Self, Non-Self, and Personal Identity

Abstract

The precise nature of the Buddha’s doctrine, as he himself may have taught it, is subject to many difficulties of interpretation. Did the Buddha in fact teach a well-formed “doctrine” at all, or was he a practical teacher of ethics and meditation, for whom doctrine was an unnecessary intellectual distraction? Are the doctrines attributed to him perhaps the inventions of the schools that followed and not the formulations of the founder himself? Or was he, as certain scriptures present him, actively engaged in disputations with the leading ascetic teachers of his time, so that he must have sought, in his turn, to refine the content and consistency of his message? However we may seek to answer these and similar questions, many early Buddhist scriptures unmistakably call into question the notion that each one of us possesses a unique and persisting self. Though it has been suggested that the Buddha may have only intended an ethically uplifting conception of selflessness, or perhaps wished to awaken us to the possibility of a higher Self, the attribution to him of a metaphysical assertion of “non-self” (Pali anatta, Skt. anātman) became established as a hallmark of his teaching among the mainstream of his successors early on. From the conflicting interpretations about this that arose in the generations following the founder’s passing, and later from their disputes with the non-Buddhist schools of Indian thought, there evolved in scholastic circles a rich array of increasingly rigorous arguments to support the conclusion that the “self” (ātman) or “person” (pudgala), conceived as an enduring entity that somehow individuates an otherwise fragmented continuum of mental and physical events, simply does not exist. We are continuums (santāna), not persisting selves. The conception of the person that seemed entailed here gave rise to numerous puzzles that later Buddhist thinkers endeavored to resolve. Certain of the teachings that became current were suspected of seeking tacitly to reaffirm the existence of a substantial self. One such doctrine, that of the “Personalists” (pudgalavādin), is surveyed below; others, notably the conceptions of a “ground consciousness” (ālayavijñāna) and of buddha-nature (buddhadhātu, tathāgatagarbha), are treated in other entries. As the history and development of Buddhist thought have become better known, some contemporary scholars have called attention to apparent parallels between Western and Buddhist approaches to the puzzles of the self and personal identity. Recent explorations of these conceptual connections are examined in the final section of this entry.

Self-Improvising Memory: A Perspective on Memories as Agential, Dynamically Reinterpreting Cognitive Glue

“…From this perspective, memories are messages between agents separated across timeeach engram is a stigmergic [76,77] note left in our body by a past version of us 12 . A view of temporal (vertical) memories as communication between our Selflets invites us to think of memory as parallel to the horizontal communication we do with others' Selflets 13 . And like all messages, they need to be interpreted 14 ; indeed, von Foerster [82] emphasizes the symmetry between foresight, hindsight, and insight: the key is not the passage of time but rather the need to make sense of the future and the past equally.…”

“…12 The corresponding memory medium for ant colonies-another collective intelligence-is the ground, on which they leave chemical messages that mediate the colony-level decision-making. 13 Memory is communication, and the mechanisms used to assemble those communications into an emergent Self-model that seems to persist over time is analogous to the mechanisms that bind individual agents (like cells) into an emergent Body-model, because in both cases a continuous stream of signals (passing messages) underlies a temporally and spatially extended whole (as perceived by itself and by external observers). An interesting direction for future research then is to ask what role, within a persistent cognitive Self, is played by the competitive and cooperative dynamics studied in evolutionary game theory within communication between agents [37,[78][79][80].…”

Can Being Aware of the Illusion of Self Augment an Agent's Affordances: Integrating Buddhist Philosophy, Cognitive Science, and Artificial Life

“…Our approach is based on Buddhist views of "no self" (Garfield, 2014;Kapstein, 2016), which in turn can be seen as developing the idea that what is conventionally considered to be a single and enduring person (or agent) is constructed upon a plurality of impermanent causal factors. Buddhist philosophers may thus suggest that because no person or agent can be found apart from these constantly changing factors, it is more profitable to consider a person an imputation rather than a substantial and enduring individual (Kapstein, 2016).…”

“…Our approach is based on Buddhist views of "no self" (Garfield, 2014;Kapstein, 2016), which in turn can be seen as developing the idea that what is conventionally considered to be a single and enduring person (or agent) is constructed upon a plurality of impermanent causal factors. Buddhist philosophers may thus suggest that because no person or agent can be found apart from these constantly changing factors, it is more profitable to consider a person an imputation rather than a substantial and enduring individual (Kapstein, 2016). According to Buddhist traditions, and as a basis for contemplative practices, this view has ethical implications: it is thought that an individual who recognizes oneself as an entity that is constantly co-constituted by their interactions with others, will develop prosocial qualities.…”

“…In other words, the self can in this way be considered both extendable and illusory. In Buddhist thought, the notion of "self as an illusion" can then be summarized as a rejection of singular and enduring individuals (Gold, 2021; Kapstein, 2016), which in turn may enable perceptions of selfhood as distributed/distributable and dynamic (Maitreya-Asaṅga et al, 2014).…”