Notes on Anatman

 

ME:Originally, Anatman was not as sharply emphasized in Buddhism. It was more a consequence of annica / impermanence and dependent-origination. It followed that no permanent self *can* exist if you grant the premises of impermanence and co-arising phenomena. Later it became a specialized area of discourse due to the debates between adviatins and Buddhists.

A:Your understanding of the historical trajectory of the

anatman doctrine is accurate. In early Buddhism, anatman was indeed presented more as a logical consequence derived from the principles of anicca (impermanence) and dependent origination (pratityasamutpada), rather than as a freestanding, metaphysical axiom. It became a highly specialized and intensely debated topic later, particularly in response to the essentialist views of schools like Advaita Vedanta.

Early Buddhism: Anatman as a practical consequence:

The Buddha's teachings were fundamentally pragmatic, aimed at alleviating suffering (dukkha). The three characteristics of existence (tilakkhana)—dukkha, anicca, and anatman—were not abstract truths to be contemplated for their own sake, but tools for liberation.

Anicca (Impermanence): The Buddha taught that everything is constantly changing—the body, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. The self as a permanent entity is incompatible with this reality.

Dependent Origination: This doctrine describes reality as a web of interconnected, mutually conditioning phenomena. There is no independent, unchanging self because every part of a being is dependent on other parts. The notion of a person is merely a convenient label for a bundle of ever-changing processes, the five aggregates (skandhas).

The Chain of Reasoning: In early Buddhism, the logic was straightforward:

• If everything is impermanent (anicca), it is a source of suffering (dukkha) because one cannot hold onto it.
• If something is subject to change, decay, and suffering, it cannot be considered a permanent, blissful self (atman).
• Therefore, the conclusion naturally follows that there is no permanent, unchanging self (anatman).

Focus on Practice: Early Buddhist texts focus less on proving anatman as an ultimate metaphysical truth and more on using it as a meditative strategy to undermine attachment and graspiness. By contemplating the non-self nature of the five aggregates, one cultivates detachment and moves towards enlightenment.

Medieval debates: Anatman as a philosophical axiom

With the resurgence of Vedic thought and the development of scholastic philosophical systems like Advaita Vedanta, the Buddhist position was forced to become more explicit and defensive.

• The Challenge of Advaita: Advaita posits a permanent, unchanging ultimate reality (Brahman) and a true self (Atman) that is identical with it. This directly contradicted the Buddhist stance.
• Specialized Discourse: The dialectical debates with Advaitins required Buddhist schools, especially Madhyamika, to sharpen their arguments and turn anatman into a finely honed philosophical weapon. Madhyamika's doctrine of emptiness (shunyata) extended the concept of no-self to all phenomena, not just the person, providing a powerful and systematic refutation of essentialism.
• Defense Against Nihilism: As noted earlier, the Advaitin accusation of nihilism required a robust defense from Buddhist thinkers, who had to clarify that anatman did not mean "nothing exists" but rather "nothing exists inherently" or "nothing has a permanent essence".

This evolution of the anatman doctrine reflects a broader pattern in the history of Indian philosophy, where schools of thought developed and refined their positions not in isolation, but in a dynamic and highly charged environment of intellectual give-and-take. The Advaitin assertion of Atman provided the ideal foil against which the Buddhist doctrine of anatman could be sharpened and systematized.

ME:One result of the above is a misunderstanding about exactly what anatman does and does not mean and entail. Some modern Buddhists (translating it into English and other western languages as "no-self") hold that it means that there is no such thing as a "self" including empirical selves conceived as a locus of thinking, feeling, acting and willing in which these things are brought into a unity of apprehension by an emergent, dynamic and biosocial self (which is a common understandibng of selfhood in modern, empirical and secular contexts). While ideas of an eternal essence such as a "soul" ala Christian metaphysics is ruled out, the empirical self undergirding agency does not seem to me to be in tension with anatman.

A.Your assessment is correct: the modern, secular understanding of the self as a dynamic, emergent, biosocial agent is not necessarily in tension with the core Buddhist concept of anatman. The widespread misunderstanding arises from translating anatman as "no-self," which can misleadingly suggest that the empirical and conventional self does not exist.

