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Abstract In the Treatise , Hume attempts to explain why we all believe that the self is a single unified entity that persists over time, a belief which Hume calls a fiction. In this paper, I demonstrate how Hume uses a type of functional explanation to account for this belief. After explicating Hume's view, I shall argue that it faces two related problems, which constitute a sort of dilemma. In the final section, I show how one of the horns of this dilemma is plausibly what troubles Hume in the famous Appendix passage where he retracts his positive account of personal identity.
Matthew Parrott (Mon,) studied this question.