[Buddha-l] Re: Physicalism (was Re: Emptiness)

[Richard Hayes]

On Sunday 28 October 2007 10:04, Bill Kish wrote:

> And as I don't think
> you have ever fully articulated your views on physicalism on
> BUDDHA-L, I thought I would try and get you to dive into the
> details a bit more.

I have never articulated my views on physicalism because I don't HAVE any 
views on physicalism to articulate. What I may have said is that 1) I think 
of the mind-body problem as one of the most complex and interesting puzzles 
in philosophy and science, one to which I have never seen a solution that 
struck me as obviously the best candidate, and 2) despite its being an 
interesting puzzle, absolutely nothing else that I believe in or care about 
is contingent in any way on the solution to the problem, and 3) despite its 
being an amusing puzzle, the attitude I admire the most is that of the 
Buddha, who left the relation between mind and body as one of the unanswered 
questions, that is, a question that has zero relevance to Buddhist theory and 
practice.

The Buddha's good advice not to mind the matter of mind and matter 
notwithstanding, Indian Buddhists let themselves get sucked into the 
purposeless enterprise of trying to defend a particular view of the 
relationship between mind and matter, and, in the process, managed to produce 
a gaggle of unconvincing arguments, many of which Buddhists have been 
mindlessly repeating ever since. What do you get when a Buddhist waxes 
mindless? It really doesn't matter.


-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico