a. Do you think David Hume was right? Can you ‘catch’ or perceive yourself without any perceptions?

b. What might this mean in terms of your self-understanding?

2. Comment to at least 1 of your classmates' insight.

1.

a. Yes, a bundle of perceptions is what we are, but they are both correct and incorrect aswell. While perceptions can describe your actions and beliefs, those same perceptions can misguide you when deeply incorrect. In the end there are multiple layers of this quote that mostly lean towards agreement for me.

b. This means that we ourselves are complex but fundamentally built on the existence of others and our surroundings.

B.) I suppose this questions if I’m purely built from other people’s view or if it’s an amalgamation of my views and other’s

1b) It might mean that our perceptions are what define us the most. They can determine the personality traits we may have.

2) Interesting insights, Ken. We may be complex, but everything complex is made of many things that are simple.

I believe that David Hume was right when he said that the self, are simply a "bunch of perceptions" which we use to see the world. Whether it comes from the literary theories we learn in Grade 10 or the various branches, twists and turns of Science. They all look at the world in a different yet unique way. We all have our experiences to inform us, to teach us about the future or the past, to reflect and to see what has come before or what will come after. To live is to perceive—for example in Visual Arts we learn that the act of choosing itself is art. A perception within itself, the fact that we see the world and how other people see it becomes art itself. The beauty of life is that we don't see everything, and that we perceive the world in a way that cannot be fully described to another being, that even if none of us are special, we'll be able to hold something that nobody can take from us, ourselves.

1B. While our perceptions can help us understand ourselves better, we must make sure that it doesn't fully define us as a person. Our perceptions don't fully make us who we are and we should never think of it that way.

b.) This can mean the way i understand things just by realizing what i did or what had just happened/experienced

From my understanding, catching yourself not having any perception is impossible. When you reflect or think about any past experience, you inevitably think about what you perceived during that time.

B. Our perception is definitely a major part of what makes us, us. Although it can lie to us, how can we function without it? Would we still be us? I think not. It allows us to develop and learn. It's not the only thing which makes us who we are, but without it we definitely wouldn't be what we currently are.

a. I think, to some extent, he is right. We are made up of a bundle of perceptions, yes. However, we are also more than just a bundle of perceptions.

We can’t really perceive ourselves without perceptions because we need to reflect and understand our surroundings and ourselves to be ourselves. To simply put it, what we experience and gain from the environment and how we absorb and perceive it is what forms us.

b. This reveals that how we see and understand ourselves is deeply influenced by who and what we surround ourselves with.

- I think that the second question answers itself: no- as it is asking whether or not a person can perceive themself without any perceptions, which is inherently self-contradictory. The whole idea of self-perception implies the presence of perception. And the question is assuming an impossible scenario wherein one can perceive without having the ability or agency to perceive (perception).

Nonetheless, I think that David Hume is totally right. I would try to justify his proposition as I base it on my favorite movie, Possessor (2020) by Brandon Cronenberg. The science fiction movie revolves around Tasya Vos, a corporate assassin who uses brain-implant technology to control other people’s bodies to carry out her high-profile assassinations. And on a major hit targeting the CEO of the largest company in the US, she assumes control of (possesses) Colin Tate’s body. As she pushes through her critical mission, things start to go off the rails as Tate’s consciousness begins creeping its way back in.

During the course of the movie, Vos gets increasingly detached from her identity- she even practices speaking in her natural voice before visiting her family. She can not stand being her ‘self’ anymore; she struggles to separate her job life from her real life after all the violence that she performed while inhabiting another person’s body. At one point in the story, during an epiphany, she even sees her former hosts wearing a ‘mask made of her face’ as they ‘act as her’ around her family (a distortion of her memories of her being her). And her lack of agency on her own identity eventually allowed for her current host, Tate, to override her control and obtain access to her deeply personal memories (her family) while she gets hopelessly stuck in his head, witnessing firsthand how her job threatens to put an end to her family- and her own self.

I think that the central concept of this movie perfectly encapsulates how as perception suffers, identity also deteriorates. That losing your own perceptions can make you lose a sense of who you really are. And that if you are hypothetically put into another person’s body- as you feel their sensations, their emotions, their everything- you start to become them, to feel as though YOU ARE THEM. In Vos’ case, she felt the opposite- instead of her playing her victims, her victims PLAYING AS HER all along. Perhaps, it is just a side effect of her losing control over her host’s body- the same way her host must have felt when they got possessed by her. Nonetheless, whichever perspective it is, it reflects a soul losing its own body and likewise its perceptions- and thereby losing its identity that was built upon those perceptions. 

Colin Tate: “Just think, one day your wife is cleaning the cat litter and she gets a worm in her, and that worm ends up in her brain. The next thing that happens is she gets an idea in there, too. And it's hard to say whether that idea is really hers or it's just the worm. And it makes her do certain things. Predator things. Eventually, you realize that she isn't the same person anymore. She's not the person that she used to be. It's gotta make you wonder, whether you're really married to her... or married to the worm.” -Possessor

Thus, our sense of self is constructed from ongoing perceptions & experiences. When those perceptions are altered (in this case, by the worm), our understanding of our identity can shift dramatically, or it can be lost.