Selfhood, Anatman, and Fictional Thought Experiments: A Philosophical Precis
This essay addresses a profoundly puzzling yet vital question: What is the ontological status of selfhood, and do Buddhist arguments—ancient and modern—provide good reasons to deny its reality? While the issue may appear abstract, it swiftly intersects with the complexities of lived experience. Western audiences, in particular, rarely encounter “no-self” doctrine as a simple metaphysical thesis. Instead, it arrives through therapeutic and ethical idioms—urging us to “let go,” to resist self-importance and narcissism, and to value humility and compassion. This language threads through Buddhist teaching, Christian mysticism, Advaita Vedanta, and much of modern psychology and sociology. Crucially, though, what is unique about Buddhist discussions of the self is the claim that such a being does not exist in any but a conventional way. Here it parts company with the other traditions equally concerned to celebrate the *ethical* desideratum of "selflessness" as the renunciation of vanity, and cultivation of the value compassion and openness to others, and a kind of "self-forgetting" as some Christians say. This makes the ethical discussion potentially deceptive when it is used to argue for the doctrine that there exists no being called the "self"- - that it is a conventional contrivance of great utility to unenlightened beings, but not an empirical reality.
A vivid illustration of the contemporary framing may be found in Jay Garfield’s work (notably How to Lose Yourself and Losing Ourselves: Learning to Live Without a Self), where the introduction catalogues a spectrum of self-focused cultural phenomena—self-help, self-importance, self-indulgence, self-realization—before pivoting to a radical Buddhist claim: that preoccupation with the self is, at root, a metaphysical error. Garfield’s key move is to bridge ethical critique with ontological dismissal, insisting that the Buddha’s answer is not merely to revalue the self but to dissolve the idea of selfhood entirely. In his reading, all forms of self-concept—from Atman in Vedanta, to the Christian soul, to the ego of Descartes and Husserl—are ultimately illusory conventions.
It is here, at this crossroads, that the need for analytic clarity becomes acute. Critiques of self-absorption abound: from Lasch’s Culture of Narcissism and Christian kenosis (self-emptying, agapic love), to Advaita teachers who urge surrender of the “false self,” and even George Harrison’s “I, Me, Mine”—written while studying Vedanta, a tradition that places Atman at its center rather than denying the self. All these sources agree that self-obsession is ethically problematic, but none require the ontological claim that the self does not exist. Being “selfless”—as we attribute to saints, therapists, or genuinely compassionate leaders—may be praiseworthy, but it does not imply metaphysical anti-realism about personhood. For example, both Christian and Advaitin traditions valorize the diminution of ego while retaining robust doctrines of the soul or true self; psychological therapy seeks to moderate harmful self-preoccupation without denying the existence of a personal agent.
The difference between evaluating the self (axiology) and denying its reality (ontology) forms an essential conceptual distinction for this project. Buddhist anatman doctrine, especially as taken up by Garfield and many in the Western academic tradition, demands not only ethical transformation but the metaphysical rejection of self as a real, unified locus of agency. In this view, selfhood is a narrative fiction—a temporary convention arising from the aggregation of impermanent processes—that ought to be seen through and ultimately discarded.
To examine whether such a claim can be sustained, the essay advances not abstract analysis alone, but integrates a fictional thought experiment—a full-length short story entitled “The Empathy Enhancement.” The story unfolds in a climate-ravaged near-future, where Dr. Sarah Ross and other world leaders undergo a medical procedure designed to maximize empathy by erasing self-referential cognition. The hope is to create leaders free from selfishness and political deadlock; the result is catastrophic. Enhanced individuals become unable to form coherent judgments, own their emotions, or make decisions grounded in their own values and memories. They remain exquisitely attuned to the feelings of others, yet are functionally paralyzed—unable to steer institutions, communicate genuine beliefs, or engage in rational deliberation. Only those “unenhanced,” who retain conventional agency, can rescue society from collapse.
The philosophical premise of the story is sharp: What happens if we truly erase not just egotism but the structures of conventional selfhood—the integrative center for agency, memory, and value? The narrative tests the consequences of radical anatman in practice: If the self is nothing more than a social or narrative construct, is moral life, rationality, or learning still possible? The disaster that follows dramatizes what is lost when selfhood is not merely revalued but abolished.
