Selfhood and the Problem of Sameness: Some Reflections

Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Religion. ‘Self and Not-Self in Indian Philosophy’ in Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro (eds.) Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Religion, Volume 4, pp. 2252-2262. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell., 2021

Asian Studies, 2016

I contrast briefly the Buddhist concept of Self as a process and a conditional reality with the concept of the substantial metaphysical concept of Self in Brahmanism and Hinduism. I present the criticism of the Buddhist thinkers, such as Nāgārjuna, who criticize any idea of the metaphysical Self. They deny the idea of the Self as its own being or as a possessor of its mental acts. However, they do not reject all sense of Self; they allow a pure process of knowledge (first of all, Self-knowledge) without a fixed subject or “owner” of knowledge. This idea is in a deep accord with some Chan stories and paradoxes of the Self and knowledge.

Recent years have seen a considerable growth in interest amongst Western philosophers and psychologists in the Buddhist idea of anattā – “no self”, as it is usually translated. A number of philosophers have published works, addressed to Western philosophical audiences, expounding and defending versions of anattā, some claiming that the Buddhist doctrine has significant affinities with various Western forms of reductionism or eliminativism about the self. In this paper I consider and criticize a number of these accounts. My concerns are not primarily exegetical; I am writing, not as a scholar of Buddhism, but as a philosopher, trained in the Western tradition(s), and interested in assessing the various recent interpretations/defences of anattā on their philosophical merits. I argue that none of them gives us grounds for abandoning a common sense, phenomenologically-based view of the reality of the self. I conclude by tentatively suggesting a way in which we might interpret anattā “practically”; one that would not see it as a theory about personal identity in the standard post-Lockean Western philosophical sense at all.

Alternative Standpoints: Tribute to Kalidas Bhattacharya, 2015

In this paper my aim is to discuss Kalidas Bhattacharya's treatment of "self" with special reference to Yogacara Buddhist philosophy. Bhattacharya has started his discussion with the basic minimum sense of the term 'self'. After discussing different Indian philosophical analysis of the term self, he started discussing the treatment of self by Yogacara Buddhist philosophers. For him in the Yogacara conceptual framework a definite assertible self has not been accepted.

2019

India has a rich and diverse history of philosophy. The integral understanding of ‘Self’ is often neglected, which is given by Indian philosophy and the western view is more popular. This essay starts with the introduction of main orthodox and heterodox schools of Indian philosophy. Then discussion on six major epistemologies followed by these schools, which follow these epistemologies in-parts or as whole is presented. Further the article looks into an analytical discussion on the concept of ‘self’ as given by these classical Indian schools, especially Nyāya-Vaiśeṣikas, Vedanta and Buddhism in detail. In the conclusion, the answer to the question -What is the comparison and contrast of their views with popular western philosophers such as Locke, Sartre, Hume, Descartes and Kant?, is given.

HKU, 2021

Altruistic and greater-good considerations are not only fundamental aspects of ethical maturity, but also a basic means for coming to know each other. Rational egoism (the view that practical rationality requires some form of personal pay-off for the goal-driven agent) is not so easily snubbed, nor has it fallen terribly out of fashion in the social sciences and economics. I argue that it is not a truism that altruism is less natural than egocentrism for an ordinary self. It is false. I aim to reconceive the problem that altruistic considerations seem less rational than justified, egocentric considerations. I conclude that the self can identify with subjectivity as such, and thereby advance the interests of a “we-self.” While epistemically distant, the “we-self” is ontologically prior to the ego. I conceive the problem in terms of a central distinction in Indian philosophy; the distinction between an ego-self (ahaṅkāra) and either a bundle of property tropes (as we find in schools of Buddhist philosophy), or a persisting synthesizer of experiences that is not solely identified as “this body” (as we find in Monistic-Śaivism). For Mādhyamika-Buddhist thinkers like Śāntideva (c. 8th century C.E.), an error-theory of self provides good reasons for altruism. I argue that this is logically unconvincing. In chapter 3, I appropriate Levinas’s discussion of the Other/other to develop a Buddhist-inspired, Emptiness Ethics. However, I dismantle this in chapter 4, where I appeal to aspectual metaphysics, particularly, the notion of composition as identity (CAI), to clarify not only the rational status of other-centric considerations, but the very possibility of acting on such considerations. In chapter 4, I offer a Śaivist-inspired solution to the problem of other minds. Borrowing from Abhinavagupta (c. 10th-11th century C.E.), I contend that the possibility of identifying with and acting for a larger whole lies in recognizing ourselves as both individuals and others (bhedābheda). I develop this by showing how normativity and a concept of selfhood go hand in hand; and, furthermore, the reflexivity of consciousness allows us to recognize a self that is not limited to only practical and narrative identities, but to self as such.

Sydney Studies in Religion, 2008

‘According to the teachings of the Buddha, the idea of the self is an imaginary, false belief, which has no corresponding reality, and it produces harmful thoughts’. (Walpola Rahula). I evaluate these criticisms of the idea of the Self in Buddhist teachings.