.
They talk about it in the
Upanishads, pages 208 and 209.
I just want to reiterate this, because it's
such an important part of philosophy, I think,
that becomes more important
in light of string theory.
If you look on page 208 on the left-hand
column, the Chandogya Upanishad,
"The intelligent whose body is spirit, whose
form is light, whose thoughts are true,
whose nature is like ether,
omnipresent and invisible,
is never surprised," he goes on to say.
Over on the Mundaka Upanishad, "In
him" -- he's talking about Brahman --
"the heaven, the earth, and the sky are
woven, the mind also, with all the senses.
No, him alone is the self."
Coming down a little bit, he says, "He
who understands all and who knows all,
he to whom all this glory in the world
belongs, the self, is placed in the ether,
in the heavenly city of Brahman,
where it's blissful."
So the highest golden sheath there is
Brahman, without passion, without parts.
This cosmic horizon, the Akasha, or ether,
where all of the parts have all of the qualities
of the whole -- it seems to
be a two-dimensional sphere,
but the entire thing is located
at each of its points.
That's a new insight into cosmology
with string theory that seems so similar
to the Upanishads and Plato's "Cosmology."
But how is -- in what way is Hume's argument
similar to Nagasena's Buddhist argument?
Nagasena, like David Hume, on page
289, he says, "All of these nice
and subtle questions concerning personal
identity can never possibly be decided,
and are to be regarded rather as grammatical
than as philosophical difficulties."
Nagasena says the same thing
on pages 224 and 225.
King Milinda says to Nagasena, "Who are you?"
He goes, "Well, they call me
Nagasena, but that's just a name.
Really, there is no self,
just like there's no chariot.
Chariot is just a word, a name, an
appellation describing a bunch of parts --
the wheels, the axle, the flagpole -- that
are temporarily combined in a loose way,
but there's no enduring, unchanging chariot, and
there's similarly no enduring, unchanging self."
So that is how David Hume is very
similar to Nagasena's argument.
And then, finally, in what ways are Hume's
theory about the self different than Plato's?
And we went over that extensively, so, in --
