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Love of All Wisdom

~ Philosophy through multiple traditions

Love of All Wisdom

Category Archives: Philosophy of Science

Empiricism of the subtle body

23 Sunday Feb 2025

Posted by Amod Lele in Biology, Emotion, Mahāyāna, Meditation, Philosophy of Science, Supernatural

≈ 10 Comments

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Janet Gyatso, phenomenology, tantra, Tibet, Yangönpa Gyeltsen Pel

A public-domain illustration by Alex-engraver of the chakras and channels, taken from Wikipedia.

Traditional Indian and Tibetan tantric anatomy tells us that in the middle of the human torso there are three channels (nādis or “streams”), one each on the left, middle, and right, and that these proceed vertically upward through a number of circular centres (cakras in standard Sanskrit transliteration, chakras in modern English spelling). This account of the “subtle body” (sūkṣma śarīra) has become popular in modern yoga and other forms of alternative medicine or spirituality.

I don’t believe this account of the subtle body – but not primarily for the obvious reason.

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The scientific self is not reductionist

08 Sunday Dec 2024

Posted by Amod Lele in Analytic Tradition, Biology, Early and Theravāda, Metaphysics, Modernized Buddhism, Philosophy of Science, Self

≈ 4 Comments

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Buddhaghosa, Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, conventional/ultimate, expressive individualism, Wilfrid Sellars

Any serious contemporary Buddhist intellectual needs to think through the connection between Buddhist ideas and the relevant claims of natural science. Many of us, too, are expressive individualists: we believe that there is something valuable in the project of discovering one’s true self. The expressive individualist view of self-discovery and self-expression – put perhaps in most recent terms as “let your freak flag fly” – is that’s an uncomfortable fit with a tradition that has proclaimed for millennia that there is no true self.

There are at least three different metaphysical understandings underlying each of Buddhism, natural science, and expressive individualism, and at least at first glance they all appear to be in conflict. Resolving this conflict is not easy, and recently my views on how to do it best have significantly changed. I often find I get the best sense of what’s important in other people’s philosophies by figuring out what they changed and why, so I thought it would be helpful to show the changes in my own.

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Mysticism vs. magic

14 Sunday Jan 2024

Posted by Amod Lele in Epistemology, Health, M.T.S.R., Metaphysics, Philosophy of Science, Psychology, Supernatural

≈ 16 Comments

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Arthur C. Clarke, James Frazer, mystical experience, nondualism, Roland Griffiths, Stonehill College, technology

While lecturing at Stonehill I made a comment about some traditional practice, I don’t remember which, that it was “less mystical and more magical.” Or maybe it was the reverse. What I remember clearly is that, as I was about to move on, one brave and perceptive student raised her hand to ask “Could you maybe explain the difference between magical and mystical?”

I paused for a moment, a little stunned by the reminder that I hadn’t explained that distinction. I was very grateful for the question: of course I should have explained the distinction, how could I have expected them to know it? The question reminded me that the distinction between magic and mysticism is something I tend to take for granted – even though it is not at all obvious to a layperson. It’s also quite important – for the key reason that the claims of mysticism are more likely to be true than those of magic. Or at the least, they are less unscientific – likely to conflict with the evidence of natural science. So it’s a key distinction I keep in mind when I read works like Jeffrey Kripal’s The Flip, which argue for viewing the world in ways that go beyond the natural-sceintific.

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Why philosophy needs history

04 Sunday Apr 2021

Posted by Amod Lele in Analytic Tradition, Epistemology, German Tradition, Hermeneutics, Metaphilosophy, Philosophy of Science, Prejudices and "Intuitions", Truth

≈ 3 Comments

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Benjamin Bloom, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Imre Lakatos, Thomas Kuhn

After writing my previous post about history and the love of literature, I realized there’s a lot more one could say about the way history can deepen our appreciation of a work of literature – and perhaps even more so of philosophy, where I’ve thought about the question a lot more. I noted Herder’s recognition of the differences between eras, but there’s a lot more to say beyond that. It’s a particularly important point to make within philosophy, since it’s at the heart of the analytic-continental divide: analytic philosophers typically appreciate the truth of philosophical texts but without reference to their historical context, and continental philosophers typically learn about the historical context of texts without reference to their truth.

