Hume claimed there is no idea of a soul or self?

At Hume's time there was no actual experience of radio waves, microwaves, ultraviolet light and a number of other things.

Absence of proof is not proof of anything, it is simply absence.

Let Hume speak in his own words: "There are some philosophers who imagine we are every moment intimately conscious of what we call our self; that we feel its existence and its continuance in existence, and are certain of its identity and simplicity.

For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call my self, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure, color or sound, etc. I never catch my self, distinct from some such perception.

I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind that they are nothing but a bundle or collections of different perceptions which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity and are in a perpetual flux and movement. Our eyes cannot turn in their sockets without varying their perceptions. Our thoughts are still more variable. And all our other senses and powers contribute to this change.

The mind (or self) is a kind of theatre where perceptions make their appearances, pass, repass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety. But there is no simplicity, no one simple thing present or pervading this multiplicity; no identity pervading this process of change; whatever natural inclination we may have to imagine that there is. The comparison of the theatre must not mislead us: it persists, while the actors come and go. Whereas, only the successive perceptions consititute the mind.

As memory alone acquaints us with the continuance and extent of a succession of perceptions, it is to be considered, on that account chiefly, as the source of personal identity. Had we no memory, we should never have any notion of that succession of perceptions which constitutes our self or person. But having once acquired this notion from the operation of memory, we can extend the same beyond our memory and come to include times which we have entirely forgot. And so arises the fiction of person and personal identity."

I think he's absolutely right.

EDIT:

To explain it simply: whenever you look into your mind or body you will experience thoughts, feelings, sensations but you will NEVER find a "self" which is experiencing these things APART from the things themselves. For example, when you feel hunger, you just feel hunger - you don't see or feel an entity called a self. That's all. Forget all your ideas - just look at your thoughts and feelings and you will ONLY find these thoughts and feelings - you will not experience a self as an object. The self which we assume when we look inside is a fiction.

As Curtis Edward says, Hume is not arguing against a soul here - just a self.

In Blackholes entire quote, the word "soul" doesn't exist.

It seems Hume didn't argue that the soul does not exist. It implicitly exists in this statement of Humes:

"By the mere light of reason it seems difficult to prove the Immortality of the Soul;"

He is arguing against the immortality of the soul, and that it is "a spiritual substance to be dispersed throughout the universe, like the ethereal fire of the Stoics..." He continues:

Nature treats the soul as "a kind of paste or clay; modifies it into a variety of forms and existences; dissolves after a time each modification, and from its substance erects a new form. As the same material substance may successively compose the bodies of all animals, the same spiritual substance may compose their minds: Their consciousness, or that system of thought which they formed during life, may be continually dissolved by death. And nothing interests them in the new modification." http://www.qcc.cuny.edu/socialsciences/ppecorino/p...

He's wrong...just his opinion.

There is so much 'experience' supporting this...

Here is a Scientific Example...

The Book:

The Afterlife Experiments :

Breakthrough Scientific Evidence of Life After Death

Gary E. R. Schwartz

About the Author

Dr. Gary Schwartz is director of the Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health (formerly known as Human Energy Systems Laboratory) at the University of Arizona. He is currently a professor of psychology, medicine, neurology, psychiatry, and surgery at the University of Arizona. He is a graduate of Harvard University, and has taught at both Harvard and Yale, holding the positions of professor of psychiatry and psychology for nearly three decades. He has published more than 400 academic papers.

Hume is flat out wrong. I would say to him SPEAK FOR YOURSELF (no pun intended). But in a way, he's right. To have a sense of self, you must work for it. You must TRY to remember yourself. It's very difficult. Everything in life is designed to keep you from remembering yourself, to keep you distracted. But self remembering may lead to self-consciousness, not in the ordinary sense but in the sense of the third state of consciousness.

Hume is flat out incorrect. i could say to him talk FOR your self (no pun meant). yet in a fashion, he's excellent. To have a experience of self, you should artwork for it. you should target to undergo in recommendations your self. it truly is totally confusing. each and every thing in existence is designed to keep you from remembering your self, to keep you distracted. yet self remembering could lead to self-knowledge, no longer contained in the conventional experience yet contained in the experience of the third state of knowledge.

no soul = no life.

no soul = no love.