The Battle of the Bundle and the Theory

The Battle of the Bundle and the Theory

Derek Parfit was a British Philosopher that used two theories to show his view on the Unity of Consciousness and the Unity of a Life. To start, the Unity of a Life is a series of experiences that occur overtime. The Unity of Consciousness is the bringing together of multiple consciences' in one central person. After analyzing both theories in depth, its safe to agree with the Bundle Theory. I don't think as a human we can have a separate ego's. The body and the mind is one in itself and I don't believe that it can be a separated.

The Ego Theory states that a person is an ego, or self that separates from the body and the mind. This is viewed as a mental state. Another way to explain this theory is that it's the continued existence of a subject or experience(s) that explains a person's existence continuing on over time. On the other hand, the bundle theory states that a person is nothing more than a bundle of psychological states and bodily states, namely not an ego. It's basically saying that a person is made up of his/her thoughts and feelings that are unified by the relations that their conscious experiences and other mental states share.

As a living, breathing human being, I view myself to be an advanced organism that was given the incredible ability to think, act and reason on my own. With these abilities I can discern right from wrong, left from right and blue from black. I can also learn and retain information, grow and mature etc. All together, I agree with Parfit's believes that we are. He stated that we as humans are a bundle of mental events and states. You can think about it like string bundled up together. All the knots, twists and turns make up the ball of string. There is no outside force or entity that is a part of this string. It is one in itself.

Parfit used the split-brain theory to prove the bundle theory's legitimacy. In the split-brain experiment, a patient (who's brain has been split) is asked to name which color. The patient sees one color, but as each hand describes the color, doctors realize that each side of the brain saw a different color. The Ego Theory would say that this was because this person (singular) had two experiences at the same time, making them two separately existing entities. The bundle theory proves this wrong though. For example, when a gun goes off at a track meet you see the smoke and you hear the bang. That's one memory of two experiences.

Derek Parfit was a man of many theories. He used these to prove his point on occasion. One Science fiction example that he used to prove the bundle theory was the Teletransporter theory. This machine was designed to look at your body's cells, destroy them, send them to another machine, and recreate them. It would give you back your all your experiences, feelings, thoughts, memories