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JASR (print) ISSN 1031-2943
JASR 29.3 (2016): 223-241
https://doi.org/10.1558/jasr.31485 JASR (online) ISSN 1744-9014
© Equinox Publishing Ltd, 415 The Workstation, 15 Paternoster Row, Sheffield, S1 2BX.
The Abhidharma Version of No-Self Theory
Monima Chadha
Monash University
Abstract
This paper elucidates the Abhidharma attempt to revise our ordinary ways
of thinking and our ordinary conceptual scheme in which the self (mini-
mally conceived of as the referent of ‘I’) occupies a prime position. This
revisionary metaphysics provides an intellectually and morally preferred
picture of the world that lacks such a self. The no-self theory is no doubt
deeply counter-intuitive. In response to this some contemporary scholars
offer a weak version of the Buddhist no-self account which incorporates
elements of Abhidharma and Mādhyamika philosophies. I analyse two such
influential attempts by contemporary philosophers who weaken the no-self
account in a bid to show that we can retreive a minimal notion of self from
the Buddhist account. However, to reconstruct a self from the scraps of the
no-self view is to, I think, misunderstand the strategy employed by
Vasubandhu. In this paper, I argue that it is a mistake to interpret the no-
self view as allowing for a minimal self. To be true to the spirit and
arguments of the Abhidharma Buddhist philosophers we need to deny the
self, period.
Keywords
Buddhism, Abhidharma, No-Self.
Introduction
In the intellectual milieu of ancient India where Brahminical views domi-
nated the philosophical landscape, the Buddha puts forward a revisionary
metaphysics which lacks a ‘self’ in order to provide an intellectually and
morally preferred picture of the world that lacks such a self. The view is
deeply counterintuitive and Buddhists are acutely aware of this fact.
Accordingly, the Abhidharma-Buddhist writings are replete with attempts
224 JASR 29.3 (2016)
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to explain the phenomenology of experience in a no-self world. To
evaluate the merits of the preferred Buddhist-Abhidharma worldview the
first task is to understand the target of the no-self doctrine. This task is
urgent in the contemporary context as the interest in the notion of self is
not just restricted to philosophers and phenomenologists but also a
variety of other disciplines including psychology, neuroscience, develop-
mental psychology, psychiatry, anthropology, cultural studies, and so on.
As a result of this ongoing discussion there are many different concep-
tions and notions of self floating around in the contemporary literature
and correspondingly there are many different versions of the no-self
views among contemporary Buddhist and non-Buddhist philosophers. I
am not going to attempt a taxonomy of the different notions of self in the
literature for no such taxonomy is immune to revision and raises further
questions about the relations between the notions, some of which are
complimentary and others that are conflicting.
1
Nor will I make the
assumption, as some in the literature do, that the target of the Buddhist
no-self account is the Hindu view of self as a substantial, independent self
existing apart from the mental and physical states (Thompson 2014).
The
deeply counterintuitive nature of the no-self doctrine drives ancient and
contemporary Buddhist philosophers to qualify the Buddhist rejection of
self as the denial of a substantial self that is independent of the mental and
physical aggregates that constitute us. Gold (2014) presents an impressive
summary of the Buddha’s rejection of the self as a false construction in
the hands of the famous Abhidharma philosopher Vasubandhu. Gold’s
reconstruction softens the force of Vasubandhu’s denial of the self, in
saying that Vasubandhu emphasises that the self is not denied entirely
but just made into a ‘figurative’ designation for the aggregates (2014: 61).
Garfield (2015) masterfully enunciates the M
ā
dhyamika teaching of
dependent arising, the teaching of the Middle Way, neither reifying
conventional phenomena nor rejecting them as nonexistent. Phenomena
exist dependently and conventionally. There are no hidden real essences;
all existing things are like reflections or echoes rather than entities. This
teaching is extended to the nature of persons. There is no core nature
that establishes a separate self, no center to which mind and body parts
or characteristics belong. Tables, fire, people, and all phenomena are
designated by thought in dependence upon relationally characterised
parts. They do not exist objectively, from their own side. Again, Garfield’s
reconstruction of the M
ā
dhyamika teaching emphasises that the denial of
the self is not an outright denial of its existence, but only that it exists
independently and separately from the aggregates.
1. Many taxonomies have been offered in the literature. See Neisser 1988; G.
Strawson 1999; Zahavi 2005; Ganeri 2012.
Chadha The Abhidharma Version of No-Self Theory 225
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In light of the fact that the ancient Buddhist philosophers also disagreed
about the right way of interpreting the no-self view, it is hardly surprising
there is little agreement about which self is denied by the no-self view.
Just as we cannot say this is ‘the’ definition or right way of thinking about
the self, some like Zahavi (2011: 67) advise that self-skeptics should settle
for the modest claim that they are denying a special kind of self. Zahavi’s
claim is motivated by the fact that two well-known interpreters of the no-
self view, Albahari (2006) and Dreyfus (2010), both insist on distinguish-
ing subjectivity and selfhood. Zahavi, however, thinks that although
subjectivity or the phenomenal mineness of experiences does not provide
an exhaustive understanding of what it means to be a self, it is sufficient
to warrant the use of the term ‘self’ (2011: 67). Furthermore, he clarifies:
that the for-me-ness or mineness in question is not a quality like scarlet,
sour or soft. It doesn’t refer to a specific experiential content, to a specific
what, nor does it refer to the diachronic or synchronic sum of such content,
or to some other relation that might obtain between the contents in
question. Rather, it refers to the distinct givenness or how of experience. It
refers to the first-personal presence of experience. (2012: 149)
The later Abhidharma-Yog
ā
c
ā
ra epistemologists are led to introduce the
notion of self-awareness or reflexive awareness (
svasa
ṃ
vedana
) to
account for the subjectivity of experiences.
