Thought this quote from St. John of the Cross might be relevant here: "The spiritual man aims at complete abstraction and forgetfulness so that , as much as possible, no knowledge of created things, as if they existed not, shall remain in his memory."

What has no exordium or eschaton is what is no self. We have at the core of our consciousness what has not existed from time immemorial and will not exist infinitely far into the future. We are dead while alive and death is the source of intelligence. To think you're fully alive is the tinge of self and imbecility. Judging a part of existence by existence is bias, judging existence by non-existence is where stupid atta can't enter. Thankfully, anatta has clearance.

we transcend the biological. We are able to conceive of purposes above and beyond those encompassed by biological theory. — Wayfarer

I can think of a better alternative than settling for a dualism between the biological and the cognitive.
Combining neuro and cognitive science with phenomenology, enactivist, dynamical systems approaches unite the biological and the cognitive. They view intentionality as originating in the inherently anticipatory self-organizing characteristics of living systems. Cognition is not the internal representation and manipulation of external stimuli, but an active interaction between organism and world based on sensorimotor coupling.

They view intentionality as originating in the inherently anticipatory self-organizing characteristics of living systems. — Joshs

So what? It's still thinking like an engineer.

Then why believe it? It is the epitome of unsupported speculation. At best it's a feeling. This is precisely where the Buddha diverged from Hinduism, as he showed their doctrine of 'universal self' is incoherent. — Wayfarer

There are some good reasons to believe it. I am not sure I have the motivation at the moment to lay it all out, as it is pretty involved. But I have long been past the point of being convinced of the matter.

Regardless, my curiosity is piqued when you say that the Buddha showed the doctrine of universal self to be incoherent. Would you care to elaborate?

The decimal representation of Pi never ends and never settles into a permanently repeating pattern. — praxis

Do you mean to say that there is change here? Surely, the value of Pi doesn't change.

Surely, the value of Pi doesn't change. — petrichor

What makes you so sure?

Regardless, my curiosity is piqued when you say that the Buddha showed the doctrine of universal self to be incoherent. Would you care to elaborate? — petrichor

Well the Buddha would challenge anyone to say what ‘the higher self’ is, or where in experience such a proposed ‘changeless being’ can be found or be demonstrated to exist. This is the distinctively Buddhist conception of ‘anatta’, although it’s hard to bring to mind specific examples, because it permeates the discourses, in which all of the elements of experience (dharmas) are shown to be anatta, anicca (impermanent) and dukkha (unsatisfactory).

Furthermore, the early Vedic descriptions of the purported higher self were pretty incoherent. There were numerous ideas about the fate of the soul at death in common with many early Indo-European cultures. It wasn’t until Adi Sankara came along many centuries later that the philosophical doctrines of Advaita were made rigorous, and that mainly happened because he was disputing the Buddhists. (In fact some of his Hindu critics accused him of being a disguised Buddhist.)

This aspect of the Buddha’s teaching has lead to some depictions of him as an early naturalist or even positivist (according to one Western scholar whose name escapes me), although I think it’s a mischaracterisation. But Buddhism is in some ways very similar to Greek scepticism (in fact there are books on that.)

Are you familiar with any of the enactivist writing? It's hardly engineering, especially where Varela and Thompson integrate neuroscience with Buddhist teachings and phenomenology. What specific models of cognition , emotion and consciousness are you advocating instead?

Of course. As you say, Varela and Maturana incorporate many elements from Buddhist philosophical psychology (abhidharma) in their work. Varela was a co-founder of Mind Life Institute which is chaired by the Dalai Lama, and went on to formally study dzogchen (which is the esoteric school of Tibetan Buddhism).

