sub.vtt

WEBVTT

1
00:00:00,690 --> 00:00:02,130
<v.speaker Sam>Today I'm speaking with Jay Garfield.

2
00:00:02,130 --> 00:00:07,620
<v.speaker Sam>Jay is a professor in the humanities and professor of philosophy, logic and Buddhist

3
00:00:07,620 --> 00:00:08,790
<v.speaker Sam>studies at Smith College.

4
00:00:08,790 --> 00:00:13,620
<v.speaker Sam>And he is also a visiting professor of Buddhist philosophy at Harvard Divinity School.

5
00:00:13,620 --> 00:00:20,070
<v.speaker Sam>And he is the author of most recently the book Losing Ourselves: Learning to Live

6
00:00:20,070 --> 00:00:20,700
<v.speaker Sam>Without a Self.

7
00:00:20,700 --> 00:00:23,310
<v.speaker Sam>And we get deep into that topic.

8
00:00:23,310 --> 00:00:26,850
<v.speaker Sam>I found it a really useful conversation.

9
00:00:26,850 --> 00:00:34,620
<v.speaker Sam>We talk about how the self is an illusion, must be an illusion, can't be what it seems,

10
00:00:34,620 --> 00:00:39,420
<v.speaker Sam>et cetera from a wide variety of angles.

11
00:00:39,420 --> 00:00:43,620
<v.speaker Sam>And we do that fairly systematically.

12
00:00:43,620 --> 00:00:49,170
<v.speaker Sam>So I hope you find it both useful and interesting.

13
00:00:49,170 --> 00:00:57,720
<v.speaker Sam>I think the nature of what we are as subjects, as persons, as experiencers in the

14
00:00:57,720 --> 00:01:03,480
<v.speaker Sam>world really is central to everyone's concerns, whether they know that or not.

15
00:01:03,480 --> 00:01:10,350
<v.speaker Sam>It is, as I point out, inextricable from the question of why we suffer and how we

16
00:01:10,350 --> 00:01:16,560
<v.speaker Sam>can be happy, how we can live better lives, what it means to be a good person in the

17
00:01:16,560 --> 00:01:17,730
<v.speaker Sam>world, how we can be ethical.

18
00:01:17,730 --> 00:01:20,400
<v.speaker Sam>All of these questions are interlinked.

19
00:01:20,400 --> 00:01:23,040
<v.speaker Sam>Anyway, we get deep into it.

20
00:01:23,040 --> 00:01:26,070
<v.speaker Sam>So without further delay, I bring you Jay Garfield.

21
00:01:26,070 --> 00:01:36,660
<v.speaker Sam>{GONG} I a m here with Jay Garfield.

22
00:01:36,660 --> 00:01:37,500
<v.speaker Sam>Jay, thanks for joining me.

23
00:01:37,980 --> 00:01:38,850
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Well, thanks for having me.

24
00:01:38,850 --> 00:01:39,270
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>It's a real pleasure.

25
00:01:40,290 --> 00:01:47,250
<v.speaker Sam>So you are a philosopher who is focused on areas that are really dear to my heart.

26
00:01:47,250 --> 00:01:54,390
<v.speaker Sam>Before we jump in, can you summarize your intellectual and academic background and

27
00:01:54,390 --> 00:01:54,510
<v.speaker Sam>orientation?

28
00:01:56,010 --> 00:01:56,010
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Sure.

29
00:01:56,010 --> 00:01:57,690
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>I tend to move around a lot.

30
00:01:57,690 --> 00:02:04,140
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>That is I work in foundations of cognitive science, philosophy of mind, logic, Indo-Tibetan

31
00:02:04,140 --> 00:02:08,760
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Buddhist philosophy, cross-cultural hermeneutics, ethics, a little bit of this and

32
00:02:08,760 --> 00:02:09,060
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>that.

33
00:02:09,060 --> 00:02:09,780
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>I'm not really a specialist.

34
00:02:11,640 --> 00:02:16,260
<v.speaker Sam>Well, so I want to focus on the topic of your recent book, and that book is Losing

35
00:02:16,260 --> 00:02:18,960
<v.speaker Sam>Ourselves: Learning to Live Without a Self.

36
00:02:18,960 --> 00:02:28,260
<v.speaker Sam>And that is an explicitly Buddhist framing of what could be considered one of the

37
00:02:28,260 --> 00:02:34,230
<v.speaker Sam>central mysteries slash paradoxes slash illusions of our being in the world.

38
00:02:34,230 --> 00:02:41,550
<v.speaker Sam>But my goal for this conversation is to make the claim that the self is an illusion

39
00:02:41,550 --> 00:02:47,040
<v.speaker Sam>as understandable as possible for people.

40
00:02:47,040 --> 00:02:52,710
<v.speaker Sam>And this is something that people find really inscrutable, even those who are seeking

41
00:02:52,710 --> 00:02:58,380
<v.speaker Sam>to penetrate this illusion through practices like meditation, even if they admit that

42
00:02:58,380 --> 00:03:04,560
<v.speaker Sam>this is a worthy goal to have an insight on this front and are not at all skeptical

43
00:03:04,560 --> 00:03:08,820
<v.speaker Sam>about it, they still find it very difficult to think about.

44
00:03:08,820 --> 00:03:15,150
<v.speaker Sam>And to say nothing of all of the people who think it's a preposterous claim on its

45
00:03:15,150 --> 00:03:21,360
<v.speaker Sam>face and that it sounds even undesirable if such a thing could be understood or experienced

46
00:03:21,360 --> 00:03:21,930
<v.speaker Sam>directly.

47
00:03:21,930 --> 00:03:28,710
<v.speaker Sam>So before we jump into that central question, and either this will link up with ethics

48
00:03:28,710 --> 00:03:35,880
<v.speaker Sam>and cognitive science and other areas, first tell me, how did you come to be influenced

49
00:03:35,880 --> 00:03:39,480
<v.speaker Sam>by the Buddhist framing of all of this?

50
00:03:39,480 --> 00:03:44,730
<v.speaker Sam>What's your entanglement with Buddhism and meditation practice and any other related

51
00:03:44,730 --> 00:03:45,750
<v.speaker Sam>issue there?

52
00:03:46,260 --> 00:03:46,260
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Sure.

53
00:03:46,260 --> 00:03:51,660
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>First, let me say that while there are certainly a lot of Buddhist ideas in this book,

54
00:03:51,660 --> 00:03:57,060
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>and I draw on some Buddhist texts, I also draw on the Western philosophical tradition,

55
00:03:57,060 --> 00:04:01,560
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>in particular, on the work of David Hume, but also contemporary phenomenology.

56
00:04:01,560 --> 00:04:06,780
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>So I really take it to be a more cross-cultural look at this than a specifically Buddhist

57
00:04:06,780 --> 00:04:07,170
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>look.

58
00:04:07,170 --> 00:04:14,040
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>But to answer your question, I began working in Buddhist philosophy quite a while

59
00:04:14,040 --> 00:04:19,830
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>ago, largely at the instigation of students at the college where I then taught, at

60
00:04:19,830 --> 00:04:23,820
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Hampshire College, who were really interested in Buddhist philosophy and dragged me

61
00:04:23,820 --> 00:04:24,810
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>into it kicking and screaming.

62
00:04:24,810 --> 00:04:30,660
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And it was as a result of getting interested in teaching this material that it became

63
00:04:30,660 --> 00:04:32,910
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>an important research interest for me.

64
00:04:32,910 --> 00:04:37,740
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And so for the last 30 years or so, I've been spending a lot of my intellectual time

65
00:04:37,740 --> 00:04:42,600
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>with Indian and Tibetan Buddhist texts and some East Asian Buddhist texts, and trying

66
00:04:42,600 --> 00:04:47,400
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>to place them in conversation with Western philosophy and to bring Buddhist philosophy

67
00:04:47,400 --> 00:04:52,500
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>more into the mainstream of the philosophical curriculum around the world.

68
00:04:52,500 --> 00:04:56,760
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>I find the Buddhist tradition a very rich, very complex, very large tradition.

69
00:04:56,760 --> 00:05:03,090
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And I think that to ignore Buddhist ideas when we're doing philosophy is simply irresponsible

70
00:05:03,090 --> 00:05:07,770
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>given the extent, and the depth and the rigor of that tradition.

71
00:05:07,770 --> 00:05:13,620
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And in particular, when we're thinking about questions like the nature of the human

72
00:05:13,620 --> 00:05:17,790
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>person or the nature, whether there's a self there or not, Buddhist have been working

73
00:05:17,790 --> 00:05:19,200
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>on this problem for a long time.

74
00:05:19,200 --> 00:05:21,480
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Western philosophers have as well, of course.

75
00:05:21,480 --> 00:05:23,580
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>But the Buddhist have distinctive contributions.

76
00:05:23,580 --> 00:05:28,230
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And when we place the Buddhist and the Western ideas together, we often get a lot

77
00:05:28,230 --> 00:05:28,590
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>more clarity.

78
00:05:28,590 --> 00:05:30,660
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And that's what I'm trying to do in this book.

79
00:05:31,440 --> 00:05:31,440
<v.speaker Sam>Yeah.

80
00:05:31,440 --> 00:05:32,160
<v.speaker Sam>Yeah.

81
00:05:32,160 --> 00:05:38,220
<v.speaker Sam>And what's been your engagement with the methodologies whereby Buddhist have traditionally

82
00:05:38,220 --> 00:05:44,760
<v.speaker Sam>come to have their insights and opinions on these topics, specifically meditation?

83
00:05:45,960 --> 00:05:45,960
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Yeah.

84
00:05:45,960 --> 00:05:48,240
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Well, there's a lot of methodologies within Buddhism.

85
00:05:48,240 --> 00:05:53,550
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Many different meditative traditions, but also a lot of specifically academic philosophical

86
00:05:53,550 --> 00:05:54,210
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>practice.

87
00:05:54,210 --> 00:05:59,790
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>I'm not a religious person and I'm not much of a meditator.

88
00:05:59,790 --> 00:06:05,550
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>I'm somebody who engages with this work philosophically, and that's something that

89
00:06:05,550 --> 00:06:07,110
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>many Buddhist scholars have done as well.

90
00:06:07,110 --> 00:06:11,160
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>I mean, there's always this myth that if you go to a Buddhist monastery, you're going

91
00:06:11,160 --> 00:06:12,720
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>to find lots of people sitting in meditation.

92
00:06:12,720 --> 00:06:18,150
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>In fact, what you find is lots of people sitting in classrooms, in offices, in kitchens

93
00:06:18,150 --> 00:06:23,280
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>and people doing various jobs, but among those jobs, teaching and debating philosophy.

94
00:06:23,280 --> 00:06:29,250
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And so I think of my practice as more in the line with academic Buddhist practice

95
00:06:29,250 --> 00:06:35,490
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>that is working on ideas, debating, analyzing, writing, asking questions.

96
00:06:35,490 --> 00:06:36,960
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>That's what I do.

97
00:06:37,470 --> 00:06:42,120
<v.speaker Sam>Have you had more contact with Gelugpa than with any other tradition within Vajrayana

98
00:06:42,120 --> 00:06:42,630
<v.speaker Sam>Buddhism?

99
00:06:43,770 --> 00:06:43,770
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Yes.

100
00:06:43,770 --> 00:06:49,410
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>My principal teachers in the Buddhist tradition have almost all been in the Gelugpa

101
00:06:49,410 --> 00:06:54,120
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>tradition, and many of the commentaries on which I rely and a lot of the work that

102
00:06:54,120 --> 00:06:56,100
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>I've translated is Gelug work.

103
00:06:56,100 --> 00:06:59,310
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Though I also certainly read in other traditions.

104
00:06:59,310 --> 00:07:02,370
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>I'm not a sectarian, defender of the Gelug lineage.

105
00:07:02,370 --> 00:07:09,570
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>I also read work in the Sakya, Kagyu, Nyingma lineages and in the Rime, or non sectarian

106
00:07:09,570 --> 00:07:11,940
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>movement of the 19th Century.

107
00:07:11,940 --> 00:07:15,060
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>So I read pretty broadly in that area.

108
00:07:15,060 --> 00:07:19,380
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And of course, when you're reading in Chinese and Japanese Buddhist philosophy, these

109
00:07:19,380 --> 00:07:21,660
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Tibetan lineages have no relevance at all.

110
00:07:21,660 --> 00:07:26,790
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>So I try to be pretty broad, but the people from whom I've learned the most are certainly

111
00:07:26,790 --> 00:07:28,020
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>people in the Gelug lineage.

112
00:07:28,860 --> 00:07:28,860
<v.speaker Sam>Yeah.

113
00:07:28,860 --> 00:07:29,430
<v.speaker Sam>Yeah.

114
00:07:29,430 --> 00:07:35,250
<v.speaker Sam>And that would certainly bias everything in the direction of scholastic, scholarly,

115
00:07:35,250 --> 00:07:43,260
<v.speaker Sam>philosophical emphasis and conceptual analysis as being intrinsic to any path of practice.

116
00:07:43,260 --> 00:07:50,190
<v.speaker Sam>You certainly get more of that with the Gelugpas than with the Nyingmapas or Kagyu

117
00:07:50,190 --> 00:07:50,910
<v.speaker Sam>schools.

118
00:07:51,600 --> 00:07:51,840
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>That's true.

119
00:07:51,840 --> 00:07:55,380
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>But of course the Sakya's lineage is also highly academic and scholastic.

120
00:07:55,380 --> 00:08:00,810
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And I think the way to put this is if you're somebody like me who's trained as a professional

121
00:08:00,810 --> 00:08:05,760
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>philosopher and is trained to be scholastic, when you encounter the Gelug and the

122
00:08:05,760 --> 00:08:08,430
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Sakya lineages, you kind of feel like you've come home.

123
00:08:09,090 --> 00:08:09,090
<v.speaker Sam>Yeah.

124
00:08:09,090 --> 00:08:09,690
<v.speaker Sam>Yeah.

125
00:08:09,690 --> 00:08:10,800
<v.speaker Sam>Okay.

126
00:08:10,800 --> 00:08:12,330
<v.speaker Sam>So let's jump in here.

127
00:08:12,330 --> 00:08:21,630
<v.speaker Sam>The self, what do you think most people mean by the term self?

128
00:08:21,630 --> 00:08:29,280
<v.speaker Sam>So when we propose to the naive listener that the self is an illusion or it's a construct,

129
00:08:29,280 --> 00:08:36,390
<v.speaker Sam>those are different claims obviously, or that it's not what it seems to be, what is

130
00:08:36,390 --> 00:08:44,100
<v.speaker Sam>the object that's coming under conceptual or empirical attack there?

131
00:08:45,300 --> 00:08:45,300
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Sure.

132
00:08:45,300 --> 00:08:53,220
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Let's begin by drawing a distinction, and then by talking a bit about illusion, and

133
00:08:53,220 --> 00:08:54,330
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>then coming to the self illusion.

