David Hume’s Concept of Personal Identity: Perfect and Imperfect identity

The famous 18th centuries Scottish philosopher David Hume famously mentioned the “bundle theory” in the work “A Treatise of Human Nature” where he referred to identity as a bundle of different perceptions. We believe that personal identity is the sum of our experiences through which we perceive our own identity to be numerically the same through mental processes. But he clarifies that this is how we misinterpret “identity”, when in fact the analysis of “identity” is immutability and constancy over time. Hume defined “identity” based on this type of analysis, known as “perfect identity”. So, any “identity” of person or thing cannot be “perfect identity” because it changes over time, but Hume clarifies why we mistakenly think of ourselves as “the same” and “one” over time. He mentions various examples to explain personal identity such as vegetables, republic, river, church etc. Where he tries to make us clear that even though our mind perceives these as perfect over time, they are actually imperfect identities because they can never remain constant over time. But the question is, how do we interpret our identity by misconceptions and illusions? This question is truly arguable by Hume’s concept. However, the main purpose of this paper is to analyze how Hume explains “perfect” and “imperfect identity” in by the evaluations of his analysis of personal identity.