I was off from work today and had a chance to catch up on some reading. I was cutting through a book about the relationship between Buddhist thought and cognitive science (The Embodied Mind by Francesco Varela, Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch). You really have to plow your way through this book; it’s very dense with complex thought, although you can usually stay up with the authors if you go slow. However, it becomes incomprehensible whenever Buddhist doctrines are discussed. The two key Buddhist doctrines being flouted here are 1.) the falsity of “self”, and 2.) the ultimate emptiness and groundlessness of everything.

Well, that certainly covers a lot of ground (except that ‘ground’ ultimately doesn’t exist). We believe that we have stable, if slowly changing, self-identities; and that we live in a world that is “really there”. But certain Buddhists seem to think it’s all an illusion. Or mostly an illusion. Or an illusion in one sense, but not in another. Somehow, this confusion is supposed to break our egos (not unlike what a Zen koan sets out to do), and turn us into wiser, kinder and gentler beings. Once we stop grasping for fixed identities, we can then just experience things “straight up”, open-heartedly, without self-delusions.

Yea right.

The biggest problem with Buddhist thought, in my opinion, is its lack of respect for words. They don’t give much regard to the notion that “words have meaning” (which is consistent with their focus on meditative experience). So they can be sloppy with even the most important words like “truth”. Varela and company talk about “relative truths” and “ultimate truths”, but warn that neither are part of a “theory of truth”. The ultimate of ultimate truths is the emptiness of the world. And that would also include the concept of truth. If so, then truth is an empty concept; it can be whatever anyone wants (thus all truth becomes “relative truth”). That’s not what this book affirms, but its flip-flopping notions of what “truth” means would do nothing to prevent this. I suspect that criminal defense lawyers would love to convince judges and juries to adopt this book’s way of thinking.

As to throwing away our notion of “self” and the overly-inflated ego that often goes with it: I’ll be the first to acknowledge that many, if not most, people could use a good dose of humility. Ego causes a lot of trouble. But to nuke the ego and turn everyone into compassionate, compliant zombies – that scheme would work only if you absolutely guarantee 100% effectiveness. If just one person kept their ego, he or she would then become the ruler of the planet. In the real world, egos are a pretty good defense against power mongering and sales pitches and political speeches. Admittedly, the “self” and its ego are not permanent, and are not always good. In extreme instances (e.g., severe head injuries or traumas), the “self” can be terminated and replaced by a new personality. But self and ego are rough working concepts that make sense in the world such as it is.

Another rough working concept that makes sense, at least here in the West, is that “words have meaning”. Philosophers and scientists can prove that words and language could not and do not perfectly “represent” the world. Reality is always a bit more complex than our concepts. But we do need these concepts to maintain law and order, along with industry and commerce and science and education. We have to respect our words, not devalue them in favor of “enlightenment through sitting”. Hell, even in the Far East, most Buddhists these days seem more interested in making a buck than in folding their legs and slowing their breathing until the inner light of wisdom shines. And to make a buck, you have to assume that words have meaning. When China sells a batch of big-screen TV’s and then buys some US Treasury Bonds, it is not willing to accept “relative truths” about payment schedules.

I will be the first to admit that old-fashioned “objectivism” is on the ropes these days; there’s not much you can be sure of anymore. Nihilism is certainly a problem; radical jihad may well be a nihilist reaction to the failings of the Enlightenment. The USA can show the world how to to get rich (albeit with the side effect of unfair wealth distribution). But it doesn’t offer much else to believe in, other than “free elections” (which are good, but aren’t the stuff that one builds their life around). Nonetheless, I don’t think that Buddhist approaches such as “empty-minded open-heartedness” are the answer. I think that we need to press on in order to find compelling ideas and ideals that everyone can grasp and believe in.

Descartes gave us half an answer – we all know that even if nothing else exists, one thing does – we ourSELVES exist! And we know something else almost as fundamental: i.e., that we crave relationship with something else. Preferably something else having an existence much like our own, with thinking and self-consciousness. I.e., relationship with OTHER PEOPLE. Without such relationship we know that we malfunction and ultimately shut down, even if all of our physiological needs for nutrition and air and heat are met.

If our species, in its search for meaning, could lock-on to the necessity of relationship, to the sacredness of having other self-egos that our own self-ego can relate to (without dominance or force, which ultimately corrodes all relationships) — well, that would surely go a long way towards realizing a better world.

To many people, philosophy seems like a big exercise in wasting time. It looks like a little group of weird people with spacey minds having nothing better to do than to ponder the true nature of their bellybuttons. These folk are kept away from the crowds, safe and sound in their colleges and universities. There, they challenge our youth (college students) with odd questions that have some temporary usefulness as “mind strengthening” exercises. It’s kind of like weight training for a baseball or football player, as it helps young women and men to develop brains strong enough to take on modern problems like quantum computer design or asynchronous war strategy or multi-national manufacturing logistic systems. As with muscle exercise for athletes, you do just enough philosophy in college to pass your class, then you get on to the more relevant challenges.

In a way, that’s too bad. Classical philosophical issues really can be interesting and relevant to a graying, middle-aged person like myself. But other than spending your time alone with a bunch of books (which actually sounds pretty good to me these days), it’s hard for the average middle-aged person to get back in touch with philosophy. There are a handful of small “movements” out there that are trying to bring philosophy back to the people. One of those movements is called “Socrates Café”, which sets up weekly or monthly discussion sessions open to the public during the after-work hours. I’ve been to the nearest SC, and it can be interesting. But it didn’t seem like “real” philosophy to me. It was mostly a rambling discussion that usually turned into a group therapy session (with follow-up liquid therapy at the local tavern).