134
00:08:54,330 --> 00:08:56,730
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>So I'm going to try to be a little bit systematic here.

135
00:08:56,730 --> 00:09:00,750
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>There's a distinction that runs through my book and one that I think is very important

136
00:09:00,750 --> 00:09:03,330
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>between the self and the person.

137
00:09:03,330 --> 00:09:10,110
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And so, while I argue in the book that the self is a non-existent thing and a Chimera,

138
00:09:10,110 --> 00:09:13,080
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>I'm not denying that we exist as persons.

139
00:09:13,080 --> 00:09:18,660
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And I want to replace the idea that we exist as selves with the idea that we exist

140
00:09:18,660 --> 00:09:19,200
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>as persons.

141
00:09:19,200 --> 00:09:25,230
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>The second thing to say is that when I think about illusion, I tend to think of this

142
00:09:25,230 --> 00:09:26,640
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>in a very Indian way.

143
00:09:26,640 --> 00:09:32,880
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And in most Indian philosophical traditions, including the Buddhist tradition, an

144
00:09:32,880 --> 00:09:38,160
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>illusion is always defined as something that exists in one way, but appears in another

145
00:09:38,160 --> 00:09:38,490
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>way.

146
00:09:38,490 --> 00:09:43,470
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>So for instance, when we say that a mirage is an illusion, we mean that it exists

147
00:09:43,470 --> 00:09:47,640
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>as a refraction pattern of light, but it appears to be water.

148
00:09:47,640 --> 00:09:54,360
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>When we look at the Muller-Lyer illusion, we say that those two lines exist as equally

149
00:09:54,360 --> 00:09:56,310
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>long, but appear to be different.

150
00:09:56,310 --> 00:10:02,010
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>So when I talk about the self illusion, I'm going to be talking about the person existing

151
00:10:02,010 --> 00:10:07,110
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>as a person, but often taken to be a self.

152
00:10:07,110 --> 00:10:09,540
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>So what do I mean by a self?

153
00:10:09,540 --> 00:10:16,200
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>I mean by the self, the thing that we kind of instinctively atavistically think that

154
00:10:16,200 --> 00:10:16,620
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>we are.

155
00:10:16,620 --> 00:10:19,830
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>The me that owns my body.

156
00:10:19,830 --> 00:10:23,010
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>The me that stands behind and owns my mind.

157
00:10:23,010 --> 00:10:25,260
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>The subject of my mental states.

158
00:10:25,260 --> 00:10:30,180
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>The agent that acts upon the world, but isn't quite in the world.

159
00:10:30,180 --> 00:10:37,320
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And it's a hard illusion to really get people to see, in part because it's so atavistic,

160
00:10:37,320 --> 00:10:42,000
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>and in part because when you put it into words, it sounds preposterous.

161
00:10:42,000 --> 00:10:50,370
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>So when I say that I naively and instinctively don't take myself to be my body or

162
00:10:50,370 --> 00:10:56,190
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>to be my mind, but to own them as a separate thing, well that sounds crazy, but it

163
00:10:56,190 --> 00:10:56,640
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>is how we think.

164
00:10:56,640 --> 00:11:01,230
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And I use a thought experiment in the early part of the book to illustrate that.

165
00:11:01,230 --> 00:11:02,880
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And the thought experiment's really simple.

166
00:11:02,880 --> 00:11:09,390
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Just imagine somebody whose body you'd like to have for a little while, or for a long

167
00:11:09,390 --> 00:11:15,570
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>time, the moment you formed that desire, whether the desire makes sense or not, you've

168
00:11:15,570 --> 00:11:19,770
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>told yourself that you are not your body or something that has a body and that could

169
00:11:19,770 --> 00:11:21,150
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>in principle have some other body.

170
00:11:21,150 --> 00:11:23,400
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And you can do the same thing with your mind.

171
00:11:23,400 --> 00:11:28,200
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>You can imagine a mind you would really love to have for a little while or for a long

172
00:11:28,200 --> 00:11:28,470
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>time.

173
00:11:28,470 --> 00:11:34,380
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And if you can form that desire, then you don't regard yourself as identical to your

174
00:11:34,380 --> 00:11:34,530
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>mind.

175
00:11:34,530 --> 00:11:39,210
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>You regard yourself as something that has a mind and could have a very different mind,

176
00:11:39,210 --> 00:11:41,070
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>maybe a better one, maybe a worse one.

177
00:11:41,070 --> 00:11:46,590
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>But it's that thing that we think of behind our experience, the thing that's pure

178
00:11:46,590 --> 00:11:52,500
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>subject and never object, that's pure agent, that acts upon the world, that we take

179
00:11:52,500 --> 00:11:54,060
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>to be free of the causal nexus.

180
00:11:54,060 --> 00:11:56,910
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>That's the thing that I take to be the self.

181
00:11:56,910 --> 00:12:03,690
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And I think that it's almost maybe a universal illusion that that's the way in which

182
00:12:03,690 --> 00:12:09,030
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>we exist, even though when we subject it to analysis, we find that it doesn't make

183
00:12:09,030 --> 00:12:09,510
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>a lot of sense.

184
00:12:09,510 --> 00:12:16,500
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>But we also find that lots of philosophy, not just Western philosophy, but also Indian

185
00:12:16,500 --> 00:12:22,320
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>philosophy, also philosophy and other traditions takes that atavistic idea of a self

186
00:12:22,320 --> 00:12:28,230
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>and then ramifies it into a kind of philosophical theory about what that self must

187
00:12:28,230 --> 00:12:28,620
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>be like.

188
00:12:28,620 --> 00:12:34,050
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>In Greek, we get the Psyche, the kind of soul that then moves its way, works its way

189
00:12:34,050 --> 00:12:37,500
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>into the Judaic, and Christian and Islamic traditions.

190
00:12:37,500 --> 00:12:43,680
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>In India we get the Atman, the thing that persists through lives and remains constant

191
00:12:43,680 --> 00:12:45,030
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>while everything else changes.

192
00:12:45,030 --> 00:12:51,930
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And what we get then is a kind of sophisticated philosophical theory about what that

193
00:12:51,930 --> 00:12:52,770
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>self might be like.

194
00:12:52,770 --> 00:12:58,560
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And my take is that those theories are kind of like theories of how deep the water

195
00:12:58,560 --> 00:12:59,190
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>is in a mirage.

196
00:12:59,190 --> 00:13:03,210
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>You start out with something that doesn't exist and then try to figure out what its

197
00:13:03,210 --> 00:13:03,720
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>nature is.

198
00:13:03,720 --> 00:13:09,090
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Where what I think we need to do is to try to work our way out of that illusion and

199
00:13:09,090 --> 00:13:14,070
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>come to understand ourselves as persons, things that are part of the world, that are

200
00:13:14,070 --> 00:13:18,960
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>embedded in the world, that are embodied, that are interdependent, that are causally

201
00:13:18,960 --> 00:13:26,580
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>conditioned, that are kind of continue of psychophysical processes rather than individual

202
00:13:26,580 --> 00:13:32,970
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>things, and that only exist in interaction with other persons in a social context.

203
00:13:32,970 --> 00:13:37,710
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And if we understand ourselves that way, we get a much deeper and much richer understanding

204
00:13:37,710 --> 00:13:39,900
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>of what it is to be a human being.

205
00:13:41,040 --> 00:13:41,040
<v.speaker Sam>Yeah.

206
00:13:41,040 --> 00:13:44,190
<v.speaker Sam>So let me see if I can ground this in the experience of our listeners.

207
00:13:44,190 --> 00:13:50,880
<v.speaker Sam>This is something I've done at many points before in discussing meditation, but I

208
00:13:50,880 --> 00:13:55,200
<v.speaker Sam>think it's important to make this visceral for people, because I think most people,

209
00:13:55,200 --> 00:14:02,640
<v.speaker Sam>many people intellectually would repudiate the concept of the self that you just put

210
00:14:02,640 --> 00:14:02,880
<v.speaker Sam>forward.

211
00:14:02,880 --> 00:14:07,740
<v.speaker Sam>If I pulled in my friend, Dan Dennet here, he would say, well, I don't believe in

212
00:14:07,740 --> 00:14:09,030
<v.speaker Sam>any self of that sort.

213
00:14:09,030 --> 00:14:13,200
<v.speaker Sam>The self I believe in is simply the person, the whole person.

214
00:14:13,200 --> 00:14:20,130
<v.speaker Sam>And he would be right to say that, but he would not be honest about the nature of

215
00:14:20,130 --> 00:14:24,480
<v.speaker Sam>most people's experience, virtually every person's experience, and I would allege

216
00:14:24,480 --> 00:14:30,600
<v.speaker Sam>his experience as well, which is that of being a kind of passenger in the body of

217
00:14:30,600 --> 00:14:35,070
<v.speaker Sam>a sort you just described, most people don't feel identical to their bodies.

218
00:14:35,070 --> 00:14:37,110
<v.speaker Sam>They feel that they have bodies.

219
00:14:37,110 --> 00:14:41,850
<v.speaker Sam>They feel that they're appropriating the body from some position of subjectivity,

220
00:14:41,850 --> 00:14:44,130
<v.speaker Sam>very likely in the head.

221
00:14:44,130 --> 00:14:50,460
<v.speaker Sam>They feel like a locus of consciousness, and attention and will, this connects us

222
00:14:50,460 --> 00:14:53,880
<v.speaker Sam>to the perennial debate about the nature of free will.

223
00:14:53,880 --> 00:15:00,780
<v.speaker Sam>And it's that inner homunculus, that sense that you're behind your eyes as a subject,

224
00:15:00,780 --> 00:15:12,630
<v.speaker Sam>and therefore as a center to experience that we refer to when we say I or me most

225
00:15:12,630 --> 00:15:13,140
<v.speaker Sam>of the time.

226
00:15:13,140 --> 00:15:18,180
<v.speaker Sam>Now, of course we do think of ourselves as people, we think of our bodies as being

227
00:15:18,180 --> 00:15:18,450
<v.speaker Sam>ours.

228
00:15:18,450 --> 00:15:25,200
<v.speaker Sam>We understand intellectually that whatever we are as minds and agents is arising out

229
00:15:25,200 --> 00:15:26,220
<v.speaker Sam>of the whole body.

230
00:15:26,220 --> 00:15:34,200
<v.speaker Sam>But when you pay attention, when you feel what in you is implicated when someone looks

231
00:15:34,200 --> 00:15:37,860
<v.speaker Sam>into your eyes, or points at you, or refers to you, when you become self-conscious

232
00:15:37,860 --> 00:15:46,320
<v.speaker Sam>before a crowd, there is this experience of being an inner subject that is threatened

233
00:15:46,320 --> 00:15:47,550
<v.speaker Sam>or implicated.

234
00:15:47,550 --> 00:15:55,590
<v.speaker Sam>And in that case, just take the case of acute self-consciousness, your own face becomes

235
00:15:55,590 --> 00:15:56,370
<v.speaker Sam>a kind of mask.

236
00:15:56,370 --> 00:15:59,940
<v.speaker Sam>You're not identical to your face, you're behind your face.

237
00:15:59,940 --> 00:16:02,580
<v.speaker Sam>And in some sense, your face is misbehaving.

238
00:16:02,580 --> 00:16:10,440
<v.speaker Sam>I mean, think of what it's like to be so embarrassed that you're blushing, so blushing

239
00:16:10,440 --> 00:16:12,660
<v.speaker Sam>obviously against your will.

240
00:16:12,660 --> 00:16:19,350
<v.speaker Sam>And you are the one implicated in the center of it all feeling at war with your experience.

241
00:16:19,350 --> 00:16:24,900
<v.speaker Sam>And in those moments, your body is in some sense part of the world.

242
00:16:24,900 --> 00:16:30,780
<v.speaker Sam>You are the inner man or woman and everything else is out there.

243
00:16:30,780 --> 00:16:38,130
<v.speaker Sam>And it is from that place of being this embattled subject that virtually everyone

244
00:16:38,130 --> 00:16:43,290
<v.speaker Sam>seeks to have a better experience in life, to get out of the position of always looking

245
00:16:43,290 --> 00:16:48,270
<v.speaker Sam>over your own shoulder and being abstracted away from your experience, but rather

246
00:16:48,270 --> 00:16:53,730
<v.speaker Sam>to have experiences that are so good and compelling that you are unified with them.

247
00:16:53,730 --> 00:16:56,850
<v.speaker Sam>And then we call these experiences flow experiences or peak experiences.

248
00:16:56,850 --> 00:17:02,310
<v.speaker Sam>Those moments of unselfconscious unity with an athletic performance, or an intellectual

249
00:17:02,310 --> 00:17:08,250
<v.speaker Sam>engagement, or pure pleasure, whatever it is, those become highlights of the day.

250
00:17:08,250 --> 00:17:14,250
<v.speaker Sam>And the rest is us as subjects thinking, thinking, thinking, talking to ourselves

251
00:17:14,250 --> 00:17:17,610
<v.speaker Sam>in a way that is paradoxical, and perhaps we can examine.

252
00:17:17,610 --> 00:17:19,920
<v.speaker Sam>But it is a subset of the person.

253
00:17:19,920 --> 00:17:26,310
<v.speaker Sam>It is the subject inside that is the self, whatever you may believe about its emergent

254
00:17:26,310 --> 00:17:31,320
<v.speaker Sam>dependency on the brain, and the rest of the body and its entanglement with the world.

255
00:17:31,980 --> 00:17:31,980
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Yeah.

256
00:17:31,980 --> 00:17:33,810
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>That's a very nice way of putting it.

257
00:17:33,810 --> 00:17:38,100
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And I'd like to emphasize something that you said in passing, and that was, you talked

258
00:17:38,100 --> 00:17:41,370
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>about having a kind of inner experience or inner world.

259
00:17:41,370 --> 00:17:48,180
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And part of the self illusion is the illusion that our experiences and our actions

260
00:17:48,180 --> 00:17:54,360
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>happen in a kind of inner space that's outside of physical space and time.

261
00:17:54,360 --> 00:17:59,940
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And that somehow physical space and time is all exterior to us, but that we have this

262
00:17:59,940 --> 00:18:01,770
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>inner life happening in an inner space.

263
00:18:01,770 --> 00:18:07,110
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And what that does is it kind of removes us in consciousness from the world and takes

264
00:18:07,110 --> 00:18:11,580
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>the world to be something of which we're a kind of spectator or upon which we can

265
00:18:11,580 --> 00:18:13,770
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>act, but to which we don't belong.

266
00:18:13,770 --> 00:18:20,550
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And again, the moment we say it, it might sound crazy so that nobody thinks that on

267
00:18:20,550 --> 00:18:21,450
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>reflection, perhaps.

