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Full Idea
For Parfit all personal identity really amounts to is a chain of experiences and other psychological features causally related to each other in 'direct' sorts of ways.
Gist of Idea
Personal identity is just causally related mental states
Source
report of Derek Parfit (Personal Identity [1971]) by Keith T. Maslin - Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind 10.5
Book Ref
Maslin,Keith: 'An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind' [Polity 2001], p.269
A Reaction
When summarised like this, it strikes me that Parfit is just false to our experience, whatever Hume may say. I suspect that Parfit (and those like him) concentrate too much on rather passive perceptual experience, and neglect the will.
| 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] |
| 5325 | Is something an 'experience' because it relates to other experiences, or because it relates to a subject? [Ayer] |
| 5326 | Qualia must be united by a subject, because they lead to concepts and judgements [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] |