Anattaa -- A Reply to Richard Taylor

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Anattaa -- A Reply to Richard Taylor

By Tyson Anderson

Philosophy East and West

V. 25, No.2 (April 1975)

pp. 187-193

Copyright 1975 by University of Hawaii Press

Hawaii, USA

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Tyson Anderson is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Theology at Saint Leo College, Saint Leo, Florida.

p. 187

I
Richard Taylor in "The Anattaa Doctrine and Personal Identity", [1] asserts that according to the Buddha "there simply is no self" in the sense of "an inner enduring self," [2] and that this claim is logically equivalent to the thesis that "there is no personal self other than just the body." [3] I believe that his view of the anattaa doctrine is incorrect and in fact makes the Buddha's message pointless. I will argue first that Taylor fails to establish his thesis that the self is the same thing as the body, and secondly that even if he were correct about this, it is not what the Buddha taught.

Taylor thinks that there are two main reasons why some philosophers think the person is not identical with the body. The first is a linguistic consideration, namely, that while I can say "I have a body" I cannot just as well say that "I have a person." His reply is that "in the same way one can say of any physical object whatever that it has a body." [4] He gives as examples a car and a table. But there seems to be an odd turn of speech here. Does a car have a body like a man has a body? A foot is part of a man's body but a wheel is not part of a car's body in the sense of "body" used in "body shop." On the other hand, Taylor does say he is talking about "physical objects" and I suppose we would understand someone's saying that they simply are bodies. He would mean, I guess, that tables and things like that don't have psychological attributes. But what about the idea that animals -- a dog, for instance -- simply are bodies. Imagine that a dog has been given a drug that results in his body's doubling in size. We can imagine the owner saying that nevertheless, "he is still his same old self," meaning that his disposition, memory, and other psychological factors have remained stable even though his body has changed drastically. I think we tend to resist identifying animals with their bodies and that our resistance increases with the increasing importance of psychological aspects in an animal's life. When we arrive at human beings our resistance becomes refusal until good reasons to the contrary are given.

Taylor speaks more to this point in his second main reason -- "metaphysical considerations." He begins with the principle:

If one ventures any true description of something, A, and likewise any true description of something, B, then one is entitled to affirm that these are alternative descriptions of the same thing -- or in other words, that A and B are one and the same thing -- if and only if the description rendered of A, whatever it might be, can now be applied to B without ceasing to be true; and, of course, vice versa. [5]

Taylor believes that this principle is involved when philosophers cite incongruities which should not obtain if men and their bodies were identical. Thus it would be odd to say that my body is politically "liberal" or that my body "admires Plato." He believes that the same metaphysical point is expressed

p. 188

epigrammatically in the ancient idea that "matter cannot think." He replies to this position by considering a man engaged in some activity such as tinkering. He goes on to say, first, that if we can't say his body is "tinkering" it is also true that we can't say that his mind is "reading the instructions." Second, he wants to describe the man's situation as follows:

...This man, whom we see and point to, and who is one and the same thing as the person we are describing, is a visible, palpable, physical object. What else, indeed, could one see and point to? And from this it surely does follow that the person we are describing, the man who is assembling the engine, is a visible, palpable object, a living human body or, in short, a body. [6]

In regard to Taylor's first point it needs to be asked what exactly is supposed to follow from the fact that it would be absurd to say that the man's mind is reading the instructions. That it is incorrect to say that persons are nonphysical things or minds? Even if we grant him this -- and it would indeed be odd to say of a man tinkering with a car that he was a mind! -- it does not follow that the man is identical with his body. All that follows from Taylor's considerations is that a man is identical with neither mind nor body. Moreover it by no means follows that since a human being has both material and incorporeal attributes he can therefore never lose the material attributes and retain some of the incorporeal attributes and thus become an incorporeal being. It is one thing to say that men are not Cartesian entities. It is another thing to say that they cannot become beings who lack corporeal attributes.

