Relation to oneself· Identity and freedom
Bundle theory
Axis: Nature of the self — What makes me remain myself through time?
There is no permanent self: only a bundle of perceptions, thoughts and sensations following one another. The "I" is a convenient fiction, and letting go of it can be a liberation.
Movements 2
Buddhismexplicit
Look for the self among the five aggregates (form, feeling, perception, formations, consciousness) and you find only their shifting flux: none of them is stable, none is yours, none is a subject bearing them. From this analysis Buddhism draws against the of the Upaniṣads, that permanent Self identified with : where posits an unchanging subject beneath becoming, the Buddha holds that positing such a substrate is precisely the delusion (avidyā) that feeds attachment. The subject is only a bundle of impermanent processes, which makes Buddhism the great historical instance of bundle theory.
Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta (the discourse on the not-self characteristic) · Nāgārjuna, Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way)
Empiricismexplicit
Applying the school's rule to the self, admit nothing whose idea experience does not supply, suffices to dissolve the Cartesian soul-substance: introspection never yields the thinking substance, only successive states. Locke concludes that rests not on a substance but on the continuity of memory and consciousness, prising the person loose from the metaphysical soul; Hume, finding within himself only a bundle of perceptions in perpetual flux, denies any substantial self. Against 's res cogitans, posited as the first certainty, the subject becomes a fact to be reconstructed, not an assured starting point.
Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II, 27 (of identity and diversity) · Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, I, 4, 6 (of personal identity)
Philosophers 9
Humeexplicit
The same test applies to the self: if it existed, there would be an impression that gives it. But introspection never yields a permanent subject, only some particular perception, heat, light, pleasure or pain, at once replaced by another. Hume infers that there is no thinking substance beneath the perceptions: the self is but a bundle of perceptions in perpetual flux. The we ascribe to it is a fiction of the imagination, mistaking the resemblance and continuity of its contents for a real identity. The thesis targets and every soul-substance; it is the archetype of the bundle theory.
A Treatise of Human Nature, I, part IV, sect. 6 (of personal identity)
Lucretiusexplicit
The mind (animus, the seat of thought) and the vital breath (anima, spread through the whole body) are not a simple or immortal substance but a compound of very small, very mobile atoms mingled with the flesh. Born with the body, this bundle comes apart when the assemblage breaks up: the self has no identity beyond its material composition, and there can be no transmigration. Lucretius adds an argument of his own: even were our atoms to gather again after ages, it would not be us, for the thread of memory would be severed. This is a bundle theory.
On the Nature of Things, III, 94-322 (animus and anima, the nature of the soul) · On the Nature of Things, III, 843-861 (were our atoms to reassemble, it would no longer be us)
Nāgārjunaexplicit
Classical Buddhist analysis dissolved the person into aggregates (body, sensations, perceptions, formations, consciousness), but treated those aggregates as the ultimate elements of the real. Nāgārjuna objects that the critique stopped too soon: applied to the relation of fire and fuel, his examination shows that the subject and its constituents are neither identical nor separate, and so lack . then holds of the aggregates themselves, in turn : the self is a pure bundle of dependent processes, with no ultimate term to bear it, bundle theory carried to its limit.
Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way), ch. XVIII (the examination of self and phenomena) · Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, ch. X (the examination of fire and fuel)
The Buddhaexplicit
The argument proceeds by exhaustive review: Gautama runs through the five aggregates that make up a person (form, feeling, perception, formations, consciousness) and shows that none meets the criteria for a self. Each is , hence a source of dis-ease, and above all eludes our command, "let it be thus and not otherwise"; yet what can neither last nor be mastered cannot be held as "my self". With no fifth term surviving behind these aggregates, there is no self-substance, only a bundle of conditioned processes: this is , which squarely rejects the of the Upaniṣads, the permanent Self identified with that the Brahmanical tradition held to be our true identity.
Anattalakkhaṇa Sutta, Saṃyutta Nikāya 22.59 (the discourse on the not-self characteristic) · Dhammapada, XX, 279 (all phenomena are not-self)
Show inferred positions (5)
Epicurusinferable
The soul is not a simple, immortal substance but an aggregate of very fine atoms distributed through the body: it forms with the body and scatters at death, as atomism requires. The self thus reduces to a transient material composition, which corresponds to a bundle theory rather than to a substantial subject.
Letter to Herodotus, 63-68 (the corporeal nature of the soul) · Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, III, 417-829 (the material, mortal soul)
Zhuangziinferable
The butterfly dream undoes the assurance of a stable self: on waking, Zhuangzi no longer knows whether he is the man who dreamed the butterfly or the butterfly dreaming the man. The "self" is not a substance enduring beneath change, but a provisional knot in the flux of transformations, a boundary that one must "forget" (wuwo) so as to merge into the course of things. This dissolution of the substantial self, close to a bundle of states without a bearer, echoes Buddhist even before any contact between the two traditions.
Zhuangzi, ch. 2 (the butterfly dream) · Zhuangzi, ch. 6 (sitting in forgetfulness)
Nietzscheinferable
For Nietzsche the unified "self" is a fiction: the subject is only a multiplicity of drives in struggle, a society of instincts whose apparent unity results from a provisional command. This dissolution of the substantial ego brings his psychology close to a bundle theory, inferred from his analyses rather than professed under that name.
Beyond Good and Evil, §12 and §19 · Posthumous Fragments, 1885, 40[42]
Schopenhauerinferable
Individuality holds only by the , the space and time that parcel the single will into a multitude of separate beings; the soul-substance is a fiction. What is indestructible in us is therefore not the person, doomed to come undone, but the impersonal will that ran through it.
The World as Will and Representation, vol. II, ch. 41
Charles Sanders Peirceinferable
From his rejection of intuition Peirce draws a radical consequence about the self: there is no immediate self-consciousness, the self is a late inference, which the child constructs to account for its errors and the ignorance others reveal to it. Above all, since all thought is sign, man himself is a sign: what I am unfolds in the semiotic fabric of my thoughts referring to other thoughts, with no substantial core beneath the flux. We are far from 's thinking thing; the position leans toward the bundle, but a bundle reinterpreted in terms of signs rather than pure perceptions.
Some Consequences of Four Incapacities (1868)
- Descriptive Thought experimentThe teletransporter
If you are scanned here, your body destroyed, and an exact copy with all your memories rebuilt on Mars, is it you who arrives, or did you die, replaced by a double who believes he is you?
a person - DescriptiveOne self or many?
Am I a unified subject who says "I", or an assembly of voices and forces sometimes in conflict, part of which escapes me and acts without my knowing?
the unity of the self - DescriptiveLetting go of the self
Is the "I" a convenient fiction, mistaken for a thing? And would letting go of it be a loss, or rather a deliverance?
the self