the bundle theory of self

[gib]

I've been reading some Hume and he his creditted with coming up with the first modern "bundle theory" of the self. A bundle theory of self is any theory that says that the self is the entire collection of one's mental content at a given time--one's thoughts, memories, desires, emotions, sensations, etc.--and because this content changes over time, so does the self. IOW, the self is impermanent, and if taken to extremes, can be said to be non-existent.

What I want to know is, what other modern philosophers subscribe to a bundle theory of self?

[Frankenstein]

I've been reading some Hume and he his creditted with coming up with the first modern "bundle theory" of the self. A bundle theory of self is any theory that says that the self is the entire collection of one's mental content at a given time--one's thoughts, memories, desires, emotions, sensations, etc.--and because this content changes over time, so does the self. IOW, the self is impermanent, and if taken to extremes, can be said to be non-existent.

What I want to know is, what other modern philosophers subscribe to a bundle theory of self?

One issue with the bundle theory, otherwise known as "Hume's Parade formation" is that there is no one essential self; there isn't anything that knits the consciousness together in order to have a coherent experience. Isn't this reminiscent of William James, when we speaks of consciousness as being a booming buzz-- if it weren't for selection and attention. Even Locke has something mysteriously knitting experience together. With Hume, this means there is no essential self. How does this connect with your question though? Is it possible to say that anyone agrees with the bundle theory if they are but a bundle of ideas, emotions, and sensations? Does one idea trump another idea? When one gets punished, how does one know that that person is punishing the correct thought?

I'm also curious to know if anyone knows any contemporaries that subscribe to this theory, and where their line of thought has finally taken them.

[Drusus]

I've been reading some Hume and he his creditted with coming up with the first modern "bundle theory" of the self. A bundle theory of self is any theory that says that the self is the entire collection of one's mental content at a given time--one's thoughts, memories, desires, emotions, sensations, etc.--and because this content changes over time, so does the self. IOW, the self is impermanent, and if taken to extremes, can be said to be non-existent.

What I want to know is, what other modern philosophers subscribe to a bundle theory of self?

What does Hume offer that modern psychology does not?

[thezeus18]

Is it possible to say that anyone agrees with the bundle theory if they are but a bundle of ideas, emotions, and sensations?

Is it possible to say that you're typing on a keyboard if it is but a number of keys? If baldness can be without an essential hair, piles of sand without essential grains, why can't consciousness be?

[Ierrellus]

There is a Self in interactions of a "this" with a "that". Hume's Self appears to be personality or additions to the given. Of course my "thisness" evolves, but it retains my essential being. I could be wrong.

[gib]

How does this connect with your question though? Is it possible to say that anyone agrees with the bundle theory if they are but a bundle of ideas, emotions, and sensations?

It means that if they agree with the bundle theory of self, they think of themselves as bundles.

When one gets punished, how does one know that that person is punishing the correct thought?

So much for justice.

[Amorphos]

For me the bundle is everything we experience, but that of course isn’t everything going on in the brain and body. I’d ask the question; if there were a sudden division between the experiencing being/bundle [e.g. in a sophisticated experiment where consciousness is divided from the body/brain], would it be any lesser?
Lets imagine that in the experiment the ‘experiencing being’ is stimulated with mental input, perhaps like a dream or trip [I know that’s not what those things are as they involve the brain]. That being would remain everything like what we are, only you would have replaced the body with a ‘mind in a vat’ as opposed to brain in a vat ~ given that it thought it were getting the same kind of info as it is used to from the body/brain.

Have we just described a whole being? Is there any way to describe us as a partial being? We can surely only do that when we are considering the mental being as part of the physical being, whereby taking away part of the brain would remove part of the input, and we’d conclude that part of the self were missing.

[gib]

Have we just described a whole being? Is there any way to describe us as a partial being? We can surely only do that when we are considering the mental being as part of the physical being, whereby taking away part of the brain would remove part of the input, and we’d conclude that part of the self were missing.

I wonder what Hume would have to say about this? He certainly believed that the self is composed of whatever collection of mental entities exist at a given moment, and that as this collection changes over time, so too does the self. Maybe if we remove something from the mind--a part of the brain, some segment of input--we'd simply become a different self.