But your post about ‘inherent intentionality of living systems’ is still within the domain of the biological and ultimately Buddhism has aims beyond that.. But I know what the reaction is: oh, you mean supernatural. :gasp:

In a sense, yes - but Buddhism draws the map along different lines. It’s culturally remote from the Western philosophical tradition in such a way that it allows you to re-frame many knotty philosophical problems inherent in the post-Cartesian tradition. Varela and others of his ilk are really counter-cultural figures. I had EvanThomson’s father’s book, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light, decades ago. It’s what I call ‘hippie metaphysics’; it’s eclectic, draws on ideas from all over the place including science, anthropology, Eastern religion, and philosophy. It’s not overtly religious but it’s also not old-school materialist. (Read about the Lindisfarne Association.)

But in any case, and apropos of the original conversation, one traditional epithet applied to the Buddha is 'lokuttara' which means 'world-transcending'. And I think it is pretty well an exact synonym for 'super' (over or above) 'natural'. It's just that due to the cultural dynamics surrounding religion and science in the West, the supernatural has been cordoned off from rational discourse; whatever science is, it ain't that. But these new emerging models are holistic in a way that's pretty inconceivable from a traditional Western standpoint.

Would you agree that the way that Varela and Thompson interpret Buddhism, so as to interrelate it with phenomenology and cognitive science, avoids thinking transcendence as world transcending? I believe they were following Japanese philosopher Nishitani Keiji in this respect, as well as Heidegger, and Nietzsche up to a point..

In comparing Heidegger with Nishitani, Thompson endorses a thinking of transcendence as historical rather than trans-historical:

"Dasein's freedom is grounded in perpetual surpassing to the world as being-in-the-world. On the "field of emptiness", Dasein is revealed as not-being-in-the-world; Dasein has attained the "other shore":
Yet this" other shore" is what Nishitani calls an "absolutely near side": Dasein's surpassing of the world
occurs simultaneously as the most thorough being-in-the-worId."

If we understand Being as being itself by always being ahead of, beyond itself in temoparlizing itself, doesn't a notion of world-transcendence become an inadequately thought-out and reifying derivative of being-in-the world?

It's all rather tortuous isn't it?

What makes you so sure? — Possibility

It is a strictly defined number with a definite value. Its position on the number line does not change. It is exact. Sure, our decimal approximations of it can vary, but no decimal approximation of Pi is actually Pi.

I'm baffled that anyone would suggest that Pi changes.

Well the Buddha would challenge anyone to say what ‘the higher self’ is, or where in experience such a proposed ‘changeless being’ can be found or be demonstrated to exist. — Wayfarer

What I am talking about is not what I would call a "higher self". I am not sure what that is supposed to be. And I am not sure that it would be correct to call it a "changeless being". First of all, similar to Heidegger's ontological difference, it isn't a being among beings. Second, I am not sure it would be right to call it changeless. After all, it is that which undergoes all modifications. But this is tricky.

The question you seem to have the Buddha asking reminds me of the third-person verificationist approach to consciousness, the sort of stance that leads the likes of Dennett to basically deny consciousness and qualia altogether. Consciousness cannot be demonstrated to exist, can it? Certainly not in the third-person. What about in experience? What do you experience but objects of experience? Can you find the subject in experience? Can you find experience or experiencing itself in experience? Can you find the box inside the same box? Can you bite your teeth? Can you see your own eyes without a mirror? Can space be found in space? Time in time? No? Then why believe in them?

The true self is implicit in every experience. It is what is "behind" everything. It is hard to point your mind at it because it is everywhere. Though it cannot be an object of awareness, it completely permeates it. It is awareness. When you look for it in the world or in your thoughts, you are looking in the wrong place. You can search your experiential field for it in meditation 'til the cows come home. You won't "find" it. It isn't a fish in the sea. The sea itself is in it. Space itself is in it.

Every idea you have about yourself, your identity, your biography, your perceptions of your body, and so on are all not it. What most think of when thinking of themselves is not it.

Nonetheless, it is known quite directly, in a completely unmediated fashion. It is immediately certain.

You can't exactly touch what you are. But you are that. And that is the primary experience.

