7. For David Hume, is there a proof concerning the existence of the Self?

Explain your answer through his view on knowledge and human person. No. David Hume radically rejects the existence of soul or self and therefore there is no proof concerning the existence of the Self. For Hume, what we consider as soul, or self, or person, is nothing but a bundle or collection of perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux or movement. In this sense, human beings are bunch of perceptions, which are only connected by temporal succession. Thus, insofar as simple ideas are concerned, no single impression or idea can be traced that would posit the existence of the soul, self, or person. All knowledge comes from experience. However, for Hume, we believe that the self exists because our mind fails to discriminate all perceptions as distinct sine they appear successively to our mind with inconceivable rapidity. Our mind gets hold of the ideas of identity and diversity. The inconceivable rapid successions of perceptions disable the minds ability to distinguish and make it consider them as if they are invariably and uninterruptedly connected by one thread. When we believe that there is an entity that holds together all perceptions, we merely confuse all impressions because they appear similar and connected with each other. Resemblance, contiguity and causation are the culprits. The principles of resemblance, contiguity and causation induce the mind to think of identity rather than diversity, similarly rather than difference. To claim that we have a soul or self cannot be decided with certainty at all because the problem relates to a matter of fact, which can be analyze by appealing to experience, and in such a case, the understanding is influenced by such principles that connect impressions and ideas as resemblance, contiguity and causation. We only have a customary self, a self that would conveniently tie all perceptions in a bind. Sentimentality or feeling can only cement such conception without warrants. Unless new proofs are presented, the soul or self can only be believed to exist by virtue of custom or habit. For Hume, then, the soul or self is nothing short of fiction. 8. Does constructivism believe in the existence of a thing and, by extension, of a human being? Explain your answer by discussing its philosophy vis--vis essentialism.
No. Technology or things exist as humans exist. This view supports the other interpretation that human beings produce technology or things and technology produces the human beings. In other words, human beings have no ontological priority over things or technology: the human person is a making of his/ her own making. This entails a different conception of the human person in relation to things or technology: he/she is a construct. The existence of a thing and by extension of a human being is rejected by constructivism vis--vis essentialism. In essentialism, the human being is premised on the idea that he has a nature which is rooted profoundly in a being called soul, and the manifestation of such is reason. All other possibilities through reason can be contemplated: human being is able to think, and ultimately decide, autonomously. He has, in other words, liberty to act in the end, determine creatively his life in this world. But not all philosophers will agree to such notion. Others reject the idea of a soul or a self, insofar as it is merely a construct or figment. For example, Hume, he said that all knowledge comes from experience. All other ideas that the mind has are merely caused by the mind reflecting on the impressions through the principles of resemblance, contiguity and causation. On the face of it, the

argument that the human person contains an underlying substrate or substance is already undermined. Hume has rejected such argument by castigating the propensity of reason to simulate images far beyond impressions and sensations. But the view that the human person is a construction is not at all new. Berger and Luckmann argue that human reality is a socially constructed rality. Our understanding of human being is socially constructed; what will pass up for soul for one may not stand up for others acceptance.