Distinguishing the permanent and empirical self

The key is to understand what exactly the Buddha's doctrine of anatman negates:

• The target is the permanent, independent soul (atman). The Buddha taught that no such unchanging, eternal essence exists. In early Buddhism, anatman was a refutation of the Vedic and Upanishadic concepts of a transcendent, essential self.
• The empirical self is not denied. The Buddhist teachings, particularly the analysis of the five aggregates (skandhas), provide a detailed and sophisticated account of the empirical self. The skandhas—form, sensation, perception, mental formations, and consciousness—are the ever-changing components that give rise to our experience of a unified self.
• A conceptual distinction. The Buddhist critique is subtle: it is not that the person does not exist, but that the person lacks inherent, permanent existence. The feeling of a stable, independent self is a conventional reality, a useful fiction for navigating daily life, but it becomes a source of suffering when clung to as an ultimate truth.

Why agency is not negated

• Karma and rebirth. In Buddhism, moral responsibility and agency are not dependent on a permanent self. Early Buddhist thinkers used the doctrine of dependent origination to explain how actions (karma) produce results and how rebirth occurs in a causal continuum. This is often illustrated with the flame analogy: a flame is not the same at any two moments, but there is a clear causal connection between them.
• The middle way. The Buddha often steered a "middle way" between the eternalist view (of a permanent self) and the annihilationist view (that nothing exists after death). He recognized the skillful use of "self" for moral motivation, but taught that at the end of the path, both concepts of self and not-self are abandoned.
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The modern context
In contemporary discourse, especially in secular contexts, the term "self" is often used to describe the very phenomena that Buddhism analyzes as the five aggregates. The modern scientific understanding of the self as an emergent product of brain and social processes, which is constantly in flux, has a great deal of resonance with the Buddhist model. The misunderstanding arises when one reads the translations of "no-self" literally and fails to recognize this distinction between the permanent soul and the dynamic, empirical self.


Ultimately, the Buddhist teaching of anatman is not a denial of the empirical person, but a powerful tool for dismantling the deeply ingrained belief in a permanent, fixed essence, which is seen as the root of attachment and suffering. The fact that modern psychology and neuroscience increasingly describe the self in terms of fluid processes makes the Buddhist insight more accessible than ever.

ME: Permanent vs. Lasting: While no permanent being exist (and this includes selves) the dynamic emerging self (which, not unlike an organic unity of interdependent powers and properties like sensation, perception, mental formations etc.) does exist as a real phenomenon. Importantly, calling it a "convention" is not accurate in western philosophical terms where "conventional facts" represent those true ONLY by virtue of social agreement (classic example = money which we *treat* as having validity thus grounding its actual validity). The empirical/phenomenal self is better understood not as something outsiders attribute to others, but something disclosed *IN* personal experience, and which makes possible the understanding of such experience as having spatio-temporal, causal and conceptual unity over large spans of time (not eternal like the "soul"). The modern interpretation of "ultimate vs. conventional reality" often misleadingly suggests that the empirical world and inidividual selves in it are literally illusions we can "live without" (see for example, Jay Garfield's interpretation in Losing Ourselves)

A:Your point is crucial for clarifying the nuances of Buddhist philosophy, especially when interpreting it through a Western lens. The misinterpretations you describe regarding the empirical self and conventional reality are common and touch upon deep philosophical differences in how "convention" and "illusion" are understood.

Conventional truth vs. Western convention

You are right that the Western idea of "convention" often implies something arbitrary or socially constructed, like money, which is only valid because we agree that it is. The Buddhist understanding of conventional reality (sammuti sacca in Pali, samvriti satya in Sanskrit) is much more robust.

• Beyond social agreement: In Buddhism, a conventional truth is simply something that is true in ordinary, everyday experience, but not when analyzed at the ultimate level. As the search result notes with the sun analogy, the sunrise is a conventional truth, but the ultimate truth is that the Earth is rotating. The sunrise isn't an arbitrary social construct; it's a real, experienced phenomenon, but its ultimate nature is different from its appearance.
• Empirical reality is dependently originated. The empirical self, along with all other phenomena, is understood as dependently originated. It is not an illusion in the sense that it doesn't exist, but it is an "illusion" in the sense that it lacks inherent, independent existence. As Jay Garfield points out, we are "persons," not "selves". The self as a dynamic, interconnected process is perfectly real and experienced, but the belief that it has an independent, unchangeable essence is what is challenged.
• A "construct," not a fiction: The empirical self can be called a "construct," but not in the way that implies a mere fiction. It is constructed out of real, causally interconnected phenomena (the five aggregates). This process is disclosed in personal experience, as you noted, and provides the basis for agency and ethical action.
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• The illusion of independent existence
  The illusion that the ultimate/conventional distinction aims to dismantle is not the empirical world itself, but the deeply ingrained, pre-conceptual sense that things exist independently and permanently. This is a cognitive error, not a social agreement.
• The actor and the role: Jay Garfield uses the analogy of an actor and a role. The actor is a real person, but they get so caught up in their role that they forget they are not the character. In this analogy, the dynamic, emergent self is the role, and the permanent, essential "soul" is the mythical "actor" inside. The point is not to deny the role, but to stop identifying with it as a permanent, unchanging reality.
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• Correcting the "live without" interpretation

  The interpretation that we can simply "live without" the empirical self is a nihilistic misreading of Buddhist philosophy, one that Buddhism itself critiques as an extreme view.
• Practical implications: The goal of anatman is not to annihilate the sense of self, but to understand its true nature. The intended outcome is greater compassion, less suffering, and more skillful action—all of which presuppose the existence of a person with agency and responsibility.
• Liberation, not dissolution. The end of the path is not the dissolution of the person, but the end of suffering. This happens not by transcending the empirical world, but by understanding it correctly. 

In conclusion, your analysis is sharp. The "conventional" status of the empirical self in Buddhism does not negate its very real, lived, and causally effective nature. It is a distinction that points to the ultimate lack of independent essence, a philosophical point that is all too easy to misunderstand when filtered through Western philosophical assumptions or overly simplified modern interpretations.

ME:Garfield is a bit sloppy imo. He begins correctly identifying self with PERMANENT STRUCTURES/ESSENCES held to exist whether Atman or Christian souls, but then extends the notion of "selfhood" being targeted to modern phenomenology, where “self” often refers to the structure of first-personal experience (“for-me-ness” or pre-reflective self-awareness), not a permanent substance. (See Evan Thompson's critique in Notre Dame Reviews of Philosophy)

A:Your criticism of Jay Garfield's interpretation, citing Evan Thompson's critique, touches on a subtle but vital distinction between a permanent self (like

Atman or a Christian soul) and the pre-reflective, or minimal, self of phenomenology. This critique highlights a potential overreach in Garfield's argument, suggesting he might be applying the Buddhist refutation of a permanent self to concepts of selfhood that Buddhism itself does not target. 

Garfield's apparent overextension

• The Target of Anatman: Garfield correctly identifies that the Buddhist doctrine of anatman was developed to argue against a permanent, unchanging self. This is in direct opposition to Advaita Vedanta's Atman and other essentialist philosophies.
• The Overreach: The problem, as Thompson points out, is when Garfield and other "neuro-nihilists" (a term Thompson uses) extend this critique to the kind of self-phenomenology describes. Thompson and others argue that the phenomenological self—the "for-me-ness" of experience—is a real, if constantly changing and emergent, feature of consciousness, not a reified entity.
• Missing the phenomenological target: Thompson's critique is that Garfield misses this distinction. The Buddhist critique of the permanent self does not necessarily apply to the phenomenological self, which is understood as a dynamic process. The Buddhist critique is aimed at the mistaken belief that a self-process is a permanent entity, not at the process itself.
• Ignoring the middle way: By conflating the two, Garfield may inadvertently push the Buddhist position toward an annihilationist extreme, which the Buddha himself rejected. The goal of anatman is not to get rid of the feeling of being a self, but to stop grasping onto it as a permanent thing, a crucial distinction that can be lost in translation and interpretation.
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• The debate between Thompson and Garfield
  
  
• The exchange between Evan Thompson and Jay Garfield (and others in the "neural Buddhism" camp) has been a significant point of contention in modern philosophy and cognitive science.
• Thompson's Position: Thompson, drawing on phenomenology, enactivism, and some Buddhist traditions, argues that the self is an experiential process, not a static entity. He sees a minimal, pre-reflective self-awareness as an indispensable feature of experience. He criticizes what he sees as Buddhist modernists and exceptionalists for misrepresenting the scientific and philosophical complexities of the self.
• Garfield's Position: Garfield, inspired by figures like Candrakīrti, defends his position by arguing that any appeal to a "minimal self" or pre-reflective awareness still reifies the self, even if it is described as a process. He maintains that it is the very notion of a self, however minimal, that must be transcended for moral and spiritual flourishing. He seems to view the phenomenological self as an illusion that, even if real in some sense, should be overcome. 
• The larger context
  
