Descartes Bundle Theory Analysis

Cavan Hagerty

Mr. Jurkiewicz

PHIL 202.33

3 March 2017

PHIL 202 Paper #1

Descartes spends a great deal of time examining what we know in his book Meditations on First Philosophy. By performing a series of meditations he challenges the very idea of previously known philosophical truth in an attempt to prove them as true or false. He spends a great deal of time discussing the idea of objects, how we can understand their existence, and how we perceive objects in the world. This is achieved by using two key examples to prove his views of the nature of objects; the wax example and the example of people walking outside of his window. Both of these examples can be used to show how Descartes sees the role of objects in the world around us.

The

One such person is David Hume. He was a philosopher much like Descarte, and believed in a very different view of objects were perceived and how their organization should be viewed. He challenged the wax example that Descarte arrived at and in doing so created a new theory regarding the composition of objects. It came to be known as the bundle theory, in direct contrast to the substrate theory which Descarte had used to understand objects and their composition.

The bundle theory approaches the composition of objects in a new a different way. Bundle theory maintains that properties are bundled together in a collection without describing how they are tied together. For example, bundle theory regards an apple as red, four inches wide, and juicy but lacking an underlying substance. The apple is said to be a bundle of properties including redness, being four inches wide, and juiciness. It is not the apple that holds these properties together, it is in fact a collection of the properties that make the apple what it

Descartes's ideas are known as the substrate theory. The theory explains the association of properties by asserting that the properties are found together because it is the substance that has those properties. In substance theory, a substance is the thing in which properties inhere. For example, redness and juiciness are found on top of the table because redness and juiciness are inherent in an apple, making the apple red and juicy. Substrate assumes that is the object that holds the properties together, not the properties that make the object. This is why the bundle theory does not stand up to Descartes's explanation of the wax