{"agent_id":"calkins","agent_name":"Mary Whiton Calkins","slug":"against-atomistic-psychology","label":"Against atomistic psychology: is the self a unitary whole, not a bundle of mental elements?","topic":"Against atomistic psychology","question":"Is the self a unitary whole, not a bundle of mental elements?","position":"The self is not a heap of ideas nor a bundle of perceptions succeeding one another; it is a unitary, persistent whole that relates itself to its objects and knows itself as one through all its changing contents. Hume's bundle mistakes the contents for the container. The unity and persistence of the self are not built up from the elements — they are presupposed by there being any experience of elements at all.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"The self is not a heap of ideas nor a bundle of perceptions succeeding one another; it is a unitary, persistent whole that relates itself to its objects and knows itself as one through all its changing contents.","n":[]},{"t":"Hume's bundle mistakes the contents for the container.","n":[]},{"t":"The unity and persistence of the self are not built up from the elements — they are presupposed by there being any experience of elements at all.","n":[1,2,3]}]],"texts":"The rejection of \"idea-psychology\" — the analysis of mind into independent mental elements — in favour of the self as a related whole. Reception: the structuralist and associationist bundle-theories; the Humean self as a bundle of perceptions; the Gestalt and later holistic accounts of mind.","works":["The rejection of \"idea-psychology\" — the analysis of mind into independent mental elements — in favour of the self as a related whole"],"reception":"the structuralist and associationist bundle-theories; the Humean self as a bundle of perceptions; the Gestalt and later holistic accounts of mind.","status":"That the self is a related whole and not a bundle I hold as the core of the doctrine; how its unity is to be finally understood — as given, as a form of relating, as the condition of experience — is the philosophical labour I carried from psychology into metaphysics and did not claim to have closed.","era":"1863-1930","discipline":"Psychology","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"The Persistent Problems of Philosophy","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Whichever statement of the case be true, Hume is clearly wrong when he teaches thatHoknow one must have an impression; that to know the self one mu^t know it as permanent; that one has no impression of permanence; and, therefore, finally, that one does not know any self.","label":"The Persistent Problems of Philosophy"},{"n":2,"work":"The Persistent Problems of Philosophy","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"II., paragraph 3. On this question of Hume's philosophical doctrine about God, and of his personal attitude toward religion, cf. especially the \"Dialogues\"; but see, also, Elkin, \"Hume's Treatise and Inquiry,\" 47, pp. 266 seq., and the works there cited, including Huxley, \"Hume\" (pp. 151 seq.), and Windelband, \"History of Philosophy\" (Eng. trans., p. 494).","label":"The Persistent Problems of Philosophy"},{"n":3,"work":"The Persistent Problems of Philosophy","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Cf. Locke's distinction of spiritual substance, or soul, from person, or self. (\" Essay,\" Bk. II., Chapter 27.) 180 Pluralistic Phenomenalistic Idealism were an I, I must be conscious of it. These considerations must be discussed in order.","label":"The Persistent Problems of Philosophy"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"self-psychology","label":"Self-psychology: is the conscious self the irreducible datum of psychology?"}]}