A Physicalist Theory of Mind

[Kaccāni]

So much compassion!

[Johnny Dangerous]

If anyone knows/can explain it..what is the physicalist explanation for Neuroplastiscity..in a nutshell?

I've read attempts at explanations that appeared to be mostly technical stuff about how brains work, which unless i'm missing something..don't really address the objections. Is there a (reasonably simple) layman's explanation of how neuroplasticity can exist when "mind" is an epiphenomena of matter?

[shel]

I recently wrote on my blog that every time the unseen world has become amenable to being seen we're learned that priests are wrong in their metaphysics. Even if scientists have also proved wrong, priests who offer speculative explanations of the world, when tested, are inevitably wrong. This process of proving priests wrong has been going on relentlessly for 400 years. If someone claims to have mystic or otherwise non-physical knowledge of the world, when finally tested they are always wrong.

I take issue with that, too. How do you 'test' a metaphysic? It can only ever be validated in the first person! At best you can appeal to like-minded individuals. But there is no way to 'lab test it', I don't think. That is one of the inconvenient truths of metaphysics.

A bit crude but a simple method would be sensory deprivation. Cutoff all sensory input and watch all metaphysics, and your whole mind, slowly degenerate. If mind were separate from 'matter' or the 'material' world that wouldn't happen. The mind is entirely dependent on the material world, and indeed consists of nothing else.

[Wayfarer]

More than 'a bit'.

Counter evidence consists, among other things, of the voluminous documentation of children with memories of previous lives. Another source might be studies of near-death experiences. There is an interesting book on that topic by the name of Consciouness Beyond Life by a Dutch cardiologist called Pim Von Lommel. He reviewed literally thousands of cases of reported 'near-death experiences' and wrote that:

That death is the end used to be my own belief. But after many years of critical research into the stories of the NDE, and after a careful exploration of current knowledge about brain function, consciousness, and some basic principles of quantum physics, my views have undergone a complete transformation. As a doctor and researcher, I found the most significant finding to be the conclusion of one NDEr: `Dead turned out to be not dead.' I now see the continuity of our consciousness after the death of our physical body as a very real possibility.

[shel]

That is not counter evidence to the fact that a mind must have sensory input, from the 'material' world, to develop and be sustained.

[Kaccāni]

A bit crude but a simple method would be sensory deprivation. Cutoff all sensory input and watch all metaphysics, and your whole mind, slowly degenerate. If mind were separate from 'matter' or the 'material' world that wouldn't happen. The mind is entirely dependent on the material world, and indeed consists of nothing else.

Something similar has been reported for Christian Monks who did not speak for the period of one year. The intellectual capabilities did need some re-training. I guess any neglection of any facility is some kind of extreme. So study and discussion as part of any syllabus seem to me like worthy components.

[Wayfarer]

Something similar has been reported for Christian Monks who did not speak for the period of one year.

By whom, and where?

[Kaccāni]

Something similar has been reported for Christian Monks who did not speak for the period of one year.

By whom, and where?

By a Christian friend of mine, in person, whose long time comrade spent one year in silent monastic retreat, it was something that they could experience in their communication directly afterwards. I wouldn´t know whether he wrote about the experience. It was something I remembered.

Best wishes
Gwenn

[Jayarava]

In fact you will find innumerable passages in books on Tibetan and East Asian Buddhism which differentiate 'insentient matter' from 'knowing mind' and which could be quoted as evidence of a dualist view. I have quoted one such above in this thread, but if you do research on the topic of "mind in Tibetan Buddhism"' you will find many more.

HI Wayfarer,

I had not realised that later Buddhist explicitly went down this root. Most of my research is on early Buddhist ideas. In all the streams of early Buddhist thought I've investigated what is proposed would be considered "wrong view". I extend to Nāgārjuna and he would have a agree as far as I can tell. Existence and non-existence don't apply, because the domain of interest for Buddhists is experience rather than reality. Once Buddhists let go of this essential distinction the intellectual output of Buddhists ceased to be coherent. Certainly none of the ontological speculations of Buddhists stand up to scrutiny in the present.

I think the point is, as I said in relation to the quote I refer to above, that dualism is regarded in Buddhism as a 'working model' or 'upaya'. This means that for practical purposes, and the purposes of instruction, 'body and mind' are surely distinguishable. But that perhaps doesn't entail that 'mind' is a 'primordial substance' in the sense posited by the true 'substance dualists'. However in practical terms, the distinction between 'mind' and 'insentient matter' is, if not absolute, at least a strong working assumption.