2
In the absence of a self this
raises the further question: What are we aware ‘of’ in self-awareness? The
Buddhist-Abhidharma answer is to say that self-awareness is not to be
understood as awareness of a subject having or possessing different
experiences, rather it is simply a conscious state being aware of itself or
being given to itself in a first-person way. Zahavi’s phenomenological
characterisation of the minimal self makes it seem that it is nothing more
than the subjectivity of experiences. Thus, the Abhidharma Buddhist
philosopher who accepts subjectivity of experience should have no
qualms about accepting this minimal notion of self.
In the Western tradition it is commonly assumed that the very idea of
conscious experience involves the existence of a subject of experience.
By definition, to say that a mental state is conscious is to say that there is
some distinctive way it ‘feels’ to be in that state. The ‘something it is like’
must mean ‘something it is like for the subject’. The minimal claim is
merely that ‘an experience is impossible without an experiencer’. Christo-
pher Peacocke calls this a ‘…constitutive, metaphysical point about the
nature of consciousness’ (1999: 292). Galen Strawson credits this point
to Descartes in the
Second Meditation
: the existence of the thinker,
subject, or experiencer cannot be doubted even if one is wrong about the
2. The terms ‘reflexive awareness’ and ‘self-awareness’ are used interchangeably in the
literature.
226 JASR 29.3 (2016)
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substantial nature of this experiencing something (2003: 281). Strawson
here boldly notes that nothing in Buddhism challenges this point. He
clarifies that the notion of an experiencer is that of a ‘thin’ subject which
does not and cannot exist at any given time unless it is having an
experience at that time. Then, however, Strawson ends up identifying the
subject, the experience, and the content of experience and claims that a
thin subject in this sense is sufficient to warrant the use of the term
episodic self. If the subject is nothing over and above the experience
itself, the Buddhist-Abhidharma philosopher should have no trouble
accepting that there are thin subjects. Surely they can admit that there are
numerically distinct minimal selves: dependently conditioned, temporary
subjects that arise, exist, and pass away within the span of an occurrent
episode of consciousness. But the Buddhist-Abhidharma philosopher will
deny that thin subjects in this sense can be thought of as selves in any
philosophically established use of the term.
I do not want to consider the so-called minimal selves as selves, since
they are not ‘good enough deservers of the name’ (Lewis 1995: 140). In
Lewisian speak, I concede that the search for perfect deservers of our
folk-psychological, pre-theoretical notion of ‘self’ is futile, because there
aren’t any perfect occupants of the role and hence no perfect deservers of
the name. But the so-called minimal selves in the Buddhist-Abhidharma
sense are so imperfect that they do not deserve the name. The task of this
article is to make a case for the claim that in the Buddhist-Abhidharma
scheme of things it is best not to talk about a self, period. It is, therefore,
important to distinguish the Buddhist-Abhidharma notion of self-aware-
ness from various notions of minimal self in the literature.
The notion of a thin self is closely related to that of a minimal self in the
phenomenological tradition; minimal self just refers to the distinct given-
ness or how of experience (Zahavi 2012: 149). Gallagher explains that the
minimal self is the consciousness of oneself as an immediate subject of
experience, leaving aside questions about the degree to which it is
extended beyond the immediate present (2000: 14). However, even the
unsuspecting phenomenologists’ notion of a minimal self is not as
innocent as it appears to be. Zahavi equates a minimal self with the ‘very
subjectivity of experience’ (2005, 2012), but that notion is thicker than
the Buddhist-Abhidharma philosopher can willingly endorse. The pheno-
menologists’ notion of experience is not innocent and builds in temporal
width. Such a notion of experience, although necessarily subjective is not
acceptable to the Abhidharma Buddhist. For Zahavi, consciousness and
self-consciousness have temporal structure and an extension in time,
unlike the Buddhist-Abhidharma universe in which conscious experiences,
like everything else, are momentary events. The same applies to
Chadha The Abhidharma Version of No-Self Theory 227
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Gallagher’s (2000) notion of minimal self and Damasio’s (2012) notion
of core self as they both include the sense of agency and ownership
which is not part of the Buddhist-Abhidharma notion of self-awareness.
Similarly, the notion of minimal phenomenal self proposed by Blanke
and Metzinger (2009) is too rich as it involves self-location, self-identi-
fication, and body-ownership. The Buddhist-Abhidharma philosophers
deny that we own our bodies and also dismiss self-identification as a
delusion we must learn to get rid of. This is what I take to be the central
issue between the proponents of the self and Abhidharma no-self
theorists, namely, the question of whether there are ultimately real
persisting entities, even
though they may be short-lived. Zahavi would
argue that experiences and
our consciousness of experiences are tempo-
rally extended. The denial of the self amounts to the denial of persisting
entities. So, I think this is not merely a semantic issue, nor is it merely a
terminological debate about what we call the ‘self’.