  
• This debate highlights the challenges of cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary interpretation, especially concerning something as fundamental as the self.
• Translation issues: As Garfield himself acknowledges in one of his writings, the debate is partly a "verbal quibble" over the English word "self," the Sanskrit word atman, and the Tibetan word bdag. The connotations of these terms do not perfectly align.
• Methodological differences: The philosophical frameworks of phenomenology and certain traditions of Buddhist thought, while having overlapping interests, have different starting points and goals. Phenomenology begins with the structure of first-person experience, while the Buddhist anatman doctrine begins with a soteriological aim to overcome suffering caused by clinging.
• Historical context: The historical Atman-Anatman debates were between different metaphysical systems. The modern debates are now occurring at the intersection of philosophy, cognitive science, and secular Buddhism, leading to new points of friction and potential misinterpretation.
  
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• In short, your observation is at the heart of a significant contemporary philosophical debate about the self. Garfield's position, while grounded in certain Buddhist interpretations, is seen by critics like Thompson as potentially overstating the scope of the anatman doctrine, particularly when confronted with the insights of modern phenomenology.  
• ME:Yes, it is a common error. Part of the problem is importing the eastern understanding of "conventional reality" to western ones. The phenomenal self, first-person understanding, allows the very unity of apprehension individual life requires for functioning. It is not an essence but nexus of interdependent capacities, forces and events that enable us to think, feel, compare, plan, remember, evaluate and act as what Garfield himself calls "persons." The comparison to the Sun rising is only apt IF one takes that self to be a) eternal or b) simple (a substance rather than dynamic assemblage or functional, organizational unity).
  


Your clarification is excellent and gets to the heart of the interpretative complexities when translating Buddhist concepts into Western philosophical frameworks. You are right to emphasize that the phenomenal self—the dynamic, emergent "nexus of interdependent capacities"—is a very real and experienced phenomenon, and that calling it a "convention" in the Western sense of an arbitrary agreement is a fundamental mistake. 
The Phenomenal Self: A Real, Though Non-Permanent, Unity
Your description of the phenomenal self as an "organizational unity" or "functional unity" of capacities like thought, feeling, and will is perfectly aligned with the Buddhist doctrine of the five aggregates (skandhas). This composite, constantly changing entity is what makes life and action possible.



The Buddhist critique of atman is not aimed at this functional unity. Instead, it is aimed at the ingrained misperception (rooted in ignorance, avidya) that this functional unity is a permanent, unchanging, and independent entity. 



The analogy of the sun rising is useful precisely because it illustrates this distinction between appearance (a real, perceived phenomenon) and ultimate reality (the Earth's rotation). As you point out, this analogy only falls short if one fails to distinguish between the permanence of the atman and the temporal coherence of the phenomenal self. 



Differentiating Permanent vs. Lasting
• The Atman of Vedanta is a single, unchanging substance that persists eternally. It is simple, not composite, and serves as the ultimate subject of experience. It is the very essence of what the anatman doctrine negates.
• The Phenomenal Self is a complex, composite, and constantly changing unity of processes. It has causal efficacy within its own temporal existence. It is not an "illusion" in the sense of being a hallucination, but it is "ultimately unreal" in the sense that it lacks an unchanging, independent core. It is a "lasting" phenomenon in a relative, temporal sense, but it is not a "permanent" being in an absolute sense.  
The Misleading Interpretation
As you note, interpreters like Jay Garfield, by extending the critique of the permanent atman to the phenomenological self, may contribute to a misleading understanding.
• Loss of Agency: By suggesting that the phenomenal self is to be overcome entirely, it can lead to an annihilationist interpretation that negates the very basis for ethical agency and compassion.
• Misreading of Conventional Truth: By conflating the robust, dependently originated conventional self with a socially constructed convention, it can create a conceptual rift between practice and reality.

A More Precise Understanding

A more precise understanding of the Buddhist position, as advocated by thinkers like Evan Thompson, would acknowledge the following:

• The phenomenal self is a real, experienced phenomenon, and it is a necessary basis for all aspects of individual life and action.
• The goal of Buddhist practice is not to eradicate the phenomenal self but to deconstruct the ingrained cognitive error of believing it is a permanent, independent entity.
• The ultimate insight of anatman is not that "there is no self," but that there is "no permanent, independent self."
• The wisdom of this insight leads to non-attachment and compassion, which are expressed through the very phenomenal self that has been rightly understood. 

