- Title: Attention not Self - Author: Jonardon Ganeri - Tags: #summary #llmgenerated #toread #book # Attention, Not Self ## Introduction - The book explores the reorientations that occur when attention is given priority in the analysis of mind - Key argument: Attention explains [[the nature]] of our consciously active involvement with the world, our freedom from passivity - Rejects two ideas in [[the philosophy]] of action: - Agent causalism - The causal theory of action - Introduces the 'Authorship View' of self, which is the main target of Buddhist 'no-self' (anatta) polemic - Argues that being the centre of an organized arena of experience and action is a property of a virtual entity, not a real one - Challenges the causal theory of action, which states that an event is an action if caused by a rationalizing intention - Proposes that attention performs two distinct roles in experience: 1. A role of placing 2. A role of focusing - These roles match [[the distinction between]] selection and access in recent theories of attention > The attention must be kept strained on that one object until at last it grows, so as to maintain itself before the mind with ease. This strain of the attention is the fundamental act of will . . . [[The idea]] to be consented to must be kept from flickering and going out. It must be held steadily before the mind until it fills the mind . . . There are at all times some ideas from which we shy away [...and...] to attend to [them] is the volitional act, and the only inward volitional act which we ever perform. (James 1890, v.2: 564, 567) - Discusses various types of attention, including: - Procedural memory - Semantic memory - Episodic memory - Short-term memory - Introduces [[the concept]] of 'disunity of attention' - Argues that attention explains action, has an epistemic role in demonstrative reference, and is central to [[perceptual experience]] - Draws extensively on the ideas of Buddhaghosa, a 5th-century Theravāda Buddhist philosopher - Aims to bring together two bodies of data on attention: 1. Rich experimental studies from contemporary cognitive psychology 2. Information from Buddhist introspective observation of the human mind's structure and functioning - Proposes that an attention-theoretic approach brings new options to [[contemporary philosophy]] of mind > Philosophy of mind is indeed a transcultural undertaking: the search for a fundamental theory of mind must never limit itself to the intuitions and linguistic practices of any one community of thinkers but should be ready to learn from diverse cultures of investigation into [[the nature]] of mind and mind's involvement in world. - The book is divided into five parts: 1. The Priority of Attention 2. Attention and Knowledge 3. The Calling of Attention 4. Attention Expanded 5. Attention and Identity ## Part I: The Priority of Attention ### Chapter 1: Attention and Action #### Attention, Not Self - Introduces the central Buddhist claim about [[the structure]] of action and awareness: - There is a 'space' or 'frame' of awareness (citta) composed of experiential, attentive, and agentive functions (cetasika) - Explains the Buddhist concept of anatta (no-self): - Rejection of [[the idea]] that a detached agent acts in the centre of a space of action - Rejection of [[the idea]] that a detached witness watches from the centre of a space of experience - Discusses [[the concept]] of the 'arena' in consciousness: - A virtual frame for the stream of consciousness - Centered because the presentation of items in sensory, bodily, and mental fields is perspectival - Argues against the notion of a detached self in experiencing and acting > We should not pretend to find a detached self in all our experiencing and acting...we should discard [[the idea]] that mindedness implies the presence of a detached self. (McDowell 2013: 41) - Introduces [[the concept]] of attention as mental 'life-blood' or 'psychic space' - Explains that attention is not a space distinct from experiences but the ongoing structuring of experience and action - Compares attention to a window of consciousness rather than a spotlight - Discusses two distinct functions of attention in experience: 1. Providing psychic space for certain select mental phenomena 2. Bringing certain phenomenal existents to consciousness #### The Agent-Causal Self Denied - Rejects agent causalism, the view that agents are the cause of their actions - Traces the history of the agent-causal view through various philosophers: - [[Immanuel Kant]] - Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) - Aristotle - Discusses the concept of self as an internal regulator or charioteer - Introduces the 'Authorship View' of self: - Agents are compositionally irreducible substances - Causation by agents is an ontological primitive in intentional action - Argues that Buddhist denials of self target this Authorship View > People are intent on the idea of "I-making" and attached to the idea of "other-making". Some don't realise this, nor do they see it as an arrow. But to one who, having extracted this arrow, sees, [the thought] "I am doing," doesn't occur, [the thought] "Another is doing" doesn't occur. (Udāna 6.6 (v.70.23), trans. Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu) - Explains the Buddhist argument against self: - Every constituent of mental life is subject to change - What is impermanent cannot be regarded as self - Critiques the causal theory of action: - Actions are events caused by an agent's intentions - Intentions are caused by the agent's motivational states - Proposes an alternative model of self-control (sva-tantra): - The prefix 'self' (sva) is used reflexively, not substantively - Introduces the concept of 'bending' (namana) of mind onto world: - Includes attentional selecting, placing, rehearsing, and effort - Describes two notions of mental activity: 1. Modulation of conscious intentionality 2. Activation of cognitive psychological modules #### Attention as Mental Action - Argues that attention explains our consciously active involvement with the world - Discusses various types of attention: - Intentional mental action (e.g., effortfully attending to a difficulty) - Non-intentional attentional activities - Critiques the causal theory of action in the context of mental action - Introduces the concept of 'sub-intentional' acts of attention - Argues that perceiving is non-intentional mental action - Discusses the role of attention in various mental activities: - Episodic memory - Empathy - Self-awareness - Quotes William James on the relationship between attention and volition: > Attention with effort is all that any case of volition implies. The essential achievement of the will, in short, when it is most voluntary is to attend to a difficult object and hold it fast before the mind. (James 1890 v.2: 561) - Explains how intention in action consists of a straining of attention - Discusses the disunity of attention: - Different types of attention serve distinct roles in explaining perception, memory, testimony, self-knowledge, social cognition, intention in action, and introspection - Introduces the concept of past-directed and autonoetic attention in episodic memory - Discusses empathy as a form of attention placed on others #### Buddhaghosa's Attentionalism - Introduces Buddhaghosa as a major figure in the history of Buddhist philosophy - Discusses Buddhaghosa's role as an innovator and creative thinker - Explains Buddhaghosa's Attentionalism: - Gives attention centrality in explanatory projects in philosophy - Describes the structure of Buddhaghosa's work "The Path of Purification": - Organized around a sustained reflection on a single quotation about attention > Cultivate attention, bhikkhus; a bhikkhu who attends knows things as they are. (S iii.13) - Outlines key aspects of Buddhaghosa's theory of consciousness and attention: - Conscious perceptual experience as active involvement with the world - Cognitive processes transforming mind's first acknowledgements into fully intentional thought - Rejection of self as controlling agent of thinking, believing, and feeling - Attention as explanation for the activity of thought and mind - Discusses Buddhaghosa's view on the many kinds of attention: - Grounded in embodied sense modalities - Explains Buddhaghosa's position against representations and Intentionalism - Highlights Buddhaghosa's anticipation of modern concepts: - Working memory - Mind as a global workplace - Subliminal orienting - Three levels of visual processing - Discusses Buddhaghosa's treatment of episodic memory and empathy - Explains Buddhaghosa's view on moral attention and its role in virtue - Compares Buddhaghosa's philosophy to that of other Buddhist thinkers: - Contrasts with Vasubandhu and Sanskrit Buddhist philosophers - Discusses the influence of Buddhaghosa on the development of Buddhist philosophy in various countries - Explains the methodological approach used in studying Buddhaghosa's work: - Focus on studying the philosophy of an individual thinker - Emphasis on Buddhaghosa's distance from a 'mediational' picture of the relationship between mind and world > Part of my agenda . . . is precisely to attack a conception according to which the world in which one acts is normatively inert. I did not use the term "solicitations", but it would have been appropriate in setting out the picture I was trying to give. In my picture, actions that manifest virtue are responses to requirements to act that agents confront in the situations they act in. (McDowell 2013: 53) - Discusses the potential of Buddhaghosa's philosophy for