I’m working on a paper for my Asian Philosophy class in which I’m arguing against the Buddhist doctrine of no-self. I am having problems right now dealing with the ontological status of consciousness. If I start not making sense from this point on I apologize. I’m not quite sure yet how to even talk about consciousness as existing yet doing so in a different way (for a better lack of words) than objects withing time-space. Does anyone have any suggestions (readings, or just ideas) that can help me understand the ontological status of consciousness so that I can try to tackle this issue with my argument? ]
You need to use your imagination on this one buddy.
I agree with realunoriginal, the Buddhist concept of no-self is probably one of their most sophisticated and highly revered concepts, at least amongst us Westerners. Ontology is pretty elusive and ethereal. I might suggest taking a more teleological approach to mind, self, and consciousness. Teleology, at least in recent times is pretty self-admittedly subjective with few clunky premises to have to wade through. Argue that self ontologically speaking may (or may not) be tangible, but teleological purpose could consolidate self in its own right.
Just a thought. Good luck on your paper.
PS - Xunzian would definitely be able to help you with this. Hopefully he’ll check this thread out. If not, I suggest reposting this in the religion section to get his attention.
Cool, it’ll give me somewhere to start. That’s really where I’m having the most problem right now, just getting started. I’ve already tackled the concreta side of the doctrine, but I don’t want to leave the abstracta side open for them to fall back on. We’ll see how it goes. Thanks for the help.
Lots of luck…
awarness of the within and without
does this help at all ? if not feel free to ask me questions
north
It helps to know what Buddhists mean by a self. That way you know what they’re refuting. Do you know what ‘self’ means in Buddhism?
I do know what they mean as a self (at least I hope I do). From the reading that I’ve done, they seem to define a self as an unchanging entity. So when I analyze everything that makes up me, I would realize that there is nothing that does not change, therefore, no self. (Of course this is just a very very brief explanation of no-self)
If I were you, I’d check out Lynne Rudder Baker. I’m not terribly familiar with Baker, but from my cursory knowledge, it seems like her non-reductive naturalism would be a good call.
That’s about right I’d say. The self which is a fiction according to Buddhism is generally defined as permanent, single, and independent. ‘Self’ or ‘ego’ or ‘soul’ is generally contrasted with ‘person’ or ‘personhood’ to make it more clear what is meant. Anatman (no-self) is not some sort of extreme nihilistic concept. So an ontological status for consciousness may or may not be anti-Buddhist. I just thought you should realize that it’s a very subtle issue, and not a clear pro- or con- one. You might assume you’re arguing against a Buddhist concept but you in fact might not be.
Well I’ll go ahead and explain what I’m doing here, as well as the argument as I have it developed thus far.
I’m not necessarily trying to argue against the doctrine itself as wrong, but the doctrine in its current version. In some of the text (and I’ll have to go back and find exactly which Buddhist text so I can site it), a Buddhist master is discussing the self with his students.
So with this, I am approaching this from two directions. The first is in dealing with substance, the other (and the one I’m trying to develop) is with concepts.
For the substance portion, I start first by saying that they are using the word “substance” incorrectly. It seems that they use “substance” to mean an object in time-space. However, because they are analyzing and stripping away all of these objects (a term I use loosely here), they never allow for the opportunity for a substance to remain.
I argue that “substance” should be used to mean a bare particular. In doing so, by analyzing and stripping down the makeup of a self, there is still an opportunity for one to find a substance remaining.
From here I define what an object would be. I take Hume’s approach with his Bundle Theory. An object is nothing but an aggregate of all of it’s properties. If you take all of the properties away from an object, there is nothing left, no substance, no bare essence, if you will.
This is only a very brief overview of my argument, but I hope you can at least see where I’m going with it.
Hume’s Bundle Theory is actually incredibly close to the Buddhist notion of emptiness as applied to the self. So, using Hume to try and disagree with Buddhism won’t work very well . . .
Actually, you could us Hume’s Bundle Theory as a surrogate for no-self and object to it by using compresence and language-reality arguments. This Wikipedia article talks about it extensively.
That would work pretty well, actually.
Yeah, that article even mentions the Buddhist implications of the theory referring to Rendawa Zhonnu Lodu’s “Commentary on the Middle Way”.
That’s pretty much what I’m trying to do. I’m not trying to argue that there is no self, just the way they state it is wrong (more or less).
For the other portion of my argument (in dealing with concepts) I’m starting to think about attacking the relationship between concept and subject (I know, this debate has been going for an extremely long time). But I’d like to run a sub-argument by ya’ll to see what you think.
P1: A concept must be instantiated within an object for the concept
to exist.
P2: An object is only an aggregate of its properties
C1: Therefore, a concept must be instantiated within a property to exist.
Partially depending on what happens with this argument, I’m thinking about taking an approach stating that because a concept must be instantiated within a property (and I will have already talked plenty about properties by this point) that Buddhism can’t look towards concepts to be a self.
P1: where is the instance of god? moreover, where is the object of god?
you are falling in anselm’s circle…
-Imp
I guess I don’t see why I would need an instance of God here. I’m just trying to argue against the no-self doctrine of Buddhism, so it would seem to me irrelevant to talk about God here, especially because I’m trying to stay away from western religion all together. Furthermore, I am atheist, so there’s really no way that I will admit that God exists in the first place.
if your first premise is true, “P1: A concept must be instantiated within an object for the concept
to exist.” then anything you can imagine as a concept must be instantiated…
can you imagine the concept of god?
-Imp
But imagining the concept of God, and that concept of God being instantiated within an object in time-space are two completely different things. It seems though that I chose the wrong word when I said ‘concept’. By concept I meant more so abstract objects like consciousness.