Given our recent exploration of moral theory, the excitement around our announcement of a Euthyphro episode and my own current interest in Buddhist thought, I guess it was inevitable that I would stumble across and then buy this book. Or perhaps it was that Mark mentioned it in an email which I had overlooked. In any case, the author, Owen Flanagan (pictured to the right), is a philosopher at Duke University. Pat Churchland also thinks highly of him and I guess that's good enough endorsement for me.
As a self-proclaimed analytic philosopher, Flanagan is a fan of science. And he's a fan of being a moral person. He's just published a book called The Bodhisattva's Brain: Buddhism Naturalized in which he argues that all of the major 'wisdom traditions' (read: religions) are incompatible with science. Since the traditions are where we get 'being a moral person' stuff, it'd be great if we could find one (or find a way to make one) that was compatible with science so that people who prioritize the scientific world view could also have a moral system to lean against. [This is my characterization, I don't think he'd put it that way]
Flanagan thinks that Buddhism 'naturalized' might fit the bill. What is that you say? Well, it's Buddhism stripped of the "hocus pocus". I don't get the impression he's super scholarly on Buddhist tradition and schools, but he does seem to know a bit about it and has met the Dalai Lama, so I think his representation is charitable. He notes that the warm, secular reception of Buddhism in the West has focused on one particular strain - Tibetan - and for the most part conveniently ignored Buddhist beliefs in "Rebirths, heavens, hells, creator gods, teams of gods, village demons, miracles, divine retributions in the form of plagues, earthquakes, tsunamis..."
His goal in the book is to see if the 'core' tenets of Buddhism are compatible with Naturalism of the sort scientific types can agree with. This means jettisoning most of the stuff mentioned above and focusing on Buddhist notions of wisdom, virtue, compassion and happiness. Unlike "Abrahamic" religions, Buddhist Ethics doesn't require a creator god of the unmoved mover variety and it's metaphysics embraces an action-effect view that appears to be consistent with scientific causality. Flanagan wants to dig into those issues as well as the Buddhist view of consciousness (hence the reference to the Bodhisattva's Brain) and a few other topics.
I'm only through the first part of the book where he lays out some conceptual distinctions, debunks some misconceptions about Buddhism (like all Buddhists meditate) and grinds a few axes about research which purports to show that Buddhists are happier than non-Buddhists (in which he plays a tangential role). But I like the way he's talking, I like the non-hippie (despite that vest) but respectful approach to Buddhism and I like the project. He's apparently not shy about sharing either: check him out here:
The Secular Buddhist (how happy was this guy that he wrote the book?) Here is the podcast.
Owen Flanagan and Alex Rosenberg on PhilosophyTV
--seth
Daniel Horne says
November 7, 2011 at 4:36 pmNice, Seth, thanks for this. I must get around to Flanagan.
FWIW, a “naturalized” approach to Buddhism which I enjoyed can be found in the conservatively-dressed James Austin’s _Zen and the Brain_:
http://amzn.com/0262511096
An interview with Dr. Austin follows below. He certainly seems to have attained some kind of calm–whether Zen-induced, I can’t say:
http://youtu.be/_4HmSKyCokg
sajon ali bites says
November 8, 2011 at 12:59 amInteresting subject. I’ve asked Buddhists if one can be a Buddhist without belief in what Buddhists believe -that’s to say, traditionally believe say.. over 90% of the time in all the schools and cultural formations in the long history of the religion. Reincarnation for example. I got mixed responses. Some strongly insist it isn’t a religion, but only “a way”.
I was just glancing at a book by an Italian loving fascist philosopher named Julius Evola that looks interesting titled “The Doctrine of Awakening: The Attainment of Self-Mastery According to the Earliest Buddhist Texts” and I feel sympathy for the notion that the origin of the religion and what the first great master taught and the first disciples believed is essential. Or else call what you’re up to some other name.
