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Warburton, and me, David Edmonds.
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The Buddha was born in around the fifth century BC, probably in modern day Nepal.
David Hume was born in the 18th century in Scotland.
By all accounts, both were tubby blokes, corpulent chaps.
But what, if anything, do their philosophies have in common?
And is it possible that Hume was influenced by Buddhism?
Alison Gopnik, a renowned psychologist and philosopher, has been investigating a possible link.
Alison Gopnik, welcome to philosophy bites.
Well, glad to be here.
The topic we're going to focus on is Hume and Buddhism.
What's the connection between these two?
Because apart from in terms of physique, it's not obvious.
Well, when you look at a lot of Hume's philosophical ideas, they're strikingly similar to some of the ideas that are in the buddhist tradition.
And I got interested in this particularly because of Hume's ideas about the self.
Hume has a really radically new different idea about the self, quite different from the ideas that people have had before.
So someone like Descartes thinks that it's obvious that you have a self.