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This essay proposes that Hume’s non-substantialist bundle account of minds is basically correct. The concept of a person is not a metaphysical notion but a forensic one, that of a being who enters into the moral and normative relations of civil society. A person is a bundle but it is also a structured bundle. Hume’s metaphysics of relations is argued must be replaced by a more adequate one such as that of Russell, but beyond that Hume’s account is essentially correct. In particular it is argued that it is one’s character that constitutes one’s identity; and that sympathy and the passions of pride and humility are central in forming and maintaining one’s character and one’s identity as a person. But also central is one’s body: a person is an embodied consciousness: the notion that one’s body is essential to one’s identity is defended at length. Various concepts of mind and consciousness are examined – for example, neutral monism and intentionality – and also the concept of privacy and our inferences to other minds.

About the Author

Fred Wilson is a Canadian philosopher, who was recently retired from the University of Toronto. He studied theoretical physics at McMaster, and then turned to philosophy. He received his doctorate from the University of Iowa in 1965, studying under Gustav Bergmann. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1994. Wilson has published many essays in ontology and also published books on Hume, Mill, and the philosophy of science. His  SEQ CHAPTER h r 1The Logic and Methodology of Science in Early Modern Thought received the Canadian Philosophical Association Book Prize in 2003. In 2007 ontos verlag published his Acquaintance, Ontology, and Knowledge. Collected Essays in Ontology.

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Review published by "Notre Dame Philosophical Review"