I am not satisfied with either of these approaches, because I think learning the historical context of a text is directly relevant to assessing its truth. And I think it’s time to unpack what I mean by that a bit more.

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How a fundamentalist gave us fallibilism

29 Sunday Nov 2020

Posted by Amod Lele in Certainty and Doubt, Epistemology, Islam, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Science, Roman Catholicism

≈ 2 Comments

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al-Ghazālī, Ann Druyan, David Hume, fundamentalism, ibn Rushd, Immanuel Kant, Nicholas of Autrecourt, Nicolas Malebranche, Thomas Aquinas, William of Ockham

Fallibilism is one of the most important modern ideas. By fallibilism I mean the idea that no idea is in principle immune to revision. It is among the most important methodological principles for natural science. As Ann Druyan said, science “is forever whispering in our ears, ‘Remember, you’re very new at this. You might be mistaken. You’ve been wrong before.’” Many of the claims a Newtonian physicist would once have confidently made, have been shown to be false by Einsteinian and quantum physicists.

As it turns out, this crucial idea has important roots in Muslim thinkers who might reasonably be called fundamentalist.

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God’s natural law?

22 Sunday Nov 2020

Posted by Amod Lele in Biology, Deity, Foundations of Ethics, Islam, Metaphysics, Mu'tazila, Philosophy of Science, Roman Catholicism, Sex

≈ 2 Comments

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Alasdair MacIntyre, Aristotle, Charles Darwin, fundamentalism, George Hourani, hadith, ibn Hazm, ibn Ṭufayl, intelligent design, Lady Gaga, law, Qur'an, Thomas Aquinas

A few years ago I discussed why the debate between intellectualist and voluntarist conceptions of God (is God an intellect or a will?) was so important in the medieval Western world. (The West here includes medieval Muslims, who not only started the debate, but were often further west than the Christians – in what is now Spain and Morocco rather than France and Italy.) I followed up by speaking of the modern practical implications of this debate: how it shows up in modern conceptions of law, and democracy. I think there are also some interesting things to say about the ethical implications of the debate in its own context.

Above all, if God is taken as a supremely good being, then our conception of him is inextricable from our conceptions of goodness and morality as such – and for that matter, of how we can tell what is good. This was the context for the debates that raged in early Muslim ethics, perhaps best chronicled by George Hourani. Muslims of the time agreed that the good life should be thought of in terms of law (shari’a): the prohibitions and obligations set out by God. But how do we know what God’s law is, exactly? It depends on what God is.

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Is the eudaimonist proposition true?

27 Sunday Sep 2020

Posted by Amod Lele in Death, Epicureanism, External Goods, Flourishing, Foundations of Ethics, Karma, Mahāyāna, Modernized Buddhism, Morality, Philosophy of Science, Pleasure, Stoicism, Supernatural

≈ 15 Comments

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Charles Goodman, Dalai Lama XIV, Evan Thompson, hell, Immanuel Kant, rebirth, Śāntideva

Evan Thompson’s critique of my eudaimonistic and probabilistic approach to karma has two prongs: that it is not really karma, and that it doesn’t work on its own terms. I addressed the first criticism last time. Now I’d like to turn to the second, which I personally find to be the more interesting and important of the two.

Let us start with the word “probabilistic”, which I use in a non-technical way. My eudaimonism is a probabilistic claim (as opposed to a deterministic claim) in the same sense that “brushing your teeth will prevent cavities” or “running into the middle of a busy street will get you run over by a car” are probabilistic claims. That is, we assert that these causal correlations are likely, not certain. In the case of the busy street, I’m not sure we have a detailed statistical model of how likely you are to get run over by a car, but I don’t think we need one. Everyday observation is sufficient to determine that. In the case of virtue and happiness, I’ve mentioned a couple of ways that Śāntideva says one leads to the other, in this life; there is a lot more to say about it, and I intend to say it in my book – not with a statistical model, but again I don’t think that’s necessary. This is what I mean by “probabilistic”. I’m not wedded to that specific word: so far “probabilistic” has seemed the most appropriate word to express the concept in question and I haven’t been convinced that it isn’t, but I wouldn’t mind expressing the concept just described with a different term if a better one is available.