Interpretation and Philosophical Stakes
The story thus serves not as allegory but as a robust philosophical thought experiment—a reductio ad absurdum that exposes the practical and existential void created when self is wholly eliminated. If persons are asked to reason, learn, and deliberate while lacking a real (if complex and convention-bound) locus for agency, the result is paralysis—not awakening. In challenging the strong, literal no-self thesis, the narrative does what traditional analytic argument often cannot: it concretizes the cost of dismissing selfhood, and suggests the indispensability of conventional, narrative self for agency and value.
Addressing the “Sudden vs. Gradual” Objection
Yet, it is crucial to recognize that most Buddhist traditions—especially as found in both Southern and Northern schools—do not advocate the abrupt, technological elimination of the self depicted in the story. Rather, selflessness is cultivated gradually, through ethical development and deepened insight. “No-self” is as much a metaphorical or therapeutic orientation as it is a literal metaphysical claim. This caveat means that the story targets the strong, literalist interpretation of Buddhist anatman, not the entire tradition or its most pragmatic, gradualist exponents. For those who read no-self as a metaphor for humility, detachment, or non-absolutism, the story becomes a prompt to clarify what “losing the self” actually means, and to affirm what is functionally indispensable about selfhood in practice. Authentic dialogue requires that both sides state their positions and costs clearly. The burden rests not on those who see robust agency as necessary, but on those who would dismiss it as a mere illusion.
Conclusion and Path Forward
Structured as both argument and narrative exploration, the essay insists that ethical wisdom (valuing humility and compassion) and metaphysical minimalism (denying self) must be sharply distinguished. By embedding “The Empathy Enhancement” within a critical analysis of Buddhist, Vedantic, Christian, Deweyan, and Garfieldian paradigms, and by maintaining sensitivity to the gradualist nuance of Buddhist practice, the work aims to reframe the self/no-self debate for contemporary philosophy of religion and mind. What emerges is a powerful case: robust agency, deliberation, and learning demand a functionally indispensable self—not as an absolute essence, but as a complex product of evolution, narrative, and convention—one that cannot be written off without risk of losing what makes human life coherent and ethical.
Endnotes:
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Garfield, Jay L., How to Lose Yourself: An Ancient Guide to Letting Go (Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers series, Princeton University Press, 2023).
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Garfield, Jay L., Losing Ourselves: Learning to Live Without a Self (Princeton University Press, 2022).
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Lasch, Christopher, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (Norton, 1979).
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On Christian kenosis and agapic love, see Cooper, John W., Panentheism—The Other God of the Philosophers (Baker Academic, 2006); see also Meister Eckhart, Selected Writings (Penguin, 1994).
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For the role of literary thought experiments in philosophy, see Elgin, Catherine Z., “Fiction as Thought Experiment,” Perspectives on Science 10, no. 2 (2002), 221-236; also Elgin, C., True Enough (MIT Press, 2017).
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On the “gradualist” interpretation of selflessness and the critique of literalism, see Batchelor, Stephen, Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World (Yale University Press, 2017), and select lectures.
FURTHER NOTES--
What cognitive science does Heye's rely on?Cecilia Heyes's cognitive science relies heavily oncultural evolutionary theory and experimental psychology to propose that many distinctively human cognitive abilities are "cognitive gadgets" constructed through social interaction, rather than genetically inherited "instincts". Her work is fundamentally a reinterpretation of evolutionary psychology, arguing that culture shapes the mechanisms of human thought, not just its content.Core reliance on cultural evolutionHeyes's central argument is that cultural selection has been the dominant force in shaping many human cognitive abilities. - Cognitive gadgets: Heyes defines these as specialized tools for thought that are built during an individual's development through learning from other people. Examples she explores include language, imitation, and mind-reading, contrasting her view with those who see these as innate "cognitive instincts".
- Rejects genetic primacy: While acknowledging that genetic evolution provides humans with powerful general-purpose learning mechanisms, she argues that these mechanisms are not specialized enough to explain complex human thought. Instead, the process of cultural transmission builds the specialized cognitive mechanisms on top of that basic foundation.