Briefly, the plan of the paper is as follows. In Section 1, I discuss Vasu-
bandhu’s central argument in
Abhidharmako
ś
a
-
bh
ā
sya
for the claim that
there is no self. Vasubandhu takes a lot of care to give an account of how
we are supposed to explain the facts e.g., memory, moral responsibility,
etc., in the absence of selves or persons. In Section 2, I consider some
contemporary rational reconstructions of the Buddhist view of no-self
which argue that the Buddhist need not deny the self as the owner of
experiences and the agent of actions. I argue that these reconstructions
are misguided as they distort the motivation and the overall project of
Abhidharma philosophy in particular, and Buddhist philosophy more
generally.
1. Self and No-Self in Vasubandhu’s Philosophy
Vasubandhu begins with the question: How do we know that the term
‘self’ refers to a series of aggregates of mental and physical states
(
skandhas
) and not to something else?
Vasubandhu responds by saying
that we know this because no proof establishes the existence of a self
apart from the aggregates. There is no proof for the existence of the self
by direct perception, nor by inference. He elaborates further that we can
know objects of the five senses and the objects of mental consciousness
by perception. And we can know about the existence of the five external
sense organs on the basis of inference: despite the presence of some of
the causes of perception—e.g., external objects, light, attention, etc.—the
blind and the deaf cannot perceive certain objects. Thus we can infer the
existence of the sense organs as a cause whose presence together with
the other factors brings about a perception. But it is not like this for the
228 JASR 29.3 (2016)
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self, hence it does not exist! We cannot perceive the self, nor are there
any considerations that would lead us to infer or postulate a self; so we
can conclude there is no self (Pruden 1988: 1313-14).
3
The central argument comes later in the text. It launches a direct attack
against the inferential proof for the self put forward in Nyāya-sūtra 1.1.10.
The
Ny
ā
ya-s
ū
tra
argument goes: Desire, volition, etc. would not be
possible without a
single
agent that cognises and recognises the object,
and this
single
agent is the self. The weight of the argument rests on
memory to defend the reality of a diachronically extended single agent. In
his response Vasubandhu outlines an alternative explanation of memory
in terms of causal connections between momentary mental events in a
series. The next concern raised by the Hindu opponents is: How can we
make sense of agents of physical actions and that of knowledge without
there being a self? And, the list goes on: cognition, happiness, and pain
are qualities had by a substratum—what is the substratum of these quali-
ties? Who is the referent of the notion of ‘I’? Who is the one who is happy
or unhappy; and, finally, who is the agent of karma and the enjoyer of
the results of karma? Vasubandhu’s strategy is to respond to each of
these concerns by giving an alternative explanation of the phenomena at
issue by appeal to nothing but ultimately real momentary events and the
relations of cause and effect combined with conventional practices or the
way we talk about these phenomena. So, for example, the need to
postulate an agent for bodily actions like eating, bathing, walking, etc., is
explained in the following manner. We do not need a self as the agent of
an action of the body, since we cannot infer it as a cause. A self contri-
butes nothing to the arising of an action, for the desire to eat, say a
mango, arises from a memory of enjoying a mango in the past, from this
desire arises a consideration as to how to satisfy this desire, and from this
consideration arises an intention to move the body for the sake of satis-
fying the desire and then from this movement, say of the hand to acquire
and cut a mango, which finally leads to the action of eating a mango.
There is no need to invoke the self as an agent at any point in this expla-
nation. For the Abhidharma Buddhist the self is an ontological dangler
without a causal role or an explanation. Vasubandhu says that by the
very fact that we cannot apprehend the capacity of the self, any more
than a capacity of the various chants uttered by a quack doctor when it is
established that the effect has been brought about by the use of certain
herbs, we must conclude that the hypothesis of the self is problematic.
3. Duerlinger (2003) presents the most detailed reconstruction of Chapter 9 and its
arguments. It will become evident that my reading of the text differs from Duerlinger’s. He
suggests that the Vasubandhu argument is that we are not selves and that we ultimately
exist. I cannot see any reason to attribute such a view to Vasubandhu.
Chadha The Abhidharma Version of No-Self Theory 229
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2017.
The point of these explanations is not just that there is a better alternative
explanation of the phenomena, but that these alternative explanations
show there is no need to postulate or infer a self to explain these pheno-
mena. Hence, Vasubandhu concludes that there is no inferential basis for
a belief in a self.
What can we claim about the notion of the self in the background of
the debate with the Ny
ā
ya-Vai
ś
e
ṣ
ikas? The self, according to Vasu-
bandhu, is not a subject of experiences, nor an owner of memory and
other cognitive states, nor even an agent of actions in the sense that the
subjects, owners, and agents are separate from and over and above the
cognitive states themselves. And there is no permanent or at least
persisting self required to explain phenomena like memory and karmic
causality. Furthermore, Vasubandhu also denies the need to postulate a
self as the substratum of qualities. All these phenomena which are
regarded by the Ny
ā
ya-Vai
ś
e
ṣ
ikas as inferential marks of the self can be
explained without postulating a self. Vasubandhu argues if, as the Ny
ā
ya-
Vai
ś
e
ṣ
ikas claim, the self they are talking about is separate from and
causally independent of the series of mental and physical states, then
such a self is causally ineffacious and thus cannot explain anything. There
is no need to posit such a self.
