Selfless Minds

Abstract Self is central to our ordinary understanding of the mind and ourselves. The fifth-century Abhidharma Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu presents a radical no-self metaphysics in his Abhidharmakośa-Bhāṣya. Selfless Minds offers a new reading of this no-self view as defending not only eliminativism about self but also about persons, and illusionism about the sense of self and all kinds of self-representation. This radical no-self thesis presents several challenges for Abhidharma Buddhist philosophy of mind. Even if we then grant that there is no self, we are left with deeper questions about the sense of self or self-representations implicated in our ordinary everyday experience and thought about the world and ourselves. This sense of self is involved in all kinds of experiential phenomena: episodic memories, unity of consciousness, sense of ownership, sense of agency, etc. And if we grant that there are no persons, questions remain about the status of our person-related concerns and interpersonal practices. Selfless Minds answers these questions on behalf of the Abhidharma Buddhist. The first part (Chapters 3–7) of the book defends the hypothesis that we can salvage much of our experience and thought without implicating self-representations. The second part (Chapters 8–9) of the book examines the normative implications of the revisionary no-person metaphysics. Some of these seem unpalatable, if not downright absurd. These revisionary implications for our normative commitments give us reason to re-evaluate both the Abhidharma metaphysics and our ordinary person-related practices and concerns in light of each other by using some sort of wide reflective equilibrium.