268
00:18:21,450 --> 00:18:24,510
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Well, some people probably do, but most of us don't.

269
00:18:24,510 --> 00:18:29,370
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>But the moment we stop reflecting, we fall right back into it.

270
00:18:29,370 --> 00:18:30,060
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And that's the illusion.

271
00:18:30,060 --> 00:18:35,730
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Just as you could measure those lines in the Muller-Lyer Diagram, convince yourself

272
00:18:35,730 --> 00:18:41,550
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>that they are the same length, but still when you look at them, they look different.

273
00:18:41,550 --> 00:18:47,730
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Just when we look at our experience, it feels broken into subject and object, inner

274
00:18:47,730 --> 00:18:55,050
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>and outer, agent and action, and that all implicates this idea of a non spatiotemporal,

275
00:18:55,050 --> 00:19:02,100
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>inner ego or self that inhabits our body and mind or makes use of our body and mind

276
00:19:02,100 --> 00:19:03,390
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>in engaging with the world.

277
00:19:03,390 --> 00:19:06,930
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And that's the illusion that I'm really concerned with here.

278
00:19:07,410 --> 00:19:07,410
<v.speaker Sam>Okay.

279
00:19:07,410 --> 00:19:13,740
<v.speaker Sam>Well, before we perform surgery on this concept and experience, why do you think this

280
00:19:13,740 --> 00:19:14,070
<v.speaker Sam>is important?

281
00:19:14,070 --> 00:19:21,510
<v.speaker Sam>I mean, I'll give you my answer in a second, but I would love to know what you think

282
00:19:21,510 --> 00:19:25,770
<v.speaker Sam>the significance of all this inquiry is?

283
00:19:26,730 --> 00:19:28,410
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>I think it's important for several reasons.

284
00:19:28,410 --> 00:19:35,910
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>One reason is that I really do believe that part of our task as human beings is the

285
00:19:35,910 --> 00:19:42,090
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Socratic task, know thy self, to try to understand who we are and what it is to lead

286
00:19:42,090 --> 00:19:42,810
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>a human life.

287
00:19:42,810 --> 00:19:47,880
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And so the clearer we can get on that, the more we actually have a kind of authentic

288
00:19:47,880 --> 00:19:48,570
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>self understanding.

289
00:19:48,570 --> 00:19:56,250
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>But the other issue is a moral issue, that is that very often the self illusion functions

290
00:19:56,250 --> 00:20:03,270
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>as a kind of foundation for moral egoism that I think can be extraordinarily corrosive.

291
00:20:03,270 --> 00:20:10,050
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>It also can be the foundation of a lot of moral, reactive attitudes that can be very

292
00:20:10,050 --> 00:20:10,320
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>corrosive.

293
00:20:10,320 --> 00:20:16,710
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Reactive attitudes like blame and anger, where we take other people to be selves acting

294
00:20:16,710 --> 00:20:21,870
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>freely and forget about the kinds of causal relations in which they're implicated.

295
00:20:21,870 --> 00:20:26,340
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>So I think that the self illusion actually inhibits our relationships.

296
00:20:26,340 --> 00:20:33,180
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>I also think, as you pointed out earlier, the place where the self illusion disappears

297
00:20:33,180 --> 00:20:35,640
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>is when we're in flow states.

298
00:20:35,640 --> 00:20:41,970
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And when we're in flow states, we're in states of real expertise, as well as states

299
00:20:41,970 --> 00:20:42,600
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>of real happiness.

300
00:20:42,600 --> 00:20:50,490
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And if we can understand that the self illusion is one that breaks flow, and takes

301
00:20:50,490 --> 00:20:57,840
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>us out of real expertise and can often suck the joy out of our lives, then becoming

302
00:20:57,840 --> 00:21:03,120
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>more aware of the self illusion might enable us to be more attentive to what brings

303
00:21:03,120 --> 00:21:07,740
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>us into flow, and so lead us to live happier, more effective lives.

304
00:21:07,740 --> 00:21:12,540
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>So for all of those reasons, I think this isn't a matter of kind of idle philosophical

305
00:21:12,540 --> 00:21:18,690
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>curiosity, but one that can actually enrich our lives if we get clearer about it.

306
00:21:20,250 --> 00:21:20,250
<v.speaker Sam>Yeah.

307
00:21:20,250 --> 00:21:27,300
<v.speaker Sam>I would just add that the adverse side of that coin of flow is all of the psychological

308
00:21:27,300 --> 00:21:30,630
<v.speaker Sam>suffering that is anchored to this feeling of self.

309
00:21:30,630 --> 00:21:40,200
<v.speaker Sam>And when you can cut through the illusion that suffering itself can evaporate, this

310
00:21:40,200 --> 00:21:46,500
<v.speaker Sam>insight into selflessness is a kind of, psychologically speaking, kind of universal

311
00:21:46,500 --> 00:21:48,570
<v.speaker Sam>solvent of psychological suffering.

312
00:21:48,570 --> 00:21:54,000
<v.speaker Sam>I mean, that is the explicit promise of Buddhist soteriology.

313
00:21:54,000 --> 00:21:56,880
<v.speaker Sam>Suffering in the end of suffering.

314
00:21:56,880 --> 00:22:08,610
<v.speaker Sam>We're talking the Buddhist's whole project was to diagnose why we suffer, and insight

315
00:22:08,610 --> 00:22:13,170
<v.speaker Sam>into selflessness is at the root of the remedy there.

316
00:22:13,170 --> 00:22:18,420
<v.speaker Sam>And I mean, I would just say personally, this is something, obviously I'm interested

317
00:22:18,420 --> 00:22:25,710
<v.speaker Sam>in the philosophical and conceptual side of this, but for me personally, being able

318
00:22:25,710 --> 00:22:33,450
<v.speaker Sam>to experience the illusoriness of the self has been the most important thing I've

319
00:22:33,450 --> 00:22:34,560
<v.speaker Sam>ever learned in my life.

320
00:22:34,560 --> 00:22:37,740
<v.speaker Sam>I mean, it's really one without a second.

321
00:22:37,740 --> 00:22:45,330
<v.speaker Sam>And it shouldn't be surprising that it can be experienced, because we're making a

322
00:22:45,330 --> 00:22:49,380
<v.speaker Sam>claim about what's true about the nature of consciousness in each moment.

323
00:22:49,380 --> 00:22:55,560
<v.speaker Sam>And the claim is not that there is a self and you can by some process of analysis

324
00:22:55,560 --> 00:23:00,120
<v.speaker Sam>or meditative insight get rid of it.

325
00:23:00,120 --> 00:23:03,000
<v.speaker Sam>It's no, it is not there in the first place.

326
00:23:03,000 --> 00:23:09,060
<v.speaker Sam>No, it is not there in the first place, and its absence can be discovered in a way

327
00:23:09,060 --> 00:23:11,340
<v.speaker Sam>that changes the character of experience.

328
00:23:11,340 --> 00:23:13,200
<v.speaker Sam>Its absence can be felt.

329
00:23:13,200 --> 00:23:15,870
<v.speaker Sam>Its absence can be made salient.

330
00:23:15,870 --> 00:23:21,630
<v.speaker Sam>And that is not a claim that needs to be taken on faith by anyone.

331
00:23:21,630 --> 00:23:25,800
<v.speaker Sam>It's merely an empirical claim that is there to be investigated.

332
00:23:25,800 --> 00:23:31,260
<v.speaker Sam>So the goal of a conversation like this, if not to actually precipitate that experience

333
00:23:31,260 --> 00:23:41,100
<v.speaker Sam>in the listener, is to make the terrain sound plausible enough that a person has some

334
00:23:41,100 --> 00:23:48,240
<v.speaker Sam>indication of where they would look to find it and the path by which they might actually

335
00:23:48,240 --> 00:23:49,830
<v.speaker Sam>arrive there.

336
00:23:49,830 --> 00:23:54,930
<v.speaker Sam>So we're essentially describing the map to the territory as clearly as we can.

337
00:23:54,930 --> 00:24:00,840
<v.speaker Sam>And to that end, let's talk about this from both the so-called objective or third

338
00:24:00,840 --> 00:24:07,110
<v.speaker Sam>person side, and the subjective or first person side, because they yield substantially

339
00:24:07,110 --> 00:24:11,370
<v.speaker Sam>the same view, in my experience, but they seem very different.

340
00:24:11,370 --> 00:24:17,430
<v.speaker Sam>From the third person side, when we're talking about the physical universe, that includes

341
00:24:17,430 --> 00:24:25,830
<v.speaker Sam>bodies and brains and everything that science, and most of Western philosophy is going

342
00:24:25,830 --> 00:24:34,920
<v.speaker Sam>to acknowledge to be real, there the existence of a truly separate self, a truly dualistic

343
00:24:34,920 --> 00:24:39,990
<v.speaker Sam>picture of what a person is, doesn't make any sense at all.

344
00:24:39,990 --> 00:24:45,120
<v.speaker Sam>It's obvious from that point of view that there is simply the physical universe, and

345
00:24:45,120 --> 00:24:48,750
<v.speaker Sam>you are arising within it as an expression of it.

346
00:24:48,750 --> 00:24:50,280
<v.speaker Sam>You're inseparable from it.

347
00:24:50,280 --> 00:24:56,280
<v.speaker Sam>Materially, you're constantly exchanging atoms with it across the boundary of your

348
00:24:56,280 --> 00:24:56,400
<v.speaker Sam>skin.

349
00:24:56,400 --> 00:25:00,150
<v.speaker Sam>You're breathing yourself out and you're breathing in the environment.

350
00:25:00,150 --> 00:25:06,780
<v.speaker Sam>There is no real boundary that a physicist is going to want to fight for here.

351
00:25:06,780 --> 00:25:14,520
<v.speaker Sam>And it's on that basis that any radical disjunction between a person and the world

352
00:25:14,520 --> 00:25:16,950
<v.speaker Sam>can be denied.

353
00:25:16,950 --> 00:25:23,220
<v.speaker Sam>And this is where this is why the notion of free will, as in Libertarian free will

354
00:25:23,220 --> 00:25:26,610
<v.speaker Sam>never made any sense to anyone who thought about it.

355
00:25:26,610 --> 00:25:32,640
<v.speaker Sam>It's just obvious that there's the total set of all that happens in the universe and

356
00:25:32,640 --> 00:25:38,130
<v.speaker Sam>fully within that part of the Venn diagram, as a subset of what happens, are all the

357
00:25:38,130 --> 00:25:39,870
<v.speaker Sam>things that, quote, you do.

358
00:25:39,870 --> 00:25:45,000
<v.speaker Sam>Your actions are part of the physics of things and can't be otherwise.

359
00:25:45,000 --> 00:25:52,050
<v.speaker Sam>And so I guess throwing it back to you here, do you see that as an incontestable and

360
00:25:52,050 --> 00:25:54,420
<v.speaker Sam>a non-controversial starting point from the outside?

361
00:25:55,170 --> 00:25:57,330
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Yeah, I think that's an extremely important starting point.

362
00:25:57,330 --> 00:26:03,960
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>I would only add one aspect to that, if I might, and that is that as hyper social

363
00:26:03,960 --> 00:26:12,240
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>beings, which we are and we've evolved into that status, we don't only find ourselves

364
00:26:12,240 --> 00:26:15,330
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>inseparably embedded in the physical universe.

365
00:26:15,330 --> 00:26:23,160
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>We find ourselves inseparably embedded in a social universe, embedded with other people,

366
00:26:23,160 --> 00:26:24,300
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>with other persons.

367
00:26:24,300 --> 00:26:29,760
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And that becomes extraordinarily important because one of the mechanisms of that embedding,

368
00:26:29,760 --> 00:26:36,960
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>one of the many mechanisms, is language, and when we acquire language, we acquire

369
00:26:36,960 --> 00:26:42,990
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>a medium through which we introspect and through which we understand ourselves that's

370
00:26:42,990 --> 00:26:43,890
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>entirely transformative.

371
00:26:43,890 --> 00:26:51,210
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And we can have the illusion that when I find myself, for instance, believing right

372
00:26:51,210 --> 00:26:55,530
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>now that I'm talking to you, that I do that by introspecting and finding a little

373
00:26:55,530 --> 00:27:00,270
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>sentence in there that says, "Hey, Jay right now you're talking to Sam," but that's,

374
00:27:00,270 --> 00:27:00,780
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>of course, crazy.

375
00:27:00,780 --> 00:27:05,880
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>I'm interpreting myself in terms of a language that's socially constituted.

376
00:27:05,880 --> 00:27:12,840
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>I understand myself as a philosopher, or as a teacher, or as a son, or as a father

377
00:27:12,840 --> 00:27:14,610
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>in terms of social relations.

378
00:27:14,610 --> 00:27:22,650
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And so we end up being constructed, not as autonomous beings who enter a world and

379
00:27:22,650 --> 00:27:28,950
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>then interact with it, but we are constructed and emerge out of a world that is both

380
00:27:28,950 --> 00:27:35,070
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>physical and social, and everything we are reflects that fact and reflects that constant

381
00:27:35,070 --> 00:27:41,730
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>interdependence, and that dynamic interplay between our bodies and the physical environment

382
00:27:41,730 --> 00:27:47,370
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>around us, between our psychological states, and the psychological states of others,

383
00:27:47,370 --> 00:27:50,940
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>and you just can't understand who we are without that.

384
00:27:50,940 --> 00:27:53,460
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>I think that's extraordinarily important.

385
00:27:53,460 --> 00:27:59,400
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And as you put it, if we were to do physics, or chemistry, or biology, or psychology,

386
00:27:59,400 --> 00:28:04,950
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>we can do all of that and we do all of that without ever saying, "Oh yes, and then

387
00:28:04,950 --> 00:28:08,940
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>there's the self and we've got to think about that too," because it simply falls out

388
00:28:08,940 --> 00:28:09,390
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>of the equation.

389
00:28:09,390 --> 00:28:14,850
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>That illusion isn't one that's propagated by our best science.

390
00:28:15,750 --> 00:28:15,750
<v.speaker Sam>Yeah.

391
00:28:15,750 --> 00:28:23,520
<v.speaker Sam>You used a word, interdependent, there, which obviously has Buddhist overtones and

392
00:28:23,520 --> 00:28:31,770
<v.speaker Sam>links up with another concept that we might refer to by the phrase, conventional existence

393
00:28:31,770 --> 00:28:32,820
<v.speaker Sam>of things.

394
00:28:32,820 --> 00:28:39,390
<v.speaker Sam>So maybe we should explain some of that or introduce some of those distinctions.

395
00:28:39,390 --> 00:28:49,650
<v.speaker Sam>And in your book, you referenced the story of King Melinda Naga to do this, and you

396
00:28:49,650 --> 00:28:50,490
<v.speaker Sam>use a few other examples.

397
00:28:50,490 --> 00:28:54,900
<v.speaker Sam>Hume has an approach here with his church analogy.

398
00:28:54,900 --> 00:29:04,590
<v.speaker Sam>So maybe talk about the way in which the things, including people in the world, exist

399
00:29:04,590 --> 00:29:12,060
<v.speaker Sam>but their existence is a paradox or things exist by convention, which is not quite

400
00:29:12,060 --> 00:29:17,130
<v.speaker Sam>the same thing as something existing truly independently from everything else.

401
00:29:17,760 --> 00:29:18,030
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>That's right.

402
00:29:18,030 --> 00:29:24,780
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Oftentimes when people hear the idea of conventional truth, as opposed to ultimate

403
00:29:24,780 --> 00:29:32,130
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>truth, they think that what this is, is a second class reality, an air-sucked reality,

404
00:29:32,130 --> 00:29:36,870
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>that isn't really real, something you do until ultimate truth comes along.

405
00:29:36,870 --> 00:29:38,610
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>But that's a deep misunderstanding.

406
00:29:38,610 --> 00:29:43,590
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>So let's begin with the idea of dependent origination and then work our way into con

407
00:29:43,590 --> 00:29:44,850
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>into conventional existence.

408
00:29:44,850 --> 00:29:51,960
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>When in the Buddhist world, we talk about dependent origination, we mean that everything

409
00:29:51,960 --> 00:29:59,100
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>that occurs, occurs in dependence on a vast network of countless causes and conditions.

410
00:29:59,100 --> 00:30:05,490
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>My speaking depends upon all kinds of things happening in my nervous system, but it

411
00:30:05,490 --> 00:30:09,240
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>also depends upon my being able to breathe and there being oxygen in the air.

412
00:30:09,240 --> 00:30:13,620
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>It depends upon the things that I've been taught, the things upon which I've reflected.

413
00:30:13,620 --> 00:30:18,660
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>It depends upon the fact that you are at the other end of this conversation and that

414
00:30:18,660 --> 00:30:19,380
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>I see you as an interlocutor.

415
00:30:19,380 --> 00:30:26,430
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>When we talk about that dependence in the Buddhist world, we often distinguish three

416
00:30:26,430 --> 00:30:28,680
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>different dimensions of that interdependence.

417
00:30:28,680 --> 00:30:34,050
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>The first, the one I've been stressing so far is causal interdependence.

418
00:30:34,050 --> 00:30:39,690
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Effects depend upon their causes, and there are many different kinds of causes, some

419
00:30:39,690 --> 00:30:42,300
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>of which are antecedent, some of which are simultaneous.

420
00:30:42,300 --> 00:30:45,240
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>We don't need to worry about that botany now.

421
00:30:45,240 --> 00:30:51,000
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>But even when you think about an ordinary event, like say turning the lights on, you

422
00:30:51,000 --> 00:30:52,740
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>might say that flicking the switch is the cause.

423
00:30:52,740 --> 00:30:57,420
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>You might say that the power plant and the electric grid are the cause of the lights

424
00:30:57,420 --> 00:30:57,960
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>being on.

425
00:30:57,960 --> 00:31:01,890
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>You might say that your desire to read is the cause for the lights being on.

426
00:31:01,890 --> 00:31:04,380
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>All kinds of different causes to which we can appeal.

427
00:31:04,380 --> 00:31:06,660
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>So the causal nexus isn't linear.

428
00:31:06,660 --> 00:31:08,310
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>It's a real mesh.

429
00:31:08,310 --> 00:31:12,540
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>But secondly, we talk about part-whole dependence.

430
00:31:12,540 --> 00:31:15,780
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>The technical term for that is mereological dependence.

431
00:31:15,780 --> 00:31:21,270
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>So a whole entity depends, for its existence, on its parts.

432
00:31:21,270 --> 00:31:27,600
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>I depend on my liver, and my spleen, and my lungs, and my hair, and all of that stuff

433
00:31:27,600 --> 00:31:31,620
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>to be who I am, but parts also depend upon their holes.

434
00:31:31,620 --> 00:31:35,520
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>My heart can't function as a heart without being embedded in my body.

435
00:31:35,520 --> 00:31:39,510
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>My liver isn't my liver unless it's in me, and so forth.

436
00:31:39,510 --> 00:31:45,480
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Or to take other kinds of analogies, the college at which I teach depends upon its

437
00:31:45,480 --> 00:31:48,570
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>faculty and its students, and its library, and its buildings, and its administrators,

438
00:31:48,570 --> 00:31:49,560
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>and so forth.

439
00:31:49,560 --> 00:31:55,200
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>But each of those things depends upon the college in order to be a classroom building,

440
00:31:55,200 --> 00:32:01,050
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>or a teacher, or a student, or an administrator, so that's a bidirectional mereological

441
00:32:01,050 --> 00:32:01,860
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>interdependence.

442
00:32:01,860 --> 00:32:08,460
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>But the third form of interdependence, the hardest one for most people to get their

443
00:32:08,460 --> 00:32:14,370
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>minds around, but the most important one in some ways for the present purposes is

444
00:32:14,370 --> 00:32:16,650
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>dependence on conceptual imputation.

445
00:32:16,650 --> 00:32:23,610
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>That is things depend for their identities upon the ways in which we understand them.

446
00:32:23,610 --> 00:32:29,250
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And I want to start with a really easy example to make that clear, and it's an example

447
00:32:29,250 --> 00:32:31,890
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>that I use throughout the book, and that's the example of money.

448
00:32:31,890 --> 00:32:38,730
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>If I've got a $5 bill in my hand, nobody denies that it's actually true that I've

449
00:32:38,730 --> 00:32:40,950
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>got $5 there unless it's counterfeit, of course.

450
00:32:40,950 --> 00:32:44,040
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>But what I've got is a piece of paper in green ink.

451
00:32:44,040 --> 00:32:48,510
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>There's nothing about the paper and the green ink that make it worth $5.

452
00:32:48,510 --> 00:32:56,910
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>It's worth $5 because we've got the institution of the Federal Reserve, because I

453
00:32:56,910 --> 00:33:01,320
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>can exchange it for five ones, because I can buy something with it.

454
00:33:01,320 --> 00:33:08,340
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>People will accept it for as a $5 note, unlike say an IOU or some Confederate money.

455
00:33:08,340 --> 00:33:14,250
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And it's important to see that the identity of that piece of paper as a $5 note depends

456
00:33:14,250 --> 00:33:20,280
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>upon this vast network, not only of physical causes and conditions, but of conceptual

457
00:33:20,280 --> 00:33:24,540
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>activity that constitutes its value as a $5 note.

458
00:33:24,540 --> 00:33:31,110
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>After all, if I've got a $5 note and a $20 note, the paper and the ink are worth exactly

459
00:33:31,110 --> 00:33:33,240
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>the same in both of those cases.

460
00:33:33,240 --> 00:33:38,160
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>It's not like there's four times as much really cool paper and ink in the $20 note

461
00:33:38,160 --> 00:33:42,360
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>as there is in the $5, but we have different conceptual responses to them.

462
00:33:42,360 --> 00:33:48,090
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And those conceptual responses don't reflect the identity of the two notes as a five

463
00:33:48,090 --> 00:33:48,090
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>and a 10.

464
00:33:48,090 --> 00:33:51,360
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Rather they constitute that identity.

465
00:33:51,360 --> 00:33:57,390
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And the more we look, the more we see that almost everything that we take seriously

466
00:33:57,390 --> 00:34:02,040
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>as a real existent is interdependent in all of these three senses.

467
00:34:02,040 --> 00:34:08,820
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>It's causally interdependent, it's mereologically interdependent, but it's also dependent

468
00:34:08,820 --> 00:34:11,940
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>for its identity on our conceptual resources.

469
00:34:11,940 --> 00:34:17,610
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Now, that's important because when we think about things that are extended in time,

470
00:34:17,610 --> 00:34:25,320
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>like persons who often live for 60, 70, 80, 90, 100 years, and we think about the

471
00:34:25,320 --> 00:34:31,560
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>difference between what that person was when its body was brand new, when it was delivered

472
00:34:31,560 --> 00:34:36,270
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>out of the womb and what it might be like when it's an adult or an ancient being.

473
00:34:36,270 --> 00:34:41,580
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Those are very different bodies, but we unite them through a conceptual imputation

474
00:34:41,580 --> 00:34:46,740
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>by seeing that they're physically, causally connected, that they share some parts,

475
00:34:46,740 --> 00:34:53,760
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>that one part of the sequence is caused by earlier parts of the sequence, and we conceptually

476
00:34:53,760 --> 00:35:00,030
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>decide to say, "Let's call that one thing." And that gives us a person, but that person

477
00:35:00,030 --> 00:35:06,600
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>is something that is every bit as constructed as an entity, as a dollar bill is, but

478
00:35:06,600 --> 00:35:11,190
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>just because the dollar bill, or the $20 bill, or the $5 bill, just because the fact

479
00:35:11,190 --> 00:35:17,610
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>that those are constructed, doesn't make them unreal, but rather describes that in

480
00:35:17,610 --> 00:35:18,900
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>which their reality consists.

481
00:35:18,900 --> 00:35:25,470
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>When we understand the constructed nature of our own identities, a construction in

482
00:35:25,470 --> 00:35:30,120
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>which we are not the only agents in which other people participate as well, we see

483
00:35:30,120 --> 00:35:35,580
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>that our existence as constructed beings doesn't amount to our non-existence, rather

484
00:35:35,580 --> 00:35:37,950
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>it constitutes our mode of existence.

485
00:35:37,950 --> 00:35:44,160
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>When we understand ourselves as persons, we understand ourselves as interdependent

486
00:35:44,160 --> 00:35:46,170
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>artifacts in that sense.

487
00:35:46,170 --> 00:35:53,460
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Hume in A Treatise of Human Nature, makes the beautiful point that human beings are

488
00:35:53,460 --> 00:35:57,240
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>natural artifices, that we are born to make things.

489
00:35:57,240 --> 00:36:04,950
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Among the things we make are cookies and cakes, houses and cities, but we also make

490
00:36:04,950 --> 00:36:05,190
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>cultures.

491
00:36:05,190 --> 00:36:12,780
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>We also make ideas, and I think that the deepest part of this whole are our activities,

492
00:36:12,780 --> 00:36:16,500
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>our devices, is that one of the things that we make is ourselves.

493
00:36:16,500 --> 00:36:23,520
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And in a lot of ways, we persons are the most sophisticated things that we human beings

494
00:36:23,520 --> 00:36:25,290
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>make as natural artifices.

495
00:36:25,290 --> 00:36:33,720
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And so oftentimes you can understand the illusion of the self as the illusion that

496
00:36:33,720 --> 00:36:38,190
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>something that we've in fact made was something that existed independently and that

497
00:36:38,190 --> 00:36:38,610
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>we just found.

498
00:36:38,610 --> 00:36:42,420
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>It would be as though you thought that here's how money originated.

499
00:36:42,420 --> 00:36:48,720
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Somewhere on a beach, somebody saw lots of pieces of paper and coins, and then noticed

500
00:36:48,720 --> 00:36:52,470
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>that they were each valuable and that you could exchange them for things and that

501
00:36:52,470 --> 00:36:55,530
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>you could put them in the bank, and so they started doing that.

502
00:36:55,530 --> 00:37:01,110
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>But that the value in the coins in the papers was just there before we did anything

503
00:37:01,110 --> 00:37:01,680
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>with them.

504
00:37:01,680 --> 00:37:03,240
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Nobody would accept that view.

505
00:37:03,240 --> 00:37:08,640
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>I want to suggest that it's exactly that way with us, that we are not just great apes

506
00:37:08,640 --> 00:37:13,980
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>who happened to discover that they were persons, but we've constructed ourselves as

507
00:37:13,980 --> 00:37:19,560
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>persons, and then erroneously think that's because we noticed that we had selves.

508
00:37:20,490 --> 00:37:20,490
<v.speaker Sam>Okay.

509
00:37:20,490 --> 00:37:26,700
<v.speaker Sam>So I can imagine some listener being very skeptical about this analogy to the dollar.

510
00:37:26,700 --> 00:37:32,580
<v.speaker Sam>The claim would be well, it's obvious that there are different types of existence

511
00:37:32,580 --> 00:37:37,680
<v.speaker Sam>among all the myriad objects and properties in the world.

512
00:37:37,680 --> 00:37:40,710
<v.speaker Sam>And yes, some things are socially constructed.

513
00:37:40,710 --> 00:37:47,760
<v.speaker Sam>Some things only exist by virtue of our agreeing that they exist, and money is among

514
00:37:47,760 --> 00:37:48,450
<v.speaker Sam>those many things.

515
00:37:48,450 --> 00:37:54,060
<v.speaker Sam>Something is a dollar because we say it is, and the moment we stop saying it is, well,

516
00:37:54,060 --> 00:37:55,080
<v.speaker Sam>then it ceases to be that.

517
00:37:55,080 --> 00:38:01,230
<v.speaker Sam>And there are cocktail parties and corporations, and other things might be constructed

518
00:38:01,230 --> 00:38:07,110
<v.speaker Sam>in this way, but there are other things that exist, whether or not we even know about

519
00:38:07,110 --> 00:38:13,140
<v.speaker Sam>them, much less have formed the right concepts about them and had conversations about

520
00:38:13,140 --> 00:38:13,410
<v.speaker Sam>them.

521
00:38:13,410 --> 00:38:20,790
<v.speaker Sam>So if a new virus comes flying out of a bat next week and begins to spread surreptitiously

522
00:38:20,790 --> 00:38:27,150
<v.speaker Sam>throughout the world, making people sick, well, that virus is what it is, whether

523
00:38:27,150 --> 00:38:28,350
<v.speaker Sam>we know about it or not.

524
00:38:28,350 --> 00:38:34,980
<v.speaker Sam>And it's efficacy in making people sick will be what it is, whether we've learned

525
00:38:34,980 --> 00:38:38,730
<v.speaker Sam>to even talk about it or not, much less cure it.

526
00:38:38,730 --> 00:38:46,110
<v.speaker Sam>So there are different ways in which things exist, and perhaps the self is much more

527
00:38:46,110 --> 00:38:55,050
<v.speaker Sam>like an unnamed virus than it is like a dollar that was the mere invention of people

528
00:38:55,050 --> 00:38:56,700
<v.speaker Sam>at a certain moment in time.

529
00:38:56,700 --> 00:39:02,100
<v.speaker Sam>And that the self has, and now I'm referencing your book and your own terminology,

530
00:39:02,100 --> 00:39:11,910
<v.speaker Sam>the self has the properties of priority, and unity, and subject object, duality, and

531
00:39:11,910 --> 00:39:16,020
<v.speaker Sam>agency of the kind that we discover in ourselves.

532
00:39:16,020 --> 00:39:20,820
<v.speaker Sam>It's me in here, and I can think, and do whatever the hell I want.

