David Hume

The term identity is broad and is interpreted differently by various fields of science depending on the accented aspect of this concept. The main domains that exploit the notion of identity are psychology, sociology (cultural and social identity) and philosophy (personal identity). In the philosophical meaning identity means sameness, "identical" is indistinguishable, and the problem of identity is based on the question what makes us one and the same person.

For David Hume, whereas, the personal unity was a kind of fiction similar to that which occurs when we talk about the unity of the nation. In his work “Of Personal Identity” he touches the issue of unique identity, the conditions under which a person is said to be identical to themselves through time. These conditions are known as personal continuity. Stuart Hall writes “Identities are never unified and, in late modern times, increasingly fragmented and fractured; never singular but multiply constructed across different, often intersecting and antagonistic, discourses, practices, and positions. They […] are constantly in the process of change and transformation...” David Hume was the first Western philosopher to unmask this idea of the no-self theory and pointed out that we are never the same person as we were, for instance, 10 years ago.

Hume also criticizes Descartes and his followers who believed in the existence of conscious identity. “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.“ According to Hume something as conscious self does not exist, he rejected and considered it as a fiction. He says that we are just a bundle of different perceptions that are in a perpetual movement and flux and that there is no moment during conscious life where our perceptions remain constant through time. He divides perceptions in two categories: impressions (feelings, emotions such as love, hate, desire; and sensual impressions so what we see, hear or touch), and ideas which they derive from impressions (imagination, memory and relating different impressions to each other).