The idea that mind and body are distinguishable is not tenable in a modern discussion. Mind is embodied. "Without body there is no mind." Funnily enough I read exactly these words in a book on Theravāda Abhidhamma today. But even the Ābhidharmikas have strayed into ontological territory which the authors of the suttas (Sautrikas) would never have countenanced. There is simply no epistemological access to objects, to the body as distinct from the mind - there are simply cittas of different flavours that we interpret in different ways. That said the Sautrikas admit that one can distinguish bodily (kāyika) experience from mental (cetayika) experience. Just as one might distinguish an emotion from a thought, though of course this is not a distinction that the ancient Buddhists would have made. But again this is simply identifying different cittas as having different qualities - the distinction is epistemological rather than ontological. Ontologically all dharmas (citta, cetasikas, nibbāna) have the same status: impermanent, dissatisfying, & essenceless; or as Heart Sutra puts it: sarvadharmāḥ śūnyatālakṣaṇāḥ.

The other issue is that our notion of 'substance' is irrevocably contaminated with materialist associations. We simply can't help but think of 'substance' in terms of some 'stuff' or 'energy' or 'thing'. And that is what is truly inimical to the Buddhist way of understanding it.

well yes. I agree with the content of this statement on any number of grounds. Though it does contradict what you've already said.

I take issue with that, too. How do you 'test' a metaphysic? It can only ever be validated in the first person! At best you can appeal to like-minded individuals. But there is no way to 'lab test it', I don't think. That is one of the inconvenient truths of metaphysics.

I think you've fundamentally misunderstood the nature of metaphysics and the progress of science over the years. In the last 400 years innumerable notions which emerged from speculative metaphysics have been put to the test and found wanting, been proved wrong. Almost al theorising makes predictions using metaphysical concepts. If nothing else we work with the metaphysical concept of causation all the time! What is beyond (meta) physics in one age, is within it in another. I think you confuse metaphysics precisely with a first-person perspective here. This is Romanticism.

My favourite example of the triumph of empiricism over metaphysics is the Copernican Revolution. Priests followed Ptolemy in proposing an earth centred universe - it was consistent with Biblical accounts. But the metaphysics of an earth centred universe makes predictions that are wrong. A sun-centred universe was better, though at the time it was proposed in the 1600s there was no sense of a much larger universe.

Just so, the metaphysics of ontological duality makes a raft of predictions about what will be observed that are inaccurate. Careful observations of the mind are entirely consistent with ontological monism. The evidence is far from complete, but it is already overwhelmingly in favour of this conclusion and no amount of special pleading from religion is going to change that.

Overall, very good analysis, and very sophisticated. But I think you underestimate the sophistication of a true philosophical dualism. I think that the fundamental distinction between mind and matter is not hard to show.

According to a friend of mine who teaches philosophy at the Open University there are currently no philosophers who accept an ontological dualism with respect to mind and body. I certainly find any kind of ontological dualism entirely unconvincing. As I say the evidence, as far as I am aware of it and I do try to keep up, is all in favour of ontological monism. Ontological dualism cannot explain the facts. It only survives because of special pleading.

The really difficult issue is that our contemporary mainstream culture is basically 'one-dimensional' - that is, there is no dimension corresponding with 'depth'. We live in a culture where things either exist or not. There is no scope, and no language, for degrees of reality or degrees of being. That was something, which in Western philosophical terms, Rene Descartes understood, which many of his critics and successors did not, and without which it is very difficult to interpret issues such as these.

Which culture do we live in? There is no scientist these days who would claim that existence and non-existence are the only two options. Everyone is well aware of Shrodinger's failed thought experiment. Failed in the sense that his attempt to discredit the Copenhagen Interpretation of the wave-function was eventually adopted as a advert for it's success. The cat neither exists nor non-exists until we observe it. As badly misunderstood as this thought experiment is, it still infects the entire scientific culture of the present. Descartes is thoroughly discredited and irrelevant in the modern world. He has a place in history as an interesting intellectual dead-end, but he was wrong about the nature of reality. I'm a bit shocked to find anyone taking more than an historical interest in Descartes, but for a Buddhist to be promoting him I find incomprehensible. Mind and body might be epistemologically distinguishable, but they are not ontologically distinguishable. Watch out for my blog on 27.6.2014 which will explore some of the implications of this.