I will not evaluate the success of Vasubandhu’s argument at this stage.
I am well aware of many concerns that arise in the mind of the reader
about the outright dismissal of the minimal self as a serious candidate for
the self, the suspected incoherence in explicit denial of the need for an
owner of experiences or agent of actions, the adequacy of the explanation
of memory, and so on. For now, we will assume that there is good reason
to think that a relatively permanent self which is distinct from and
independent of the aggregates of mental and physical states does not
exist.
2. Contemporary Reconstructions of the No-Self Theory
So far we have discussed the kind of self that is the target of Vasu-
bandhu’s refutation. On this distinctive Abhidharma view the aggregates
or the sequential psycho-physical processes supervene on collections of
ultimately real momentary atoms (
dharmas
). Vasubandhu’s interpretation
of the Buddhist no-self doctrine is to say that the word ‘self’ is only a
designation for the series of aggregates (
skandhas
) and that selves do not
exist apart from the aggregates. No self exists, not even in the minimal
sense as an owner of experiences and agent of actions. This strong inter-
pretation of the no-self account is not only counterintuitive but, some
might say, indefensible. In response to this some contemporary scholars
230 JASR 29.3 (2016)
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offer a weak version of Buddhist no-self account which incorporates
elements of Abhidharma and M
ā
dhyamika philosophies. My aim here is
not to defend the Abhidharma no-self view, but only to present it as the
backdrop for the Abhidharma account of mind. In this section I analyse
two such attempts by contemporary philosophers who weaken the no-self
account in a bid to show that we can retreive a minimal notion of self
from the Buddhist account. After all the self has important work to do in
our ordinary conceptual scheme. However, to reconstruct a self from the
scraps of the no-self view is to, I think, misunderstand the strategy
employed by Vasubandhu. So, I am not even going to try to reconstruct a
minimal self. Rather, I will concentrate on showing why contemporary
reconstructions of the Buddhist no-self view are not an adequate
representation of the Abhidharma-Buddhist view.
Some contemporary Buddhist philosophers, for example, Ganeri
(2007) and Thompson (2014), are inclined to argue that to say that the
self is not ultimately real is not to say that the self is an illusion. Ganeri,
for example, says that persons are conventionally real or ‘real with
reference to conception’ and should not be considered as an illusion.
Person-involving conceptual schemes are subject-specific or interest-
specific; they are positional observations, but not for that reason subjec-
tive illusions (2007: 173). They are ways of thinking about the real; they
are not false but they are imperfect. The self, insofar as it is a construc-
tion, just like pots and tables, is not an illusion. Persons, in this sense, are
not natural kinds, but they are not for that reason not real; they are
artificial kinds. The person-involving conceptual schemes are artificially
constructed; persons are real in the sense in which the European Union is
real. But the construction of the European Union is imperfect; we could
do better. So too it is with persons and selves. According to the Budd-
hists, the conceptual schemes containing persons and selves are morally
and intellectually inadequate. These schemes are ways of thinking about
the world as organised into persons, divided into me, you, ours, and
others. There are no such strict divisions and boundaries at the level of
reality. And furthermore there is no reason to endorse such a division; it
only leads to suffering. The Abhidharma view, and the Buddhist view
more generally, is not that the self is an illusion but that it is a delusion
that needs to be deconstructed, as we are better off without it.
4
If we are
4. The terms illusion and delusion are sometimes used interchangeably. However, they
do have strict definitions in psychiatry, in the light of which I suggest the following distinc-
tion: Illusions are false perceptions of a real external stimulus, for example, the Müller-Lyer
illusion. In contrast, delusions are abnormalities of thought rather than perception (although
they may develop from the latter) and are defined as ‘fixed false beliefs, strongly held and
immutable in the face of refuting evidence, that are not consonant with the person’s
education, social and cultural background’, for example, delusions of grandeur.
Chadha The Abhidharma Version of No-Self Theory 231
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able to get rid of this delusion we will reduce suffering, the overarching
aim of Buddhist philosophy.
Ganeri offers a philosophical reconstruction of the Buddhist no-self
account by unearthing a constructive analysis of self offered by Vasu-
bandhu in his later Abhidharma-Yog
ā
c
ā
ra incarnation, while rejecting
their view that the self is an illusion, error, or fiction (Ganeri 2012: 147).
5
Ganeri sets out to defend a version of what he calls the ‘ownership view’
of the self and argues that Vasubandhu gives a constructive analysis of
the so-called immersed self which is a component of the ownership view.
This seems odd; at the very least it is in conflict with Vasubandhu’s no-
ownership view as presented in Section 1. To understand what is going
on here we must unpack the notion of ownership at play in this discus-
sion. It will be useful to examine the Naiy
ā
yikas’ objection and
Vasubandhu’s response as stated in the
Abhidharmako
ś
a
-
bh
ā
sya
:
If a self does not exist, [they ask] who remembers? [They claim that] What
is meant by [saying that someone] ‘remembers’ is [that an agent] ‘grasps
an object [of perception] with [the help of] a memory [of the object]’.