Not that a walk-in therapy session (at low cost) is a bad idea in these crazy times. But from what I’ve seen, philosophy really is like exercise. It’s not easy and not necessarily pleasant. You have to put time into it and work your way up through it, as your “mental muscles” strengthen. In my own current project of reading up on the issues behind human consciousness, I’ve had to build some familiarity with “philosophy of mind”, which can be difficult and frustrating at times. It’s not always light, pleasant reading. But it can lead to some interesting insights, and maybe even develop the wisdom that promotes and protects one’s mental health in a crazy world. At my age, it’s not a question of passing a class to get a degree; it’s a question of using whatever time and opportunities are left to shore up some of my failings and to make whatever I can yet out of my messy little life.

I’ve been reading a treatise lately that talks a lot about “the self”. You can’t read a book or article on consciousness without some reference to “self”, but the authors of this particular work were very interested in Buddhism and its claim that there actually is NO self. Well OK then – so just what is “the self”? We usually get just one self in life, so maybe it’s better to ask just what is MY self? One answer to that question, perhaps the easiest one, is that our bodies define our selves. Here I am, sitting right here. My body defines the way I look, the way I talk, the memories I have, my tendencies such as crankiness or anger or hunger or contentedness or friendliness. The body changes over time, but so what? We all accept that we change over time.

And yet. Deep down inside, isn’t there something that we believe stays the same about us? Isn’t there some theme to who we are, to what our lives are? Isn’t there something we could say about ourselves that would apply even when we were babies and children? Something fundamental, more than just the sum of what happens to us over time? Were we totally determined by everything around us, everything that happened to us and came through us (“you are what you eat”) over the years? Obviously our laws don’t think so. We are held responsible for what we do; we can’t get off a felony charge by saying that we had a bad childhood or a bad meal.

Actually, our laws could simply be pragmatic; they could accept that we don’t have independent selves (free will) but demand that the guilty still be punished so as to keep society from falling apart. But most people (here in the west, anyway) seem to think there’s something more to it than that.

Plato took it all the way to the other end. He said that we had souls, and that there were “forms” that defined the pure essence of everything in our world. As such, our souls are the ultimate “form” of ourselves. You can see why the Christian religion (and some of the others) liked Plato, despite having to ultimately brush him off as a Greek pagan. The Christians, and the Jews before them, said that God gives each of us a soul, and that soul is ultimately who we are – or could be. But we live as a mix of body and soul, and if we listen too much to the body, our souls get corrupted and ultimately vanquished, to Sheol or Hell or where ever. If we make the sacrifices needed to nurture the soul, even at the expense of the body, then we won’t be vanquished once our bodies fail. We might then live on in some other realm or dimension, since we previously asserted the true nature of our “self”.

And in between these two extremes, i.e. self as nothing more than the changing body and self as cosmic eternal soul, various philosophers over the years have had other thoughts. John Locke emphasized the facility of memory; we are what we remember. Memory allows us to change, yet keep some things constant over the years (so long as our brains are working right). According to Locke, if you could take two people and exchange their memories (unforeseeable in Locke’s time, not so unforeseeable today), they would in fact exchange bodies and lives. The “self” would follow the memory trail. David Hume talked about self as more of a “bundle” of things, some that change quickly (e.g. our conscious attention; our minds do wander a lot), and some that don’t change as much (memories, body structures, personality tendencies, etc.). Other philosophers in turn have pondered whether there is something else about the mind that defines us, something to do with the ethereal nature of consciousness (i.e., “SELF consciousness).

Even the most dualistic of modern philosophers (those who posit that consciousness is different than matter and physics as we now know them) are generally afraid to say that consciousness actually affects how we are and what we do. But a small handful try to get around the “epiphenomenal” problem and ponder whether a conscious being is actually different than an unconscious one, all else the same. If so, then our behavior is in fact influenced by consciousness per-se (or self-consciousness, which is conceptually more stable than the short-run consciousness we have of itches and flies buzzing and people talking in the background and what we are doing this weekend). If so, then there is something to Plato and the Judeo-Christian Platonists, even if this doesn’t prove that there is a God (or a “World of Forms” in Plato’s case) behind it all.

The Buddhists generally don’t think so. They say that the mind is a monkey, doing this and doing that without much more reason than day-to-day survival. As such, the self is an illusion. On one level of truth, we have multiple selves, selves that change every day. We are one way in the morning, another way in the afternoon, another way after good news, another way after bad. In their deep meditations, they see nothing but change. They see that the idea of an unchanging self ultimately causes more pain than comfort. It’s an empty promise that makes us nutsy, it’s really the source of all problems. The highest level of truth revealed in their sittings is that there is no self. Once a person reaches that truth, they can
then be happy in life despite pain and sickness and failures in this world. Well, that’s what I’ve read about the Buddhists, anyway.

So, is all this deep thinking (or deeper than the usual office-cooler chit-chat) worth more than the digits and pixels on the screen which you are reading it with? Can it help my life and yours? Notice that I didn’t draw any conclusions here (although admittedly I am hoping against hope that the radical consciousness-dualists somehow rally back against the pro-Buddhists and physicalists that seem to be winning the debate right now). But hey, if the exercise helps you to appreciate your own SELF – your life, your very being – if it helps you to see just how precious a gift it all is, even in a world of decay and failures — then maybe it is worth the struggle. As the fitness freaks say, “no pain, no gain”. In a “SELF-SERVICE” world, it’s a good idea!