I will add that the terms 'mind' and 'conscioussness' are not exactly synonymous. It is a hard topic, because in this field uniform definitions are very difficult to arrive at. But you can't help but notice that if you read a lot of the current Western literature about Tibetan Buddhism, in particular, there is a way of using the term 'mind' with a capital 'M' - 'knowing Mind', 'realising Mind', and expressions like that, which has a particular significance in relation to this topic, in my opinion.

I don't read any literature about Tibetan Buddhism. But once one starts to capitalise "mind" then one would seem to have fallen into error. I'm not sure what significance you place on this, but from my point of view it's not very interesting. Most Buddhist philosophy after the early Abhidharma period is uninteresting to me, precisely because it begins to flirt with and then to jump into bed with ontological speculation of just the kind the Buddha warned his followers to avoid. The attempt to make pratītyasamutpāda a Theory of Everything is ultimately a failure and it's going to take a major break with tradition to right the gross wrong that has been done.
I'm all for it personally, but most people seem to find the idea unsettling.

As far as I can make out there is no conception in ancient Buddhist texts which corresponds to consciousness as an entity as we describe it in the present, or as you say that Tibetan Buddhists describe it. The refutation is found in many early Buddhist texts and in books like Antonio Damasio's Descartes' Error. The double pronged attack of early Buddhist thought and contemporary neuroscience I find very convincing as I have a foot in both camps.

[Wayfarer]

Thankyou for your comments, but I can only see the foot you have in the materialist camp.

Existence and non-existence don't apply, because the domain of interest for Buddhists is experience rather than reality.

I'd be interested to see an attribution for that claim.

"Without body there is no mind."

What empirical finding would falsify that claim? (Hint: look further up the page.)

there are simply cittas of different flavours that we interpret in different ways.

Interpretation is also citta. It isn't as if first there is an object, then an act of interpretation. An object is only an object, because it is interpreted as such. The mind brings the classification to the scene, which recognizes 'an object' as such, distinct from other objects, and in relation to them in such a way. There are no objects for which that cannot be said. No 'ultimate object' has ever been found, and indeed the further down you go into matter, the more it appears as mathematical objects, which are intellectual in nature, by definition.

Descartes is thoroughly discredited and irrelevant in the modern world.

A number of ex cathedra declarations at this point, of which this is one.

Ontologically all dharmas (citta, cetasikas, nibbāna) have the same status: impermanent, dissatisfying, & essenceless;

I don't think you demonstrate a grasp of the meaning of 'ontology'. Perhaps you might offer an elaboration?

In the last 400 years innumerable notions which emerged from speculative metaphysics have been put to the test and found wanting, been proved wrong.

....the metaphysics of ontological duality makes a raft of predictions about what will be observed that are inaccurate

For instance?

Careful observations of the mind are entirely consistent with ontological monism

A simple idea or formula can be represented in any one of a number of languages, or in different symbolic systems - binary, linguistic, mathematical, even by way of semaphores and signs. But say in some case, the same information is represented in these diverse ways and media. So in such a case, what is different, and what is the same? The material nature of each instance is totally different, yet the information is the same in each case. So how does that support 'ontological monism'?

[LastLegend]

If there is no body, will there be mind?
If there is mind, will there be a body?
If there is no mind, will body produce it? If there is no fire, will tree produce fire?
If there is no body, will there be mind?

[Andrew108]

@ Jayarava. That was an interesting post. I hope you can publish a link to your blog. I would be interested in reading it. Just a question. This ontological monism you are talking about - the monism is 'thing' monism rather than 'stuff' monism right?

[Wayfarer]

(Schrodinger's) cat neither exists nor non-exists until we observe it. As badly misunderstood as this thought experiment is, it still infects the entire scientific culture of the present.

