Bundle Theory of Personhood

“It was the split-brain cases which drew me into philosophy... We control each of our arms, and see what is in each half of our visual fields, with only one of our hemispheres. When someone’s hemispheres have been disconnected, psychologists can thus present to this person two different written questions in the two halves of his visual field, and can receive two different answers written by this person’s two hands...

“One of these people looks fixedly at the centre of a wide screen, whose left half is red and right half is blue. On each half in a darker shade are the words, ‘How many colours can you see?’ With both hands the person writes, ‘Only one’. The words are now changed to read, ‘Which is the only colour that you can see?’ With one of his hands the person writes ‘Red’, with the other he writes ‘Blue’...

“[A] view is that, in these cases, there are two persons involved, sharing the same body. Like Professor MacKay, I believe that we should reject this view. My reason for believing this is, however, different. Professor MacKay denies that there are two persons involved because he believes that there is only one person involved. I believe that, in a sense, the number of persons involved is none...

“According to the Bundle Theory, we can’t explain either the unity of consciousness at any time, or the unity of a whole life, by referring to a person. Instead we must claim that there are long series of different mental states and events—each series being what we call one life... Each series is like a bundle tied up with string...

“The first Bundle Theorist was Buddha, who taught ‘anatta’, or the No Self view... Here are some quotations from Buddhist texts:

“‘A sentient being does exist, you think, O Mara? You are misled by a false conception. This bundle of elements is void of Self, In it there is no sentient being. Just as a set of wooden parts Receives the name of carriage, So do we give to elements The name of fancied being.’

“‘Buddha has spoken thus: “O Brethren, actions do exist, and also their consequences, but the person that acts does not. There is no one to cast away this set of elements, and no one to assume a new set of them. There exists no Individual, it is only a conventional name given to a set of elements.”’

“Buddha’s claims are strikingly similar to the claims advanced by several Western writers. Since these writers knew nothing of Buddha, the similarity of these claims suggests that they are not merely part of one cultural tradition, in one period. They may be, as I believe they are, true.”

--Derek Parfit, “Divided Minds and the Nature of Persons,” first published in Mindwaves, 1987, collected in Doing Philosophy: An Introduction through Thought Experiments, Second Edition, 2003