My other favorite philosopher: Galen Strawson on SESMETs

I also really like Galen Strawson. Here are his essays on 'The Self' and its successor 'The Self and the SESMET'. He argues for what seems to me to be an essentially Buddhistic view of the self and its impermanence.

Ursic's explanation of Parfit's 'Impersonal Survival'

Slovenian philosopher Marko Ursic has a nice essay from his book Four Seasons where he explains Parfit's idea on "selfhood" (really, the lack thereof) through time, and makes the conceptual link to Buddhism. The chapter/essay is here: "Impersonal Survival"

The "blind spots" and Parfit on death

I was talking with friend today and he told me that he had also wondered about what the back of his head "looked like", the ending of the visual field without boundary, and also wondered about where he "was" before he was born. This could be a common thing with people who end up interested in philosophy!

I read a neat quote that also seems rather Buddhist, and is similar to Wayne Stewart's metaphysics and Clark's essay from the last two posts:

Even the use of the word ‘I’ can lead us astray. Consider the fact that, in a few years, I shall be dead. This fact can seem depressing. But the reality is only this. After a certain time, none of the thoughts and experiences that occur will be directly causally related to this brain, or be connected in certain ways to these present experiences. That is all this fact involves. And, in that redescription, my death seems to disappear.
-Derek Parfit

This is from Is personal identity what matters? (PDF file)

Subjectivity and the edges of experience

Why do I find the Taylor paper so interesting? (see previous post.)

The main reason is that I have had similar but less well-formed and argued ideas, for quite a long time:

• When I was a kid, I used to wonder about why I couldn't see "blackness" at the back of my head, i. e. I was musing on the fact that there is no "border" nor a "beyond" to my visual field. I don't know where I got the idea, but I was an early and avid reader, and had read old popular books about the brain as early as age 10 (or less). If you think about this a while, it is quite striking, particularly in the context of Clark's paper. This is an 'angular' version of the 'finite block of experience'!


• Along the same lines, I also thought about 'Where was I before I was born?' at quite a young age. I may have thought about this as young as the age of seven or eight, maybe even sooner. I remember sitting in the yard and thinking about it, but I cannot recall the year.


• Later in life, when actively confronting the idea of 'hard materialism' and death, I have had the thought "Well, after I die, someone will go on experiencing anyway." This was definitely after learning about the idea of reincarnation and some Eastern ideas, though.
  

Also, this approach reminded me of two essays: The first is Harding's On Having No Head, a book I read many years ago (and still have somewhere). There is now a website for The Headless Way. Amazing. The second is "Enlightened Solipsism" in 5000 B. C. and Other Philosophical Fantasies by Raymond Smullyan. Alas, this seems to be out of print.

Articles on death . . . and transmigration?

Just when I was deciding 'rebirth' made no sense, I looked at another article at The Center for Naturalism after reading an article by Clark at the Pragmatic Buddhism newsletter site.

Death, Nothingness, and Subjectivity and Chapter 9 of Metaphysics by Default both present a case for a naturalistic version of 'transmigration' in the sense of a 'subjective continuity' of experience.
The MBD version is a little more baroque, but they are both very interesting.

A severe criticism of modern Theravada

I have been wondering about the apparent vitality of Mahayana and Tibetan Buddhism compared to Theravada, and now I find one answer: Theravada is rather ossified, particularly in its own cultural context. A footnote in Wikipedia led me to this site, which is mostly in German, look for Ven. Dhammika and "The Broken Buddha".

He has a blog here: Dhamma musings.
He mentions that his book "The Broken Buddha" is being translated into Indonesian here. At least he is trying to act as a reformer.

Ven. Dhammika's assessment of Theravada is pretty disillusioning. His view is that the Insight Meditation folks in the US are the most vital of western inheritors of Theravada. He also thinks Bhante G.'s emphasis on metta is not very impressive, because there is no emphasis on social engagement. I was wondering about this. Nhat Hahn is more impressive, I am beginning to think, though Bhante G. did make a good meditation manual.

Anatta and Parfit

Reading about anatta on Wikipedia has led me to Derek Parfit.

I read a little of his Reasons and Persons on amazon.com. Unfortunately my local libraries don't seem to have it. Sigh.

Pragmatic Buddhism?

These look really interesting: The Center for Pragmatic Buddhism, and their newsletter site: The Pragmatic Buddhist

I will look at these a while . . .

Anatta and Atoms and 'I'

And Democritus? I find it fascinating that Leucippus and Democritus came up with atomism in the so-called 'Axial Age' while early Buddhism was developing. The Epicurean ideas that followed, as preserved in Lucretius, really strike me as similar to 'anatta', no-self, particularly the idea that 'death is nothing to us' because our selves dissolve away in the flux of atoms when we die.

I also read a recent article in Scientific American Mind by Jesse Bering on the subjective difficulty of imagining one's own death.

There are also interesting papers referred to in the above article by Shaun Nichols.

What's this all about?

Due to a recent meeting with another person interested in modern Buddhism, I have become interested in vipassana meditation and renewed a long interest in Buddhism. I have been reading a couple of books by Bhante G. from the Bhavana Society, and also my new friend pointed me to Access to Insight. which is a Theravada resource site.

I am interested in Theravada because it strikes me as being sort of a 'minimalist' Buddhism, although my recent reading has made me aware it is only one of the original conservative schools of Buddhism.

Why am I interested in Buddhism? I lean towards being a 'physicalist' in the sense described by Galen Strawson --- and I think Buddhism is an interesting 'spirituality' to fit in with this.

Really I've been interested in Buddhism for most of my life, along with Taoism. My original contact was through Zen references in the old TV series Kung Fu. (Yeah, yeah, I know . . .) I just haven't been looking at if for a while and I really think it is the most congenial 'religion' to my outlook on life