Schrodinger was many things - a romantic, a womanizer, a bohemian, a trickster - but a fool, he wasn't. He knew perfectly well the point he was illustrating with his cat analogy, and it represents something which is and remains fundamentally and deeply mysterious about the nature of matter, according to physics. Furthermore, this puzzlement - which began with Heisdenberg's assertion of the Uncertainty Principle - has never been resolved. It is still highly contentious, and contested. Presently, one of the so-called 'resolutions' is Rupert Everett's 'many-worlds interpretation' of quantum physics. This idea, that was dismissed as utterly preposterous and fanciful by Everett's own thesis supervisor, maintains that all possible alternative histories and futures are real, each representing an actual world (or universe). In lay terms, the hypothesis states there is a very large—perhaps infinite —number of universes, and everything that could possibly have happened in our past, but did not, has occurred in the past of some other universe or universes. Polls have shown that such ideas are increasingly popular amongst physicists. Indeed, David Deutsch, who is regarded with an admiration bordering on idolatory by the secular intelligentsia, is convinced of the reality of 'many worlds' to the point where he is scornfully dismissive of anyone who dares to disagree.

Certainly physics has been very successful in some respects - especially in its application to technology - but physical cosmology is a complete and utter shambles, insofar as it purports to be a parsimonious account of the underlying principles of the Cosmos. So the notion that matter, or materialism, could possibly represent the basis for these endlessly proliferating mathematical fantasies, is (at best) wishful thinking. As far as materialism is concerned, it is game over - even Stephen Hawkings has had to adopt what he calls 'model-dependent realism' - so the idea of any ultimately 'objective' reality is history, at this time.

So the irony in all this is that physics itself has completely torpedoed materialism - holed it beneath the waterline.

Descartes is thoroughly discredited and irrelevant in the modern world. He has a place in history as an interesting intellectual dead-end, but he was wrong about the nature of reality. I'm a bit shocked to find anyone taking more than an historical interest in Descartes, but for a Buddhist to be promoting him I find incomprehensible.

Not discredited so much as completely misunderstood. It's a pity he didn't have any real successors around to defend his legacy. I'm sure that his detractors, such as Gilbert Ryle, never understood Descartes' notion of res cogitans.

Dan Lusthaus gives an excellent summary account of the aftermath of Cartesian dualism in his online essay 'what Is and Isn't Yogacara'. In it, he says:

The term "Idealism" came into vogue roughly during the time of Kant (though it was used earlier by others, such as Leibniz) to label one of two trends that had emerged in reaction to Cartesian philosophy. Descartes had argued that there were two basic yet separate substances in the universe: Extension (the material world of things in space) and Thought (the world of mind and ideas). Subsequently opposing camps took one or the other substance as their metaphysical foundation, treating it as the primary substance while reducing the remaining substance to derivative status. Materialists argued that only matter was ultimately real, so that thought and consciousness derived from physical entities (chemistry, brain states, etc.).

You will notice that materialists still argue that case, even though, as a matter of principle (which is the basis of the 'hard problem of consciousness'), it is something that can never be accomplished. If mind and matter belong in ontologically different categories or levels (which I believe they do), then explaining the former in terms of the latter is like trying to produce a two-dimensional image which accurately represents a three-dimensional object. It simply can't be done, and won't ever be done, for reasons that those who advocate it can't even grasp, let alone refute.

[Andrew108]

Objective reality or objective condition? The latter is not controversial at all.

[Wayfarer]

You might care to elaborate.

[Jayarava]

Existence and non-existence don't apply, because the domain of interest for Buddhists is experience rather than reality.

I'd be interested to see an attribution for that claim.

Oh that's easy. This is the famous Kaccānagotta Sutta which also survives in a Sanskrit (Katyāyana Sūtra) and Chinese Version (Saṃyuktāgama 301. Taishō 2.99 85a-86c ). I've translated all three (See sidebar). The Chinese and Sanskrit are quite similar to each other and both a little different from the Pāḷi, suggesting they are translations from the same original, probably in Gāndhārī. And of course Nāgārjuna takes up this theme throughout his Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. The Katyāyana is the only text cited by name by Nāgārjuna (MMK 15.7). Candrakīrti's commentary on MMK, Prasannapadā, cites a version of this text in Sanskrit that is slightly different to the extent Sanskrit manuscript, suggesting that at least one other recension existed.

I'd recommend Sue Hamilton's book Early Buddhism a New Approach for a discussion of why we should always take the Buddha to be talking about epistemology and never about ontology. Her case is very good, and her approach has certainly paid dividends for my own research and practice. I've explored the idea over a number of years on my blog in dozens of essays and in my daily practice.

Beyond that I can't think of a modern writer on early Buddhism who would dispute the idea that the Buddha was not talking about ontology and that the interest in ontology emerged only in the late Abhidharma stage. One could look at Noa Ronkin's book Early Buddhist Metaphysics or Collett Cox's writings about the Sarvāstivāda, particularly Cox, Collett. (1995) Disputed Dharmas Early Buddhist Theories on Existence: An Annotated Translation of the Section on Factors Dissociated from Thought from Sanghabhadra's Nyāyānusāra. (Tokyo, The International Institute for Buddhist Studies).

