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

[Erik Hoogcarspel]

I stil find considerable flaws in this analysis. I've not read Siderits, 
but there are some angles left untouched here. First of all, we have to 
make a difference between an empirical ego (the one which the shrink 
gets his hands on) and the transcendental one, which is no more and no 
less then the principle of responsability and the necessary unity of 
cognition. The latter is related to the first person single in grammar. 
Secondly I think it's impossible to give a coherent description of the 
self from the point of view of the self. The self is a social 
phenomenon, it's the way we participate in a group. . The Buddhist 
attempts and most of the western philosophical attempts just fall short 
in taking this into account. As a subject in language, that what we 
think and speak about, Sartre gives a reasonable description of the self 
as the ad hoc mental construct on the basis of filtered memories. 
Bourdieu calls it the illusion of the biography. To me at least this 
makes more sense then the rather theoretical categories of Siderits.

Richard Hayes schreef:

> Siderits adapts some terminology used in analytic philosophy, and
> especially philosophy of mind. He suggests that three possible attitudes
> can be found with respect to the reality of a self or person. 
>
> 1. Elimininativism would be the view that the self is a complete and
> useless fiction that so much gets in the way that we had best eliminate
> all mention of it altogether. (In another context, an eliminativist
> might say about the concept of the soul that it is utterly vacuous and
> so misleading that we had best purge our vocabulary of it.) Siderits
> claims that in Indian Buddhism there are no eliminativists with regard
> to selves and persons. No one says that the concept of self is
> meaningless.
>
> 2. Reductionism would be the view that it makes sense to speak of a
> self, but only insofar as "self" is a convenient shorthand for a complex
> of phenomena that it would be cumbersome to mention in full detail. The
> concept of self could, in principle be eliminated, but at a cost. (In
> another context we might say that "buddha-l" is a convenient shorthand
> for the 500 or so people who subscribe to this discussion group, and for
> the messages that appear on this discussion group. So when we say
> "Buddha-l is a waste of time," this is a shorthand way of saying "All
> the messages written by Dan Lusthaus and Richard Hayes and Lance Cousins
> and [name every subscriber by name] is a waste of time.") Siderits sees
> much of early Buddhism (Theravada, Vaibhasika, Sautraantika etc) as
> reductionist in this sense.
>
> 3. Realism would be the view that the self is fully real in that there
> are predicates that apply to it but that cannot be applied to anything
> else. The self is one of the ultimately real constituents of the world,
> and it would therefore be an intellectual mistake to eliminate it or to
> see it as merely a convenient fiction. (In another context, some
> philosophers hold that consciousness is a sui generis reality that
> cannot correctly be seen as just a metaphorical or careless way of
> speaking about events in the brain.) Siderits claims that no Buddhists
> were realists about the self, but that one can find self-realists in
> most non-Buddhist schools of Indian philosophy. These are the
> full-fledged aatmavaadins.
>
> Siderits suggests that just as reductionism is a middle path between
> eliminativism and realism, one can find another middle position between
> reductionism and realism. This middle position he calls non-reductive
> mereological supervenience (NMS). This view of the self is non-reductive
> in that it regards self as a subject that bears predicates that cannot
> be borne by any of the aggregates. It is mereological in that the self
> is seen as a whole that has parts, namely, the 5 aggregates (or, more
> accurately, all the dharmas that can be classified into aggregates on th
> basis of shared features). But the self has a supervenient relationship
> with the dharmas. (The basic idea of supervenient relationship between A
> and B is that it holds just in case every change in A is an effect of
> some change in B. So the concept of self is supervenient upon dharmas
> because no change in the concept of self occurs without some change in
> the underlying dharmas.) The self on this account is an idea (prajnapti)
> but not an idea to which there does not correspond a single uneliminable
> and irreducible reality. Because it is a supervenient reality, it is not
> regarded as simple, unconditioned and eternal; it differs, therefore,
> from the aatman of Brahmanical thought. Siderits argues that at least
> one version of pudgalavaada can best be described as a example of
> non-reductionist mereological supervenience theory.
>
> I think that we are now living in a time when it is seen by many people
> as just wrong-headed to say that self or ego is nothing but a poetic way
> of talking about more complex realities. Self is just too important a
> construct in depth psychology and in moral theory to wave it aside. It
> is not simply because of some beginningless delusional habit that we
> think and talk of selves. So our tendency is to be non-reductive about
> self. But we also tend not to see the self as eternal, unconditioned and
> unchanging. Indeed, most of it see self as what analytical philosophers
> call supervenient. By seeing the self as a supervenient reality we can
> speak seriously, and without embarrassment or shame, about such things
> as self-cultivation, self-improvement, self-awareness and
> self-understanding, and we can do so without buying into what most of us
> would see as a metaphysical absurdity, namely, an eternal soul or
> something of the like.
>
> Although the terminology of non-reductive mereologial supervenience is
> perhaps unnecessarily arcane, the theory for which it stands seems both
> reasonable and attractive to me. Whether or not anyone in India ever
> held such a view---I'm happy to leave it to historians of ideas to sort
> that whole matter out---, I think a number of Buddhists in our times
> hold such a view. If only we could find a less awkward and pompous and
> unattractive name for it. (It's a good job analytic philosophers never
> have children; one shudders to think what ugly names they would give
> them.)
>
>   


Erik


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