jcs-online
menu Keith Sutherland wrote:
Anyone who takes subjectivity seriously will ultimately have to acknowledge the experiencer as separate from the objects of experience.
This assertion is unjustified. Buddhist philosophy takes subjectivity very seriously indeed, but in it subject and object are "ultimately" seen as one. The Enlightenment experience is commonly described as a transcendance of the subject/object dichotomy, in which there is no experiencer, nor thing experienced, but just experience. This is not to say that subject and object *are* necessarily not separate, as interpretations of that experience might differ, but it does invalidate the claim about "anyone who takes subjectivity seriously".
Robin Faichney
rjf1@stirling.ac.uk
This shows the confusion that we can arise from relying on books, oral traditions and other Travellers' Tales. Let's just for a moment forget all this philosophising -- Eastern or Western -- and just refer to our own experience. In this context I recommend we all re-read Mait Edey's post .
Let me assume therefore that whatever one may feel the "ultimate" truth to be, that none of us have any problem distinguishing ouselves from other things. As we follow our chosen spiritual path we should find that the self seems to get less selfish, as we identify less and less with the particular lump of rotting flesh that we carry around with us. If you just extrapolate that a bit, its quite easy to think of a graceful state in which the self has escaped from its skin-encapsulated cocoon.
Mait was making a very different point indeed. He was pointing out the confusion between the *concepts* of subject and object that is rampant in this field. In particular, the view of consciousness as a kind of object that can be studied using objective techniques. My view is entirely consistent with his: once we are clear about these concepts, we may begin to understand how subject and object are different aspects of what is "ultimately" one thing. We must be very careful in distinguishing one aspect from the other, but that does not conflict with recognising (or at least hypothesising) that aspects is all they are. The distinction between red and green traffic signals is absolutely vital, but does not prevent us realizing that they are both coloured lights.
The Enlightenment experience is commonly described as a transcendance of the subject/object dichotomy, in which there is no experiencer, nor thing experienced, but just experience.
I'm no philosopher, but the idea of experience without an experiencer sounds pretty incoherent to me, although I'm quite ready to speculate (with Schrodinger) that the experiencer may in the end be recognised to be a singularity. And if the multiplicity of subjects is found to be a surface property, then maybe the objects will have the same fate.
Not to be trite, but that's because you are not enlightened. This sort of clinging to received "wisdom" is precisely what Buddhist practices are designed to mitigate. Of course, from the mundane point of view, if there is experience there must be both experiencer and thing experienced, but Enlightenment is not the mundane point of view.
I'm alarmed to hear this sort of language outside of the context of some New Age gazette. I appreciate that a certain amount of hand-waving is inevitable in this sort of dialogue, but I think commentators should be required to do a little more than raise two fingers. I'm as big a fan as any of the apophatic tradition but one should beware of the Cloud of Unknowing becoming a smoke-screen to cover up incoherent arguments.
At least Joe Jeffrey attempts to wave his hands about in a meaningful way:
However, a main theme in several spiritual disciplines is that this distinction [between subject and object] is one *we make*, and then to explore what happens if one does *not* make it.
Mait's argument is that the distinction is fundamental and pre-theoretic. The problem arises when people let their theories override their experience.
I'll admit that it was a mistake to use this tactic in this context, but I cannot withdraw what I said, because it is in fact not wrong. Approaching Enlightenment simply *is* (among other things) learning to transcend dualistic dichotomies among which is that of subject versus object.
On the other hand, I have tried to make it clear from the beginning of this exchange that my main point is that, contrary to Keith's claim, there are those who take subjectivity very seriously, but "ultimately" view subject and object as one, and I do have some backup here. Alan Watts writing in the context of Zen:
Through such [enlightened] awareness it is seen that the separation of the thinker from the thought, the knower from the known, the subject from the object, is purely abstract. There is not the mind on the one hand and its experiences on the other: there is just a process of experiencing in which there is nothing to be grasped, as an object, and no one, as a subject, to grasp it. [The Way of Zen, Thames and Hudson, London, 1957, p 53]
This view, as well as being in agreement with most (perhaps all) other Buddhist teaching, is broadly consistent with the dual aspect theories of Western philosophy, such as Spinoza (in the Ethics), Strawson's notion of the person as a primitive concept with mental and bodily attributes (see his Individuals, Methuen, London, 1959), and Nagel's views as expressed in What is it like to be a bat?, Subjective and Objective (both in Mortal Questions, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1979), and The View from Nowhere (Oxford University Press, New York, 1986).
Mait's argument is that the distinction is fundamental and pre-theoretic. The problem arises is when people let their theories override their experience.
A Zen teacher might say that that is precisely what you are doing, because what you take to be "raw" experience of subjects and objects is in fact interpreted, overlaid by your conceptual framework. Now, this aspect of the framework is certainly quite fundamental, and it is shared by, maybe, >99% of people alive today, but that does not make it the "ultimate" truth.
What "pretheoretic" means in practice is not entirely clear. Both views, pro and anti subject/object dichotomy, are based on experience, but experience varies. The distinction is certainly prior to any fancy philosophical theory, but there are credible accounts, for instance by symbolic interactionists, as to how the subject/object distinction could arise in the mind of the infant as a result of social interaction. See, for instance, P.D. Ashworth, Social Interaction and Consciousness, John Wiley and Sons, Chichester, 1979.
I perhaps should reiterate that I very heartily agree with Mait Edey that confusion in the area of subject versus object bedevils these discussions--but that does not prevent these being mere aspects of "ultimate" reality. He no doubt can speak for himself regarding the latter, if he wishes to do so.
[Alan Watts quote]
I've always understood one of the unwritten rules of this debating forum to be that one should argue from experience/evidence rather than by appealing to some sort of canonical text (or glosses theoron). I still remember Pat Hayes' shocked reaction when David Hodgson introduced the dreaded "G" word. Yet Robin's distinction between "mundane" and "enlightened" experience is just how a Christian might distinguish between the fallen world and a state of grace.
So why is it that the Buddhist canon is somehow exempt? A clue might be found in the fulsome praise afforded to "The Embodied Mind" in the New Scientist review by that pre-eminent Buddhologist, Daniel C. Dennett. What I am alluding to is that the stripped-down, abstract, secularised form of Buddhism favoured by the Western chattering classes fits in very nicely with the materialist-constructivist paradigm.
For many of us brought up on old-man-on-a-cloud-with-a-white-beard Sunday School religion the abstract *via negativa* of Buddhism is very attractive. But some caution is in order. While no competent Buddhist teacher would buy the idea that consciousness could be explained by local neuronal effects, its only a small step for a religion that defines "otherness" in purely abstract negative terms. While one may despair of the facile historicity and reifying tendency of the Middle Eastern religions, they are less likely to be hijacked by materialists.
Of course many would argue that being non-theistic (or even atheistic), Buddhism is more a way of life/understanding than a religion, and thus it is quite appropriate to base one's arguments on such a position. However what really characterizes religion is the appeal to canonical authority, rather than experience/evidence.
there are credible accounts, for instance by symbolic interactionists, as to how the subject/object distinction could arise in the mind of the infant as a result of social interaction. See, for instance, P.D. Ashworth, Social Interaction and Consciousness, John Wiley and Sons, Chichester, 1979.
For every such account, I would offer you 100,000,000 parents and several millenia of folk psychology to testify that this distinction is fundamental and "hard-wired". But I've made this point so many times I'm beginning to bore myself.