Both Ronkin (discussing Theravāda sources) and Cox (discussing Sarvāstivādin sources) make this point that even the earlier phases of Abhidharma are interested in events rather than entities. Some authors discuss this as a "process ontology" as opposed to a "substance ontology" though I'm not sure how helpful that is. Where unspecified I mean "substance ontology" when I use the word "ontology".

Amongst scholars of Buddhism I think this point is now entirely uncontroversial, a consensus view. The value of Buddhist ontological speculation is a moot point. I say it's entirely pointless and that modern science and philosophy is far more insightful than medieval Indian speculations. The value of Buddhist epistemology is still beyond question.

"Without body there is no mind."

What empirical finding would falsify that claim? (Hint: look further up the page.)

Well again, this is easy. All one has to do is come up with incontrovertible evidence for a disembodied mind. A straight forward example of communication from a mind that has no body would suffice. It may be that AI researches achieve this, but I predict they will not. Since no such evidence exists, the proposition remains to be disproved. However as a theory it does make more useful predictions: for example it predicts that if you damage their hippocampus a person will not be able to form new memories. And this turns out to be accurate 100% of the time so far. If you stimulate the left temporal lobe with a magnetic field the sense of self breaks down in ways consistent with classic mystical experiences: loss of sense of boundedness, out-of-body experiences, etc can all be routinely induced under laboratory conditions nowadays. I recommend Thomas Metzinger on this subject.

If we invert it and look to falsify the idea that "the mind can exist separately from the body" there is a huge volume of neurological evidence that refutes this. The vast outpouring of data from neurological studies is, as I say, entirely consistent with ontological monism - mind and body being inseparable in practice despite physical and mental experiences having different qualities. One can cite the popular works of Oliver Sachs, Joseph Le doux, V S Ramachandran, Antonio Damasio, Patricia Churchland, and Thomas Metzinger but there are tens of thousands of other researchers working in this area. The scientific literature is vast and it all points to mind/body integration. The work of linguist George Lakoff backs this up as well. And his writing partner Mark Johnson has shown how the idea of embodied consciousness is a better paradigm for understanding how we experience the world.

So the positive statement is unrefuted, despite there being a clear route to falsification; and the negative is thoroughly refuted by a ton of evidence. And the positive statement makes a range of highly accurate predictions about the relationship of brain to mind, and of how the mind works, whereas the negative makes inaccurate predictions and fails to explain the observed relationship between brain and mind.

There's really no mileage in ontological dualism outside of religion and the metaphysical speculations of priests.

there are simply cittas of different flavours that we interpret in different ways.

Interpretation is also citta. It isn't as if first there is an object, then an act of interpretation. An object is only an object, because it is interpreted as such. The mind brings the classification to the scene, which recognizes 'an object' as such, distinct from other objects, and in relation to them in such a way. There are no objects for which that cannot be said. No 'ultimate object' has ever been found, and indeed the further down you go into matter, the more it appears as mathematical objects, which are intellectual in nature, by definition.

I think like many philosophers you overstep the limitations of your own epistemological stance.

To say "An object is only an object, because it is interpreted as such." is going too far. All you can really assert with confidence is that you have experiences what can be interpreted as objects. You want to turn this into an ontological observation. But you don't know, and cannot know, that an object is only an object because it is interpreted as such. You do not know anything about the object beyond your experience - you are certainly not in a position to assert anything at all about the existence or non-existence of that which you experience as an object. So any kind of Idealism is misplaced.

And it's probably why the status of objects of the senses is never discussed in the suttas or the early Abhidharma. It's not until Buddhists get drawn into arguments with non-Buddhist Indian philosophers, during the Gupta Empire (more or less) that objects get any consideration at all beyond being referred very generally as "rūpa".

And this is also why Cartesian dualism is entirely unconvincing. From a Buddhist point of view, we simply don't have an epistemological perspective that would enable us to do anything more but speculate about the nature of substances. So you both affirm Cartesian dualism and thoroughly refute it in the same breath. And it's this kind of inconsistency which has plagued Buddhist thought for the last millennia or so. Metaphysical speculations with no epistemological basis and no understanding of the need to justify speculations on a solid epistemological basis. It's a tragedy because this confusion is clearly not evident in early Buddhist texts and only creeps in as time goes by and the emphasis of Buddhism changes.