In regard to his second point, it should be noted that from the fact that a man is visible it does not follow that he simply is a physical object or body. But this is the conclusion that must follow if Taylor's redescription of the tinkerer's situation is to have any force. Of course the opposite conclusion fails to follow too: from the fact that a man is rational it doesn't follow that he simply is a mind.

Taylor thinks that he has been making merely "commonplace observations" [7] about his example of the man engaged in some activity and he goes on to consider two "mistakes" that prevent philosophers from accepting his observations. The first mistake is treating psychological states and activities as things rather than as states and activities. He says this about an "image":

It is true that no such thing can be a physical thing, but it should not therefore be supposed that it must be a nonphysical thing. One can say, rather, that there is no such thing to begin with; that there is only a person imagining something. [8]

I suppose Taylor is right in saying that thoughts and images have no existence as entities existing independently of the people who think or imagine them, but what does this prove? Certainly not that persons are bodies, for this would make imagining or thinking a physical activity or process, which is an odd notion, one requiring further explanation and justification which Taylor does

p. 189

not give. He may have some sort of Identity Theory in mind but this theory has yet to be defended in a way that gives any sense to saying, for example, that this physical process is a thought -- in the ordinary sense of the word.

The second "mistake" is to assume that a human body can't have capacities not found in lifeless things. But one can reject such an "assumption" and its corollary (therefore men need "minds") and still find unintelligible Taylor's notion that people are bodies. All one needs to assert is that certain animals and people are capable of activities and states that are not amenable to physical description. This does not entail a Cartesian or dualist view of man. It is still the human being -- the person -- who does these things, and not some mind (or body). If men think and men are physical objects, then some physical objects think. But what has to be shown is that there is any sense to saying that men are physical objects.

Taylor concludes by considering issues concerning personal identity. He compares two men having various parts interchanged or undergoing a conditioning process, to two cars undergoing similar changes:

...Suppose you and I were physically conditioned, perhaps unbeknown to us, in such a way that I (note) "woke up" with all your memories and you with all mine. Which would be you, and which me?
....................................................
What any man would think or say under such fanciful circumstances is not in every case easy to see, but what the truth of the matter would be to someone not misled and knowing the facts, knowing just what has happened with respect to the two men involved, is not so recondite. [9]

But the question is, what are "the facts"? Imagine that such a conditioning process had taken place and now A has B's memories and vice versa. Imagine that it is explained to them how they had been "conditioned" and that they are not really who they think they are. What happens if the two men dispute the conclusion and still claim to be the "other" person? Or imagine that the conditioning process had gone as planned but that A and B begin to produce memories that were correct and which they were not conditioned to remember -- that is, they begin spontaneously to remember things they were never taught. Just what are "the facts" here? Has A been merely conditioned to have B's memories or has he become B? If it is not clear (and I think it isn't), then it is certain that people are not their bodies as Taylor claims, for if they were there should be no issue here whatsoever.

II
Taylor thus fails to prove that there is no personal self other than the body. I think he is also mistaken about the meaning of the Buddha's anattaa doctrine.

p. 190

It does not mean that "there simply is no self". [10] I want to argue that by this doctrine the Buddha meant, on the one had, to deny a certain philosophical view of the self, and, on the other hand, to affirm that the ordinary view of the self is inadequate to the truth about man which his religious vision enabled him to perceive.

Works on Buddhist philosophy generally take the anattaa doctrine to mean things like "there is no spiritual substance," "there is no eternal soul," and other descriptions of this sort. These phrases are not so far off the mark if they are taken as referring to philosophical (and not ordinary) views. It is known that at the time of the Buddha there were those who affirmed the existence of an eternal and imperishable soul or self -- the "Eternalists" -- and those who denied the existence of such an entity -- the "Materialists." The latter argued that there was no such soul since there was no empirical evidence for it. "As a man draws a sword from the scabbard and shows it, saying, 'this is the sword and that is the scabbard,' so nobody can draw (the soul from the body) and show (it saying), 'friend, this is the soul and that is the body.'" [11] Jayatilleke observes that the Buddha "as an Empiricist... is satisfied with the empirical investigation which shows that no such aatman exists because there is no evidence of its existence." [12] It is interesting to note that if the Buddha admitted the self at all he had to admit it as eternal, because of the widespread (Parmenidean) belief in his time that "what exists cannot cease to exist." [13] This latter notion is clearly philosophical in nature and shows that at least part of the anattaa doctrine was directed against philosophical opinions which the Buddha encountered.