We could claim that a finger cannot touch itself. But it can, you might insist! It can bend back upon itself! This can only happen because it has parts, which are actually different things. And two different things can be in relation. The tip can touch the base. But something without parts cannot touch itself in this way. It can only be itself. It is in contact with itself in a sense. It is as close to itself as something can be! But in every direction it looks, it fails to find itself. And yet, wherever it goes, there it is! It cannot escape itself! Nothing is more familiar.

What color is it? What color is color?

It is one thing to ask how you know that the Statue of Liberty exists. All the usual questions of epistemology arise. It is another to ask how you know that 2+2=4. It is another to ask how you know the stop sign is red. But what if I were to ask you how you know you are having an experience or are conscious at all? And who is it that knows?

You might be in doubt that the stop sign truly is red. You could be hallucinating. But can you doubt that you are experiencing redness? That is closer to your experiencing than the sign. Step it back toward your primary, unmediated experience even closer. Closer. All the way. There it is. Nothing is more certain than what is right there.

The content of experience can be in doubt. That I am experiencing cannot.

How might we know the self is universal or that there is only one self? That requires some reasoning beyond the scope of this thread. Maybe another time.

the sort of stance that leads the likes of Dennett to basically deny consciousness and qualia altogether. — petrichor

:down: Dennett is a materialist. Buddhism denies materialism outright. But other than that, very insightful post and much I agree with. There are some modern academic philosophers who have looked at Buddhist philosophy alongside contemporary philosophy, for example Buddhism as Philosophy : Mark Siderits and Zen and the Art of PostModern Philosophy, Carl Olsen.

what if I were to ask you how you know you are having an experience or are conscious at all? And who is it that knows? — petrichor

There is another well-known Eastern teacher, Ramana Maharishi, died 1960, who used to pursue that line of approach. As an Advaitin, he taught the 'Who am I' approach to demonstrate to the student that their consciousness was ultimately identical with Brahman.

So what you're saying, in summary, is that Buddhism makes no sense?

"The content of experience can be in doubt. That I am experiencing cannot."

Let's consider a drunkard just awakened from a blackout. People tell him of his deeds during the blackout, but he doesn't believe, because he can't remember experiencing those things. He doubts he experienced that.

Let's consider a child being told that when he grows, he will do stupid things with his life, because that is the lot of all humans; the little tyrant disbelieves his imperfection because he does not yet remembers experiencing those things. He doubts he will experience that.

Finally, consider a madman whose madness is about reality being a computer simulation, and every person being just running code. He will then doubt that his experience is real: it is just a fiction being projected, with the intention to dupe.

So we see, we can doubt that we experience; and that throughout time.

This reminds me of the difference between Husserl and Merleau-Ponty on the self. Husserl argued that self is an aspect of all intentional meaning, not as a specific content of self but as a certain 'mineness' that is pre-reflectively implied in any awareness of experience. Merleau-Ponty, on the other hand, used the idea of my one hand touching the other as model for how self-awareness functions. He said that this demonstrated that self-reflection is a reflecting back on an other. That is to say, when we attempt to return to the self that we are, its as returning to an other, an outside. This explains how we are able to empathically understand and relate to other persons. The other is already in me as myself. Thus there is no self-same entity or experience or aspect of being that we can point to when we point to 'self' . Self is both an inside and an outside at the same time.

Self is both an inside and an outside at the same time. — Joshs

Please forgive my ignorance: is this point canonical Merleau-Ponty or you took some liberty in your exposition?
I ask because I find compelling the idea of self-reflection being a reflecting on an other, but that is because of the self being immersed in time: we propel ourselves to self-reflect, but what we find is a self to which time has passed since the propelling. So I'd agree self is both an inside and an outside, but only at different points in time.