[Moreno]

Have we just described a whole being? Is there any way to describe us as a partial being? We can surely only do that when we are considering the mental being as part of the physical being, whereby taking away part of the brain would remove part of the input, and we’d conclude that part of the self were missing.

I wonder what Hume would have to say about this? He certainly believed that the self is composed of whatever collection of mental entities exist at a given moment, and that as this collection changes over time, so too does the self. Maybe if we remove something from the mind--a part of the brain, some segment of input--we'd simply become a different self.

Hume when at self as mind and demonstrated (to some degree) that this is made up of component parts that change. Materialists, iow naturalists, scientists, etc., look at the issue in terms of brain, matter. And since parts of our brains are constantly being replaced, they can eliminate the persistent self that way. A sucession of different selves. Whether hume directly influenced scientists and naturalists is unlikely, but within philosophy his influence is enormous and this would have trickled out into other fields. So I think we can say that many people hold something like the bundle theory of self, but the emphasis today is much more on the self as object - with all the postive and negative ramifications this entails.

[Trevor]

A bundle theory of self is any theory that says that the self is the entire collection of one's mental content at a given time--one's thoughts, memories, desires, emotions, sensations, etc.--and because this content changes over time, so does the self. IOW, the self is impermanent, and if taken to extremes, can be said to be non-existent.

The suggestion that changes take place "over time" implies, at least to me, that this is a gradual change. But if you consider the nature of memories, at any given time you are not in complete possession of your memories. There are things you only remember when given a particular stimulus for example, you might remember a person's name upon seeing their face again. Does this mean that at that moment I am another self to the one I was a moment ago?

[Frankenstein]

Is it possible to say that anyone agrees with the bundle theory if they are but a bundle of ideas, emotions, and sensations?

Is it possible to say that you're typing on a keyboard if it is but a number of keys? If baldness can be without an essential hair, piles of sand without essential grains, why can't consciousness be?

But what is making experience and understanding coherent at all? what is the motivating, organizing, creative, rational "thing" that is typing this-- and making it intelligible. William James tries to tackle this in his Principles of Psychology. Imagine seven people holding seven cards, none of the others know what the other cards say. Now, what is the meaning of the sentence that they are given? This is fragmentary, and each person represents a single idea, and each idea has no clue about what the other idea represents. Therefore, this fragmentary sentence is just a clutter of words; it's that buzzing boom that's so turbid and turbulent. One might as well be the fool playing 52 card pickup, but instead blindfolded.

[finishedman]

Well, doesn’t it seem as if the reality of ‘self’ is elusive when there is no instrument to help in finding out what is there? There is something about the workings of the brain that generates an organized combining movement and creates a temporary state of coordination among the independent areas of brain activity. After all, there are plenty of autonomically produced functions taking place in the whole operation of a living organism. So it would seem the brain has a readiness to process various stimulations, yet there is also something else needed to complete the instrumentality being used to bring a working, sane, intelligent ‘self’ into fruition. That would be neatly and systematically provided by the supplementation of the knowledge passed down by society for creating in you the sense of a person whose purpose it is to maintain the status quo.

We impose on a child right from its birth a series of dogmas, superstitions, religious rituals, language, behavior, and a framework of morals. All this can be described as the superstructure. Thus the developing child is subjected to a series of conditioned responses that finally form part of his thought system called knowledge. Such knowledge is stored in us as memory. Mankind has been submitted to millennia of conditioned responses, thus fixing the frame of the human mind.

[James S Saint]

What I want to know is, what other modern philosophers subscribe to a bundle theory of self?

Me.

[finishedman]

Let’s take two: ideas and emotion and to see how they interact, all one merely has to do is realize how one idea (there are many) can have a heavy effect on nearly all the cells of the body. Thus, emotion takes root in the intellect. Emotions are not feelings that just happen, in certain cases, they are feelings you choose to have. This could give credence to there being the ability to exercise control over thoughts thereby disrupting any cohering effect in the bundle. At the same time, the fact that you have to do something like self control all the more means the bundling effect is trying to tighten its grip.