Ironically there's a whole sub-genre of early Buddhist texts mocking this approach to knowledge in quite harsh terms, which was common amongst Brahmin theologians. As the Buddha says of such people in the Tevijja Sutta "It's just as if there were a line of blind men – the first one does not see, the middle one doesn't see and the last one doesn't see. The talk of these Brahmins turns out to just be laughable, empty, worthless, cant." (My Translation)

Also you say "It isn't as if first there is an object, then an act of interpretation." But in fact citta theory contradicts this. Since there can only be one citta at a time and the perception and interpretation are both cittas, then we can only interpret past cittas of perception. This is a point that is reinforced time and again in Abhidharma manuals (of all flavours). This is part of the argument for the persistence of dharmas as functioning conditions which gives the sarva-asti-vāda it's nickname. The Theravādins get around it using a strategy that is reminiscent of epicycles to preserve the Ptolemaic model of the earth-centric universe - i.e. they obscure the problem in nitpicking detail.

Descartes is thoroughly discredited and irrelevant in the modern world.

A number of ex cathedra declarations at this point, of which this is one.

As I say, your own stated views are entirely inconsistent with Descartes. You implicitly deny that there is any episteme by which you could assess your own explicit knowledge claims. Perhaps my statement of truisms offends you, but at least I understand my own arguments!

But really? Descartes? Name a single contemporary philosopher or scientist who is interested in him any more. Descartes ontological Dualism was a theological position, he was trying to allow for the existence of God. Dualism is really only of interest to theologians.

Ontologically all dharmas (citta, cetasikas, nibbāna) have the same status: impermanent, dissatisfying, & essenceless;

I don't think you demonstrate a grasp of the meaning of 'ontology'. Perhaps you might offer an elaboration?

Given that you are defending Descartes and ontological dualism at the same time as arguing that you couldn't possibly know anything at all about objects, I don't find your unwillingness to accept my definitions sufficient motivation to say more. Let's not descend into petty squabbling. You seem to trying to imply that my views are somehow off-the-wall and that dualism is the most natural thing in the world for Buddhists. But it isn't. It's very, very unusual to see a Buddhist defending substance dualism. Why don't you mount a proper defence of Descartes and dualism instead of trying to get under my skin with picayune comments?

[Wayfarer]

I'd recommend Sue Hamilton's book Early Buddhism a New Approach for a discussion of why we should always take the Buddha to be talking about epistemology and never about ontology.

Splendid book. As it happens, I drew on it for a Buddhist Studies thesis in 2012.

What I was interested in, however, is the relevance of 'experience' , and how this relates to the idea that 'existence and non-existence don't apply'

I believe that 'experience' is a transitive verb (i.e. requires an object.) So, if you like, experience (any kind of experience) presupposes the division between subject and object, which is what non-dualism seeks to overcome. I think on those grounds that a differentiation can be made between 'experience' and 'realisation', although the only place I have seen that spelled out is Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche's Mind at Ease. (It is a profound and difficult point, however, so I am happy to try and elaborate it later.)

Furthermore I think that the understanding of Śūnyatā is entirely ontological. 'Absence of own-being' is a claim about the nature and reality of being, or reality as such. Where it differs from Western metaphysics, is that it doesn't posit an 'essence' or something unchanging which can be distinguished from 'accidental properties'. But that doesn't mean it isn't an ontological observation. The root of 'ontology' is the present participle of 'to be'. So 'ontology' is not really the study of objects, but the nature of being itself. (I agree with Whitehead's comment that 'Buddhism is the most colossal example in history of applied metaphysics'.)

All one has to do is come up with incontrovertible evidence for a disembodied mind.

There are various examples. Ian Stevenson's research into children who recalled previous lives is one source. (Please don't say it has been discredited, because it really hasn't). In any case, there are numerous documented such cases, including some in which children have physical birthmarks in proximity to the site of the fatal injury to the previous life. So if that is the case, there is some means (as yet unknown) to transmit information from one life to another, aside from molecular biology.

There are also various data on out-of-body, near-death, and ecstatic experiences of various kinds. It is old news, although apparently not convincing enough for CSICOPs.

