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This thesis is an examination of Bertrand Russell's realist "bundle theory of particulars". In Russell's earlier work, the need to explain the unity and individuality of objects compelled him to accept particulars as well as universals as ultimate kinds of reality. Nevertheless, in carrying out his efforts to economize his ontology, he discovered he could not reduce properties to particulars, because there are some relations that resist nominalistic explanation, but particulars could be reduced to bundles of qualities. In this thesis, I show that the realist 'bundle theory' not only reduces the kinds of ultimate reality to one, i.e., to universal qualities, but also serves all of the purposes for which bare particulars were originally required. Specifically. I examine what I take to be the major criticisms leveled against the realist 'bundle theory': the problem of individuation, the problem of necessity, and the problem of analyticity. I defend the strength and consistency of Russell's theory and argue that it can answer to the objections. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Why do you experience yourself as a continuous self? This is a central question when regarding the self and it has two kinds of answers: either there is something like an ego inside you which is the entity perceiving all your experiences (the ego theory-view), or there is no such thing as a self or an ego and you are just a collection of different perceptions (the bundle theory-view). There are many different components all contributing to the concept of self as a whole leading to different neuroscientific ways of measuring it and some researchers are arguing for the nonexistence of a unified self-system within the brain. The aim of this thesis is to review how neuroscientific findings might contribute to the philosophical debate about the nature of self. The thesis starts off by reviewing the different concepts and components with which the self is typically described, both in philosophy and in the empirical research field of neuroscience. Then follows a presentation of three important aspects of self-awareness – first-person perspective, self-reflection, and interoception – and their specific associated brain areas (namely, the medial prefrontal cortex, the posterior and anterior cingulate cortices, and insula). The purpose here is to examine how the self is approached in these studies. After this the thesis explores to what extent neuroscience supports the bundle theory-view, with a focus on reviewing the different brain networks involved in the processing of self. In conclusion, the thesis suggests that the literature reviewed provides neuroscientific support for the bundle theory-view that there is no unified self located in the brain, mostly because of the dissimilar neural activations associated with different self-related processes. In other words, the bundle theory seems to be correct despite the experienced feeling you have of being a continuous and unified self.