addressing modern questions: - Developing a human-rights-based notion of political involvement despite Buddhist denials of self ### Chapter 2: Consciousness #### Concomitants and Causes - Introduces two accounts of consciousness in Buddhaghosa's work: 1. Concomitants (cetasika) always accompanying every moment of worldly experience (citta) 2. Causal conditions under which consciousness arises - Explains the first account: - Consciousness is never bare consciousness-of, but always consciousness-with - Concomitants are co-emergent, co-dependent, and conjoined with experience - Lists the components of a single moment of experience: - Aboutness or directedness (citta) - Presence (phassa) - Felt evaluation (vedanā) - Identificatory type (saññā) - Effortful control or intending (cetanā) - Sustaining of cognitive boundaries (arūpa-jīvitindriya) - Attentional placing (ekaggatā; samādhi; appanā) - Attentional focusing (manasikāra) - Discusses two notions of intentionality: 1. Involvement or involved mindedness 2. Engagement - Explains that concomitants are not constitutive of consciousness but belong within an account of mindedness - Introduces the second account of consciousness: - Describes what happens when 'mind' (mano) takes up a cognitive task - Consciousness arises at the end of a series of cognitive activities - Explains the cognitive modules (dhātu) involved in the process: - Mind (mano-dhātu) - Mind-discrimination (mano-viññāṇa-dhātu) - Describes the cognitive process in visual perception: 1. Stimulus impinges on the eye 2. Instruction to orient a sense modality 3. First visual acknowledgement 4. Complex cognitive activity (receiving, investigating, determining) 5. 'Running' (javana) across the object 6. Taking 'as an object that [which has been so clarified]' - Discusses the role of cognitive penetration in the process: - Influence of past moral conduct (kamma) on cognitive processing #### Finding Consciousness - Addresses the challenge of identifying consciousness in Buddhist theory - Discusses the polysemy of Pāli terms often translated as 'consciousness': - Viññāṇa - Citta - Mano - Nāma - Ceto - Explains the need for careful translation and philosophical interrogation - Introduces contemporary definitions of consciousness: - Phenomenal consciousness ('what it is like' to be in a given mental state) - Access consciousness (information broadcast for reporting and deliberation) - Discusses Ned Block's distinction between p-consciousness and a-consciousness - Proposes a method for identifying consciousness in Buddhist theory: - Describe the theory without using 'consciousness' as a translation - Ask where consciousness (as understood in contemporary philosophy) is in the theory - Explains the need to treat translations as a posteriori identities, not analytic truths #### Four Defining Features - Introduces the four-component analytical technique used in Abhidhamma: 1. Distinctive characteristic (lakkhaṇa) 2. Function (rasa) or task (kicca) 3. Proximate cause or immediate occasion (padaṭṭhāna) 4. Way of showing itself (paccupaṭṭhāna) - Applies this technique to the analysis of citta (often translated as 'consciousness'): - Characteristic: Taking cognizance of an objective world - Function: To forerun, to be a precursor - Proximate cause: The object or constructing activities - Way of showing itself: As putting together or linking - Discusses the implications of identifying citta with consciousness: - Intentionality as a mark of consciousness - No non-circular answer to "What is consciousness?" - Explores the relationship between intentionality and phenomenal character: - Rejects pure Intentionalism - Proposes 'Inseparatist Phenomenism' or 'Conjunctivism' - Discusses the function of citta as a global workspace: > Just as when a town watch-man sits at the crossroads in the middle of the town and records people as they come thus, "This is a resident, this is a visitor," so should [the function of citta] be understood. (Fount 112) - Explains the proximate cause of citta as the object and constructing activities - Discusses how citta shows itself as putting together or linking: > Since that same citta arises subsequently each time, it appears as a putting together (sandahana), making the previous one immediately next [to it]. Thus it has putting together as its manifestation. (Fount 112; cf. Dispeller 134) - Concludes that citta is consciousness based on the application of the fourfold method of analysis - Summarizes the Buddhist analysis of consciousness as 'holding a world in view' ### Chapter 3: Thought and World #### Intentionality is Irreducible - Presents two different descriptions of mental life in Buddhist philosophy: 1. An ever-shifting directedness associated with concomitants 2. A series of cognitive activities set in motion by perceptual