One can cite the popular works of Oliver Sachs, Joseph Le doux, V S Ramachandran, Antonio Damasio, Patricia Churchland, and Thomas Metzinger but there are tens of thousands of other researchers working in this area....

…all of whom are working within a materialist culture and paradigm and who can be expected to interpret all the data accordingly. That is what makes their view 'metaphysical' - their stance provides those global axioms and assumptions about 'the way things are' which influence the way results are interpreted. As I have noted, even in physics itself, the gaps and anomalies are now literally astronomical, yet physicalists have the temerity to propose that they can explain 'mind', which is the source of any explanation!

"An object is only an object, because it is interpreted as such" is going too far.

Not so. No object has ever been shown not to be reducible to something which is an object. There is no 'ultimate object'. That is why science has created the most expensive and complex apparatus in the history of the world to find 'the fundamental basis of matter. (And they're already saying it's not big enough, we need another.)

I agree with Schopenhauer - objects only exist for subjects. Without a subject who brings to the picture, a sense of relatedness, some proportion, a point of view, there are no objects whatever. Say the proverbial chair of philosophy tutorials - it is 'a chair' because you're 'a sitting being'. If you were a termite, it would be 'lunch'. If you wanted to start a fire, it would be 'fuel'. All of those viewpoints are valid.

Objects are mind-made. That doesn't mean they're non-existent, but it does mean they are not ultimately real.

Empty of own-being, in fact.

You seem to trying to imply that my views are somehow off-the-wall and that dualism is the most natural thing in the world for Buddhists

No, not at all! I didn't realise how much you knew till I read your other posts and visited your blog. This is just my general shtick 'against all materialism'. I will always argue against it. I hope you stick around, I have dashed this off whilst I am supposed to be making dinner, but would love to pursue it with you.

[Wayfarer]

No object has ever been shown not to be reducible to something which is an object.

Blooper. Tied up by my own double negatives. Should be 'No object has ever been shown to be reducible to something which is an object.'

There's really no mileage in ontological dualism outside of religion and the metaphysical speculations of priests.

I'd be interested in which 'priests' you think are generally known for metaphysical speculations (although I have one to toss into the pot, namely Stanley Jaki.)

...you are certainly not in a position to assert anything at all about the existence or non-existence of that which you experience as an object.

Which is precisely my point, and also a point generally made by Buddhist philosophers. Scientific materialism generally is posited on the notion of the 'mind-independence' of objects, which, as you say here, we are in no position to either affirm or deny. So how this supports your 'ontological monism', I cannot see.

From a Buddhist point of view, we simply don't have an epistemological perspective that would enable us to do anything more but speculate about the nature of substances. So you both affirm Cartesian dualism and thoroughly refute it in the same breath.

You misunderstand the meaning of the word 'substance' in relation to philosophy, I suggest. 'Substance' was a mis-translation of the original 'ouisa', which is the root of 'ontology'; again, it is based on the present participle of the verb 'to be'. So 'a substance' in philosophical terms, is not any kind of objective reality, stuff, or thing; it is much nearer in meaning to the word 'being'. The thrust is, it is that which cannot be reduced to constituent parts; it is metaphysically simple, that from which other things are derived.

I suggest that science hasn't found anything of that kind. That is what 'the atom' was purported to represent; however, didn't work out. In fact the very notion of 'substance' in the sense understood by Descartes (and the other early modern philosophers) is quite alien to anything in modern science; belongs to an entirely different cultural form and epoch.

Still investigating all of this, although excellent primer on the subject on the Encyclopedia of Philosophy site.

[Jayarava]

What I was interested in, however, is the relevance of 'experience' , and how this relates to the idea that 'existence and non-existence don't apply'

Surprised you haven't picked up on Sue Hamilton's conclusions. If you've read it you know that she talks about the khandhas as the apparatus of experience and makes the equation: experience = khandhas = dukkha = loka. I've expanded on this on my blog in several places. Since this is the central thesis of Sue's book I'm a bit surprised that you missed it. But it is a hard book.

I believe that 'experience' is a transitive verb (i.e. requires an object.) So, if you like, experience (any kind of experience) presupposes the division between subject and object, which is what non-dualism seeks to overcome. I think on those grounds that a differentiation can be made between 'experience' and 'realisation', although the only place I have seen that spelled out is Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche's Mind at Ease. (It is a profound and difficult point, however, so I am happy to try and elaborate it later.)