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Your critique effectively addresses the interpretive hazards of translating and applying deep philosophical concepts across different frameworks. It highlights the importance of historical context, linguistic precision, and the subtle yet crucial distinctions that can be lost in translation and oversimplification.

 

 

ETHICS:

 

You are correct that to maintain his thesis, Jay Garfield would need to address and refute the numerous counterarguments you've raised

. The evidence from history, diverse philosophical traditions, and common observation strongly challenges the direct causal link he proposes between belief in a self and moral egoism. Without a refutation, his claim appears to be an oversimplification of a much more complex picture of human ethics. 

Here is a summary of the arguments Garfield would need to refute and why they present such a significant challenge to his position:

The evidence from Abrahamic religions

The examples from Christianity, Judaism, and Islam directly contradict the idea that a belief in a substantial soul or self leads inevitably to egoism.

• Agape and the Beatitudes (Christianity): Christianity, which centers on the concept of the soul, also promotes selfless love (agape) and humility through the Beatitudes.
• "Love your neighbor as yourself": This maxim, present in different forms in Christianity and Judaism, uses the self as a standard for love, but directs that love outward toward others.
• Hillel and the Golden Rule (Judaism): Rabbi Hillel's teaching on loving your neighbor as yourself, which he describes as the entire Torah, and Martin Buber's "I and Thou" demonstrate that a healthy concept of self can be the foundation for an altruistic, relational ethics.
• The Golden Rule Hadith (Islam): The hadith from the Prophet Muhammad establishes a Golden Rule parallel, connecting true faith with a love for others that mirrors one's love for oneself. 
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The evidence from Hinduism

Mahatma Gandhi's example provides a powerful Hindu counterpoint, demonstrating how belief in a spiritual self can be the basis for radical altruism.

• The divine spark (Atman): Gandhi's belief in the Atman, or divine spark, within every individual, was the philosophical basis for his nonviolent approach (Ahimsa) and selfless service (Swadeshi).
• Empathy for all beings: His ethics were based on the idea that if everyone contains a divine spark, all beings are worthy of compassion and should be treated nonviolently.
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• The evidence from scientific humanism
  The example of Einstein and Spinoza demonstrates that a concept of the self (as part of a greater whole) can inspire an ethic of universal compassion without relying on a supernatural or religious framework.
• Spinoza's monism: Spinoza's philosophy, which influenced Einstein, views the individual as part of a single, interconnected Nature.
• Understanding as love: This deterministic view leads to the conclusion that understanding our place in this interconnected whole fosters an expansive love, rather than egoism. 
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The metaethical argument

The most fundamental challenge is the philosophical point that ontology underdetermines ethics.

• Belief vs. action: As you noted, the reality of human behavior shows that a person's assent to an abstract belief (like anātman) does not guarantee ethical conduct. Every tradition has both compassionate and selfish adherents.
• The complex nature of morality: Morality is shaped by a complex web of psychological, social, and environmental factors, in addition to philosophical or religious beliefs. Garfield's direct causal link oversimplifies this reality.  
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Why Garfield's argument struggles

For Garfield to successfully defend his thesis, he would need to do more than simply present the Buddhist argument. He would need to:

1. Discount the counter-examples: He would have to explain why the ethical systems and actions of individuals from these other traditions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Scientific Humanism) do not count as genuine counterexamples to his claim.
2. Prove the causal link: He would need to provide a more robust philosophical or empirical argument to prove that a belief in a self directly causes egoism, beyond simply asserting that it does.
3. Address the complexity of human character: He would need to account for the fact that human behavior is multifaceted and that even those who hold altruistic beliefs can act selfishly. 

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In conclusion, the range and depth of the counterarguments you have put forth demonstrate that Garfield's claim about the necessary link between a concept of self and moral egoism is highly contestable and lacks the strong logical and evidential support required to sustain it against such a diverse set of refutations.