David Buchanan says
November 8, 2011 at 7:39 pmIt was a bit surprising to see an actual person (Rosenberg instead of straw man) openly subscribing to scientism, reductionism and “nice” nihilism. Except for “nice”, I use those words as terms of abuse. On the other hand, it’s very nice to have a religion that doesn’t require anything supernatural or magical. Naturalism without reductionism or scientism is going to open up a space for things like psychology, as opposed to boiling everything down to neurological processes and other directly observable physical phenomena. I’ve heard the Buddha himself described as a very good psychologist and as a radical empiricist, neither of which entails any supernaturalism and yet it’s much broader and more humanistic than eliminative materialism.
The Dali Lama at M.I.T. seems like a good start. The idea is to get brain scientists and expert meditators to work together, to look at meditative states from the inside and the outside at the same time, so to speak.
The Austin clip was cool too. Thanks gents.
Andrew C says
November 8, 2011 at 9:52 pmI’d like to plug Hajime Tanabe’s Shin-buddhism flavoured existentialism expounded in ‘Philosophy as Metanoetics’. His project is (was, I suppose) an integration of
1. his (shin-buddhism) personal experience of ‘repentance’ (self-emptying, giving up on self-powered project, letting Nothingness swallow it; which was followed by ‘Other-power’ – finding his self maintained without self-maintenance) – with
2. his thorough knowledge of European philosophy (he works through Goethe & Fichte, Kant, Schelling, Nietzche Hegel Husserl & Heidegger extensively, and almost everyone else (English, French, Kierkegaard gets a mention)). And of course, you can’t talk about repentance without also noting the similar elements of Christianity.
The integration is achieved by (I ambitiously summarise) making repentance a fuller description of learning as it functions in Hegel – moving from one false consciousness/understanding to a slightly less false one, rejecting the rewards of self-certainty in favour of the rewards of real growth.
I found it very attractive as a buddhism for those who are not ‘great sages’ but ‘foolish and ignorant persons such as I’ (HT). This article broke the news to me that 15000-40000hrs / lifetime of meditation was out there for the great sages. (http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2011/06/17/3246272.htm ). I am probably never going to be that kind of buddhist.
John F Kihlstrom’s Berkeley course in iTunesU has some lectures on psychological science on meditation – a research focus of his apparently. Meditation reduces automaticity – which I think is the advertised benefit?
Has anyone here with a better background than I (foolish and ignorant) read Tanabe and been impressed?
Jay Jeffers says
November 9, 2011 at 6:58 amI’m not a Buddhist scholar, but it seems to me that there are more strains that just, on the one hand, “Rebirths, heavens, hells, creator gods, teams of gods, village demons, miracles, divine retributions in the form of plagues, earthquakes, tsunamis…” and on the other “Buddhist notions of wisdom, virtue, compassion and happiness.”
It’s sometimes said that the Buddha himself hated metaphysics, but the tradition has developed one, or perhaps many. A place in between the two poles quoted above is one that stresses panpsychism, interconnection, and no-self (closely related is the doctrine of Atman-Brahman in the distinct but very similar Hindu tradition of Advaita Vedanta).
Even this relatively modest metaphysic is probably too “hocus pocus” for a Western materialist, but it stops way short of demons and divine retributions and what not. It’s probably a bit like… (groping here for analogues)… Hegel with ritual, or…. Whitehead without God (and Plato). A ritualized non-materialist tradition that focuses on interconnection and all the moral teachings Flanagan acknowledges, strikes me a genuine religion, and not just a collection of moral teachings that can be easily naturalized.
Then again, maybe Flanagan gets into this when he tackles Buddhist views of consciousness.
Maxwell Marler says
November 17, 2011 at 9:38 amIt seems to me like history shows the Buddha as an existentialist, and only seemingly unnatural once the prominent vedic culture Adapted his teachings Into their spiritual worldview. He taught the doctrine of no-soul, and that immortality was a joke. His teachings in term of ethics revolves wholly around the concepts of self-rule and respect for other natural beings.