533
00:39:20,820 --> 00:39:23,190
<v.speaker Sam>And I have free will.

534
00:39:23,190 --> 00:39:24,750
<v.speaker Sam>I'm a me.

535
00:39:24,750 --> 00:39:28,620
<v.speaker Sam>Yes, I'm in my body, perhaps in some paradoxical way.

536
00:39:28,620 --> 00:39:33,690
<v.speaker Sam>And I'm sure I'm dependent on my brain in ways that I can't introspect about, but

537
00:39:33,690 --> 00:39:41,130
<v.speaker Sam>all of this highfalutin talk about interdependence and emergent causation and all

538
00:39:41,130 --> 00:39:41,370
<v.speaker Sam>the rest.

539
00:39:41,370 --> 00:39:47,430
<v.speaker Sam>Maybe there's something of interest to say there, with respect to the neuroscience

540
00:39:47,430 --> 00:39:54,330
<v.speaker Sam>of being a self, or the information processing aspect of what's actually happening

541
00:39:54,330 --> 00:39:55,410
<v.speaker Sam>in my brain.

542
00:39:55,410 --> 00:40:01,110
<v.speaker Sam>But as a matter of phenomenology, as a matter of lived experience, there's a simple

543
00:40:01,110 --> 00:40:08,610
<v.speaker Sam>point of view that is as undeniable as any conceivable feature of experience.

544
00:40:08,610 --> 00:40:15,510
<v.speaker Sam>And it's that I'm me and I'm not you, and so none of what you've said really has put

545
00:40:15,510 --> 00:40:16,920
<v.speaker Sam>that into question.

546
00:40:17,580 --> 00:40:17,790
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>That's right.

547
00:40:17,790 --> 00:40:22,530
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Nothing that I've said so far in this conversation has, but now maybe it's time to

548
00:40:22,530 --> 00:40:28,860
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>start doing that, because what you've done is very, ably characterized the self illusion.

549
00:40:28,860 --> 00:40:36,690
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And part of the kind of tell there, the giveaway, is that you talked about it as a

550
00:40:36,690 --> 00:40:40,980
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>kind of undeniable phenomenological fact, a fact about our experience.

551
00:40:40,980 --> 00:40:49,110
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And I think that we have to be really careful when we go from how things seem to us,

552
00:40:49,110 --> 00:40:55,110
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>to how they are, because of course, we know that we're all subject to illusions of

553
00:40:55,110 --> 00:40:55,410
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>all kinds.

554
00:40:55,410 --> 00:41:01,170
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Some of those illusions are what you might call accidental illusions, like the Muller-Lyer

555
00:41:01,170 --> 00:41:06,690
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>illusion that you encounter sometimes but not others, or the bent stick illusion,

556
00:41:06,690 --> 00:41:07,860
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>or something like that.

557
00:41:07,860 --> 00:41:10,410
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Other illusions are pretty constant.

558
00:41:10,410 --> 00:41:16,440
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>So for instance, the illusion that our visual field was uniformly colored, or that

559
00:41:16,440 --> 00:41:18,210
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>it doesn't have a hole in the center of it.

560
00:41:18,210 --> 00:41:25,050
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>The illusion that our senses simply deliver the world to us just as they are, instead

561
00:41:25,050 --> 00:41:30,360
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>of thinking about perception as a complicated neurological construction system, and

562
00:41:30,360 --> 00:41:37,650
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>so forth, so we know that we can't simply go from the phenomenology to metaphysics

563
00:41:37,650 --> 00:41:41,520
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>directly, and so that's an important cautionary right there.

564
00:41:41,520 --> 00:41:48,540
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Now, when we start looking at the properties that you correctly assigned to the illusory

565
00:41:48,540 --> 00:41:56,550
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>self, things like primordial independence, free agency, pure subjectivity, unity,

566
00:41:56,550 --> 00:42:01,800
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>simplicity, all of those, those are properties of the illusion.

567
00:42:01,800 --> 00:42:05,760
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And we can see that in a bunch of different ways.

568
00:42:05,760 --> 00:42:10,860
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Let's start with the one that you've mentioned several times already in that I haven't

569
00:42:10,860 --> 00:42:11,400
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>really addressed.

570
00:42:11,400 --> 00:42:14,370
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And that's the question of free agency.

571
00:42:14,370 --> 00:42:22,560
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Oftentimes, especially in modern Western cultures, part of the self illusion is the

572
00:42:22,560 --> 00:42:27,540
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>illusion that we can literally do whatever we want, that we've got Libertarian freedom,

573
00:42:27,540 --> 00:42:34,530
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>and that's the illusion that while everything else is part of the causal matrix, that

574
00:42:34,530 --> 00:42:37,710
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>somehow we stand outside of that causal matrix.

575
00:42:37,710 --> 00:42:43,260
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>The real locus classicist for that, of course, in the Western tradition is St.

576
00:42:43,260 --> 00:42:47,520
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Augustine who basically invented the idea of free will.

577
00:42:47,520 --> 00:42:49,980
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And when he did that, he invented two things.

578
00:42:49,980 --> 00:42:56,370
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>One was the idea of a will as a component of the ego, and the other was its exemption

579
00:42:56,370 --> 00:43:00,990
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>from the laws of causality and the theological reasons for doing that have to do with

580
00:43:00,990 --> 00:43:02,610
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Theodyssey, and we don't have to go there.

581
00:43:02,610 --> 00:43:07,620
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>But it is worth pointing out that if you've taken a psychology course, you don't suddenly

582
00:43:07,620 --> 00:43:08,520
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>find, "Oh, yes.

583
00:43:08,520 --> 00:43:12,480
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And there's the will." That's the will part of the brain, or first there's a cause

584
00:43:12,480 --> 00:43:15,690
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>a perception then there's a bit of will, and then there's an action.

585
00:43:15,690 --> 00:43:21,330
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>The idea of the will simply is completely inert in psychological theory.

586
00:43:22,950 --> 00:43:25,560
<v.speaker Sam>Let's spell that out a little more because there's a point that I'm embarrassed I've

587
00:43:25,560 --> 00:43:31,500
<v.speaker Sam>never made before, given my bonafide days as a critic of organized religion and organized

588
00:43:31,500 --> 00:43:33,510
<v.speaker Sam>Abrahamic religion in particular.

589
00:43:33,510 --> 00:43:42,210
<v.speaker Sam>But this idea of the will from Augustine, the whole point is to get God off the hook

590
00:43:42,210 --> 00:43:45,180
<v.speaker Sam>for human evil because...

591
00:43:45,360 --> 00:43:45,480
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>That's right.

592
00:43:45,480 --> 00:43:51,090
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>This is all about the garden of Eden and the fall, and it's worth reminding ourselves

593
00:43:51,090 --> 00:43:52,020
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>of this, I guess.

594
00:43:52,020 --> 00:43:56,700
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>I don't want to bash the entire Christian tradition.

595
00:43:56,700 --> 00:44:02,280
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>That's not my ax to grind, but this one is a pretty serious one.

596
00:44:02,280 --> 00:44:11,100
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Augustine was worried about whose fault it was that we fell from Eden, and the problem

597
00:44:11,100 --> 00:44:18,210
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>is that if we understand God as omniscient, omnipotent, and omni-benevolent, it sounds

598
00:44:18,210 --> 00:44:23,460
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>like he should have known, he had to have known that Eve was going to take the apple

599
00:44:23,460 --> 00:44:24,030
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>from the snake.

600
00:44:24,030 --> 00:44:28,770
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>He had to have really wanted her not to do that because he knew what a bad thing that

601
00:44:28,770 --> 00:44:28,980
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>was.

602
00:44:28,980 --> 00:44:32,760
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And because he was omnipotent, he had to be able to stop it.

603
00:44:32,760 --> 00:44:33,450
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>But he didn't.

604
00:44:33,450 --> 00:44:38,700
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And so if you put those things together, it makes it sound like the fall is God's

605
00:44:38,700 --> 00:44:39,060
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>fault.

606
00:44:39,060 --> 00:44:42,930
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And Augustine was worried about that because you can't blame God for stuff like that.

607
00:44:42,930 --> 00:44:48,960
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And the way that he got God off the hook was to invent this faculty of velentos, of

608
00:44:48,960 --> 00:44:53,790
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>will, which was a new faculty to create, and he said that we have this general faculty

609
00:44:53,790 --> 00:45:00,870
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>to act and what's more that faculty is special in that it's exempted from causation.

610
00:45:00,870 --> 00:45:07,170
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And so there's nothing God could have done because Eve was free and could do things

611
00:45:07,170 --> 00:45:07,860
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>free of causation.

612
00:45:07,860 --> 00:45:13,890
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>So even though he was omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-benevolent, he couldn't have

613
00:45:13,890 --> 00:45:16,170
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>stopped her from doing what she freely did.

614
00:45:16,170 --> 00:45:24,660
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Now, if you are worried about talking snakes and apples from magical trees and the

615
00:45:24,660 --> 00:45:31,860
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>origins of evil and a triple omni God, then perhaps you should take the idea of a

616
00:45:31,860 --> 00:45:32,430
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>free will seriously.

617
00:45:32,430 --> 00:45:39,600
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>But my point here is that if that's not what drives you metaphysically, then you better

618
00:45:39,600 --> 00:45:46,020
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>recognize that's the origin of this idea and that to the extent that we think of ourselves

619
00:45:46,020 --> 00:45:53,250
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>as selves, and so as free agents outside of the causal nexus, even though we know

620
00:45:53,250 --> 00:45:58,890
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>that we are biological organisms in a causally determined world, then you've really

621
00:45:58,890 --> 00:46:02,130
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>got a crazy picture of who you are, an alienating picture.

622
00:46:02,130 --> 00:46:03,480
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And it's a picture that a...

623
00:46:03,480 --> 00:46:03,480
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Picture of who you are, an alienating picture.

624
00:46:03,480 --> 00:46:08,790
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And it's a picture that, as I said earlier, both can lead to illegitimate feelings

625
00:46:08,790 --> 00:46:11,670
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>of pride, shame, guilt, I did this.

626
00:46:11,670 --> 00:46:18,630
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>But can also lead to very dangerous attributions of blame and anger, failing to see

627
00:46:18,630 --> 00:46:22,530
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>that other people just like me fail to have this kind of free will.

628
00:46:22,530 --> 00:46:28,170
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And I think that extirpating this myth of freedom is a really important task of philosophy.

629
00:46:28,170 --> 00:46:34,440
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>But what I'm trying to also do in this book is to show that myth of freedom is tied

630
00:46:34,440 --> 00:46:36,090
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>deeply to the idea of the self.

631
00:46:36,090 --> 00:46:42,600
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And so, one of the reasons that we want to say that the self isn't something that

632
00:46:42,600 --> 00:46:47,010
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>we just found is because to find it we'd have to find something that was causally

633
00:46:47,010 --> 00:46:47,580
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>exempt.

634
00:46:47,580 --> 00:46:50,580
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And there isn't anything that's causally exempt.

635
00:46:50,580 --> 00:46:53,040
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>We also have to find something that's simple.

636
00:46:53,040 --> 00:46:58,710
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And when we look at who we are, how we act, how we perceive, and how we understand

637
00:46:58,710 --> 00:47:05,730
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>what we discover is a complex of constantly changing phenomena, not some simple single

638
00:47:05,730 --> 00:47:08,790
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>thing that persists through those phenomena.

639
00:47:08,790 --> 00:47:16,140
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>When we look at subjectivity, we don't find a single I lying behind all of that.

640
00:47:16,140 --> 00:47:19,680
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>We see perceptual subjectivity, effective subjectivity.

641
00:47:19,680 --> 00:47:26,790
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Within perceptual subjectivity, auditory, visual, tactile, olfactory subjectivity.

642
00:47:26,790 --> 00:47:32,430
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>What we see is a complex, more like a committee than an individual thing.

643
00:47:32,430 --> 00:47:40,080
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>So, when you start losing simplicity and this kind of perfect subject and free agency,

644
00:47:40,080 --> 00:47:46,890
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>you start seeing that this kind of mythical apparent thing really isn't there at all.

645
00:47:46,890 --> 00:47:50,520
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>It's as though you were looking at those lines of the Muller-Lyer illusion.

646
00:47:50,520 --> 00:47:55,860
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And as you erase the arrowheads on each side, the lines come back into a perception

647
00:47:55,860 --> 00:47:56,580
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>of equality.

648
00:47:56,580 --> 00:47:59,160
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And when you see them that way, you see them correctly.

649
00:47:59,160 --> 00:48:08,820
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>When we see ourselves as natural organisms enmeshed in a causal nexus with an identity

650
00:48:08,820 --> 00:48:12,660
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>that we constitute, then you begin to see who we are.

651
00:48:12,660 --> 00:48:19,200
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And that's very different from the I that I think that I am when I succumb to the

652
00:48:19,200 --> 00:48:19,650
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>self illusion.

653
00:48:21,690 --> 00:48:22,230
<v.speaker Sam>Well, it's interesting.

654
00:48:22,230 --> 00:48:30,330
<v.speaker Sam>I think, you can get there by taking the dualistic starting point of pure subjectivity

655
00:48:30,330 --> 00:48:31,920
<v.speaker Sam>seriously.

656
00:48:31,920 --> 00:48:37,980
<v.speaker Sam>So, in taking duality seriously, one can move this way.

657
00:48:37,980 --> 00:48:44,910
<v.speaker Sam>I mean, so you are the subject aware of objects and whatever your beliefs about this

658
00:48:44,910 --> 00:48:46,050
<v.speaker Sam>subject or not, leave that aside.

659
00:48:46,050 --> 00:48:51,090
<v.speaker Sam>But as a matter of experience, there is this experience to be had of just being a

660
00:48:51,090 --> 00:48:54,840
<v.speaker Sam>pure witness of all the things that can be noticed.

661
00:48:54,840 --> 00:49:01,110
<v.speaker Sam>Sight, sounds, sensations, thoughts, feelings, et cetera, objects out in the world.

662
00:49:01,110 --> 00:49:08,700
<v.speaker Sam>And because you can be aware of them as objects that testifies to the fact that they

663
00:49:08,700 --> 00:49:09,300
<v.speaker Sam>are not you.

664
00:49:09,300 --> 00:49:15,870
<v.speaker Sam>You are something else over here that is aiming attention, like a spotlight upon all

665
00:49:15,870 --> 00:49:16,500
<v.speaker Sam>the objects.

666
00:49:16,500 --> 00:49:22,650
<v.speaker Sam>And the fact that you can be aware of something proves that it's on the object side

667
00:49:22,650 --> 00:49:26,550
<v.speaker Sam>of this subject-object chasm, and therefore not you.

668
00:49:26,550 --> 00:49:28,020
<v.speaker Sam>You are just the subject.

