At each moment, there's a mental event with misrepresentational content, with said content including the misrepresentation that the event is owned by a self
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Replying to @evantthompson @ericlinuskaplan and
This is such a tricky issue, as I believe in a persisting biological process, but I also deny the existence of selves as ontological posits. Selflessness generates a kind of phenomenological distancing from the solicitations that are usually present in the world. 1/2
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Replying to @NeuroYogacara @evantthompson and
I don't see why no-self theorists can't continue to speak of *persons* existing and acting and being subject to illusions. They are just rejecting a certain metaphysical account of what persons are, aren't they?
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Agreed. That's what Buddhists generally do. See Steven Collins, Selfless Persons, and Mark Siderits, Personal Identity and Buddhist Philosophy: Empty Persons
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Replying to @evantthompson @keithfrankish and
My own view, however, is that "self" can't be restricted in meaning to an independent, substantial entity (most philosophers and psychologists since James and Mead don't use "self" that way)
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Replying to @evantthompson @keithfrankish and
And I think attempts to validate Buddhist no-self theories using cognitive science are confused, because the former are inherently normative
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Interesting! Must read up on this -- starting with your book.
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Replying to @keithfrankish @evantthompson and
The one thing that I would say is that *so is science*! The normativity doesn’t go away just because it fades into the background. Prediction and explanation are things we currently value, but they don’t track fundamental joints in nature!
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Replying to @NeuroYogacara @keithfrankish and
I agree about that, of course, but the kind of normativity is different; it's not soteriological in the relevant sense.
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Replying to @evantthompson @keithfrankish and
I agree on that too! But the question is whether psychology and neuroscience *should* proceed without sensitivity to soteriological considerations. That's where the arguments get pretty murky...
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Being sensitive to them is one thing, adhering/following one or another soteriological norm is another thing. And let's remember: there's no agreement about such norms even within Buddhism (as I argue in my book)
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Replying to @evantthompson @keithfrankish and
Definitely, and it seems to me that we need our own “soteriological” norms, such as individual and collective liberation, and the minimizing of global suffering!
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Replying to @NeuroYogacara @keithfrankish and
Minimizing global suffering definitely; individual and collective liberation is trickier, given likely irreconcilable differences about what "liberation" means
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