If I read Thompson’s objections on that point correctly, though, I don’t think they are about a statistical model or its absence. Rather, his bigger concern is this: Continue reading →

Philosophical texts for philosophers

23 Thursday Jul 2020

Posted by Amod Lele in Buddhism, Hermeneutics, Karma, M.T.S.R., Metaphilosophy, Philosophy of Science

≈ 4 Comments

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Evan Thompson, Gananath Obeyesekere, Upaniṣads

In my continuing response to Evan Thompson I now turn to another methodological question that Thompson raises: what sources should we be using in a discussion of karma? I claim that my eudaimonist interpretation of Buddhist karma is congruent with existing Buddhist tradition in important ways, so it matters what that existing tradition has to say and how we determine it.

When I had previously said that the traditional core of karma had to do with future results of action – with that basic idea that good actions improve well-being – Thompson had asserted in response that “this idea isn’t the core idea of karma, if ‘core’ means what lies at the heart of the concept’s formation. On the contrary, the core problem, which drove the formation of the concept, is to explain why bad things happen to good people.” To support this claim he linked out to Obeyesekere’s Imagining Karma, which studied the formation of the concept through philosophical texts like the Upaniṣads. In his new reply, however, Thompson now says that “exegesis of philosophical texts… isn’t the right method for a concept like karma.”

Here, it seems to me, goalposts may have been moved. In his previous post, when he was first trying to make the claim that the “core” of karma “is to explain why bad things happen to good people”, Thompson was happy to cite, as his only source, Obeyesekere’s study, which relies largely on the exegesis of philosophical texts like the Upaniṣads. This was hardly a surprise, given that both of us are self-professed philosophers, and that Thompson himself had said, “my aim is to lay bare the philosophical problems with Buddhist modernism.” Emphasis added. But once I pointed out that Obeyesekere said nothing of the sort, then Thompson declared that the right method for thinking about karma didn’t have to do with philosophical texts but must be in the way they “function psychologically and socially” in everyday people’s lives.

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Responses on humanity, rebirth, and a minimalist model

21 Sunday Jun 2020

Posted by Amod Lele in Flourishing, M.T.S.R., Metaphilosophy, Modernized Buddhism, Philosophy of Science, Psychology, Supernatural

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Ian Stevenson, Jacques Maritain, rebirth, Śāntideva, Seth Zuihō Segall

Seth Zuihō Segall wrote a helpful response to my review of his Buddhism and Human Flourishing. Seth’s1 response makes four points, groupable in two categories that correspond to the division of my original post: the first two points, roughly, have to do with endorsing modern Western views, the second two with rejecting them. I will move roughly from (what I take to be) our points of greatest agreement to our points of greatest disagreement.

So I will begin with the fourth and last of Seth’s points, which is the one where I think we agree most. This point is about transcending the constitutive conditions of our humanity: a key point at issue between Śāntideva and Martha Nussbaum. As I noted in my review, I do actually stand with Nussbaum and with Seth against Śāntideva on this question: I do not think we should try to transcend these conditions. My concern was that this point needs to be argued, we can’t simply assume Nussbaum is right – because if she is right, then Śāntideva is wrong, and I think it’s important to be clear about that.

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Why I am a Buddhist

07 Sunday Jun 2020

Posted by Amod Lele in Buddhism, Faith, Family, Health, Humility, M.T.S.R., Metaphilosophy, Philosophy of Science, Prayer, Reading and Recitation, Therapy

≈ 4 Comments

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Alasdair MacIntyre, autobiography, cancer, Evan Thompson, identity, Mañjuśrī, religion, Śāntideva, Seth Zuihō Segall

On Facebook, Seth Segall commented in response to my posts on Evan Thompson:

I agree with all the arguments you have made, but I think there is one maining major issue that divides you from Evan that transcends all the other issues. That is, as a “lover of all wisdom,” why would you define yourself as a Buddhist as opposed to someone who is informed by many wisdom traditions but holds a special place in his heart for Buddhism—in another words, how is your stance different from a more cosmopolitan one that is Buddhist-friendly, but not, strictly speaking, Buddhist?

I think I have answered this question before, but there is more to say on it. For a long time – including the first six years of writing this blog – I defined myself in just such a way, as Thompson does. Like Thompson, I went so far as to say I don’t identify as a Buddhist.

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