669
00:49:28,020 --> 00:49:34,980
<v.speaker Sam>But if you persist in doing that, what you notice is that this feeling of being a

670
00:49:34,980 --> 00:49:37,320
<v.speaker Sam>self is itself a kind of object.

671
00:49:37,320 --> 00:49:43,230
<v.speaker Sam>It is an appearance of a kind, however inscrutable, otherwise you would never the

672
00:49:43,230 --> 00:49:44,850
<v.speaker Sam>sense that it was so.

673
00:49:44,850 --> 00:49:50,760
<v.speaker Sam>And, certainly, you could never experience a loss of this feeling unless it is in

674
00:49:50,760 --> 00:49:51,420
<v.speaker Sam>fact a feeling.

675
00:49:51,420 --> 00:49:57,750
<v.speaker Sam>So, there's some signature inexperience that we're calling self.

676
00:49:57,750 --> 00:50:03,870
<v.speaker Sam>There is a sense that it feels like something to be me, or in the middle.

677
00:50:03,870 --> 00:50:08,970
<v.speaker Sam>That this thing that we're criticizing, this thing we're saying doesn't exist, the

678
00:50:08,970 --> 00:50:12,900
<v.speaker Sam>denial of that critique feels like something.

679
00:50:12,900 --> 00:50:19,620
<v.speaker Sam>And if that feeling suddenly went away, then there'd be no basis upon which to say,

680
00:50:19,620 --> 00:50:25,650
<v.speaker Sam>"I'm a self in the appropriate experience from the middle of experience." And so,

681
00:50:25,650 --> 00:50:32,100
<v.speaker Sam>if you take this duality seriously, you notice that well, okay, consciousness, that

682
00:50:32,100 --> 00:50:36,960
<v.speaker Sam>which is aware of the feeling of self, must be prior to it.

683
00:50:36,960 --> 00:50:41,970
<v.speaker Sam>And actually un-implicated in it in the same way it's un-implicated in the existence

684
00:50:41,970 --> 00:50:43,980
<v.speaker Sam>of the water bottle I can see on my desk.

685
00:50:43,980 --> 00:50:46,260
<v.speaker Sam>That's over there as an object.

686
00:50:46,260 --> 00:50:52,440
<v.speaker Sam>And so, this feeling in the face, or in the head, or in the body, whatever it is the

687
00:50:52,440 --> 00:50:56,700
<v.speaker Sam>energetics of it, that whatever the signature is of feeling individuated internal

688
00:50:56,700 --> 00:51:00,540
<v.speaker Sam>to the body, that is itself a kind of object.

689
00:51:00,540 --> 00:51:06,510
<v.speaker Sam>And therefore, doesn't actually constrain what consciousness is in itself as a matter

690
00:51:06,510 --> 00:51:06,840
<v.speaker Sam>of experience.

691
00:51:06,840 --> 00:51:13,080
<v.speaker Sam>It's a logical point but, more importantly, it's a phenomenological one because you

692
00:51:13,080 --> 00:51:18,750
<v.speaker Sam>can, if you keep falling back into that position of just recognizing that everything,

693
00:51:18,750 --> 00:51:25,710
<v.speaker Sam>including this feeling of being a subject is appearing all by itself in a condition

694
00:51:25,710 --> 00:51:32,100
<v.speaker Sam>that is aware of appearances that you can begin to feel that the condition itself

695
00:51:32,100 --> 00:51:35,340
<v.speaker Sam>doesn't feel like I, it doesn't feel like a self.

696
00:51:35,340 --> 00:51:42,090
<v.speaker Sam>I mean, that is the way to punch through to this base layer of just consciousness

697
00:51:42,090 --> 00:51:48,120
<v.speaker Sam>and its contents, which can be experienced without that usual subject/object duality.

698
00:51:49,290 --> 00:51:49,530
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>That's right.

699
00:51:49,530 --> 00:51:51,120
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And it's subject/object duality.

700
00:51:51,120 --> 00:51:57,960
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>That's kind of the bogeyman in this particular context because when we experience

701
00:51:57,960 --> 00:52:03,420
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>the world through that duality, which we very often do, there's a kind of natural

702
00:52:03,420 --> 00:52:07,050
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>tendency to take that duality for granted.

703
00:52:07,050 --> 00:52:11,430
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>I mean, Husserl calls this The Natural Attitude, the attitude in which I simply take

704
00:52:11,430 --> 00:52:15,270
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>objects to exist independently, my subjectivity to exist independently.

705
00:52:15,270 --> 00:52:21,150
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And what subjectivity does, is it passively records the stuff that's happening outside.

706
00:52:21,150 --> 00:52:26,430
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Or sometimes if I turn it in inward passively records, what's happening in inner space.

707
00:52:26,430 --> 00:52:30,720
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>The problem of course, is that as you've pointed out, and as I argue in the book,

708
00:52:30,720 --> 00:52:33,930
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>that's a crazy model of what experience looks like.

709
00:52:33,930 --> 00:52:40,050
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And you can see that if you think about how perceptual, or affective experience is

710
00:52:40,050 --> 00:52:40,590
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>generated.

711
00:52:40,590 --> 00:52:47,310
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>It's not generated by having a kind of blank camera self aimed at the world.

712
00:52:47,310 --> 00:52:53,670
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>It's generated by constructing complicated representations of the external, and the

713
00:52:53,670 --> 00:52:56,580
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>inner world based upon sensory stimulation.

714
00:52:56,580 --> 00:53:01,860
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>I mean, just think about visual perception for a minute as a kind of analogy here.

715
00:53:01,860 --> 00:53:03,510
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And then, we'll extend that.

716
00:53:03,510 --> 00:53:08,640
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>If you just look at what's in front of you, like your water bottle, or my desk full

717
00:53:08,640 --> 00:53:14,100
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>of clutter, The Natural Attitude is all of that stuff looks just like it looks.

718
00:53:14,100 --> 00:53:20,190
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And because I've got great eyes, I see that just as it looks because those properties

719
00:53:20,190 --> 00:53:23,460
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>are just conveyed right into myself somehow.

720
00:53:23,460 --> 00:53:28,560
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Now, the moment we think about how vision actually works, we realize how stupid that

721
00:53:28,560 --> 00:53:28,740
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>is.

722
00:53:28,740 --> 00:53:32,130
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Light is bouncing off of stuff outside of us.

723
00:53:32,130 --> 00:53:39,570
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>It is being refracted into our lens of our eye, turned upside down, refracted through

724
00:53:39,570 --> 00:53:45,690
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>jelly, encountering photoelectric cells on the back of our eye, creating electric

725
00:53:45,690 --> 00:53:50,700
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>potentials that travel up our optic nerve, broken into a dorsal and eventual stream.

726
00:53:50,700 --> 00:53:56,760
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And then, generating a tremendous amount of neurological activity in the back of our

727
00:53:56,760 --> 00:53:56,910
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>brain.

728
00:53:56,910 --> 00:53:59,430
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And none of that looks like the stuff on my desk.

729
00:53:59,430 --> 00:54:04,770
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And what I end up with is a constructed representation of the stuff on my desk.

730
00:54:04,770 --> 00:54:10,230
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And if I ask, "Gee, does that representation look like the real stuff," that doesn't

731
00:54:10,230 --> 00:54:10,860
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>even make sense.

732
00:54:10,860 --> 00:54:12,450
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>That doesn't even make sense.

733
00:54:12,450 --> 00:54:17,520
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Or if we think about the difference between how my dog sees the stuff on my desk,

734
00:54:17,520 --> 00:54:22,980
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>how a bee who's looking, seeing in the ultraviolet, the infrared spectrum sees the

735
00:54:22,980 --> 00:54:24,720
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>stuff on my desk, and the way I do.

736
00:54:24,720 --> 00:54:29,880
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And then we ask, "Yeah, but who sees it right?" That's a dumb question because each

737
00:54:29,880 --> 00:54:31,560
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>of us is constructing a world.

738
00:54:31,560 --> 00:54:34,830
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>That construction is a non-dual affair.

739
00:54:34,830 --> 00:54:41,250
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>It's a complete causal inter-meshing of stuff outside of my body and stuff inside

740
00:54:41,250 --> 00:54:44,250
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>my body that generates experience.

741
00:54:44,250 --> 00:54:51,030
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Part of what's generated in that experience is the illusion that I'm simply recording

742
00:54:51,030 --> 00:54:51,570
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>it.

743
00:54:51,570 --> 00:54:54,150
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>That illusion is the illusion of self.

744
00:54:54,150 --> 00:54:59,580
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>So subject/object duality isn't something that we find in our experience.

745
00:54:59,580 --> 00:55:04,260
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>It's something we construct in our experience, and then find introspectively.

746
00:55:04,260 --> 00:55:10,140
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And when we find it introspectively what we're finding is a representation of subject/object

747
00:55:10,140 --> 00:55:11,010
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>duality.

748
00:55:11,010 --> 00:55:15,450
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>But that doesn't mean that there's an actual subject of an actual object that are

749
00:55:15,450 --> 00:55:19,470
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>distinct from one another, as thing perceived and as blank conscious perceiver.

750
00:55:19,470 --> 00:55:22,380
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>It means that's how we thematize our experience.

751
00:55:22,380 --> 00:55:30,750
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And the further we dive into the perceptual process, or the motor process, or the

752
00:55:30,750 --> 00:55:33,750
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>affective process the less we find that actual duality.

753
00:55:33,750 --> 00:55:39,930
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And so, partly what's going on when we say that the self is an illusion is that the

754
00:55:39,930 --> 00:55:46,500
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>subject/object duality framework in which the idea of a self makes sense is a complete

755
00:55:46,500 --> 00:55:53,070
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>super imposition on our experience that has nothing whatsoever to do with how experience

756
00:55:53,070 --> 00:55:54,900
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>is generated in the primordial sense.

757
00:55:55,710 --> 00:56:02,010
<v.speaker Sam>One thing to add here is that the neurological case for the illusoriness of the self

758
00:56:02,010 --> 00:56:04,290
<v.speaker Sam>is quite straightforward.

759
00:56:04,290 --> 00:56:12,090
<v.speaker Sam>When you just think of what a nervous system is doing, or can do, I mean, one thing

760
00:56:12,090 --> 00:56:18,540
<v.speaker Sam>it can do and one thing it has certainly been evolved to do is to represent a world.

761
00:56:18,540 --> 00:56:20,790
<v.speaker Sam>I mean, very much in the way-

762
00:56:21,450 --> 00:56:21,600
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>To construct a world.

763
00:56:22,020 --> 00:56:22,020
<v.speaker Sam>Yeah.

764
00:56:22,020 --> 00:56:24,330
<v.speaker Sam>But, I mean, we're not saying there is no world.

765
00:56:24,330 --> 00:56:26,610
<v.speaker Sam>We're not saying that there's only mind.

766
00:56:26,610 --> 00:56:30,060
<v.speaker Sam>We're no saying that we're living in some kind of simulation.

767
00:56:30,060 --> 00:56:35,490
<v.speaker Sam>But effectively, we are living in, as a matter of experience, in a kind of neurological

768
00:56:35,490 --> 00:56:40,500
<v.speaker Sam>simulation of something, which is that just as you described a construct.

769
00:56:40,500 --> 00:56:47,190
<v.speaker Sam>That based on the kind of nervous systems we have, we are sectioning reality in ways

770
00:56:47,190 --> 00:56:52,650
<v.speaker Sam>that are different than the ways that dogs, and bees, and butterflies section reality.

771
00:56:52,650 --> 00:56:59,670
<v.speaker Sam>And so to say, which one of those sectioning is true is a kind of a non sequitur.

772
00:56:59,670 --> 00:57:04,650
<v.speaker Sam>And yet, they're importantly different, and very different things can be done on the

773
00:57:04,650 --> 00:57:09,360
<v.speaker Sam>basis of those constructed life worlds.

774
00:57:09,360 --> 00:57:16,560
<v.speaker Sam>It's not gonna be lost on anyone that humans are capable of much more than bees, and

775
00:57:16,560 --> 00:57:17,850
<v.speaker Sam>butterflies, and dogs.

776
00:57:17,850 --> 00:57:24,810
<v.speaker Sam>And it's because of the differences in the constructions of which our nervous systems

777
00:57:24,810 --> 00:57:28,680
<v.speaker Sam>are capable in dialogue with whatever this thing is that we call reality.

778
00:57:28,680 --> 00:57:33,720
<v.speaker Sam>But we don't have reality in hand outside of our experience of it.

779
00:57:33,720 --> 00:57:38,910
<v.speaker Sam>And the extensions of our experience that are the kind of tools we rely on scientifically.

780
00:57:38,910 --> 00:57:43,620
<v.speaker Sam>But, as a matter of experience, there really is only experience.

781
00:57:43,620 --> 00:57:48,120
<v.speaker Sam>And, again, it is a constructed reality.

782
00:57:48,120 --> 00:57:51,900
<v.speaker Sam>So, a nervous system can represent a world.

783
00:57:51,900 --> 00:57:59,580
<v.speaker Sam>It can also represent the body of the organism in the world as a kind of object in

784
00:57:59,580 --> 00:58:00,000
<v.speaker Sam>the world.

785
00:58:00,000 --> 00:58:01,140
<v.speaker Sam>And we do that.

786
00:58:01,140 --> 00:58:03,930
<v.speaker Sam>You see the world in your visual field.

787
00:58:03,930 --> 00:58:08,880
<v.speaker Sam>But you also see your body as an appearance in that same visual field.

788
00:58:08,880 --> 00:58:14,640
<v.speaker Sam>And you sense your body in a variety of other ways, proprioceptively, et cetera.

789
00:58:14,640 --> 00:58:20,430
<v.speaker Sam>And therefore, you represent a relationship between your body and the world.

790
00:58:20,430 --> 00:58:23,310
<v.speaker Sam>And, again, this is something that your nervous system is doing.

791
00:58:23,310 --> 00:58:24,660
<v.speaker Sam>This is not a thing.

792
00:58:24,660 --> 00:58:25,560
<v.speaker Sam>This is a process.

793
00:58:25,560 --> 00:58:31,560
<v.speaker Sam>This is a process that can become deranged based on neurological injury, or you can

794
00:58:31,560 --> 00:58:34,140
<v.speaker Sam>take a drug that makes you feel all of a sudden very differently.

795
00:58:34,140 --> 00:58:36,690
<v.speaker Sam>And there are illusions here.

796
00:58:36,690 --> 00:58:43,290
<v.speaker Sam>There's a body swapping illusion that you can provoke by using video cameras in a

797
00:58:43,290 --> 00:58:43,740
<v.speaker Sam>variety of ways.

798
00:58:43,740 --> 00:58:50,190
<v.speaker Sam>But in addition to this, what we do is we represent a self internal to the body.

799
00:58:50,190 --> 00:58:53,610
<v.speaker Sam>We've got a world, we've got a body in the world.

