[MD] Thinkers and Rainers?

[david buchanan]

Arlo said to Ian:
What "dogma"? I think DMB has been nothing but consistent and accurate in representing Pirsig's metaphysics. Give me an example of something 'better' that you feel DMB's 'dogma' has excluded?



dmb says:
Thanks, Arlo. But getting back to the topic, there's a paper that discusses it, in detail particularly the Buddhist/Jamesian rejection of the Cartesian self.

"A general kinship between the philosophy of William James and certain aspects of Buddhist thought is immediately apparent and frequently noted. This kinship is most apparent in their shared conviction that the self is not a permanent entity or "soul substance,'' but is rather an aggregate of processes (Buddhism's skandhas) including a momentary series of states of consciousness (James' "stream of consciousness" and Buddhism's cittasa.mtaana) . There are, however, deeper comparisons that can be made between James and specific Buddhist thinkers."
For anyone interested, it's called "William James and Yogaacaara philosophy: A comparative inquiry". By Miranda Shaw, published in "Philosophy East and West"Volume 37, no. 3, July 1987, University of Hawaii Press


And to see how this conception of the self has been doing lately,....

"William James’ account of consciousness has been quite influential in the back-rooms of the recent philosophical and scientific study of consciousness. Gerald Edelman, for example, credits James for pointing out that consciousness is a process and not a substance or thing. Daniel Dennett has cited James approvingly as suggesting a “purely functional” model of introspective consciousness, while Owen Flanagan parades James’ robust notion of a phenomenological stream of consciousness. Several of the papers in the proceedings of the first major interdisciplinary conference on consciousness (“Toward a Science of Consciousness,” at Tucson in 1994) take James’ doctrines as a central starting point. As work in the burgeoning field of ‘consciousness studies’ reaches fever pitch, James’ thoughts in this area have increased in importance and influence correspondingly."

That's how Andrew Bailey opens his paper, "The Strange Attraction of Sciousness: William James on Consciousness".