ABSTRACT
It is often assumed that there is something irredeemably Cartesian about the notions of self-unity and self-identity. Parfit acknowledges that people are naturally inclined to hold a non-reductionist account of personal identity, according to which selves or persons are separately existing entities whose continuity through time is an all-or-nothing affair and does not admit of degrees or phases, strictly speaking. Parfit describes his own view as a bundle theory of the person or self. According to bundle theories of the person either the unity of consciousness at any time, or the unity of a whole life, by referring to a person cannot be explained. Parfit's bundle theory of self and consciousness makes a more radical claim than his bundle theory of the person but runs into even more serious difficulties. Much of the philosophical literature on personal identity deals with extremely hypothetical or imaginary cases involving transplanted brain-parts, body- swopping consciousnesses, and replica-producing machines.