800
00:58:53,610 --> 00:58:57,840
<v.speaker Sam>And then, we think we have a self inside the body.

801
00:58:57,840 --> 00:59:04,980
<v.speaker Sam>And it should not surprise anyone that is a process that can be interrupted.

802
00:59:04,980 --> 00:59:07,020
<v.speaker Sam>And we can stop doing that.

803
00:59:07,020 --> 00:59:11,610
<v.speaker Sam>You can stop representing a self inside the body, and still have a representation

804
00:59:11,610 --> 00:59:15,000
<v.speaker Sam>of a world, and of your body in that world.

805
00:59:15,000 --> 00:59:21,120
<v.speaker Sam>So, to live from the point of view of having realized the illusoriness of the self

806
00:59:21,120 --> 00:59:28,140
<v.speaker Sam>to whatever degree a person achieves that, neurologically speaking, one description

807
00:59:28,140 --> 00:59:35,790
<v.speaker Sam>of that is that person is no longer, at the level of their brain, engaged in a representation

808
00:59:35,790 --> 00:59:39,270
<v.speaker Sam>of a self internal to their body.

809
00:59:39,270 --> 00:59:43,290
<v.speaker Sam>They're simply representing their bodies in the world.

810
00:59:44,640 --> 00:59:45,540
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>I think that's exactly right.

811
00:59:45,540 --> 00:59:51,300
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>The only small correction I would make to everything that you just said is to remember

812
00:59:51,300 --> 00:59:57,330
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>that just as we can do far more than dogs and bees, dogs and bees can do far more

813
00:59:57,330 --> 00:59:57,990
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>than we can do.

814
00:59:58,350 --> 00:59:58,350
<v.speaker Sam>Yeah.

815
00:59:59,340 --> 01:00:00,090
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And that's important.

816
01:00:00,090 --> 01:00:03,630
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>I say that because people will sometimes say, "Yeah, yeah, yeah.

817
01:00:03,630 --> 01:00:06,300
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>But look at evolution, we're more highly evolved.

818
01:00:06,300 --> 01:00:12,630
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And what that means is we're getting closer to reality than other beings are." For

819
01:00:12,630 --> 01:00:17,310
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>instance, David Marr in his Vision book argues that while lower organisms only recognize

820
01:00:17,310 --> 01:00:21,090
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>features of the world, we represent the world as it is.

821
01:00:21,090 --> 01:00:26,280
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And you just want to shake your head and say, "The only world anybody can represent

822
01:00:26,280 --> 01:00:31,290
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>is the world as it's constructed by their sensorimotor system.

823
01:00:31,290 --> 01:00:34,350
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And that's true of a dog, a bee, or a person.

824
01:00:34,920 --> 01:00:34,920
<v.speaker Sam>Yeah.

825
01:00:34,920 --> 01:00:36,750
<v.speaker Sam>The only thing I would add there...

826
01:00:36,750 --> 01:00:43,560
<v.speaker Sam>I totally take that point because, obviously, a dog through the sense of smell can

827
01:00:43,560 --> 01:00:46,020
<v.speaker Sam>do much more than we can imagine doing.

828
01:00:46,020 --> 01:00:52,200
<v.speaker Sam>But just epistemologically speaking, the realist in me would want to say, well, whatever

829
01:00:52,200 --> 01:01:00,150
<v.speaker Sam>reality is altogether, you can have a greater or lesser ability to conceive it, manipulate

830
01:01:00,150 --> 01:01:02,340
<v.speaker Sam>it, interact with it, et cetera.

831
01:01:02,340 --> 01:01:07,260
<v.speaker Sam>And so, you can just think of even just forget about other species, there's a subset

832
01:01:07,260 --> 01:01:11,550
<v.speaker Sam>of people on this earth who understand physics.

833
01:01:11,550 --> 01:01:15,960
<v.speaker Sam>And then, there's the rest of us who don't understand it as much as we might.

834
01:01:15,960 --> 01:01:22,230
<v.speaker Sam>And if all the physicists died in their sleep tonight, we would lose something.

835
01:01:22,230 --> 01:01:28,830
<v.speaker Sam>And one could describe that something as a larger picture of the reality in which

836
01:01:28,830 --> 01:01:29,190
<v.speaker Sam>we're entangled.

837
01:01:30,420 --> 01:01:30,420
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Yeah.

838
01:01:30,420 --> 01:01:36,690
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>But, I guess, I'm going to press the point and say mutatis mutandis for dogs, and

839
01:01:36,690 --> 01:01:37,290
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>bees, and birds.

840
01:01:37,290 --> 01:01:42,780
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Dogs perceive the world in terms of volumes of smell, for instance.

841
01:01:42,780 --> 01:01:45,330
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>We're not even aware of those things.

842
01:01:45,330 --> 01:01:48,090
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>We can't parse reality that way.

843
01:01:48,090 --> 01:01:53,550
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>But by interacting with dogs, we learn that's one of the dimensions of reality.

844
01:01:53,550 --> 01:02:00,720
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Birds and bees can see in the ultraviolet and infrared and so, that flowers that look

845
01:02:00,720 --> 01:02:03,000
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>identical to us look very different to them.

846
01:02:03,000 --> 01:02:08,160
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And by engaging with them through scientific instrumentation, we can't really talk

847
01:02:08,160 --> 01:02:12,870
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>to them, but learning how their visual systems operate we learn that there's far more

848
01:02:12,870 --> 01:02:14,040
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>to reality than we see.

849
01:02:14,040 --> 01:02:20,010
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And so, if we lost dogs and lost bees, we would lose different things from that we

850
01:02:20,010 --> 01:02:20,850
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>lose when we lose physicists.

851
01:02:20,850 --> 01:02:27,480
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>But we would still be losing important dimensions of reality in that sense that they

852
01:02:27,480 --> 01:02:30,420
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>really do inhabit different worlds from the worlds that we do.

853
01:02:30,420 --> 01:02:37,650
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And that's a way of understanding what it is for conventional reality to depend upon

854
01:02:37,650 --> 01:02:39,090
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>conceptual imputation.

855
01:02:40,950 --> 01:02:41,760
<v.speaker Sam>It's also a way of understanding...

856
01:02:41,760 --> 01:02:44,850
<v.speaker Sam>I mean, bringing this back to everyone's lived experience.

857
01:02:44,850 --> 01:02:53,370
<v.speaker Sam>It's a way of understanding how differently the world can appear based on you making

858
01:02:53,370 --> 01:02:58,080
<v.speaker Sam>changes to your conceptual apparatus, your modes of attention.

859
01:02:58,080 --> 01:03:00,720
<v.speaker Sam>It's possible to change the world.

860
01:03:00,720 --> 01:03:08,580
<v.speaker Sam>But it is also possible to change your mind, such that you are inhabiting a very different

861
01:03:08,580 --> 01:03:12,270
<v.speaker Sam>world emotionally, socially perceptually, et cetera.

862
01:03:13,410 --> 01:03:17,220
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And that's the promise of lots of religious and philosophical systems.

863
01:03:17,220 --> 01:03:19,020
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>That's the promise of Buddhist practice.

864
01:03:19,020 --> 01:03:23,010
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>That's the promise of Epicurean and stoic practice.

865
01:03:23,010 --> 01:03:26,850
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And also, I think the promise of scientific practice.

866
01:03:26,850 --> 01:03:31,470
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>I mean, Paul Churchland in his old book, Scientific Realism and The Plasticity of

867
01:03:31,470 --> 01:03:36,750
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Mind makes the point that all you need to do is to go out into the night sky and locate

868
01:03:36,750 --> 01:03:42,150
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>the ecliptic, and hold your eyes parallel to it for long enough, and you will get

869
01:03:42,150 --> 01:03:45,000
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>to feel the earth rotating instead of the stars rotating.

870
01:03:45,000 --> 01:03:46,200
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And it works.

871
01:03:46,200 --> 01:03:48,870
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>You can transform your perceptual experience.

872
01:03:51,090 --> 01:03:51,090
<v.speaker Sam>Yeah.

873
01:03:51,090 --> 01:03:54,780
<v.speaker Sam>Okay so, back to duality.

874
01:03:54,780 --> 01:04:03,360
<v.speaker Sam>Let's talk about where the concept of non-duality and, perhaps, emptiness fit in here.

875
01:04:03,360 --> 01:04:06,300
<v.speaker Sam>How would you integrate those words into the conversation?

876
01:04:07,470 --> 01:04:10,530
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Okay so, we've already been talking a bit about non-duality.

877
01:04:10,530 --> 01:04:16,920
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>So by duality, in this context, we don't mean the idea that there's two things in

878
01:04:16,920 --> 01:04:17,100
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>the world.

879
01:04:17,100 --> 01:04:22,830
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>We mean the idea that somehow there's an irreconcilable ontological difference, an

880
01:04:22,830 --> 01:04:25,800
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>epistemological difference between subject and object.

881
01:04:25,800 --> 01:04:28,890
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>That we are subjects independently of our objects.

882
01:04:28,890 --> 01:04:35,880
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>That objects have the qualities they have independent of our perception of them.

883
01:04:35,880 --> 01:04:40,830
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And that our subjectivity would persist even if we had no objects of consciousness

884
01:04:40,830 --> 01:04:46,110
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>and that we come into accidental relationship with objects in experience.

885
01:04:46,110 --> 01:04:49,410
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And we've been talking for quite a while about why that's crazy.

886
01:04:49,410 --> 01:04:55,650
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Now, when we turn to the concept of emptiness that you've asked me to bring in, which

887
01:04:55,650 --> 01:05:01,500
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>is an idea that emerges in Buddhism and evolves in Buddhist traditions, it's not univocal,

888
01:05:01,500 --> 01:05:07,800
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>but I'm going to take kind of a particular track through the Buddhist conceptual landscape.

889
01:05:07,800 --> 01:05:13,920
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>There, you always have to ask when somebody says that something is empty, "Of what

890
01:05:13,920 --> 01:05:19,530
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>is it empty?" So, for instance, I can assure you that my room right now is empty of

891
01:05:19,530 --> 01:05:19,590
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>elephants.

892
01:05:19,590 --> 01:05:21,780
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>There's no elephant here.

893
01:05:21,780 --> 01:05:25,290
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>But it's not empty of dogs, my dog is behind me.

894
01:05:25,290 --> 01:05:26,400
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And it's not empty of me.

895
01:05:26,400 --> 01:05:29,100
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And it's not empty of clutter on my desk.

896
01:05:29,100 --> 01:05:35,040
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>If you took all that stuff out, you might say, "Oh, gee, okay, is the room now empty?"

897
01:05:35,040 --> 01:05:37,620
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Well, no, it wouldn't be empty of furniture and pictures.

898
01:05:37,620 --> 01:05:43,710
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>If I take all of those out, it might still be empty of those, but not empty of air,

899
01:05:43,710 --> 01:05:44,610
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>and so forth.

900
01:05:44,610 --> 01:05:50,460
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>So the first thing that we need to always do is to identify what the philosophers

901
01:05:50,460 --> 01:05:56,400
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>called the object of negation, the thing that we're trying to show is not there.

902
01:05:56,400 --> 01:06:01,950
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>That's why, for instance, in our investigation of the self, we begin by identifying

903
01:06:01,950 --> 01:06:08,550
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>what we mean by a self, so that when we find that the person is empty of a self, we

904
01:06:08,550 --> 01:06:09,750
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>know what we're talking about.

905
01:06:09,750 --> 01:06:17,310
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Now, in the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, there are two broad accounts of what that

906
01:06:17,310 --> 01:06:19,410
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>object of negation is, of what emptiness is.

907
01:06:19,410 --> 01:06:24,390
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>In the Madhyamik tradition, the Middle Way tradition, that's grounded in the work

908
01:06:24,390 --> 01:06:29,310
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>of Nagarjuna and the perfection of wisdom sutras that were roughly coeval with Nagarjuna

909
01:06:29,310 --> 01:06:34,830
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>life we're talking about emptiness of intrinsic existence, or intrinsic identity.

910
01:06:34,830 --> 01:06:41,220
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And, by that, what we mean is that things that appear to have particular kinds of

911
01:06:41,220 --> 01:06:46,140
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>properties, that appear to have an essence, that appear to be substances with attributes

912
01:06:46,140 --> 01:06:48,840
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>are empty of that kind of existence.

913
01:06:48,840 --> 01:06:53,700
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>That things that appear to be independent are, in fact, interdependent.

914
01:06:53,700 --> 01:07:00,090
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>That things that appear to have their properties independent of our perception, in

915
01:07:00,090 --> 01:07:01,230
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>fact, depend upon those.

916
01:07:01,230 --> 01:07:06,270
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>So it's that kind of independent intrinsic reality that is the object of emptiness

917
01:07:06,270 --> 01:07:07,590
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>in the Madhyamik tradition.

918
01:07:07,590 --> 01:07:13,260
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>But in the Yogachara the mind only, the idealist tradition, or phenomenological tradition

919
01:07:13,260 --> 01:07:17,700
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>of Buddhism, the emptiness that we're talking about is emptiness of subject/object

920
01:07:17,700 --> 01:07:18,480
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>duality.

921
01:07:18,480 --> 01:07:24,570
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And there, the illusion isn't that things simply exist intrinsically, but they don't.

922
01:07:24,570 --> 01:07:32,010
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>The illusion is that the world exists as we encounter it, and that we just happen

923
01:07:32,010 --> 01:07:33,210
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>to encounter it.

924
01:07:33,210 --> 01:07:36,750
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And that it exists as it is independent of our subjectivity.

925
01:07:36,750 --> 01:07:39,630
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And our subjectivity just records it.

926
01:07:39,630 --> 01:07:41,400
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And that things are empty of that.

927
01:07:41,400 --> 01:07:48,420
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And the idea there is that the world that we experience is always a world that we

928
01:07:48,420 --> 01:07:51,450
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>construct, that we create, that we inhabit.

929
01:07:51,450 --> 01:07:53,700
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>It's a world that is...

930
01:07:53,700 --> 01:08:00,840
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Phenomena that are as dependent upon our cognitive and psychological processes, and

931
01:08:00,840 --> 01:08:07,350
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>the structure of our minds as they are on extramental conditions, but that they appear

932
01:08:07,350 --> 01:08:09,420
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>not to be so.

933
01:08:09,420 --> 01:08:11,310
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>They are empty of that independence.

934
01:08:11,310 --> 01:08:18,240
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>So the idea of subject/object duality and the idea of emptiness are very, very tightly

935
01:08:18,240 --> 01:08:18,690
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>connected.

936
01:08:18,690 --> 01:08:23,850
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And one way of expressing, if we wanted to do this in explicitly Buddhist language,

937
01:08:23,850 --> 01:08:32,310
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>the thesis of a book like Losing Ourselves is that we persons are empty of selves.

