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Mental Particulars, Mental Events, and the Bundle Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Richard Aquila
Richard Aquila*
Affiliation:
University of Tennessee
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Extract

I want to defend the “bundle theory” of mind from two criticisms which are sometimes levelled against it. The criticisms rest on the claim that particular experiences (for example, particular occurrences of thought and perception) are “individuated” by the experiencer who has those experiences. One of these criticisms is that while it is logically impossible that there be an experience which is not had by some sentient or cognizant being, acceptance of the bundle theory would entail admission of the possibility of experiences without experiencers. The other criticism is one which has been raised at least with respect to the most plausible form of the bundle theory. It is directed at that view which analyzes the conditions for an experience's membership in a given person's mind in terms of some external (e.g., causal) relationship between an experience and that particular person's body. The objection is, once again, that the view in question is committed to regarding as logically possible something which is in fact logically impossible.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , March 1979 , pp. 109 - 120
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1979

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References

1 Cf. Zemach, E. M. “Sensations, Raw Feels, and Other Minds,” The Review of Metaphysics 20 (1966), pp. 324ffGoogle Scholar, and “Strawson's Transcendental Deduction,” Philosophical Quarterly 25 (1975), pp. 117–18.

2 Armstrong, D.M. A Materialist Theory of the Mind (New York: Humanities Press, 1968), p. 15.Google Scholar

3 Hume, Treatise, 1, 4, sec. 6.

4 Perhaps something like the above is the reasoning behind Zemach's claim that the “no-ownership” theory is compatible with the “identity theory”: “Strawson's Transcendental Deduction,” p. 120.

5 Armstrong, p. 21.

6 Cf. my discussion of Hume, in Intentionality: A Study of Mental Acts (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977), pp. 3–4.Google Scholar

7 Hume, 1, 4, sec. 6.

8 Ibid.

9 Strawson, P.F. Individuals (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1963), pp. 104-5.Google Scholar

10 Ibid., p. 93. It should be noted that Strawson defines the view that he calls the “no-ownership” or the “no-subject” theory as a view according to which experiences are logically “transferable” from one person to another. This procedure reflects Strawson's assumption that if experiences are “had” by a person only in the sense of being causally related to some body, then experiences would be logically transferable in the sense in question. It is precisely this assumption which I would question.