Bundles, Western and Eastern

Bundles, Western and Eastern

This article (https://medium.com/ai-ai-oh/the-dissolution-of-self-b36e9975d6c3) is an excellent if unplanned, math-influenced version of David Hume’s argument demonstrating that the “self” is just shorthand for experiencing many of your separate, perceived characteristics which you think of as the collective answer to “Who am I?”

And AI needs to be added on to what you do experience, as it provides suggestions or changes not available to Hume in the 1700s.

AI summarizes this revolutionary theory, which is getting more complex since Hume wrote his “Treatise” (1739–1740) — due to clarifying similar Buddhist principles, plus psychology and algorithms being added later on — better than I can.

Mark Daynes 2015–09–17 title Two Faces of Buddha https://unsplash.com/photos/J6p8nfCEuS4 Public Domain

From ChatGPT’s AI Overview:

“David Hume argued that the ‘self’ is not a permanent, unified thing. Instead, he believed what we call the self is just a constantly changing bundle of perceptions — sensations, emotions, thoughts, memories, and experiences.

“This idea is often called the ‘bundle theory’ of the self. Hume explains it most famously in his book A Treatise of Human Nature. He says that when he looks inward through introspection, he never finds a stable ‘I’ or soul — only particular experiences:

heat or cold pleasure or pain love or hatred thoughts or memories [update: AI messages] ….

“So for Hume:

The self is not a fixed soul or essence. Personal identity is a kind of mental construction…

“His ideas later influenced: Immanuel Kant…. William James and modern psychology,

And comparisons with the Buddhist idea of ‘no-self’ (anattā), though Hume arrived there independently.”

Allan Ramsay (1713–1784) DAVID HUME, 1711–1776, Historian and philosopher. Painting Date 1754 Medium oil on canvas National Galleries Scotland Wikimedia Commons Public Domain