 In sum, the origin of belief in the continued existence of self is causal reasoning which produces a conjunction of three ideas. These are the idea of the general capacity for sensations including those caused by use of the organs of sense, the idea of the capacity to sustain life, and the idea of the power to form ideas of memory. Accordingly, belief in the continued existence of self is just belief that the three capacities referred to by these ideas are continued. They are part of the cause of the sensation of one’s existing over time, but it is interrupted.  According to Shepherd, the identity of self is constituted by nothing other than the continued existence of the union of the the three capacities (EASP: 154–4). There is no persisting particle, she observes. 