"If my left hand is touching my right hand, and if I should suddenly wish to apprehend with my right hand the work of my left hand as it touches, this reflection of the body upon itself always miscarries
at the last moment: the moment I feel my left hand with my right hand, I correspondingly cease touching my right hand with my left hand. But this last-minute failure does not drain all truth
from that presentiment I had of being able to touch myself touching: my body does not perceive, but it is as if it were built around the perception that dawns through it; through its whole internal arrangement, its sensory-motor circuits, the return ways that control and release movements, it is, as it were, prepared for a self-perception, even though it is never itself that is perceived nor itself that perceives."(Merleau-Ponty, the Visible and the Invisible)

"Consciousness is removed from being, and from its own being, and at the same time
united with them, by the thickness of the world. The true cogito is not the intimate communing of thought with the thought of that thought: they meet only on passing through the world. The consciousness of the world is not based on self-consciousness: they are strictly contemporary.
There is a world for me because I am not unaware of myself; and I am not concealed from myself because I have a world. This pre-conscious possession of the world remains to be analysed in the pre-reflective cogito."(Phenomenology of Consciousness)

So I'd agree self is both an inside and an outside, but only at different points in time. — Louco

What does that mean? What does it mean to say the self is an inside at a single point of time? Is there such a thing as a single point of time as an immediate 'now"? Heidegger and Husserl split up the now into a tri-partite structure retention-presencing and protention. Time is not puctual opints but stretched along as a horizon. For Heidegger thee now is a beyond itself, and thus self is already ahead of itself in a single moment of its being.

"..the identity of the thing with itself, that sort of established position of its own, of rest in itself, that plenitude and that positivity that we have recognized in it already exceed the experience, are already a second interpretation of the experience...we arrive at the thing-object, at the In Itself, at the thing identical with itself, only by imposing upon experience an abstract dilemma which experience ignores(p.162)." Merleau-Ponty

Let's consider a drunkard just awakened from a blackout. People tell him of his deeds during the blackout, but he doesn't believe, because he can't remember experiencing those things. He doubts he experienced that. — Louco

I agree. You can doubt what you experienced in the past. Epistemological problems arise there very naturally. You are not experiencing the past directly. In the present, you are experiencing memories of the past. These memories can be faulty. They can be absent. Your friends might be lying to you about what happened. You can even doubt whether the person who experienced those things was you. You can doubt that it was you who experienced the things depicted in your memories of your childhood. You can doubt that it will be you who will experience your future. But you can't, right now, doubt that you are having the experience that you are having.

Suppose you are dreaming but don't know it. The content of what you are experiencing can be in doubt. It might not correspond to any external reality. But you cannot doubt that you are experiencing, right now, in the present. Where there is no experience at all, there can be no deception that there is an experience being had. A nonexistent mind cannot be fooled into believing that it exists and is having an experience.

Let me put it another way, suppose a magician is putting on a show for an audience. They are being tricked into thinking they are seeing a woman being cut in half. They are deceived about what is happening. No problem here. Now suppose we have a magician putting on a show for a nonexistent audience. The seats are empty. He fools the nonexistent people into believing they exist and are watching the show. Quite a trick, right? Impossible, obviously!

Where there is no experience, there can be no illusion. So if you are an audience member watching a magic show right now, you can doubt that what you are seeing is what is actually happening. But you cannot doubt that you are having an experience! You can be sure that you exist!

You can doubt the content of your experience. You cannot doubt the doubter if you are the one doubting.

So we see, we can doubt that we experience; and that throughout time. — Louco

We can doubt the content of the experience. We can doubt that what we are experiencing is real. We might be hallucinating. We can have doubt about experiences not being had by us right now. We can doubt that we existed at other times and places. We can doubt what we experienced or will experience at other times. But we cannot doubt, right now, that we are experiencing. See the difference?

We can have all sorts of questions about what we actually are, what the experiencer really is. You might not be a human at all. You might be an alien playing a VR game right now. You might be a brain in a vat. You might be God. You might be _____. It might be impossible to really know what you really are, what the true nature of the self is. Everything you perceive and think about yourself is content, and all experiential content is subject to doubt. It may not correspond to reality. But you cannot doubt that you, whatever you might really be, exist and are experiencing something, even if that something is a deception.