Now in spite of the fact that the Buddha used an argument similar to that of the Materialists, it remains the case that he refused to affirm the Materialist doctrine which Taylor would have him holding, namely, that there is no self other than the body. The Buddha regarded both "the soul is identical with the body" and "the soul is different from the body" as "indeterminate" or unanswered questions. He said that both these positions are extremes and that he taught the middle doctrine. [14]

The Buddha's doctrine of the five khandhas or groups illustrates part of his view of the human being. According to this teaching the human being is analyzed into five "groups": body, feeling, perception or ideation, volitional activity, [15] and consciousness or stream of consciousness. [16] Commentators sometimes understand this analysis in a Humean fashion (that is, I perceive no self among my perceptions), in which case the analysis has relevance to certain philosophical views but is irrelevant to showing that "there simply is no self" in the ordinary sense of self. Ordinarily "myself" is simply me, myself, and it is, to use Wittgenstein's terms, a grammatical remark to say that myself is not one of my perceptions.

It is not hard, however, to understand the religious meaning of this doctrine if we look at the lesson which the Buddha wished to draw.

p. 191

"Is sensation... perception... the predispositions ... consciousness, permanent, or transitory?"
"It is transitory, Reverend Sir."
"And that which is transitory--is it evil, or is it good?"
"It is evil, Reverend Sir."
....................................................
"Accordingly..., as respects all form whatsoever..., the correct view in the light of the highest knowledge is as follows: 'This is not mine; this am I not, this is not my Ego.'" [17]

The teaching here is that we are not to identify ourselves with the "groups" since they are transitory. Indeed, an identification with the five "groups" is a large part of our suffering, which the Buddha wishes to show us how to eliminate. It is true that, as Taylor indicates, [18] the Buddha said that it is better to identify ourselves with the body than with the other "groups." But this doesn't mean that the body is the self. It means that the body is relatively less transitory than the stream of consciousness. But it is still transitory and something for which we should conceive an aversion since it is obviously intimately connected with the suffering involved in birth, old age, sickness, and death.

The common Buddhist analogy of the chariot might be read as supporting Taylor's view that the Buddha "argued that one could not identify himself with...anything at all." [19]

For as when the parts are rightly set
We utter the word "chariot,"
So when there are the khandhas.
By convention, "there is a being" we say. [20]

But the context makes it clear that this is merely an illustration of the khandha analysis and thus should be understood as indicating how suffering is bound up with certain identifications we make.

The chariot analogy is closely related also to certain linguistic arguments which, according to Jayatilleke, [21] are more explicitly made by the Materialists than the Buddhists. Some Indians thought that "I" must refer to a substantial ego.

The Materialists contested this belief...arguing that the subject of statements such as "I am fat," etc., is the body which alone has the observable attribute of fatness, while phrases such as "my body" have only a metaphorical significance and would mean "the body that is I" just as when we speak of the "head of Raahu" we mean "the head that is Raahu." [22]

Once again, Taylor seems to have taken a position more like that of the Materialists than that of the Buddha. The latter contended that, in terms of the khandha analysis, there is no entity which is I -- not even the body.

p. 192

The question about whether or not the Buddhist saint exists after death is relevant for our problem since if the personal self is the body and the body is annihilated then the person is annihilated also. But we know that this Materialist position -- "annihilationism" -- was rejected by the Buddha.