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  Draft: Critique of Jay Garfield’s Losing Ourselves (Tricycle Edition)

  Introduction: Framing Garfield’s Project

  Jay Garfield’s _Losing Ourselves_1 is both a work of public philosophy and a substantive Buddhist intervention in the perennial debate over the nature of the self. In his Tricycle podcast summary, Garfield lays out the book’s thesis: we are not “selves” in the metaphysical, permanent, or essentialist sense, but are rather “persons”—complex, impermanent, biopsychosocial assemblages embedded in relations and practices. At its best, Garfield’s work invites Anglophone audiences to take Buddhist critique of essence seriously, and to reframe personhood in relational and processual terms. Yet several aspects of his formulation are deeply problematic: methodologically, conceptually, and—most tellingly—ethically.

  This critique takes Garfield’s own summary as a primary source, drawing on the podcast and published interviews2, with an eye to (1) metaphysical and philosophical problems in his analogies and the structure of his critique, and (2) the crucial (but flawed) ethical thesis tying self-concept to moral egoism. My assessment is shaped by Buddhist scholarship, comparative philosophy, and metaethical considerations.

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  1. Methodological Problems: Analogy and Category Mistakes

  a. The Chariot (or Cart) Analogy
  Garfield leans heavily on Buddhist analogies like the chariot/wheelbarrow to argue that persons are only conventionally real, contingent upon a network of arrangements and recognition. This is an effective challenge to essentialism and “soul” doctrine. But Garfield mistakenly extends this analogy to argue that personhood is a matter of mere social convention or linguistic aggregation—akin to the “university” in Ryle’s category error.3

  Critique:

• Organic selves, unlike chariots or universities, are biologically, psychologically, and temporally integrated systems: emergent wholes with organizational, causal, and developmental unity. Contemporary biology, cognitive science, and phenomenology all assert that persons are not merely conventionally “agreed upon,” but emerge from physical, neural, and ecological transactions.4

• Garfield’s reduction of the “conventional reality” of persons to web-of-convention or agreement fails to do justice either to Chandrakīrti’s metaphysics or to empirical self-theories. The world of conventional truth in Buddhist thought includes the sun, stars, births, deaths, and the biological facts of animal life—not just human customs or collective decisions.5

b. Mind-Only Buddhism vs. Madhyamaka
Garfield sometimes slides between Madhyamaka’s “conventional truth” (which encompasses all interdependent phenomena) and a near-nominalism more at home in Yogācāra (Mind-Only) philosophy. In Madhyamaka, conventional reality is robust: it includes persisting biological, ecological, and psychological processes absent from a merely conventionalist or constructivist metaphysics.6

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2. The Conflation of Conventions: Chandrakīrti and Hume

Garfield attempts to synthesize Chandrakīrti’s “conventional reality” with Hume’s “custom.”7 This move creates confusion between ontological claims (what sorts of things exist and in what way) and epistemological or social claims (how we judge, infer, or agree on what exists).

Critique:

• Chandrakīrti’s sense of samvriti-satya refers to the world of dependent origination: phenomena that arise causally, whether or not recognized or known by any observer. The sun rises and infants are born as products of empirical and dependent causes—these are “conventional” only in lacking svabhava, not in depending on agreement.

• Humean “custom” is about habits of mind and patterns of inference or social habit, but does not reduce reality to convention.

• Garfield’s fusion erases critical differences: the material world, biological life, and the emergence of self-processes in an environment are not produced by custom or consensus, but by complex, causally embedded transactions.8

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3. The Nature of Personhood: Between Fiction and Emergence

Garfield’s rhetorical pivot—contrasting “self” with “person”—is central to his project. Yet his repeated insistence on persons as nothing more than “conventional, constructed complexes” risks an overextension. In his most careful moments (notably, when invoking Dōgen), Garfield acknowledges persons as emergent, dynamic, evolving psycho-physical processes actualized by the “myriad things” of the world.9 Here, his metaphysics aligns with Deweyan/Meadian and much Buddhist thought: selves and persons are “real” as embodied, evolving nexuses of interaction, not as fictions or mere conventions.

Critique:

• The best moments in Garfield’s theory find robust support in naturalistic psychology, biology, and process metaphysics.