All of your examples only raise questions about realities beyond immediate experience. Those externals are uncontroversially dubitable. Immediate experience is a different story.

I have to excuse myself as ignorant again, this time about the concept of time according to Heidegger and Husserl. That being said, I would say simply that in time two events can happen at different times and we order them to say one happened before the other.
When we pay attention to something, we emit the intention to focus on a sense, and this emission has the velocity of the nerves. Therefore when we receive the sensorial information, time has already passed and the self is no longer the same.
So in the instant when we focus on a sense, the self and the intention belong to the same being, the intention is inside the self. But when we get the sensory information, this information is the result of a biological process commanded by a self that already been left behind in time. So the sensory information comes from a will not inside the self.

You can be sure that you exist! — petrichor

There are a plethora of mental issues where the madman can be sure of his inexistence, or that he is a ghost, or other "degrees" of non-existence. And these people are functional language users and we share the world with them.
Personally, I prefer to acknowledge them in my beliefs, and I've brushed with the idea of non-existence myself. Yes we can doubt our existence. I guess we will have to agree to disagree on this.

in the instant when we focus on a sense, the self and the intention belong to the same being, the intention is inside the self. — Louco

Could we we instead say that the the intention IS the self? This way treats the self as a transitive process rather than a container.

The sense of agency versus ownership have been studied in schizophrenics.
When a schizophrenic has an experience of thought control or hears voices, they know that these occur inside of their head. So in this sense their body owns the experience. But they do not experience a sense of agency, the sense that their self initiated and was responsible for the foreign experience. It occurs inside them but not of them. Some schizophrenics describe themselves as a dead body whose behavior is controlled like a marionette being pulled by strings. One could say their body exists for them but not their self.

:down: Dennett is a materialist. Buddhism denies materialism outright. — Wayfarer

I am not a big fan of Dennett or eliminative materialism either. But Buddhism's denial of materialism is immaterial. ;)

My point was that when you say that Buddhism says that something like the self or a universal self cannot be demonstrated to exist, whatever "demonstrate" might mean there, this is a faulty objection in a way similar to some of the verificationists saying that conscious experience cannot be demonstrated to exist and therefore should not be accepted to exist. Clearly, despite the fact that it cannot be empirically verified in the third-person, consciousness nevertheless is quite real. There really are experiences. How do you know? You know immediately. You are experiencing. You know that with more certainty than you know anything about any objective, third-person realities. You know that consciousness is real with far more certainty than you know that Antarctica is real.

where in experience such a proposed ‘changeless being’ can be found or be demonstrated to exist. — Wayfarer

Let's put aside the "changeless being" part for a moment. Let's just say "self". I don't know if the self is changeless or not. I don't know if it is a being or not. Let's just say that the self, for the purposes of this discussion, is not some idea we have about ourselves, such as that I am a human, that I am a brain, that I am a soul, that I am male, that was once a child, and so on. When someone says "I am a democrat", I am not talking about the democrat or the body making the statement of identity. The self isn't any content of experience or worldly identity. It isn't a description. It isn't even the 'I' thought, the self-referencing thought, not even an inward glance. That's all experiential content. That's all the doings of the mind, the arisings in the mind. I am talking about that which is having the experience, the very witness.

Let's say that someone is challenging us to demonstrate the existence of this self, this witness. What would it mean to demonstrate it? Would we have to show it in the third-person, as an object that can be probed and measured in a lab? Would it have to be shown to have mass? Would it have to be shown to have physical location?

Suppose you say that it is not being asked that it be demonstrated objectively, but rather "in experience". What would that mean? The problem is similar. Anything "in experience", arguably, is experiential content, is object of experience, not that which is experiencing the content. To try to demonstrate its existence, it seems, is to try to objectify subjectivity itself. When you look in the mirror, what you see is an object. It isn't the self. If you try to turn around to see yourself, you are still "behind" the view. Whatever is seen isn't you.