encounters - Explains that these descriptions belong to different domains: 1. Philosophy of thought #### Intentionality is Irreducible (Continued) 2. Philosophy of cognitive science - Argues that intentionality is not reducible in Buddhist theory - Explains two types of explanation for intentionality: 1. Causal or cognitive-scientific mode 2. Concomitant conscious properties necessary for intentionality - Distinguishes between philosophy of consciousness and philosophy of cognition #### Aspects of Attention - Critiques the contemporary distinction between endogenous and exogenous attention - Argues that this distinction brings problematic theoretical presuppositions - Introduces the Buddhist distinction between: 1. Attention as an active contribution to consciousness (cetasika) 2. Attention as the activity of a cognitive module (dhātu) - Explains the roles of attention in consciousness: - Bringing-to-mind (manasikāra) - Single-minded placing (ekaggatā) - Conscious rehearsal (sati) - Effortful control (cetanā) - Discusses the roles of attention in cognitive processing: - Subliminal orienting (āvajjana) - Late gate-keeping - Early attentional selection (sampaṭicchana) - Argues for the disunity of attention: - Attention is not a single psychological kind - Different types of attention serve distinct roles in mental phenomena > 'Bringing-to-mind' is a mode of work, working in the mind. It makes mind, so to speak, different from the previous mind...It has the characteristic of driving associated states towards an object, the function of joining associated states to an object, the manifestation of facing an object (ārammaṇa-abhimukkha). It is included in the aggregate of constructing activities, and should be regarded as the charioteer of associated states because it regulates an object. (Path 466 [xiv.152]; Fount 133) #### The Feeling for Reality - Explains the Buddhist distinction between: - Mind at rest and disengaged (bhavaṅga) - Mind engaging with the world - Discusses the concept of engagement (phassa): - Being in touch with the world - Enabled by sense modalities - Already minded, not merely bodily - Explains involvement or involved mindedness (nāma): - Actively taking and holding the world in view - Discusses the nature of perceptual presence (phassa): - A primary, primitive mode of sensate intentionality - The first falling of mind onto the object - Compares Buddhist ideas to those of existential phenomenologists: - Merleau-Ponty's concept of 'operative intentionality' - Explains the relationship between engagement and cognitive processing: - Associated with the first stage of processing (āvajjana) - Prior to perceptual processing and advanced 'running' #### Functional Definitions - Explains the context-sensitive use of terms in Abhidhamma - Discusses the interchangeable use of viññāṇa, citta, and mano: - All refer to consciousness - Used in different contexts to emphasize different aspects - Explains the use of citta to emphasize variations in consciousness - Discusses the use of mano to emphasize cognitive control - Explains the two distinct uses of viññāṇa: 1. First step in visual processing (cakkhu-viññāṇa) 2. Discriminative consciousness - Discusses different interpretations of viññāṇa by various scholars #### A World Normatively Alive - Explains the five aggregates (khandha) in Buddhist psychology - Discusses the mapping of concomitants onto the aggregates - Explores the concept of rūpa: - Traditionally translated as 'materiality' - Argues for a more nuanced understanding > What is clear...is the extent to which the early Buddhist account of rūpa focuses on the physical world as experienced by a sentient being—the terms of reference are decidedly body-endowed-with-consciousness (saviññāṇakakaya). In view of this, the tendency to understand and translate rūpa as "matter" is rather misleading. The connotations of the word "matter in the Western philosophical traditions, its association with concepts such as inert "stuff" or "substance", are hardly appropriate either to the treatment of rūpa in the nikāyas and early abhidharma, or to rūpa's literal meanings of "form", "shape", or "appearance". (Gethin 1986: 26) - Proposes a 'dual aspect' theory: - Mindedness (nāma) is not disembodied - Body/matter (rūpa) is not normatively inert - Explains the distinction between 'bending onto' (namana) and 'being molested by' (ruppana) - Discusses the relationship between rūpa and vedanā (felt evaluation) - Explores the concept of solicitation in Buddhist philosophy - Compares Buddhist ideas to contemporary theories of embodied cognition ## Part II: Attention and Knowledge ### Chapter 4: The Content of Perceptual Experience #### Mindedness and the Epistemic Role of Experience - Critiques Dignāga's introduction of the Myth of the Given into Buddhist