That’s the impression I got from my intro to religion courses, maybe I’m wrong :S
Jay Jeffers says
November 17, 2011 at 9:35 pmMaxwell,
I have never seen where the Buddha taught explicitly that there was no soul. I understand that he taught that there is no-self. No soul? I haven’t seen that. Of course if souls can only reside in selves, then no souls would follow from no selves… If souls are all individual, rather than disperse and interconnected, then there can’t be souls without selves. But “soul-stuff” if you will, can be conceptually distinct from selfhood. Maybe neither exist, but I would be surprised to find out that the Buddha explicitly rejected spiritual realms and fully adopted materialism. And considering the religious milieu the Buddha taught in, I would think certain spiritual (but perhaps non-theistic) beliefs would have been assumed. Granted, much was added to his teachings after his death.
Maxwell Marler says
November 21, 2011 at 9:39 amFrom what I’ve understood, the term ‘anatman’ when translated literally means ‘no-soul’. I remember my teacher explicitely saying he rejected the notion of life after death. I can see how the distinction between self and soul is crucial though, as the Vedic notion of self is separate from the soul.
Here’s what I could find after quickly googling, this is not to be taken as authoritative!
‘Furthermore, there is the concept of anatman — literally, “no soul”. Anatman means that all things are interconnected and interdependent, so that no thing — including ourselves — has a separate existence.’
From this source : http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/buddhawise.html
Jay Jeffers says
November 22, 2011 at 8:21 amThanks Maxwell,
I still have to wonder whether “soul,” in the way you’re using the term, means the things that individual autonomous beings have, or if “soul” means soul-stuff (which can be diffuse).
If it’s the former, I think it’s uncontroversial that the Buddha didn’t believe in them. But if it’s the latter, I think we don’t have a ton to go on, but I would think his tradition assumed it, and he never rejected it, and the subsequent Buddhist tradition continued with it (not talking here about “Rebirths, heavens, hells, creator gods, teams of gods, village demons, miracles, divine retributions in the form of plagues, earthquakes, tsunamis” which I understand much of Buddhism taught as well).
If anatman means “no-soul” then the Buddha was not necessarily a naturalist. If anatman means “no soul-stuff” then the Buddha was a naturalist. I don’t think it means “no soul-stuff,” because the tradition accepts something very close to panpsychism. It’s true the Buddha talked of being “blown-out,” like a candle, but if he meant that we’re simply going to be worm-food when we die, he could have said so. Nirvana is supposed to be beyond our categories; worm-food isn’t.
But again, I agree that if souls are the things individual people have, the Buddha didn’t believe in them. I just think that doesn’t get you all the way to naturalism..
bobby says
November 29, 2011 at 8:59 pmA piece at Slate called “Buddhist Retreat: Why I Gave Up Finding My Religion” by John Horgan is very good on this subject. (John Horgan wrote a good book a few yrs back called “Rational Mysticism”.) Comments section is interesting there as well. Thought of this PEL entry and thought I’d pass it on to readers here.
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2003/02/buddhist_retreat.html?wpisrc=obinsite
Joan Brown says
December 26, 2011 at 11:40 pmBobby, just read the piece at Slate. Thanks for the link.
I agree with Horgan: The life we live, here, now, on this earth, is it. Period. While I continue to search for my personal life’s meaning, I live as a person that is moral and kind because that is the way I choose to live. Good things happen to me. Bad things happen to me. In life, I have experienced intense happiness, passion, love, as well as sadness, (near) hate, and loss. I blame no god, nor believe in a ‘higher’ power, an afterlife, reincarnation, a soul, angels, etc.
(12 years of a catholic elementary and h/school wasted?!)
At times, I wish I could/did. A comfort may be found in these beliefs. They are, however, beliefs that I can not/do not hold.
Joan Brown says
December 26, 2011 at 11:44 pmhttp://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/18/good-minus-god/#postComment
Chris Mullen says
December 27, 2011 at 5:10 pmIs it just me or does anyone else have some serious issues with Alex Rosenberg’s confused assertions on that episode of Philosophy TV?