Synopsis:
- All ideas come from perception
- "Mind" is a set of "perceptions" or ideas created from perceptions
- The mind is a theater where perceptions play their parts in rapid succession
- The self is an illusion
- The self is like a republic, whose members have an independent life and change all the time but are united by a common constitution
- The identity of the republic is provided not by its fluctuating contents but by the causal relationship that holds its members together
- Mental life is a series of thoughts, feelings, sensations
- There is no self
- A mind is a bundle of inter-related mental events
- The self is a fiction that we construct in order to define what binds these events together
- Critique of causation
- Induction is not always right: the scientific method does not always lead to truth
- Experience determines our belief in cause and effect
- Causality is probability, not certainty (the connection between the two events exists in the mind of the observer, not necessarily between the two events)
- No absolute truth: any belief is as justified as any other
- Thought is governed by two laws (associationism):
- Contiguity: ideas that occur frequently together get associated
- Resemblance: anything that is associated to an idea is also automatically associated to any similar idea (similar behavior to similar features)
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