- Information inheritance: Her theory suggests that the ways we think—the cognitive processes themselves—are culturally inherited through social learning, much like literacy is passed down through generations.
- Comparative psychology: She uses evidence comparing the cognitive capacities of humans to those of other animals, such as primates, to argue that the differences are much subtler at birth than previously assumed. This points to the powerful role of postnatal learning in constructing the human mind.
- Developmental psychology: Her work cites studies on child development to demonstrate how social interaction shapes cognitive abilities, including imitation and theory of mind.
- Cognitive neuroscience: Heyes has used neuroscientific data, such as studies on mirror neurons and metacognition, to support the idea that many sophisticated cognitive functions are socially and culturally constructed. For instance, she has developed an associative learning account for the origin of mirror neurons, proposing they are products of sensorimotor experience rather than genetic adaptation.
- Philosophy of mind: Her work grapples with classic questions about the origins of human intelligence, influenced by her work with philosophers like Daniel Dennett.
- Behavioral economics: Her association with research centers focused on economic learning and social evolution has also informed her perspective on how people acquire new skills and strategies.
- Theoretical biology: Heyes uses theoretical models to explore the dynamics of cultural inheritance, incorporating Darwinian principles to explain cultural selection.
- Replication Crisis: Many studies, especially within psychology and cognitive neuroscience, have failed to replicate original findings, leading to questions about the generalizability and robustness of results. This issue is particularly pronounced in fields relying on statistical significance testing, which can be susceptible to publication bias and questionable research practices like p-hacking.
- Functional Specialization: The concept that specific brain regions are exclusively dedicated to specific functions is debated. Critics argue against a strong, modular view, emphasizing instead that many brain regions show degeneracy (i.e., multiple regions can perform the same function, and one region can be involved in multiple functions). The development of functional specialization through learning and experience is also an active area of research.
- Indirect Measures (e.g., fMRI BOLD signal): Techniques like fMRI measure blood flow changes, not direct neuronal activity. These measures are indirect, have lower temporal resolution than neural activity itself, and are subject to noise and vascular complexities, limiting their ability to fully capture the dynamics of brain function. Using such indirect signals as proxies for complex subjective experiences (qualia) is highly problematic.
- Reliance on Self-Report: Using self-reported data to operationalize subjective experiences or constructed concepts introduces potential biases. According to Brainly and Verywell Mind, Individuals may not report honestly (due to social desirability bias), accurately recall past experiences (recall bias), or have difficulty interpreting questions. This can significantly affect the validity and reliability of findings.
- Animal studies on imitation: She and her colleagues have conducted empirical work with various species, such as rats and budgerigars (a type of bird), to show that their imitative behaviors could be the result of sensorimotor experience rather than a specialized, genetically-endowed imitation module. For example, studies with budgerigars demonstrated that the birds could copy the actions of "virtual" demonstrators, suggesting that imitation could be based on associative learning rather than a high-level cognitive process of understanding the demonstrator's goals.
- Human automatic imitation: Heyes uses evidence from human psychology on automatic imitation to argue for continuity with animal behavior. She suggests that complex intentional imitation in humans may build on a simpler, involuntary form of imitation that is also present in other species.
- Contrasting Tomasello on perspective-taking: Tomasello has conducted experiments showing that chimpanzees can understand what another individual sees but not necessarily what they believe, pointing to a key human-chimpanzee difference in theory of mind. Heyes reinterprets these findings, arguing that the apparent human-like ability is a "cognitive gadget" developed through cumulative social experience, rather than a different innate mechanism.
- Focus on metacognition: Heyes and her co-authors have marshaled comparative evidence concerning metacognition—"thinking about thinking"—which they propose is a culturally inherited and socially learned ability that distinguishes humans. They contend that this metacognitive capacity, not a core "mind-reading module," underlies the sophisticated perspective-taking seen in humans but not in other great apes.
- Comparative communication studies: She acknowledges the empirical work showing that human communication, even in infants, involves a layer of cooperative, informative intent that is lacking in great ape communication.
- Rethinking the discontinuity: Instead of framing this as evidence of a massive genetic discontinuity, Heyes views it through her "cognitive gadget" lens. She would argue that the building blocks of human communication (like gesture following and associative learning) are present in other species, and that cultural evolution has built upon these generalist mechanisms to create the complex, cooperative human communication system.