[gib]

But what is making experience and understanding coherent at all? what is the motivating, organizing, creative, rational "thing" that is typing this-- and making it intelligible. William James tries to tackle this in his Principles of Psychology. Imagine seven people holding seven cards, none of the others know what the other cards say. Now, what is the meaning of the sentence that they are given? This is fragmentary, and each person represents a single idea, and each idea has no clue about what the other idea represents. Therefore, this fragmentary sentence is just a clutter of words; it's that buzzing boom that's so turbid and turbulent. One might as well be the fool playing 52 card pickup, but instead blindfolded.

The problem here is how we conceptualize thought--as a single unit, a compartmentalized package of information--and we assume there are several such packages all being process simultaneously and also others in a latent state waiting to be called to consciousness.

When you study the brain, you find that thought occurs sporadically all over the brain, but there is one center that seems specialized for conscious abstract cogitation, and that is the prefrontal cortex. In here, you do have a booming buzz of signals, a whole network of neurons each transmitting signals in electrical and chemical form.

But I think it's a mistake to think of each of these signals on their own as a "unit of thought". Rather, my theory is that a single thought corresponds to the entire pattern of signals in the whole of the prefrontal cortex at one time. The signals that travel along the lengths of neuronal axons and across the synaptic gaps are like the 1's and 0's of computers. They are either firing or not firing. But a single thought is a whole pattern of such signals, a whole series of 1's and 0's. It is the state of the prefrontal cortex on the whole that corresponds to the flow of our thoughts.

I like this theory because it explains why we experience thought as a sort of 1 dimensional stream of consciousness. One prefrontal cortex going through a series of states is like a 1 dimensional flux through time. It also explains why it seems like each of our thoughts can be thought of as a "unit" yet it seems hard to pin-point exactly where one thought ends and another begins. There is no clean division between one thought and the next because there is no clean division between one pattern of signals in the prefrontal cortex and the next--they simply merge into each other--yet we can surely say that one thought definitively has a clear and distinct signature of neural signals so that when that pattern is present, we can certainly say that the thought is there. It als allows several different thoughts to ovelap at the same time since several different patterns of neural signals can overlap at the same time.

[finishedman]

Gib … can you give a brief explanation on how this consciousness comes into play…

Basically, signals arrive to the brain from a vibrating eardrum or light reflected on a retina. These signals need to be interpreted before an intelligible thought can result. The brain’s sets of convention need to be converted into an area of reference from which one instantly has a sense of being a ‘person’ that is superimposed over the brain’s ‘language’ and becomes a communicating self. There comes into being a point of reference within the buzzing neuron activity.

[Drusus]

I've been reading some Hume and he his creditted with coming up with the first modern "bundle theory" of the self. A bundle theory of self is any theory that says that the self is the entire collection of one's mental content at a given time--one's thoughts, memories, desires, emotions, sensations, etc.--and because this content changes over time, so does the self. IOW, the self is impermanent, and if taken to extremes, can be said to be non-existent.

What I want to know is, what other modern philosophers subscribe to a bundle theory of self?

My previous post wasn't answerd, so let me repeat myself.

What does Hume offer that modern psychology does not? Why waste time with outdated stuff?

[finishedman]

Whenever a thought takes its birth there, you have created an entity or a point, and in reference to that point you are experiencing things. The world you experience around you is from that point of view. There must be a point and it is this point that creates the space. If this point is not there, there is no space.

So, when the thought is not there, is it possible for you to experience anything or relate anything to a non-existing thing here? Every time a thought is born, you are born. Thought in its very nature is shortlived, and once it is gone, that's the end of it. You have no way of experiencing what is there between these two thoughts.

You cannot measure anything unless you have a point. So, if the center is absent, there is no circumference at all. That is pure and simple basic arithmetic.
If there is no object there, there is no subject here. What creates the subject is the object.

[finishedman]

What does Hume offer that modern psychology does not?

Modern psych and other related fields of mental activity are still trying to find out what is there. Is the mind part of you or separate from you? What parts of consciousness are innate and which are from external input? What is the entity called "I"? Is there consciousness without something contained in memory? What/where is memory? .......... things like that.

[Drusus]

Statemen revoked!

[Amorphos]

gib

I wonder what Hume would have to say about this? He certainly believed that the self is composed of whatever collection of mental entities exist at a given moment, and that as this collection changes over time, so too does the self. Maybe if we remove something from the mind--a part of the brain, some segment of input--we'd simply become a different self.

