[Buddha-l] Are we sick of dogma yet? (2nd of 2)

[James Ward]

Hi Lance -- thanks for the stimulus to thought!

On Nov 26, 2006, at 12:42 AM, L.S. Cousins wrote:

> Personally, I don't see a problem here. I am happy to see the body as 
> an evolving complex of processes (rather than entities); I don't need 
> to envisage some over-arching body entity.

Seeing the body as an evolving complex of processes is itself an 
evolving process which has not reached completion -- any rest we may 
take from this seeing-in-the-process-of-evolution remains conceptually 
provisional.  At some point we accept that a certain set of labels and 
rules describes reality sufficiently for our purposes, and we put the 
investigation aside in order to pursue other goals.

There may not be some unitary bodily entity (other than the body we 
perceive, I suppose), but in this case we still use the word "complex" 
to identify and refer to a particular body.  There is still a need for 
a referent here, and I think it's not simply because it is rude or 
cumbersome to refer to a person's person in terms of its constituent 
processes.

Not to sound like a vitalist -- but sometimes I think I am one!  
horrors! -- but the coherence of a body _in toto_ is a phenomenon that 
seems to be hardly addressed in today's biology.  What keeps these 
complexes together?  For a bunch of unconscious molecular processes 
fully consistent with known chemistry and thus physics, these processes 
are remarkably (nay, astonishingly) concerted!  (Well, there are 
processes which keep the other processes "in line"...)

> Nor do I see the need for entities rather than processes in describing 
> the mind. Of course, these things _are_ convenient some times.

Yes -- how to describe the mind?  Especially the "basic awareness" as 
opposed to the exercise of logic and so on -- there's nothing there to 
grab hold of, to single out as a foreground to focus upon against a 
background of other phenomena.  To speak of entities, we have to be 
able to identify them by characterizing them, by labeling their 
properties.  The only thing to grab onto in basic awareness is... all 
the phenomena of our experience.

I see no rigid self, but I still see.  The processes, the constituent 
elements, the entities are labeled as objects and concepts, but it is 
still very difficult to label the components of the seeing "itself".

Criticism very welcome :)

James Ward