But is [an agent] grasping an object [in this case] anything other than
[the occurrence of] a memory [in a continuum of consciousnesses? Surely,
it is not. No separate act of grasping is required, and consequently no self
as the agent of this act is required, to explain the occurrence of a memory
of an object. If they ask] what produces the memory [of the object if there
is no self, we reply that] the producer of the memory, as we have [already]
said, is the special kind of mental state that causes a memory. Although we
say Caitra remembers, we say this because we perceive a memory that
occurs in the continuum [of aggregates] we call Caitra.
If the self does not exist, [they ask] whose is the memory? [They say that]
the meaning of the use of the possessive case [indicated by the use of
‘whose’] is ownership. It is the owner of a memory in the way that Caitra
owns a cow. [In their view] a cow cannot be used for milking or for
carrying anything and so on unless it is so owned, [and in the same way a
memory cannot be directed at an object unless it is so owned]…
[In your example] what is called ‘Caitra’ is called the owner of the a cow
because we are aware of a single continuum of a collection of [phenomena]
causally conditioning [other] phenomena [within the same continuum] and
assume a causal connection [of phenomena within this continuum] to the
occurrence of changes of place of, and alterations in, [the continuum of the
collection of phenomena we call] a cow. But there is no one thing called
Caitra or a cow. Therefore, there is, [even in the T
ī
rthikas’ example] no
relation between the owner and what it owns other than that between a
cause and its effect. (Duerlinger 2003: 97-88, translation of Section 4 of the
‘Refutation of a Theory of the Self’)
5. It is important to emphasise that the purpose of the disjunction is to note that there
is disagreement among the Buddhist traditions as to whether the self is an illusion or error or
fiction. I am not sure whether Ganeri mentions delusion in this context; perhaps it is already
included under the umbrella term fiction. But I think it useful to be explicit about it.
232 JASR 29.3 (2016)
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The objection raised by the Naiy
ā
yikas is that the Buddhist account
cannot explain facts about ownership, specifically the idea that we own
our experiences, memories, and so on. Ownership, for the Naiy
ā
yikas,
consists in the capacity of the object to be used as one wishes
(
yathe
ṣṭ
haviniyogayojyatva
) (Ganeri 2007: 176). Vasubandhu’s reply is
to say that the fact about ownership can be reduced to causal facts: there
is no relation between the owner and the owned over and above that
between a cause and its effect. Notice, however, that ownership in the
Ny
ā
ya is spelt out in terms of dispositional properties: a capacity, right, or
entitlement. Ganeri complains that Vasubandhu’s reductionist account in
terms of causal relations cannot make sense of these dispositional
properties, nor can it easily explain the
disanalogy
between ownership of
experiences and ownership of property (2007: 177). I can transfer my
property but I cannot transfer my experiences.
There is reason to doubt whether the Ny
ā
ya analysis of ownership is
right. We must ask the question whether the self as the owner really has
the capacity to control one’s experiences according to one’s wishes?
There is evidence to think otherwise. Empirical research shows that we
spend 30–50% or our conscious waking lives mind wandering (Kane et
al. 2007; Killingsworth and Gilbert 2010; Schooler et al. 2011) which
involves an unnoticed loss of mental control and epistemic agency. This
is to say, on average we spend 6 or more hours of our waking time not
really having conscious control of our mental experiences. The Buddhist
also believes that we do not have much control over our bodily experi-
ences. For, as Buddha himself points out in the
Sa
ṃ
yutta
Nik
ā
ya
3.67
‘…it is not possible to say, “Let my body be like this, let my body not be
like this”’ (trans. Gethin 1998: 136). Furthermore, Ganeri’s scepticism
concerning the analysis of a capacity in terms of causal facts stems from
the concern that a capacity can go unexercised, so there may be no causal
connections corresponding to it. But this scepticism is misplaced, the con-
cepts causation and dispositions often appear together in philosophical
and experiential contexts. More importantly, the analysis of both causal
concepts and dispositional concepts in terms of counterfactual condi-
tionals has been the favoured philosophical analysis for the last two
decades (Lewis 1973, 1997; Mumford 1998). Ganeri’s other concern
about the lack of transferability of experiences is reminiscent of Strawson’s
attack on the no-ownership view.
Ganeri (2007) is right to point out that Vasubandhu’s denial of the self
as the subject and owner of experiences is prone to the charge of incohe-
rence. Peter F. Strawson (1959: 95-98) famously dismissed the ‘no-
ownership’ view, ascribed tentatively to Wittgenstein and Schlick, as
incoherent. Wittgenstein urges against the use of the personal pronoun ‘I’
Chadha The Abhidharma Version of No-Self Theory 233
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(or ‘my’) as subject of private, immediate experiences as in ‘I can see a
red patch’ since it misleads us into thinking that that one owns or has the
experiences to which we refer using ‘I’. The no-ownership theorist claims
that experiences do not belong to an owner or a subject of experience.
