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HUME’S NOTION OF ‘CONSCIOUSNESS’ IN THE ‘APPENDIX’ TO THE TREATISE OF HUMAN NATURE

ABSTRACT

The paper advances the hypothesis that David Hume does not define consciousness as ‘perception or reflected thought’ such as a passage from the twenty-eighth paragraph of the ‘Appendix’ to the Treatise of Human Nature seems to suggest. From the observation of some difficulties related to the understandings of consciousness as ‘perception’ and ‘reflected thought’, it is argued that, in that passage, Hume has in view the phenomenon of self-consciousness, that is, the way in which the self is conscious of itself.

Keywords:
History of Philosophy; David Hume; Consciousness; Self-consciousness; Mind

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