Knowledge Tree
bundle theory
Also known as: bundle theories
Facts (11)
Sources
Dualism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy/Winter 2016 Edition) plato.stanford.edu Aug 19, 2003 11 facts
claimGeorge Berkeley entertained a theory similar to David Hume's bundle theory in his Philosophical Commentaries (Notebook A, paragraphs 577-81), but later rejected it in favor of the claim that humans can have a notion, though not an idea, of the self.
claimPhysicalists generally accept David Hume's bundle theory unless they wish to ascribe the unity of the mind to the brain or the organism as a whole.
claimDavid Hume's bundle theory is a theory about the nature of the unity of the mind and is not necessarily dualist.
claimDavid Hume's original philosophical position denies that humans have any sense of self, whereas versions of bundle theory that allow for awareness of relatedness accommodate the sense of self by explaining it as an illusion.
claimThere are two strategies to attack bundle theory: claiming that human intuition favors belief in a subject and that arguments for the bundle theory are unsuccessful, or attempting to refute the theory itself.
claimD.M. Armstrong (1968) objects to bundle theories by arguing that if individual mental contents are the elements of a mind, those contents should be able to exist alone, similar to individual bricks from a house.
claimDerek Parfit (1970, 1984) and Sydney Shoemaker (1984) accept David Hume's bundle theory as physicalists.
claimJohn Foster (1991) argues against bundle theory by claiming that human intuition favors belief in a subject and that arguments for the bundle alternative are unsuccessful.
claimBundle theory posits that the mind consists of the objects of awareness and the co-consciousness relations that hold between them, with the nexus of these relations constituting the sense of the subject and the act of awareness.
claimE. J. Lowe argues that the bundle theory is untenable because it presupposes that the identity conditions of psychological modes can be provided without relying on reference to persons, whereas the identity of any psychological mode actually depends on the identity of the person who possesses it.
claimE. J. Lowe defends the argument against the bundle theory by asserting that psychological modes are essentially modes of persons, and therefore persons can be conceived of as substances.