Strawson’s argument for incoherence depends on the claim that particular
private experiences can only be identified by reference to particular
persons. He writes:
It [the no-ownership view] is not coherent, in that the one who holds it is
forced to make use of that sense of possession of which he denies the
existence, in presenting his case for the denial… States, or experiences,
one might say, owe their identity as particulars to the identity of the person
whose states or experiences they are. (Strawson 1959: 96-97)
Thus, Strawson argues that reference to persons is inevitably involved in
the explanation of the illusion of ownership. The illusion of ownership is
grounded in the contingent fact that the class of experiences that are
mine
are those that are causally dependent on a particular body. But that
fact, Strawson claims, cannot be stated without reference to ‘my’ or any
other expression that has a similar possessive force. The no-ownership
theorist calls into question the idea of possession, which is the defining
characteristic of this class of experiences: they are ‘
mine
’, or ‘
my
experiences’ or ‘experiences
of
some person’.
Ganeri (2012: 73) argues that in the absence of the referent of ‘I’
Vasubandhu’s model has the resources to sidestep Strawson’s incohe-
rence challenge against the no-ownership view. The no-ownership theorist
need not deny that a sense of ownership accompanies experience. In his
later Yog
ā
c
ā
ra phase, Vasubandhu posits the notion of afflictive mind
(
kli
śṭ
a-manas
) or simply mind (
manas
) as an aspect of experience that
presents my experiences to me as mine in a more basic, preattentive, and
nonidentifying way. My thoughts, emotions, feelings, sensations are pre-
sented to me as mine. This sense of mineness is based on introspective
attention which requires picking out a given thought or experience and
identifying it as one’s own. In addition, in this model the basic or store-
house consciousness (
ā
laya-vijñ
ā
na
) is a neutral, baseline consciousness
that serves as a repository of all basic habits, tendencies, and
karmic
latencies accumulated by the individual, providing some degree of conti-
nuity to momentary mental states. This basic consciousness is misappre-
hended by means of a conceptual transformation as a self (Dreyfus and
Thompson 2007: 97). The afflictive mind is responsible for generating a
sense of self which is articulated in ‘I-Me-Mine’. But these I-thoughts and
I-statements, as we saw above, are necessarily mistaken because they
involve a transition from being aware of oneself as being in a certain
mental state to explicitly formulating the thought that one is, and asserting
234 JASR 29.3 (2016)
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2017.
that one is. Vasubandhu’s model claims that this transformation is based
on conceptual fabrication and thus cannot justify our use of the language
of self. The term ‘I’ is only a metaphor used to designate a supposed
referent that does not really exist.
Ganeri uses these Buddhist ideas to construct what he calls an
‘immersed self’ while rejecting their so called error-theory. The immersed
self is nothing more than the phenomenology of the first person or simply
the presented mineness of experience. But can this account really sidestep
Strawson’s challenge? Ganeri makes different claims about ownership,
which, although not contradictory, make competing demands on what
qualifies as an owner of experiences or mental states. On a first reading,
the immersed self or mind (
manas
) qualifies as the owner in that the
sense of ownership comes with the phenomenal marking of an experi-
ence as ‘mine’ (Ganeri 2012: 8). On a second reading, ownership
demands much more:
For a state to be owned is precisely for it to engage the whole of one’s
being through its potential to make normative demands on any other
owned state. It is the defining feature of a first-person stance that one
occupies and endorses one’s states of mind and is not merely a spectator of
them,… The best argument for there being subjects of consciousness is that
if one’s experience, intentions, preferences and values are to bear rationally
on one another they must stand in a relationship of common ownership
and not merely one of common causation. (Ganeri 2012: 12-13)
On this second reading owning a state
t
requires a synchronically and
diachronically unified subject of consciousness, an engagement of whole
being, and this requires a much thicker conception of subject or owner of
experiences than the Buddhist mind (manas) has the resources to provide.
Ganeri recognises this; he is not claiming that Vasubandhu’s mind can do
the work of subject of consciousness in this rich sense. But he is mistaken
insofar as he thinks that the Buddhist view has the resources to sidestep
Strawson’s challenge. Strawson’s requirement demands the rich reading
of ownership outlined above. Strawson says ‘our desires and preferences
are not, in general, something we just note in ourselves as alien presences
.
To a large extent they
are
we’ (1992: 134). My beliefs, desires, and
expectations are owned by me in this sense not only because they
present themselves to me as mine but they also demand participation and
commitment of my whole being, in all its rational, conscious, uncon-
scious, and bodily dimensions. Ganeri’s talk about ‘whole being’ suggests
a diachronically extended unified entity, a subject of experience which
would clearly be rejected by the Buddhist. This notion of subject of
experience is well-suited to play the role of owner of experience and meet
the rational demands imposed by ownership and thus is well-placed to
play the role of the self. The first reading of owner as the immersed self or
Chadha The Abhidharma Version of No-Self Theory 235
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2017.
mind (
manas
) cannot, as Ganeri would agree, do the work of the self, by
itself. It needs to be enriched with the notion of a participant self that is
not an owner of one’s mental states in the sense of being a mere
spectator, but in that one endorses these states as one’s own and thus is
committed to be rationally governed and non-rationally motivated to use
them as normative constraints on action. Something that can do the work
of the participant self in this sense must be synchronically and diachroni-
cally unified to meet the above-mentioned demands. Furthermore, Ganeri
adds that the notions of participation, immersion, and coordination find
joint articulation in the idea of self (2012: 303). This idea of self is much
closer to the Ny
ā
ya notion and should not be imposed on the Buddhist
notion of
manas
. The Abhidharma Buddhist notion of mind (
manas
)
lasting for no more than a moment, like everything else in the Abhi-
dharma universe, does not deserve to be called a self, immersed or not.