philosophy - Contrasts Dignāga's view with Bhartr̥hari's thesis about the priority of language - Discusses John McDowell's argument for the pervasiveness of conceptual capacities in experience - Explains the Buddhist view on the normative nature of perceptual content: - Correctness conditions built into experience - Role of 'felt evaluation' (vedanā) and 'identificatory labelling' (saññā) - Discusses the constitutive role of attention in experience: - Absorbed attention (ekaggatā) selects phenomenal properties - Focal attention (manasikāra) accesses categorical properties - Compares Buddhist ideas to those of Hubert Dreyfus and Merleau-Ponty: - Critique of McDowell's claim about pervasive conceptual rationality - Discussion of embodied coping skills and motor intentionality #### Does Linguistic Capability Pervade Experience? - Examines Bhartr̥hari's argument for the pervasiveness of language in experience - Discusses the distinction between cognitions with actual conceptual content and those with the potential for conceptualization #### Felt Evaluation and Action Solicitation - Analyzes the Buddhist concept of 'feel' (vedanā): - Function of experiencing - Role in felt evaluation of sensory stimuli - Discusses the phenomenology of pleasure and pain: - Comparison with contemporary appraisal theory of emotion - Explains the Buddhist classification of feels: - Physical pleasure and pain - Mental pleasure and pain - Equanimity - Discusses the relationship between feel and craving in Buddhist psychology - Compares Buddhist ideas to contemporary theories of affordances and solicitations #### Labelling and Cognitive Access - Examines the Buddhist concept of 'label' or 'sign' (saññā): - Function of creating signs for recognition - Role in cognitive access - Discusses the relationship between labelling and cognitive access: - Comparison with contemporary theories of access consciousness - Explains the Buddhist view on the correctness conditions of labelling - Discusses the role of labelling in various cognitive processes: - Deliberation - Conscious solicitation - Life-plan evaluation #### Phenomenal Quality Overflows Cognitive Access - Discusses the relationship between phenomenal consciousness and cognitive access - Examines the Buddhist perspective on this relationship: - Analysis of canonical passages (M i.111-12, M i.292-3) - Explains the Buddhist simile of the king and the cook: - Illustrates the relationship between experience and cognitive access - Compares Buddhist ideas to contemporary debates about the richness of perceptual experience #### Intentionalism Revisited - Discusses the Yogācāra concept of representation (ākāra) - Examines the relationship between ākāra and phenomenal content - Discusses Dignāga's distinction between object-aspect and self-aspect in awareness - Compares Buddhist ideas to contemporary debates about Intentionalism ### Chapter 5: Perceptual Attention #### The Two Roles of Attention - Explains the Buddhist view on the dual roles of attention in perceptual experience: 1. Absorbed attention: stabilizing an object in mind 2. Focal attention: driving mind onto an object - Compares this view to contemporary theories of attention: - Anne Treisman's feature-integration theory - The attention window metaphor - Discusses the relationship between attention and perceptual binding - Explains the Buddhist concept of 'correct' (sammā) binding > It is the centring (adhāna) of consciousness and concomitants equally (sama) and correctly (sammā) on a single object; placing (thāpananti) is what is meant. So it is the state in virtue of which consciousness and its concomitants remain equally and correctly on a single intentional object (ekārammaṇe), undistracted and unscattered—that should be understood as concentrating. It has non-distraction as its characteristic. Its function is to eliminate distraction. It is manifested as non-wavering. (Path 84–5 [iii.3, 4]) #### Thinking-Of and Thinking-Through - Examines the Buddhist distinction between 'thinking-of' (vitakka) and 'thinking-through' (vicāra) - Explains the characteristics and functions of each type of thinking - Discusses the relationship between these concepts and attention - Compares Buddhist ideas to contemporary theories of cognitive phenomenology #### Attention and Perceiving-As - Discusses the role of attention in perceptual experience - Explains the Buddhist view on the relationship between attention and perceptual content - Examines the concept of 'distortions of label' (saññā-vipallāsa) - Compares Buddhist ideas to contemporary debates about cognitive penetration #### Perspective and Object Files - Discusses the perspectival nature of perceptual experience in Buddhist philosophy - Explains the concept of 'weak' first-person phenomena - Compares Buddhist ideas to