display all the ideas for this combination of texts
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5517 | Individuals don't exist, but are conventional names for sets of elements [Buddha] |
Full Idea: There exists no individual, it is only a conventional name given to a set of elements. | |
From: Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama) (reports [c.540 BCE]), quoted by Derek Parfit - The Unimportance of Identity p.295 | |
A reaction: I take this to arise from an excessively spiritual concept of a human being, which faces Descartes' problem of how to individuate non-physical minds, when they have no clear boundaries. Combine dualism with a bundle theory, and you have Buddhism. |