Ganeri is perhaps right to claim that the Buddhist analysis can be
thought of as having logically and conceptually independent components:
the constructive analysis of mind and the error theory (2012: 163).
However, to say that they offer a constructive analysis or a descriptive
metaphysics of the immersed self is misleading because it distorts the
Abhidharma Buddhist motivation and their overall project. Ganeri claims
that:
The Buddhist aim is not merely to reject some given historical theory of self
in the Indian discussion but to diagnose what they take to be a deep
mistake in our conceptual scheme. It is incumbent upon them, therefore, to
provide an accurate descriptive metaphysics of the self. (2012: 164)
The Abhidharma aim is indeed to correct the human tendency to seek a
self, but their aim is not to provide an accurate descriptive metaphysics in
the Strawsonian sense of the term (P.F. Strawson 1959: 9). The construc-
tive analysis is the result of the Abhidharma enterprise of providing an
account of the phenomenology of experiences in the absence of the self.
The so-called constructive is best conceived of as a part of the
Abhidharma model of mind. The storehouse consciousness (
ā
laya-
vijñ
ā
na
) and afflictive mind (
kli
śṭ
a-manas
) are introduced as two distinct
consciousnesses over and above the six kinds of consciousnesses found
in the Abhidharma literature. Furthermore, Abhidharma and Buddhists
are more generally are not interested in describing the structure of our
actual thought about the world, their project is more aptly described as
‘revisionary metaphysics’. That is to say, their major concern is to
produce a better structure, a structure that lacks a self. The stated aim of
the Abhidharma is to give a systematic account of conscious experiences
and of the world by analysing it into its basic constituents—the mental
and physical phenomena are ultimately reduced to momentary mental
236 JASR 29.3 (2016)
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2017.
and physical
dharmas
. The Abhidharma metaphysics, in particular
Vasubandhu’s Sautr
ā
ntika version, is shaped by a radical construal of
impermanence as momentariness. The Sautr
ā
ntika-Yog
ā
c
ā
ra present a
picture of the world in which the only ultimately real things that exist are
the momentary, impartite atoms (
dharmas
). Abhidharma espouses a
naturalistic explanation of the world and the mind in terms
dharmas
as
the fundamental constituents of the phenomenal world.
The analysis of the phenomenal world is terms of
dharmas
and the
discernment of the nature of
dharmas
is not the result of
a priori
concep-
tual analysis, but is available in experience, albeit a special kind of
experience had by expert meditators. Buddhist meditation training is
aimed at an errorless insight into reality: ‘seeing things as they really are’.
The idea is not to offer an inventory of all existing
dharmas
in their
totality, but rather to recognise that they have ‘a dual soteriological
purpose involving two simultaneous processes’ (Cox 2004: 551). First,
the
dharma
typology maps out the constituents and workings of the mind
to account for conscious experiences. The idea is that this practice
enables us to see
dharmas
as
dharmas
. In this context, Gethin writes that
meditation ‘involves watching how they arise and disappear, how the
particular qualities that one wants to abandon can be abandoned, and
how the particular qualities that one wants to develop can be developed.
Watching
dhammas
in this way one begins to understand […] certain
truths (
sacca
)—four to be exact—about these
dhammas
:
their relation to
suffering, its arising, its ceasing and the way to its ceasing’ (2004: 536).
The second soteriological purpose served by the categorisation of
dharmas
reveals the fundamental Buddhist teaching of no-self. Vasu-
bandhu writes, ‘[p]laced in the foundations of mindfulness having the
dharmas
as its universal object, he sees that the
dharmas
are imper-
manent, suffering, empty, and not-self. The detailed enumerations of
dharmas
demonstrate that no essence or self could be found in any
dharmas
since they are momentary. Even the handful of
dharmas
that
are categorised as unconditioned (that is, having no cause and no effect)
are shown to be not-self. The practice of the meditation involves
discernment of
dharmas
which undermines the conception of the world
and objects in it, including persons or selves or even experiences as
continuing entities. Gethin notes ‘Try to
grasp
the world…and it runs
through one’s fingers’ (1992: 165, emphasis in original). The revisionary
metaphysics of momentariness supported by the insight achieved by
expert meditators supports a strong interpretation of the no-self view.
Thus, I think it is a mistake to think of the Abhidharma as presenting a
constructive analysis of the immersed self.
Chadha The Abhidharma Version of No-Self Theory 237
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2017.
In another recent analysis, Thompson (2014: 358-60) offers a recon-
struction of the Buddhist no-self, according to which the no-self doctrine
is the denial of a substantial, independently existing thing, but not of the
minimal sense of self that is the subject of experiences and agent of
actions. Thompson agrees with the Abhidharma-Yog
ā
c
ā
ra that our sense
of self is mentally constructed but does not think it follows that the self is
nothing but an illusion, since all illusions are constructions but not vice
versa. The minimal notion of self which involves thinking or experiencing
of the stream of consciousness as ‘mine’ is not a delusion (2014: 359).