contemporary theories of object files and feature binding - Discusses the relationship between attention and the creation of object files ### Chapter 6: Attention and Knowledge #### Attentional Justification - Introduces the concept of attentional justification in Buddhist epistemology - Compares it to contemporary theories of perceptual justification - Discusses the relationship between attention and epistemic improvement - Proposes a principle of attentional justification: > Attentional Justification. Absent undercutting defeaters, attending to an object—selectively placed at location c and accessing identificatory type F—immediately improves one's justification for believing that the object at c is F, provided that certain further conditions are met. - Compares this principle to perceptual justification and discusses its implications #### Cognitive Penetration - Examines the Buddhist perspective on cognitive penetration - Discusses the concept of 'distortion' (vipallāsa) in Buddhist philosophy - Analyzes different types of distortion: - Distortions of recognition-access (saññā) - Distortions of conscious directedness (citta) - Distortions of view (diṭṭhi) - Compares Buddhist ideas to contemporary debates about cognitive penetration - Discusses the implications of cognitive penetration for attentional justification #### Attention and Imagination - Examines the relationship between attention and imagination in Buddhist philosophy - Discusses the Perky experiment and its implications - Analyzes the Buddhist perspective on the role of imagination in perceptual experience - Compares Buddhist ideas to contemporary debates about the relationship between perception and imagination #### Attention, Knowledge, and Expertise - Introduces the Buddhist concept of insight (paññā) - Discusses the relationship between attention, knowledge, and expertise in Buddhist epistemology - Examines the concept of 'proper' (yoniso) attention - Proposes a principle of attentional knowledge: > Attentional Knowledge. Absent undercutting defeaters, expertly attending to an object—selectively placed at location c and accessing identificatory type F—immediately suffices for knowing that the object at c is F. - Discusses the implications of this principle for epistemology and the value of knowledge - Examines the Buddhist theory of knowledge and its relationship to attention > Knowledge. A factor (dhamma) s with content p constitutes knowledge (paññā) that p iff (1) p is true (yathābhūta); (2) s is a cognition (ñāṇa); and (3) delusion (sammoha) with respect to p is dispelled. - Compares Buddhist ideas to contemporary externalist theories of knowledge - Discusses the role of expertise in attentional knowledge and its implications for epistemology This summary covers the main ideas and arguments presented in Chapters 3 through 6 of the book, maintaining a high level of detail and including relevant quotes to provide context. ## Chapter 16: Finitude and Flow ### Attention and Centring - The chapter begins by discussing the concept of a central core of personality - Some thinkers equate this with the self - Kristjánsson claims the self is "the set of a person's core commitments, traits, aspirations and ideals: the characteristics that are most central to him or her" - The Buddhist concept of citta (mind/heart) is examined: - Described as a 'frame' of awareness or 'mind-set' - Conscious experience is a 'space' occupied by objects or tasks, accompanied by 'concomitants' (cetasika) - Rune Johansson's interpretation of citta: - Viewed as "the core of personality, the centre of purposiveness, activity, continuity and emotionality" - Not a "soul" (atta), but an "empirical, functional self" - Includes all layers of consciousness, even the unconscious - Safeguards continuity and identity - Has a distinctly individual form > Johansson says that 'citta [ . . . is . . . ] the core of personality, the centre of purposiveness, activity, continuity and emotionality. It is not a "soul" (atta), but it is the empirical, functional self. It is mainly conscious but not restricted to the momentary conscious contents and processes. On the contrary, it includes all the layers of consciousness, even the unconscious: by it the continuity and identity are safeguarded. It has a distinctly individual form' (1979: 85). - The author argues that citta is not an agent cause, but rather a 'centre' - The concept of citta as a 'core self' is reinterpreted: - Not a detached agent or witness - Consists of parts of the stream of consciousness made central through attention - This interpretation aligns with the book's central thesis that attention, not self, has explanatory priority ### Self-Narratives and Survival - The section discusses personal survival over time: - Tracked by unalienated autobiographical recall