- Procedure: Participants are instructed to perform either a hand-opening or a hand-closing motion in response to a non-imitative cue (e.g., a colored square). Simultaneously, they see a video of a hand either opening or closing.
- Findings: Participants were faster and more accurate when the observed action (the video) was compatible with the required response (e.g., observing a hand close while also closing their own hand). They were slower when the observed action was incompatible.
- Heyes's interpretation: This "unwilled and unreasoned" tendency to copy another's actions is evidence that humans possess a learned, deeply ingrained sensorimotor association, not an innate imitation module. This is different from complex, intentional imitation.
- The Catmur, Walsh, & Heyes (2007) study
- Procedure: Participants underwent training in which they were instructed to perform an incompatible action—they were told to open their little finger when they saw an index finger move, and vice versa.
- Findings: After the "counter-mirror" training, the automatic imitation effect was abolished and even reversed. Observing an index finger movement now produced more activity in the little finger muscles, demonstrating that the sensorimotor link was not innate but could be overwritten by new learning.
- Relevance: This provides direct evidence against the idea of a hardwired "mirror neuron system" dedicated to imitation. Instead, it suggests that these neural mechanisms are highly plastic and are shaped by individual learning histories.
- Replication failures: In a large 2016 study, Heyes and her team failed to replicate the original findings. They tested over 100 newborns and found no evidence for imitation of most gestures, with only a small, short-lived effect for tongue protrusion that is not robust across contexts.
- Interpretive shift: Heyes reinterprets the few successful replications, suggesting that the behaviors are better explained as low-level innate reflexes or arousal responses rather than genuine, intentional imitation.
- Budgerigar study (Range, Huber, & Heyes, 2011): This work showed that budgerigars demonstrated an automatic tendency to copy the actions of "virtual" conspecifics. When presented with visual stimuli, their own motor behavior was modulated in a way that suggests a low-level, associative process similar to human automatic imitation.
- Other species: While some forms of imitation are more sophisticated in humans, automatic, low-level copying has been documented in other animals like dogs, suggesting a shared, phylogenetically continuous process. This indicates that the basic "starter kit" of associative learning is not a human exclusive.
- "Shared intentionality": Tomasello's emphasis on the uniquely human capacity for shared intentionality, joint goals, and collective culture resonates with anthropologists who study human cooperation and the development of large-scale societies.
- Explains human uniqueness: His theory offers a powerful explanation for the dramatic differences in social structure and cumulative culture between humans and other great apes, which is a central topic in anthropology.
- Focus on evolution: His work provides a strong evolutionary narrative, which is vital for many anthropologists, especially those interested in cognitive and evolutionary anthropology.
- Culturally constructed mind: Heyes's "cognitive gadgets" framework appeals to anthropologists who focus on cultural learning and the incredible diversity of human thought across societies. Her view places less emphasis on innate structures and more on the power of cultural practices and social learning to shape the mind.
- Rejects "instincts": Her critique of evolutionary psychology's "nativism" aligns with anthropological trends that are cautious of explanations that rely heavily on biologically innate traits.
- Fine-grained mechanisms: Heyes's focus on the fine-grained, associative mechanisms that build complex cognition appeals to those who seek a more mechanistic, psychologically grounded explanation that avoids vague notions of genetically-coded "special adaptations".
- Cross-species comparisons: Tomasello's extensive comparative work, which highlights significant species differences in socio-cognitive skills (like cooperation and gestural communication), provides clear, testable hypotheses for comparative psychologists and zoologists.
- Explains divergence: His focus on the cognitive divergence between humans and other great apes is directly relevant for researchers trying to understand what makes human cognition unique.
- Continuity with animal learning: Heyes's emphasis on domain-general learning mechanisms (like associative learning) and her critique of the mirror neuron system as innate appeals to zoologists and comparative psychologists who prefer "lean" explanations that emphasize continuity across species.
- Enculturation studies: Her arguments are supported by findings from enculturated great apes, whose cognitive abilities are significantly enhanced by being raised in human-like cultural environments. Such studies offer powerful insights into how learning, rather than genetics alone, shapes cognitive potential.