...The following wicked heresy had sprung up in the mind of a priest named Yamaka: "Thus do I understand the doctrine taught by The Blessed One, that on the dissolution of the body the priest who has lost all depravity is annihilated, perishes, and does not exist after death." [23]

The Buddha did not adopt annihilationism but he also classified the questions about the saint's existence after death as indeterminate and to be set aside. He compared these questions to asking of a fire that is blown out (nibbuto), in what direction it has gone -- to the east, west, north, or south:

"The question would not fit the case, Gotama. For the fire... being thus without nutriment, is said to be extinct."
"In exactly the same way, Vaccha, all form by which one could predicate existence of the saint, all that form has been abandoned, uprooted, pulled out of the ground like a palmyra-tree and become nonexistent and not liable to spring up again in the future." [24]

The Buddha here seems to reject the question because, in a sense, it is meaningless -- like asking where did a fire go. But it is perhaps just as well to say -- or even better, in view of the misunderstandings that have arisen -- that the questions reflect an inadequate view of the utter transcendence that is attained when one attains nibbaana. For the Buddha immediately switches to a positive metaphor. "The saint, O Vaccha, who has been released from what is styled farm, is deep, immeasurable, unfathomable, like the mighty ocean." [25] It seems clear that the existence of one who attains nibbaana is questionable only in a very special sense similar to Tillich's famous reluctance to say that God exists!

It is perhaps worth pointing out that in the special sense in which the saint does not exist after death, the Buddha -- and the saint -- did not exist before death either! One can, indeed must, attain enlightenment and nibbaana while still alive, in which case one's reality becomes transcendent and beyond the reach of unenlightened minds. Thus early Buddhist iconography, quite consistently, would often not picture the Buddha in the very work that represented a scene from his life. Of course later iconography, also quite consistently, would represent him with special features which set him apart. None of this was meant to imply that what the Buddha was, was his body. It was meant to say that he was much greater than that.

Surely any other interpretation of the anattaa doctrine would be pointless. I am my self; you are your self. To say that the Buddha tried to eliminate suffering by preaching that "there simply is no self" is to say that we needn't worry about suffering since we don't exist in the first place. But this cure would be

p. 193

worse than the disease. No, human beings do exist and they suffer. The Buddha preached the anattaa doctrine in order to tell men that although they normally identify themselves with aspects of themselves that inevitably involve suffering, they can, nevertheless, attain to a state that goes beyond the world of suffering and gives them a transcendent identity which they never dreamed of.

NOTES
1. Philosophy East and West 19, no. 4 (Oct., 1969): 359-366.
2. Ibid., p. 359.
3. Ibid., p. 360.
4. Ibid., p. 361.
5. Ibid., p. 362.
6. Ibid., p. 364.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., pp. 365, 366.
10. Ibid., p. 359.
11. The Suutrak.rta^nga, in K. N. Jayatilleke, Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge (London: Allen and Unwin, 1963), p. 99. Parenthetical Paali omitted.
12.Ibid., p.39.
13. See Jayatilleke, op. cit., pp. 96-97, 248-249. Compare T. R. V. Murti, The Central Philosophy of Buddhism (London: Allen and Unwin, 1960) p. 32: "A changing aatman... is a contradiction in terms."
14. See the Sa^myutta-Nikaaya, xii, 35, in Henry Clarke Warren, Buddhism in Translations (New York: Atheneum, 1963), p. 167.
15. On this translation of sa^nkhaara see Jayatilleke, op. cit., p. 451 and Rune E. A. Johansson, The Psychology of Nirvana (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1970), p. 67.
16. On this translation of vi~n~nana see Johansson, op. cit., p. 66.
17. Mahaa-Vagga, i, 6, in Warren, Buddhism in Translations, p. 147.
18. Taylor, op. cit., p. 359.
19. Ibid.
20. Sa^myutta-Nikaaya, i, 134-135, in Edward Conze, et al., Buddhist Texts Through the Ages (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), p. 80.
21. Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge, p. 102.
22. Ibid., p. 103.
23. Sa^myutta-Nikaaya, xxii, 85, in Warren, Buddhism in Translations, p. 138.
24. Majjhima-Nikaaya, Sutta 72, in ibid., p. 127.
25. Ibid.