If we visualise the experiencer and its experience as within an all composing sphere of being ~ an orb [note, that the Tibetan book of the dead describes being as such ~ in terms of intermediary realms of reality [underworld in other religions]], then change can occur all it likes, we are still left with a complete/whole being.

If we stop making effect [input] on said sphere, then we are left with the experiencer but without external input. For me we have over the course of incarnations a base being which is that experiencer [and hence comprises the core and base being], even if we don’t want to accept that, I’d still think an overall core being to be the base-self. We should ask ourselves if that is not true in some way about ourselves?

We can learn and change by that, but the ‘object’ that learns, does not change. The affecting aspects are subjective and transient, the thing of being is objective and non changing. Otherwise there would be no state to affect, just changing states ~ is that how you experience yourself?

Moreno

Materialists, iow naturalists, scientists, etc., look at the issue in terms of brain, matter. And since parts of our brains are constantly being replaced, they can eliminate the persistent self that way.

Matter has no means by which to experience, to know, to be, we know that because we can look at it and find nothing bar what it is, particles are particles, they don’t do anything bar that. Equally we cannot find our experience and qualia literally in the brain, we can only find what informs it.

.

[finishedman]

we can only find what informs it.

Where do we find it?

The affecting aspects are subjective and transient, the thing of being is objective and non changing. Otherwise there would be no state to affect, just changing states

I think I agree. Could we say the brain as a container of memory does not change? It is the knowledge that changes.

[Moreno]

I've been reading some Hume and he his creditted with coming up with the first modern "bundle theory" of the self. A bundle theory of self is any theory that says that the self is the entire collection of one's mental content at a given time--one's thoughts, memories, desires, emotions, sensations, etc.--and because this content changes over time, so does the self. IOW, the self is impermanent, and if taken to extremes, can be said to be non-existent.

What I want to know is, what other modern philosophers subscribe to a bundle theory of self?

My previous post wasn't answerd, so let me repeat myself.

What does Hume offer that modern psychology does not? Why waste time with outdated stuff?

In one way this is like asking 'Why read Darwin when you can read modern neo-darwinists? It is like that because Hume influenced, through various lines, much of the psychology - and philosophy of course - that came after him. In another way it is confused. Hume was approaching the issue as a philosopher. His focus is not quite the same as psychologists - who have a rather huge range of opinions about the nature of the self and its unity or the lack of, by the way. So while did end up paving some of the way for modern cognitive science, he is approaching more as a philosopher.

Most modern psychologists don't hold a candle to Hume for genius. They do however have the advantage of couple of centuries of study. Nevertheless, It is often very useful to read the works of incredibly smart people, even if they are writing a good while back in time. Hence people even read Plato and The Pali Canon, to give a couple of even older examples that begin with P.

Some of the issues Hume raised are not resolved. The way he came to these ideas is part of the interest in them. The way he thought and argued. I suppose you think we might as well stop publishing any works more that, say, 20 years old, and in perhaps most examples, I would not be sad to lose these works. Hume however still presents challenges and a unique mind.

[Moreno]

Moreno

Materialists, iow naturalists, scientists, etc., look at the issue in terms of brain, matter. And since parts of our brains are constantly being replaced, they can eliminate the persistent self that way.

Matter has no means by which to experience, to know, to be, we know that because we can look at it and find nothing bar what it is, particles are particles, they don’t do anything bar that. Equally we cannot find our experience and qualia literally in the brain, we can only find what informs it.

.

I wasn't saying these people are right, merely trying to put the OP's request in perspective to how the people perhaps most sympathetic to the bundle theory view things metaphysically.

[Moreno]

One has to live under a rock if one is so glaringly ignorent of Neurology, go read Neurology as it will answer all the questions posed and much more. No need to waste time on glaringly outdated philosophers who in the first place didn't have a clue.

I think you probably mean neuroscience, not the medical profession dealing with nervous system diseases. But you are not correct in either case. Neither Neuroscience nor Neurology have all the answers to his questions.

And there was no reason to insult him. Especially since you clearly are not ignorant of neurology or neuroscience, so you could actually have answered one or two of his questions from that perspective or linked to what you consider to be the final answer provided by these disciplines.