- Cultural variability: Heyes's framework, which emphasizes how local cultural practices and learning environments build cognitive "gadgets," is highly compatible with the ethnographic focus on cultural diversity and the influence of lived experience on psychology.
- Challenges ethnocentrism: Her perspective challenges the assumption that some cognitive skills are universal instincts, encouraging ethnographers to examine how seemingly fundamental abilities might be shaped differently across societies.
- Cooperation and norms: Tomasello's work on shared intentionality and the development of social norms provides a strong theoretical framework for understanding the cooperative and normative behavior that ethnographers observe in the field.
- Language development: His emphasis on how infants acquire linguistic symbols and participate in cultural life informs ethnographic research on language use, communication, and socialization.
- If the goal is to explain the most profound differences between humans and other apes (e.g., how humans developed large-scale cooperation and cumulative culture), Tomasello's framework may be more compelling.
- If the goal is to provide a mechanistic explanation for how specific cognitive abilities are built during development through learning and experience, Heyes's framework is often preferred.
- More researchers are focusing on the idea that many human cognitive abilities are products of cultural evolution, passed down through social learning and experience, rather than solely genetically-determined traits.
- Heyes's work is a prominent example of this trend, challenging the assumption that core cognitive processes are primarily products of genetic evolution.
- Her "cognitive gadgets" model, suggesting that seemingly unique human cognitive abilities are constructed culturally during development, has gained traction as an alternative to explanations that emphasize innate "instincts."
- While Tomasello's work on shared intentionality remains highly respected, some researchers have questioned specific aspects of his framework.
- For example, some argue that he may overemphasize the innate component of shared intentionality, while others suggest that the concept needs further clarification or refinement.
- The rise of research into the mechanisms of cultural learning has broadened the perspective beyond shared intentionality as the sole or primary driver of human cognitive uniqueness.
- Heyes and other cultural evolution researchers emphasize the importance of understanding the mechanisms by which cultural learning and social interaction shape cognitive development.
- This approach focuses on the plasticity of human cognition, emphasizing that the human mind is not a fixed product of genetic predispositions, but rather actively constructed through experience and learning within a cultural context.
The increased recognition of cultural evolution as a driving force in shaping the human mind has led to greater acceptance of perspectives that emphasize the role of social learning and cultural inheritance in building human cognition. This doesn't necessarily mean that Tomasello's work has been fully superseded, but rather that Heyes's cultural evolutionary framework offers a powerful complementary lens, leading to a richer and more nuanced understanding of human cognitive development and evolution.
- Echoes Heyes's foundation: Muthukrishna builds his framework upon the core idea that human cognition is shaped by powerful, general-purpose learning mechanisms, just as Heyes argues. His work is deeply rooted in the cultural evolution school of thought that Heyes represents.
- Incorporates Tomasello's insights: He acknowledges and integrates the importance of evolved social motivations and unique cooperative skills, a key pillar of Tomasello's work. The synthesis doesn't dismiss Tomasello's findings but instead frames them within a broader cultural evolutionary context.
- The "cultural brain" hypothesis: Muthukrishna advocates for the "cultural brain" hypothesis, which suggests that larger human brains co-evolved with cultural complexity, a concept that can integrate both perspectives. The brain has been shaped by evolution for cultural learning, but cultural learning is what then builds the more complex cognitive abilities on top of that.
- Beyond "great ape" comparisons: While Tomasello's work often highlights the differences between humans and great apes, Muthukrishna places human uniqueness in the context of the vast scale and speed of cumulative cultural evolution. The synthesis explains how general learning mechanisms (Heyes) and cooperative social motivations (Tomasello) fuel this uniquely human capacity for cultural accumulation.
- Explains rapid change: By focusing on cumulative culture, the book directly addresses the changes you've observed since the 2010s. It explains that the acceleration of cultural change, driven by specific social and technological innovations, has profound effects on the kinds of cognitive skills and behaviours that are selected and transmitted.
- Refining the origin story: Muthukrishna refines the debate about whether traits arose primarily from genes (Tomasello's more nativist lean) or culture (Heyes's more constructivist lean). He explores the ongoing dialogue between genes and culture, where genetic adaptations can make cultural learning more effective, which in turn creates new selection pressures for more genetic adaptations.