Thompson explains that this mistaken interpretation is a result of assum-
ing that the term ‘I’ essentially refers to a substantial self. However, this is
a mistake. He explains that a minimal notion of self as a subject of
experience and an agent of action can provide a legitimate and valuable
notion of self. Legitimate because it allows us to experience ourselves as
neither the same as nor different from the stream of consciousness and
valuable because it allows us to individuate my experiences and actions
as belonging to me as subject and agent without thinking of oneself as a
substantial entity (2014: 361). Furthermore, in his defence of the minimal
notion of self, Thompson appeals to the M
ā
dhyamika view, rather than
restricting himself to the Abhidharma position. The second reason offered
in support of the minimal self is that the function of the term ‘I’ is not to
refer. Rather, following the M
ā
dhyamika philosopher Candrak
ī
rti the term
‘I’ serves an appropriative function. The appropriation is to be thought of
as an activity of
laying claim to
rather than
asserting ownership of
experiences and thoughts within one’s conscious stream.
One individuates oneself as a subject of experience and agent of action by
laying claim to thoughts, emotions and feelings—as well as commitments
and social practices—and thereby enacts a self that is no different from the
self-appropriating activity itself. Again, the self isn’t an object or a thing; it’s
a process—the process of ‘I-ing’ or ongoing self-appropriating activity.
(Thompson 2014: 363)
Thompson’s rich notion of the self as the subject of experiences and the
agent of actions may well be an intuitively acceptable notion of self as
process, but it is certainly not an Abhidharma notion of self. The reason
why such a notion of self will be unacceptable to the Abhidharma-
Buddhist philosophers is because the notion of a minimal self as a subject
and an agent presupposes a diachronically extended unified self. As we
saw earlier, the requirement that the self must be diachronically extended
and unified is necessitated by the talk of commitments incurred by the
agent, in this case the participant self, in Ganeri’s terms. Thompson
(2014) does not talk explicitly about the temporal extension of the
minimal self, but it is quite clear that continuity and temporal width is
238 JASR 29.3 (2016)
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2017.
built into the very Husserlian inspired idea of conscious experiences and
consciousness developed by Thompson. Furthermore, the claim that
autopoiesis (or self-production) is a necessary precondition for experience
leads to the idea that the phenomenology of bodily experience is consti-
tutively linked to ordinary experience, emphasising that there is a deep
continuity of life and mind, and an embodied and enactive approach to
cognition and mind (Thompson 2007: 232). This embodied and enactive
approach brings in the idea of unity and continuity of mental states and
mental life and also makes agency central to the idea of mind. The ideas
of unity and continuity are in conflict with Abhidharma Buddhist meta-
physics of conscious experience, according to which consciousness is
really discontinuous and momentary, rather than a continuous flow. It is
important to note here that the process of ‘I-making’ is thought to be
afflicted and erroneous because it takes the storehouse consciousness
which is itself a momentary series of conscious moments and transforms
it into a permanent self. A good deserver of the name ‘self’ brings
in the
idea of continuity and at least some temporal width. But it is for this
reason that any notion of self must be rejected by the Abhidharma.
Thompson may simply say he is not defending an Abhidharma view, and
that his aim is eventually to defend a weakened version which is closer to
the M
ā
dhyamika account of no-self. I think here too Thompson is
mistaken that the M
ā
dhyamika philosopher Candrak
ī
rti will endorse his
view because clearly all Buddhists think that self is a delusion. But that
argument is not my concern here.
I have argued that Abhidharma rejection of self as the owner of experi-
ences and agent actions is underwritten by their denial of any entities that
exist over time. As we saw in Section 1, Vasubandhu denies the need to
postulate the self as the owner of experiences and the agent of actions.
The causal connections among a series of mental states are adequate to
explain mental and physical experiences and actions. The Buddhist con-
cern is that the sense of self as the agent of actions creates
an illusion of a
diachronically unified self that has control over experiences
and actions.
This idea of an owner of experiences and agent of actions suggests that
the self is the boss in charge of the mind–body complex (Dreyfus 2010:
137). Such a conception of self is not only denied in the Abhidharma
texts, as we saw in Section 1, but also in the
Nik
ā
yas
. For example:
Body is not a self. If body were a self then it might be that it would not lead
to sickness; then it might be possible to say, ‘Let my body be like this, let
my body not be like this’. But since body is not a self, so it leads to
sickness, and it is not possible to say, ‘Let my body be like this, let my body
not be like this’. (
Sa
ṃ
yutta Nik
ā
ya
3.66–67, trans. Gethin 1998: 136)
Chadha The Abhidharma Version of No-Self Theory 239
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2017.
This argument from the lack of control over bodily states points to an
illusory sense of self defined as being the owner of the aggregates and an
agent in charge of the aggregates. But such a sense of self, the Buddhist
argues is an illusion because it depends on the diachronically unified and
bounded nature of the self which is separate from the rest of the world.
This deluded sense of ownership and of agency insofar as it is based on
an egocentric view of the world with a special referent for ‘I’ over and
above the psychological and physical processes is not a faithful represen-
tation of how things really are according to our Abhidharma-Buddhist
philosophers. Insofar as notion of minimal self is explicated in terms of
ownership of bodily and mental states and agent in control of actions,
according to our Abhidharma-Buddhists, there is no such thing.
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