• But too often, especially when invoking analogies or Humean custom, he flattens the distinction between fictional, merely agreed-upon entities and the rich, causally efficacious processes that anchor personhood. This inconsistency weakens his case and risks sliding into an implausible nominalism.10

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4. The Strong Ethical Thesis: Self-Concept and Moral Egoism

a. The Claim
Perhaps the most consequential flaw in Losing Ourselves is Garfield’s repeated assertion—stated as a central motive for the book, reiterated in interviews—that metaphysical belief in a “self” (ātman, psyche, soul, or otherwise) almost inevitably leads to moral egoism. That is, once one posits a self, self-interest becomes primary, requiring special defense for the interests of others.11

b. Counterexamples from World Traditions

The historical and cultural record amply refutes the thesis:

• Christianity posits the soul as the locus of personhood and dignity, yet centers sacrifice, humility, and agape (self-transcending love) as supreme virtues. “Love your neighbor as yourself”—the Golden Rule—is foundational, not egoistic. The Beatitudes and countless saints exemplify selflessness, not egoism.

• Judaism grounds ethical life in relationship (Hillel’s “what is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor”; Martin Buber’s dialogical ethics). Self-concept becomes the measure of compassion and justice, not their barrier.

• Islam possesses its own Golden Rule and extensive traditions of charity (zakat), neighbor-love, and hospitality.

• Hinduism (e.g., Gandhi’s philosophy) makes Atman the universal divine spark, yielding radical altruism and nonviolence, not egoism.

• Scientific Humanism (Spinoza, Einstein) uses an embedded, non-supernatural view of self as part of a cosmic whole to generate broad, inclusive compassion.

• Buddhism itself contains both exemplary compassion and (where historically shaped by context) instances of violence, hierarchy, and egoism—just as other traditions do.

c. The Argument from Metaethics
Metaethically, ontology does not determine ethics. Human moral psychology is vastly more complex, shaped by developmental, cultural, economic, and interpersonal factors. The mere affirmation or denial of enduring selfhood under-determines the character of one’s ethical life. Compassion, courage, and humility are cultivated by countless means, rituals, and beliefs—not exhausted or uniquely grounded by one metaphysical thesis.

d. Critique in Current Scholarship
Evan Thompson, among others, has called Garfield’s strong thesis a “huge non sequitur” and “preposterous.”12 The assertion fails by the standard of both logic and empirical evidence: great critics of egoism among Western, Indian, and Islamic philosophers almost always take the reality of self/soul for granted.13 Conversely, egotism and its ills flourish within Buddhism (as within every tradition) whenever conditions allow.

e. What Garfield Would Need to Show

• Either (1) explain why all the counterexamples are irrelevant, or (2) show a non-circular, empirically supported mechanism by which self-belief inevitably entails egoism.

• So far, Garfield provides neither but instead repeats the Buddhist diagnosis as if no counter-history existed.

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Conclusion: The Costs of Over-Claiming

Garfield’s Losing Ourselves is valuable in its Buddhist public philosophy and in its positive vision of relational, emergent personhood. But it is marred by methodological equivocations on convention and custom, by inconsistent handling of the relationship between ontology and ethics, and—most seriously—by an unsustainable and exclusivist ethical thesis about self-concept and moral egoism. The weight of philosophical, historical, and comparative evidence refutes the strong causal link on which the book’s boldest claims depend. Rather than cementing Buddhist insight, Garfield’s thesis unnecessarily narrows it. The real ethical promise of Buddhist and cross-cultural philosophy lies not in diagnosing others’ faults, but in the plural affirmation that compassion, humility, and self-transcendence can be realized by countless paths, across ages and traditions.

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Endnotes

1. Jay Garfield, Losing Ourselves: Learning to Live Without a Self, Princeton University Press, 2022.

2. Tricycle Podcast Transcript, 2022; see also Garfield’s online and video interviews as cited above.

3. For Ryle’s classic discussion, see The Concept of Mind, 1949.

4. See Dewey, Experience and Nature; Mead, Mind, Self, and Society; Thompson, Mind in Life.

5. See Siderits, Buddhism as Philosophy, and Garfield himself, when reading Dōgen.

6. For an accurate account, see Garfield’s Engaging Buddhism: Why it Matters to Philosophy, OUP 2014, and Buddhism as Philosophy.

7. Podcast, Tricycle, and also Losing Ourselves, pp. 5–7.

8. For strong critiques, see Evan Thompson, NDPR Review, 2022; and “Losing What Self?” PhilArchive, 2023.

9. Garfield’s discussion of Dōgen, Tricycle Podcast, 2022.

10. See review essays by Thompson and others for parallel concerns.

11. Garfield, Losing Ourselves, introduction and chapters on ethics.

12. Evan Thompson, NDPR Review, 2022.

13. Thompson, NDPR Review, and cf. Taylor, Sources of the Self; Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good; Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire.

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