more from this thinker | more from this text
Full Idea
[People] are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a continual flux and movement.
Gist of Idea
A person is simply a bundle of continually fluctuating perceptions
Source
David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.IV.6)
Book Ref
Hume,David: 'A Treatise of Human Nature', ed/tr. Selby-Bigge/Nidditch [OUP 1978], p.252
A Reaction
Nowadays we must say that this misses the huge non-conscious aspect of what a person is. He seems to see all mental events as equal. Isn't the experience of deciding to focus on this sentence more 'central' than awareness of your feet?
| 3819 | Hume's 'bundle' won't distinguish one mind with ten experiences from ten minds [Searle on Hume] |
| 1317 | A person is just a fast-moving bundle of perceptions [Hume] |
| 1331 | The parts of a person are always linked together by causation [Hume] |
| 1388 | Hume gives us an interesting sketchy causal theory of personal identity [Perry on Hume] |
| 21297 | A person is simply a bundle of continually fluctuating perceptions [Hume] |
| 5323 | Experiences are logically separate, but factually linked by simultaneity or a feeling of continuousness [Ayer on Hume] |
| 5326 | Qualia must be united by a subject, because they lead to concepts and judgements [Ayer] |
| 5325 | Is something an 'experience' because it relates to other experiences, or because it relates to a subject? [Ayer] |
| 5172 | If the self is meaningful, it must be constructed from sense-experiences [Ayer] |
| 3820 | The bundle must also have agency in order to act, and a self to act rationally [Searle] |
| 3539 | Personal identity is just causally related mental states [Parfit, by Maslin] |
| 1394 | Can the mental elements of a 'bundle' exist on their own? [Carruthers] |
| 1395 | Why would a thought be a member of one bundle rather than another? [Carruthers] |