Analytical Buddhism: The Two-tiered Illusion of Self

by Miri Albahari

Does the self - a unified, separate, persisting thinker/owner/agent - exist? Drawing on Western philosophy, neurology and Theravadin Buddhism, this book argues that the self is an illusion created by a tier of non-illusory consciousness and a tier of desire-driven thought and emotion, and that separateness underpins the self's illusory status.

Genres: Buddhism, Philosophy, Spirituality, Religion, Psychology, Meditation, Eastern Philosophy

249 pages, Hardcover

First published October 13, 2006

Reviews

[Frank Jude · Rating 4 out of 5]

Albahari, an Associate Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Western Australia here offers a thought-provoking and original thesis to the on-going philosophy of consciousness conversation. If anyone knows anything about Buddhism, they know that Buddhism denies the existence of any entity that can be called "self" understood to be unified and persistent, unchanging and autonomous and separate from contingency. To be clear, that there is a robust sense of self that we might call an "empirical" or "autobiographical self" as the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio refers to it is not denied. But such a "self" is less entity and more a dynamic process, constantly in flux, like a river or candle flame, totally contingent upon myriad causes and conditions which are also contingent and ever-changing.

Many Western philosophers too deny the existence of any such unified, separate, persisting thinker/owner/agent that we unquestioningly take to be ourselves. Following Hume and James, most of these philosophers have denied the existence of such a self by treating its alleged unity and unbroken persistence as illusory. Albahari begins her analysis with a deep presentation of Buddhist teaching including the Four Noble Truths and the role of tanha, the word meaning "thirst" but most understood as a force of craving that is said to be the source of duhkha, often translated as "suffering" but is actually something more subtle -- a pervasive discontent that permeates life as normally lived.

Albahari bases some of her presentation on the work of such luminaries as Nyanaponika Thera and Bhikkhu Bodhi as well as Thanissaro Bhikkhu and the practitioner scholar, Peter Harvey, especially in her chapter on nibbana. It is here that my first qualms about her approach arise as I see what I refer to as the common "flinching" from the radical understanding of anatta or "not self" where Albahari posits an "intrinsically unified, unbroken, invariable witness-consciousness" as "real in and of iself, but that, through processes of tanha and identification, it mistakenly assumes itself to be part and parcel of a personalized, bounded self-entity." But that is EXACTLY how Patanjali would describe the mis-identification of Purusha understood as a kind of "pure awareness" with prakriti in the form of an individual person! Elsewhere, Albahari explicitly equates Buddhism with Advaita Vedanta which, while many have done throughout history, I believe, as have others, is a terrible mistake. When she does this, she creates a "pseudo-atman" out of this unconstructed awareness.

It is just where she breaks from the general thread of Western philosophers who reject the existence of the self that I part company with her argument. While denying the self, she asserts it is craving (tanha that merges with consciousness to create the impression of a separate and unified self, and it is this, not unity that makes for the self illusion. For her, unity and unbrokenness are real qualities of consciousness.

Again, it's an intriguing argument and there is much here to grapple with, but if we are to take the radical notion of emptiness seriously, I believe we have to see consciousness itself as contingently constructed.

[Sunpreet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Took me forever to read. Finished my degree but needed to continue exploring this idea and Albahari presented it very clearly and brought analytic rigour to a topic with which I'm obsessed

[Mark Nichols · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating.mind_blowing is possible.Such a necessary work.Nothing that is encountered

Is here for our gratification or displeasure.Hereness and thereness as a continuum.Brave,precise and insightful.Valuable for understanding how a view from the point of view of the universe is possible.Thanks

[Rory Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

Empiricist (Western) Philosophers (like Hume and James) have long noted that we have an experience of a ‘self’ as a unitary subject of our bundles of sensory experiences. Yet we can never directly sense our selves, so they have concluded that we should dismiss the very existence of a self, as it must be just an illusory feature of our broader experiencing.

It has sometimes been thought that Buddhism is essentially making the same claim. However, the author of this book argues for a somewhat different interpretation of Buddhism, which she admits is a slightly unorthodox reading of some aspects of the Buddhist tradition (p75).

She agrees with the philosophers that it is correct to insist that there is no self, but (contrary to the philosophers) she thinks that we should not be revisionist in dismissing the reality of the sense-of-self which arises in inner experiencing (p.21). She argues (or rather claims) that there is a genuine (ie non-illusory) subject-less state of human witnessing-experiencing, and that state is essentially what Buddhism refers to as nirvana (nibbana). She believes that that genuine state (ie a sense-of-self) explains the origin of the illusion of the self, and so (her interpretation of) Buddhism can explain the illusion of the self, while philosophers like Hume and James are left scratching their heads over why the illusion arises.

The author’s approach is a ‘two tier’ explanation of the illusion of the self. The first tier is the (non illusory) essentially contentless consciousness, which constitutes the sense-of-self. But then there is a second tier of experiencing where all our thoughts and perceptions are accompanied by the emotive features of ‘desire’ (tanha), which Buddhism identifies as constitutive of the unsatisfactoriness (dukkha) of our illusory experiences. So, the Four Noble Truths correctly diagnose the fundamental problem confronting humanity.

Focusing upon the role of emotional desire (tanha), the author argues that emotion always accompanies the sense of self, and when there are conditions involving a loss of emotion then it impacts upon the sense-of-self (p108). Therefore, the role of emotion (dukka) can be seen to be a key factor in generating the illusion of the self (p.188, 196), as indeed the four noble truths claim.

However, what we are essentially presented with in this book is just a coherent description of a possibility. The author readily identifies that some of the modern philosophers are somewhat ‘speculative’ in how they try to explain the illusion of the self (p.187). But her own account can also be described as merely speculative, as it is essentially just using philosophy to show the coherence of a Buddhist description of reality. Yes, there may indeed be a way of explaining Buddhism coherently using analytic philosophy. But the question still remains whether that coherent description is actually true, or not?

This is a particularly significant issue as the author is pitching her explanation between two alternative extremes. On the one hand empiricist philosophers think that the self (and the sense-of-self) is illusory and that all there are is bundles of experiences. At the other extreme is a belief in a self (such as a soul). The author thinks she can take an intermediate position where the self is illusory, but the sense-of-self is a non-illusory nibbanic consciousness. But does that intermediate position really exist? Why should anyone think that there is a reality of nibbanic consciousness (when they have already rejected the idea of a self as illusoy) unless they are accepting that idea as an a priori religious truth of Buddhism which is then just asserted as a philosophical assumption?

Overall this is a very thoughtful engagement between Buddhist ideas and analytic philosophy, both of which are presented clearly and with interesting links. It is not an easy read and will probably be enjoyed most by readers who are graduates or who have prior experience and expertise with the style of analytic philosophy.

[Benno Blaschke · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most important academic work on Buddhism ever published (that I know of).

[Dana Larose]

Ooo this sounds like it'll tickle both the part of me that is fascinated by cognitive science AND the wannabe buddhist in me!