and foresight - Derek Parfit's case of the young Russian couple is used to illustrate: - The young man's claim that his future self is no longer him is based on repulsion from anticipated future states - Marya Schechtman's position on personal identity is examined: - She argues for a positive affect in first-person access, not just absence of negative affect - Introduces the concept of 'empathetic access' to one's past - The author argues that Schechtman's requirement is too demanding: - Survival only requires absence of negative affect, not necessarily sympathy - A fourth case is proposed: - A 'matron' who remembers her youth without disgust or sympathy - The apophatic theory predicts this is sufficient for survival > For consider a fourth case, one not mentioned by Schechtman. In the fourth case, the 'matron' remembers from the inside her youth but reacts with neither disgust nor sympathy. Unlike the first of Schechtman's cases, she is first-personally connected to her past, and, unlike the second, she is not alienated from that past. She is 'dispassionate' but not disgusted. The apophatic theory of survival predicts, I think correctly, that such a connection is strong enough for survival. - The author critiques views requiring enduring character traits for survival: - Argues this makes radical self-transformation impossible - Rejects the need for a set of 'defining traits' or static personality 'store' - Proposes that the centre of being is whatever is currently centred in attention ### Attending to What Matters at the End of Life - Discusses the illusion of immortality: - Awareness of being alive throughout life can lead to a false sense of permanence - Buddhaghosa's view on death: - Described as a 'putting down' or 'falling' - Function is to disjoin the psycho-physical complex - Manifests as an absence - The last moment of consciousness is crucial: - Unique mental state unlike any other in life - Important for the conservation of karma - Near-death experience takes one of three forms: 1. Memory of a past action with karmic significance 2. Perception of an object signifying such an action 3. Prospection of a future life - These experiences are forms of mental time travel or autonoetic consciousness - The ethical significance of near-death experience: - Projects the ethical balance sheet of each life into the future - Impacts future psychological continua - Death-experience as a form of attention: - Autonoetic attention to the totality of one's life - Condensation of life into a single moment of maximal significance > At the precise moment of death it seems then that there is little one can do to change the course of events, but what one can do is to attend closely to the death experience itself. Thus death-experience too is a kind of attention: autonoetic attention to the totality of one's life as distilled into a moment of maximal significance to one, the condensation of one's life into that single moment with which one most wholeheartedly identifies. ## Postscript: Philosophy Without Borders - Advocates for a cross-cultural approach to philosophy: - Draws on vocabularies and conceptual repositories from various cultures - Not limited to Anglophone intuitions and practices - Argues that cross-cultural philosophy is methodologically essential for discovering fundamental theories about the human mind - Presents two strands of cosmopolitanism in philosophy: 1. Intellectual obligation to reach for inclusive theories 2. Taking seriously the thoughts of others outside one's intellectual circle - Discusses the 'Hardy-Ramanujan trap': - Warns against treating Buddhist philosophical literature merely as a source of contemplative data - Argues for recognizing the deep theoretical frameworks developed in South Asia - Introduces 'Attentionalism' as a distinct philosophical stance: - Differs from Phenomenology and Analytical Philosophy - A set of guidelines for thinking about the mind - Advocates for 'epistemic pluralism': - Need for multiple stances to understand the reality of mind - Discusses the relationship between Buddhist theory and cognitive science: - Argues for using modern conceptual and empirical tools to study ancient philosophies - Cautions against reducing Buddhist theory to psychology alone - Concludes by emphasizing the need for both philosophical explanation and psychological description in approaching Buddhist theory > The approach responds to Buddhaghosa's own call for Buddhist theory to be developed and extended, just as he himself has done: 'This is just a sketch. An in-depth understanding of this question of the [function of consciousness] is only to be gained on the strength of one's selection after considering views, one's estimation of reasons, one's preferences and credences, learning and testimonial reports' (Fount 94).