What sorts of demonstration are left? Rational arguments? There are some decent ones. But there is something more directly known about just being yourself and having an experience, the way in which you know that you are experiencing, that you exist and are conscious, that makes it obvious somehow. I simply cannot doubt my existence. I am not sure "existence" is really the right word though. What does that mean? The roots suggest "standing forth". That suggests objects. It suggests things. The subject doesn't "stand forth". It isn't a thing. It isn't a figure against a background. Rather, it is that by virtue of which there are standings forth at all! It is the condition for the possibility of experiential objects, of things, at least phenomenologically speaking.

If someone says that the great meditators have meditated long and hard and deep, deeper than anyone before them, that they have looked and looked for the self and have come up empty-handed, I am deeply unimpressed. I don't care if the person who says that no self was found is said to be a deity. I don't care if that person was prophesied to be the great world-teacher. I don't care if that person could levitate or walk on water or defeat the efforts of demons to disturb their concentration. I don't care if that person is immortal. I don't care if that person came from some Heaven to teach us. "The Buddha says..." is hardly evidence of anything.

What is it exactly that Buddhists mean by "anatta"? What is the self that they deny? Is it the identity we have, the story we tell ourselves about ourselves? Is it the 'I thought'? Or are they denying the very witness? Are they claiming that they have gone beyond the witness into non-existence and experienced themselves not existing and have returned to tell the tale? Who is it that experienced enlightenment? Nobody? Who is liberated? What deceived-nobody is now undeceived and freed from the illusion of existing? Who was there to experience whatever it was that is being reported to have been experienced? Is someone reporting a non-experience?

I have no doubt that it is possible, in meditation, to have no self-referencing content in experience, no self-idea, no 'I-thought', no auto-biographical rumination, no inner dialogue saying "I am ____". I have experienced such states of consciousness. I did that momentarily just before writing this sentence. I'm not impressed. All I did was suspend the generation of certain kinds of representational mental content. I did not therefore cease to exist or cease to experience at all. If I had ceased to experience at all, how would I know?

And supposing someone (who?) goes deep in meditation and finds themselves not existing (who finds themselves not existing?). Did they cease to exist? Did they discover that they had never existed to begin with? I am imagining some inner dialogue in the moment of realization of no-self:

Wow! Look at this! I don't even exist! I never existed at all! All my problems are solved! The knot is untied! What a fool I've been! I'm not even here right now! What a relief!!! I'm free!!! I must go and tell everyone else that they don't have to worry, that they don't exist either!!! I am going to pretend that I exist and go back into the world to teach until all the other nonexistent selves are similarly freed of the delusion that they exist!!!

These sound like the ravings of a lunatic to me.

There are a plethora of mental issues where the madman can be sure of his inexistence — Louco

Okay, so a madman can believe that he doesn't exist. He can experience mental content such as, "I don't even exist". Is he correct in these thoughts? Is he really not there having that experience of thinking himself not existing?

Could we we instead say that the the intention IS the self? This way treats the self as a transitive process rather than a container. — Joshs

I wouldn't say that. Quite the opposite, actually: I think of the self as a metaphorical space where mental phenomena happen; so the metaphor of a container seems quite apt to me.

Is he really not there having that experience of thinking himself not existing? — petrichor

I can only experience the certainty or the illusion of being. I cannot get out of myself and take a peek into what is "really there" concerning myself.

I think of the self as a metaphorical space where mental phenomena happen; so the metaphor of a container seems quite apt to me. — Louco

Note that metaphors are 'as' structures, understanding something as something else. i think that's an apt description of the signifiying nature of the moments of meaningful awareness. Each moment of self is a self-transcending metaphorizing of the previous moment. To 'be' this moment is to have transformed oneself from what one was the precious moment. The moment of self could be thought of as spatial in the sense of a synthetic coordinating of multiple neural imputs into the unifying 'con' of consciousness. But to be consistent with recent research into consciousness, it would be useful to recognize this synthentic whole of a moment of awareness as intersubjective rather than solipsistic.
Self is space of interactive body-world transformation rather than static 'isness'.