1999 Meeting Abstracts A183: Roundtable with William Waldron

A183 The Siren Song of Self: How can We Think of 'Thoughts without a Thinker'?

One of the problems of Buddhist notions of mind is the question of agency: if there is no self, who 'thinks' or 'acts'? This arises from, 'syntactical' assumptions of a narrative agent that preclude an adequate expression of the classical Buddhist notions of non-self and its correlate, dependent arising. This "anthropomorphization of causality" corroborates Wittgenstein's observation that philosophy is the reification of grammar. I shall suggest interpretive models that express Buddhist notions of mind, particularly vijnana, without reifying it into a subject-object dichotomy. In addition to Buddhist materials, I shall also draw upon diverse sources such as the work of Bateson, Varela, and several cognitive scientists, in order to forge new conceptual models that express Indian Buddhist notions of mind and mental processes in a decentered and impersonal language more appropriate to it, while simultaneously engaging current developments in theories of mind.