- Explaining the "why": The book provides a theoretical structure for why human cognition evolved the way it did, moving beyond simply describing the differences between species (Tomasello's focus) or arguing against nativist explanations (Heyes's focus) to provide a more comprehensive and unified account.
- The Secret of Our Success: How Culture is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter by Joseph Henrich (2015): A foundational text that, along with Heyes, helped popularize the cultural evolutionary viewpoint and influence the field away from purely genetic explanations.
- Darwin's Unfinished Symphony: How Culture Made the Human Mind by Kevin N. Laland (2017): Provides a thorough overview of gene-culture co-evolution and offers a detailed argument for how cumulative culture has shaped human cognitive evolution.
- The short answer is no, Heyes and Muthukrishna do not leave us with a purely conventionalist account of agency. While they emphasize the profound role of culture and learning, both are very clear that the constructed aspects of the human mind are built upon a foundation of genetically inherited, domain-general capacities. Their theories grant that agentic skills supervene on a priori capacities, but they differ from more nativist views by emphasizing that these foundational capacities are more basic and less domain-specific than often assumed.
Cecilia Heyes's perspective on agency
Heyes, in her "cognitive gadgets" framework, argues that complex mental mechanisms are culturally constructed rather than genetically innate. However, this construction relies on and is constrained by a biological substrate.- A priori capacities: Heyes acknowledges that we are not born a blank slate. She states that the "subtle differences" in cognitive hardware between newborn human babies and other great apes—such as a greater capacity for associative learning and memory, and a general inclination toward social engagement—are genetically inherited. These differences, while subtle, are the foundational "starting kit" for cultural development.
- The learning engine: The brain's general-purpose learning mechanisms, such as associative learning ("neurons that fire together wire together"), are the bedrock on which more complex mental mechanisms are built. These learning capacities are themselves products of genetic evolution, but they are not specialized for complex human functions like reading minds or language acquisition.
- Supervenience: For Heyes, agentic skills (like intentional imitation or mind-reading) supervene on the interaction between these basic, a priori, domain-general capacities and the cultural environment. The complex skill cannot exist without both the hardware (the domain-general genetic capacities) and the software (the cultural learning that builds the cognitive gadget)
- Michael Muthukrishna's perspective on agencyMuthukrishna's work on gene-culture coevolution also moves far beyond a simple conventionalism, providing an integrative framework that explicitly links genes, culture, and individual agency.
- Gene-culture feedback loop: His theory is founded on the dual inheritance model, which explicitly posits a dynamic, two-way feedback loop between genetic and cultural evolution. Genes give humans the capacity for complex cultural learning, and cultural practices then create new selective pressures that alter the human genome. This means the human capacity for agency is deeply biological, but it is also shaped by a long history of culture.
- A priori capacities as an adaptation for culture: For Muthukrishna, the brain has evolved genetically as an adaptation for cultural learning. This means that humans' innate psychological predispositions are designed to be receptive to cultural information, rather than being a purely conventional outcome. This moves beyond the idea of a simple conventional overlay and argues that the hardware itself is co-evolved with culture.
- Supervenience on a system: Muthukrishna's view of agency supervenes not just on an individual's a priori capacity, but on the entire gene-culture coevolutionary system. Individual agentic capacity is inseparable from the cumulative culture and social intelligence that characterize the human species
- Rejection of the blank slate: They both explicitly reject the idea that humans have no a priori capacities. A purely conventionalist view would suggest that agency is entirely a product of cultural rules and social norms, with no biological basis.
- Emphasis on the learning substrate: Instead of arguing for specialized innate modules (as Tomasello might suggest for some traits), they posit innate learning mechanisms that are domain-general but extremely powerful and flexible.
- Supervenience on biology: Both models are materialistic and recognize that all psychological processes, whether constructed or innate, must ultimately supervene on the biological functions of the brain. The debate is about how much information is contained in the initial state of the hardware.
- The difference lies in their emphasis. Heyes focuses more on the proximate, developmental mechanisms by which cultural learning constructs cognitive gadgets. Muthukrishna provides a broader, more ultimate explanation, describing the long-term gene-culture co-evolutionary dynamic that has resulted in both the innate capacity for cultural learning and the cultural tools that enable sophisticated agency.