Experience is a transitive verb, in Pāḷi as well (mohaṃ paṭisamvedeti 'he experiences confusion'). But a grammatical object is not an ontological object. The early Buddhist theory of experience acknowledges that for experience to happen - for there to be vedanā - a sense object and a sense faculty must come together. But it says nothing at all about the nature of either. All that is known to you is that you are having an experience.
Imputing existence or non-existence onto experience is a mistake. It is the mistake.

Furthermore I think that the understanding of Śūnyatā is entirely ontological. 'Absence of own-being' is a claim about the nature and reality of being, or reality as such.

Well, it depends who or what you read. Clearly you have yet to read any of the references I posted yesterday and have not understood the history of the progress of ontological thought in Buddhism. As the Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya says: sarvadharmāḥ śūnyatālakṣanāḥ. The question then is, "What is a dharma?" For early Buddhist texts and through the early and middle Abhidharma period dharmas are events, not entities or substances. As I say you ought to read the two authoritative accounts of the history of this idea in Ronkin (Theravāda) and Cox (Sarvāstivāda). It's quite clear, for example, that svabhāva changes it's meaning over time. It starts off with no ontological implications at all. And when it gets them it's an intellectual blunder of staggering proportions. I've blogged about the Sarvāstivāda side of this recently in two essays:

Sarvāstivāda Approach to the Problem of Action at a Temporal Distance.
Where and Why Did the Sarvāstivādins Go Wrong?

But the thing is that you already have a substantial course of recommended reading to get up to speed. And you clearly need to read Sue Hamilton again.

All one has to do is come up with incontrovertible evidence for a disembodied mind.

There are various examples. Ian Stevenson's research into children who recalled previous lives is one source. (Please don't say it has been discredited, because it really hasn't). In any case, there are numerous documented such cases, including some in which children have physical birthmarks in proximity to the site of the fatal injury to the previous life. So if that is the case, there is some means (as yet unknown) to transmit information from one life to another, aside from molecular biology.

There are also various data on out-of-body, near-death, and ecstatic experiences of various kinds. It is old news, although apparently not convincing enough for CSICOPs.

I always burst out laughing when Buddhists bring up Stevenson. Apart from the fact that he died as mystified by his results as he was 40 years earlier when he started them, the kind of rebirth he purports to have evidence for involves souls reincarnating repeated. So score Hinduism 1: Buddhism nil!

The skeptics Dictionary has a succinct rebuttal of Stevenson, whose research is decidedly controvertible not to say laughable. As is the rest of the bunk that passes for evidence in that field.

One can cite the popular works of Oliver Sachs, Joseph Le doux, V S Ramachandran, Antonio Damasio, Patricia Churchland, and Thomas Metzinger but there are tens of thousands of other researchers working in this area....

…all of whom are working within a materialist culture and paradigm and who can be expected to interpret all the data accordingly. That is what makes their view 'metaphysical' - their stance provides those global axioms and assumptions about 'the way things are' which influence the way results are interpreted. As I have noted, even in physics itself, the gaps and anomalies are now literally astronomical, yet physicalists have the temerity to propose that they can explain 'mind', which is the source of any explanation!

And this failure to engage with evidence which contradicts one's views while lowering the bar to ankle height for evidence that confirms one's views is the characteristic feature of religious discourse. It's every kind of cognitive bias rolled into one and presented as an alternative. You might as well be a Jehovah's Witness.

I agree with Schopenhauer - objects only exist for subjects.

Of course you agree with him. How could you not?

But he wrote his little book 11 years before On the Origin of Species was published and died before he could respond to it. Schopenhauer has nothing of interest to say about Materialism because he died before it was invented! Schopenhauer even less relevant than dear old Descartes! If anyone tragically missed the boat of modernity it was him. And he's not even included in the Monty Python Philosopher's Song. Besides which, as I have pointed out, even your sclerotic version of Buddhism epistemology denies the possibility of Schopenhauer's ontology. He and you have no way of knowing anything about the existence or non-existence of objects. You're a walking contradiction.

No, not at all! I didn't realise how much you knew till I read your other posts and visited your blog. This is just my general shtick 'against all materialism'. I will always argue against it. I hope you stick around, I have dashed this off whilst I am supposed to be making dinner, but would love to pursue it with you.

I'm not interested in "shtick" of any kind. But especially not this kind.

[daverupa]

a few times, as it happens. A clarificatory discussion, this.