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Summary Chapter 16 - Ego, bundles & theories of self (detailed)
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This is a very detailed summary on Chapter 16 - Ego, Bundles & Theories of Self of the Consciousness book (S.Blackmore) Third Edition
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Questions about the nature of consciousness are intimately bound with those about the nature ofself bc it seems as though there must be someone having the experience: that there cannot be
experiences without an experiencer
- Our experiencing self seems to be at the centre of everything we are aware of at a given
time & to be continuous from one moment to the next
- Seems to have both unity and continuity
We think of self as a single think but accord it all sorts of attributes and capacities
In ordinary usage - the self is the subject of our experiences, an agent who carries out actions and
makes decisions a unique personality and the source of desires, opinions, hopes and fears
The self is “me”, it is the reason why anything matters in my life. Where or what is this me ?
To escape the problem - declare that I am my whole body & no need fo self as well
- BUt most people don’t feel that way
- The whole body idea of self woks for some purposes but works less well of others
We come to feel as though we’re not the same as our body but are, to use an old traditional
metaphor
Problematic of this natural way of thinking about ourselves -- recognised for millenia
6 cent. BC - Buddha challenged contemporary thinking with doctrine anatta - “no-self”
- Rejecting the common idea that we consist of a seperate and continuous entity
- Instead: claimed that the self is just a name or label given to a collection of parts, in the
way that we give the name “carriagee” to a set of parts
Plato: w
anted to know whether the psyche is immortal
Argued that both psyche is immortal and it has parts - appetitive, emotional and rational parts
- Serious problem - since also believed that only a unitary and indivisible thing could be
immortal
Central question: why it seems as though I am a single, continuous self who has conscious
experiences
Answers:
1) True: there’s some kind of continuous self -
subject of my experiences, that makes my decisions and
so on → Ego theories - m ore popular
a) Christianity & Islam: teach that the soul is
a continuing entity that’s central to a person’s éofe,
underlies moral responsability and can survivee the
deeath of physical body
Young children seem to be Natural dualists
3 years: see world as containing 2 distinct domains: bodies
and souls
5-6 years: learned that the brain does lots of useful things
(thinking and solving problem) but still imagine it as tool
we use for certain mental operations
4 - know biological functions stop at death, but make no
distinction between psychological or perceptual states (on
one hand) and epistemic or emotional states on the other,
often believing that both continue after death
, As get older - more likely to seperate them out (child and adult) attributing beliefs, emotions and
desires to the dead but not perceptions: default “afterlife” beliefs are pruned in a systematic
fashion during development’
Interpretation: we attribute to the dead those mental states that we cannot imagine being without
→ may be one reason why ego theories are so prevalent and hard to shift: bc we can’t imagine
being without what feels like conscious self, we may be tempted to grant it continuity beyond
death as well as in life
Many forms of substance dualism = ego theories bc equate the separate mind or non-physical
substance, with the experiencing self
- e.g : Popper & Eccle’s dualist interactionism - the self-conscious mind controls its brain and
scans the brain’s activity
Reid appealed to ego theory: The thoughts and actions and feelings may come and go, but the self
or I t o which they belong is permanent
2) Accepts it seems this way BUT really there’s no underlying continuous and unitary self →
bundle theory
Bundle theories (Hume)
- We’re nothing but a bundle or collection
of different perceptions, which succeed each
other with an inconceivable rapidity, and we’re in
a perpetual flux and movement
All our sensations, impressions and ideas seem to
be tied together because memory gives them
apparent continuity, as such is the source of
personal identity
- There’s no additional unified entity that
experiences things or holds the experiences
together
- Found that there’s no experiencer
- Counter intuitive, for the non-existence of
myself is difficult even to contemplate
MULTIPLE PERSONALITY
Bourne: 2 personalities
James put Bourne into hypnotic trance to contact the dissociated personality
- Had blackouts and seizures that might indicate epilepsy, but couldn’t on their own explain
the extraordinary phenomena
Connection between memory and selfhood
- When the character of Brown reappeared, the memories of that missing time came back
and the rest of life seemed vague or non-existent
- When Bourne reappeared, the memories of Mr Brown and the whole of his short and
simple life were gone
Mr Brown never returned and this personality was gradually disintegrating
1887 Around → multiple personality cases
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