Bundle Theory

EGO THEORY (essentialist theories):
There is a core unified, continuous entity we call self, there is a thinker who has the thoughts, the essence to your being.
-Plato = Self, soul which has three parts.(reason,spirit,appetite).
-Descartes = Self, the mind and body dualist. "I think therefore I am."
-John Locke = Self is memory (empiricism).
-Christianity = The soul is a continuing entity and can survive bodily death.


BUNDLE THEORY (non-essentialist theories):
There are experiences, but there is no one who has them, self is an illusion or useful fiction. You are just an ever changing "bundle" of fleeting sensations, thoughts, emotions.
-David Hume = There is no impression of self, therefore the idea of self has no empirical justification.
-Buddha- Anatta (no soul). There is nothing that can be called a self, and there is no such thing as mine in all the world. Clinging to a false notion of self causes suffering.


DAVID HUME:
Believed that the source of all genuine knowledge is our direct sense experience (empiricist approach). Hume concludes that if we carefully examine our sense experience through the process of introspection, we discover that there is no self. According to Hume our experiences are 2 distinct entities (impressions, ideas). Impressions are the basic sensation of our experience, the elemental data of our mind. Impressions are lively and vivid. Ideas are copies of impressions, and as a result they are less lively and vivid. Ideas include thoughts and images that are built up from our primary impressions through a variety of relationships. If we examine these basic data of our experience, we see that they form a fleeting stream of sensations in our mind and that nowhere among them is the sensation of a constant and invariable self that exists as a unified identity over the course of our lives. Hume argues that if any impression gives rise to the idea of self, that impression must continue invariably the same, through the whole course of our lives. But there is no impression constant and invariable. Sensations succeed each other, and never all exist at the same time. So because the self is not found among these continually changing sensations, we can only conclude that there is no good reason for believing that the self exists. "I can never catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception." All of our experiences are perceptions, and none of these perceptions resemble a unified and permanent self-identity that exists over time. "When my perceptions are removed for any time, as by sound sleep; so long am I insensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist." Hume believes that when we are not experiencing our perceptions-as when we sleep-there is no reason to suppose that our self exists in any form.

According to Hume our self is a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement. Humans so desperately want to believe that they have a unified and continuous self that they use their imaginations to construct a fictional self. But this fictional self is not real; what we call the self is an imaginary creature, derived from a succession of impermanent states and events. According to Hume our mind is a theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance, pass, re-pass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations.


BUDDHISM:
Concept of anatta (no-self). Even though there are similarities between Hume's and the Buddhists' view of the self, a deeper analysis reveals significant differences. For Hume, a close examination of our stream of consciousness reveals no self, soul, or "I" that exists continually through time. We each create a fictional self to unify these transient mental events and introduce order into our lives, but this self has no real existence.

Buddhist doctrine agrees with Hume that the notion of a permanent self that exists as a unified identity through time is an illusion. For Buddhists, every aspect of life is impermanent and all elements of the universe are in a continual process of change and transition, including each self as well. The self can be thought to retain a certain continuity but no real personal identity. According to Buddhist philosophy, the self is composed of five aggregates: physical form, sensation, conceptualization, dispositions to act, and conciousness. Each self is comprised of the continual interplay of these five elements, but there is no substance or identity beyond the dynamic interaction of these five elements.

===>THE SIMILE OF THE CHARIOT<===

A famous debate between King Menander, a Greek who ruled north western India, and a Buddhist monk Nagasena. This argument hinged on a chariot simile.