938
01:08:32,310 --> 01:08:41,370
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And in virtue of being empty of selves, our lived experience is, in fact, empty of

939
01:08:41,370 --> 01:08:46,980
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>the subject/object duality that we thematize when we introspect and characterize it.

940
01:08:48,510 --> 01:08:54,420
<v.speaker Sam>Yeah, that was a fantastic delineation of those two strands of emptiness within Buddhism.

941
01:08:54,420 --> 01:09:00,840
<v.speaker Sam>I don't only even think I was aware that the connection between non-duality and emptiness,

942
01:09:00,840 --> 01:09:03,870
<v.speaker Sam>which is certainly the more important one for...

943
01:09:03,870 --> 01:09:03,870
<v.speaker Sam>...

944
01:09:03,870 --> 01:09:06,420
<v.speaker Sam>and emptiness, which is certainly the more important one for me, as a matter of just

945
01:09:06,420 --> 01:09:13,440
<v.speaker Sam>my own practice, was a point first made in the Yogacara School.

946
01:09:13,440 --> 01:09:19,290
<v.speaker Sam>I have a courtesy of Dzogchen teaching, but I've never heard it linked there.

947
01:09:19,380 --> 01:09:24,960
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Dzogchen inherits a lot of ideas, both from Madhyamaka and from Yogacara.

948
01:09:24,960 --> 01:09:24,960
<v.speaker Sam>Yeah.

949
01:09:24,960 --> 01:09:28,140
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And it's really important to see that, because it's emerging out of this movement

950
01:09:28,140 --> 01:09:33,120
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>in Tibet that was called the Great Madhyamaka; which was a kind of fusion of Madhyamaka

951
01:09:33,120 --> 01:09:35,790
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>and Yogacara, inspired by Shantarakshita's work.

952
01:09:36,540 --> 01:09:36,540
<v.speaker Sam>Yeah.

953
01:09:37,320 --> 01:09:42,870
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>So it's no accident that you encounter ideas from both of these schools when you move

954
01:09:42,870 --> 01:09:45,330
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>to indigenous Tibetan systems like Dzogchen.

955
01:09:46,920 --> 01:09:56,040
<v.speaker Sam>So, and perhaps you can spell out what is meant by the title Mind Only School of Buddhism.

956
01:09:56,040 --> 01:09:58,890
<v.speaker Sam>What does Mind Only mean?

957
01:09:59,730 --> 01:10:00,810
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>That's a complex question.

958
01:10:00,810 --> 01:10:08,310
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And it's complex because the intellectual tradition in the Buddhist world that is

959
01:10:08,310 --> 01:10:13,080
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>called Mind Only, that the Sanskrit here would be Chittamatra, but also called Yogacara,

960
01:10:13,080 --> 01:10:13,320
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>or , Vijnanavada; that school is just vast, thousands and thousands of important texts.

961
01:10:13,320 --> 01:10:13,320
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And dozens and dozens of philosophers working in that school.

962
01:10:13,320 --> 01:10:13,320
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And, of course, it's got a very long history.

963
01:10:13,320 --> 01:10:30,810
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>So different people have meant different things by that expression.

964
01:10:30,810 --> 01:10:36,480
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>There are definitely texts in that school that can be read, and philosophers in that

965
01:10:36,480 --> 01:10:38,310
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>school, as pushing idealism.

966
01:10:38,310 --> 01:10:43,800
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>The idea that the only thing that really exists is mind and the external world is

967
01:10:43,800 --> 01:10:44,070
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>illusory.

968
01:10:44,070 --> 01:10:47,550
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>But that's only one strand in that school.

969
01:10:47,550 --> 01:10:53,490
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Another strand is a phenomenological strand, that argues that the only thing that

970
01:10:53,490 --> 01:10:57,360
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>we can directly experience and that we can work with is our mind.

971
01:10:57,360 --> 01:11:03,120
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And so that's where our attention ought to be, as my friend Dan puts it, "Mind Only

972
01:11:03,120 --> 01:11:05,070
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>means that your mind is your only problem."

973
01:11:06,210 --> 01:11:06,210
<v.speaker Sam>Yeah, that's great.

974
01:11:06,480 --> 01:11:07,500
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And that's another strand.

975
01:11:07,500 --> 01:11:12,270
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Another way of understanding this, though, the way that I kind of prefer to understand

976
01:11:12,270 --> 01:11:18,210
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>it, which is very much a kind of riff on the phenomenological reading, is that the

977
01:11:18,210 --> 01:11:25,080
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>object of our direct experience, the world in which we function, is a world that only

978
01:11:25,080 --> 01:11:29,040
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>exists as it shows up for our kind of mind.

979
01:11:29,040 --> 01:11:31,230
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>The point that we were making a little bit earlier.

980
01:11:31,230 --> 01:11:37,080
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>The properties that I see, the visual properties of the objects around me, are dependent

981
01:11:37,080 --> 01:11:40,290
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>upon the structure of my visual system.

982
01:11:40,290 --> 01:11:45,600
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>The sounds that I'm hearing are dependent on the structure of my auditory system.

983
01:11:45,600 --> 01:11:52,050
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>My introspective awareness of myself is dependent upon the language and concepts,

984
01:11:52,050 --> 01:11:56,040
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>in terms of which I introspect and self ascribed properties.

985
01:11:56,040 --> 01:12:02,490
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>So the entire world I inhabit, whether I take it to be external, or take it to be

986
01:12:02,490 --> 01:12:06,600
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>internal, is affected by the structure of my mind.

987
01:12:06,600 --> 01:12:12,660
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And that without understanding that, I can't understand what it is to be an object

988
01:12:12,660 --> 01:12:13,170
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>of experience.

989
01:12:13,170 --> 01:12:22,320
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>So that if we ask what things are like, independent of our cognitive and sensory modalities,

990
01:12:22,320 --> 01:12:25,710
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>that question doesn't make any sense.

991
01:12:25,710 --> 01:12:30,330
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And that's, I think, the real heart of Mind Only philosophy.

992
01:12:30,330 --> 01:12:37,500
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>So at the foundation of this school are the doctrine of Three Natures and Three Naturelessnesses,

993
01:12:37,500 --> 01:12:42,840
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>that are developed in the Sutra, Unraveling the Thought, the Samdhinirmochana Sutra.

994
01:12:42,840 --> 01:12:49,530
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And there we get this idea that when we say that things are empty, we can understand

995
01:12:49,530 --> 01:12:51,930
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>that in three interrelated ways.

996
01:12:51,930 --> 01:12:59,940
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>One way is to say that they are empty of the properties that we ascribe to them.

997
01:12:59,940 --> 01:13:04,890
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>That I ascribe colors to the surfaces of flowers, or to things on my desk.

998
01:13:04,890 --> 01:13:09,720
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And I know that those properties aren't in the things themselves, but are constructed

999
01:13:09,720 --> 01:13:14,400
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>by my visual system and would be constructed differently by a different visual system.

1000
01:13:14,400 --> 01:13:19,230
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Another way of saying that things are empty is to say that they're causally empty,

1001
01:13:19,230 --> 01:13:26,550
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>that they arise only in virtue of the complex of causes and conditions, and not as

1002
01:13:26,550 --> 01:13:27,300
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>unitary things.

1003
01:13:27,300 --> 01:13:31,500
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And another way to say that is that they are ultimately empty.

1004
01:13:31,500 --> 01:13:34,500
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>That is that when we ask, "Well, what's its nature?

1005
01:13:34,500 --> 01:13:38,430
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>I just want to know what the thing is." That's a question that doesn't make any sense

1006
01:13:38,430 --> 01:13:43,680
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>because I can only ask the question, "What is its nature for this particular kind

1007
01:13:43,680 --> 01:13:46,110
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>of subjectivity, at this particular moment?"

1008
01:13:47,670 --> 01:13:47,670
<v.speaker Sam>Right.

1009
01:13:47,880 --> 01:13:51,930
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And those are understood in terms of a way of thinking about the objects of experience,

1010
01:13:51,930 --> 01:13:58,590
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>whether those objects are external or internal; we can ask about how we imagine them

1011
01:13:58,590 --> 01:14:04,680
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>to be, we can ask about how they arise, and then we can ask about what they are and

1012
01:14:04,680 --> 01:14:06,960
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>that those are three very, very different questions.

1013
01:14:08,220 --> 01:14:08,220
<v.speaker Sam>Right.

1014
01:14:08,550 --> 01:14:11,940
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>The first question only takes us to the illusions we construct.

1015
01:14:11,940 --> 01:14:15,960
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>The second explains how those illusions are possible.

1016
01:14:15,960 --> 01:14:22,260
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And the third says that if we want to try to understand them independently of our

1017
01:14:22,260 --> 01:14:26,850
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>conceptual systems, there's nothing left to understand at all.

1018
01:14:28,740 --> 01:14:28,740
<v.speaker Sam>Okay.

1019
01:14:28,740 --> 01:14:34,830
<v.speaker Sam>So yeah, maybe there's something to say about that final sentence, because to many

1020
01:14:34,830 --> 01:14:41,490
<v.speaker Sam>scientifically or philosophically trained listeners that seems to kick open the door

1021
01:14:41,490 --> 01:14:47,220
<v.speaker Sam>to some kind of philosophical realism, right?

1022
01:14:47,220 --> 01:14:52,200
<v.speaker Sam>Or anti realism, where it is just like, there is no reality beyond experience.

1023
01:14:52,200 --> 01:15:00,090
<v.speaker Sam>Or it seems to commit us to some kind of idealism, something which a naturalistic

1024
01:15:00,090 --> 01:15:03,960
<v.speaker Sam>epistemology would want to disavow.

1025
01:15:05,160 --> 01:15:05,160
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Yeah.

1026
01:15:05,490 --> 01:15:09,990
<v.speaker Sam>And, I don't think that necessarily follows, but it can be heard to follow.

1027
01:15:09,990 --> 01:15:14,910
<v.speaker Sam>So for instance, I'm going to make a few claims here, which I think you will find

1028
01:15:14,910 --> 01:15:15,360
<v.speaker Sam>unobjectionable.

1029
01:15:15,360 --> 01:15:20,490
<v.speaker Sam>And, perhaps you can tell me how to understand them, in the terms you just sketched

1030
01:15:20,490 --> 01:15:25,680
<v.speaker Sam>out, of acknowledging the truth of emptiness and the construction of everything, based

1031
01:15:25,680 --> 01:15:27,420
<v.speaker Sam>on the type of minds we have.

1032
01:15:27,420 --> 01:15:35,820
<v.speaker Sam>There were mountains on earth long before there were people to experience, or think

1033
01:15:35,820 --> 01:15:36,540
<v.speaker Sam>about those mountains.

1034
01:15:36,540 --> 01:15:44,430
<v.speaker Sam>There are places in the galaxy that really do exist, that we will never see or think

1035
01:15:44,430 --> 01:15:46,770
<v.speaker Sam>about specifically, or name.

1036
01:15:46,770 --> 01:15:51,720
<v.speaker Sam>And they exist, whether or not we think about or name them.

1037
01:15:51,720 --> 01:15:54,660
<v.speaker Sam>What do you do with those claims?

1038
01:15:54,660 --> 01:16:02,370
<v.speaker Sam>Or how would you translate those claims into the kind of epistemology and ontology

1039
01:16:02,370 --> 01:16:03,720
<v.speaker Sam>you just sketched?

1040
01:16:04,620 --> 01:16:04,620
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Yeah.

1041
01:16:04,620 --> 01:16:09,240
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>The first thing you do is you endorse them because of course, those claims are right

1042
01:16:09,240 --> 01:16:10,710
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>about the world that we inhabit.

1043
01:16:10,710 --> 01:16:17,670
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Nothing I've said undermines a kind of robust, empirical realism about the world.

1044
01:16:17,670 --> 01:16:22,710
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And I want to underline one way to put that, is something that I said at the very

1045
01:16:22,710 --> 01:16:27,900
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>beginning of our interview, is that there's always a temptation to think that conventional

1046
01:16:27,900 --> 01:16:34,680
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>reality is second class reality, when in fact, it's simply an analysis of what reality

1047
01:16:34,680 --> 01:16:35,430
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>is.

1048
01:16:35,430 --> 01:16:39,990
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>It's not a denial that things are real, it's an explanation of a mode of reality.

1049
01:16:39,990 --> 01:16:49,800
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>But, but that kind of reality is consistent with, and in fact, forces us to a different

1050
01:16:49,800 --> 01:16:50,730
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>kind of unreality.

1051
01:16:50,730 --> 01:16:56,550
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>So when you ask, "Are you a realist or not?" That's not a question you can answer.

1052
01:16:56,550 --> 01:16:58,800
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>The question is "What kind of realist are you?

1053
01:16:58,800 --> 01:17:03,900
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And what kind of anti- realist are you?" Because any sane person has to be realist

1054
01:17:03,900 --> 01:17:05,910
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>in some sense, and anti-realist in another.

1055
01:17:05,910 --> 01:17:13,050
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And so the point is here, that the very realism that drives us to accept the existence

1056
01:17:13,050 --> 01:17:18,900
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>of mountains before there were people, and things happening in galaxies that are epistemically

1057
01:17:18,900 --> 01:17:26,490
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>inaccessible to us, but that are nonetheless real, forces us to believe that all of

1058
01:17:26,490 --> 01:17:32,820
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>our perceptual and conceptual access to the world is mediated by our brain's nervous

1059
01:17:32,820 --> 01:17:34,650
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>systems and other parts of our body.

1060
01:17:34,650 --> 01:17:40,770
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And that the way that world shows up for us in our experience is constructed.

1061
01:17:40,770 --> 01:17:46,860
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And the properties we experience things as having are simply the properties that we

1062
01:17:46,860 --> 01:17:49,290
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>are capable of detecting and representing.

1063
01:17:49,290 --> 01:17:58,050
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And so that the object of our experience, and that includes us ourselves when we introspect,

1064
01:17:58,050 --> 01:18:03,780
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>are one and all constructed by the organisms that we are.

1065
01:18:03,780 --> 01:18:07,140
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Otherwise, we couldn't experience them.

1066
01:18:07,140 --> 01:18:11,610
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>So the mountains that we see, if we asked, "What are the properties of that mountain

1067
01:18:11,610 --> 01:18:18,300
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>that was here before I was born, before anybody was born?" And we say, "Oh yeah, well,

1068
01:18:18,300 --> 01:18:21,720
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>it's kind of green because all the trees on it.

1069
01:18:21,720 --> 01:18:26,760
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And it's got all these beautiful sounds from chirping birds and so forth." All of

1070
01:18:26,760 --> 01:18:30,270
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>those properties that we experience are constructed properties.

1071
01:18:30,270 --> 01:18:35,610
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Properties constructed by the interaction of whatever is outside of us and whatever

1072
01:18:35,610 --> 01:18:40,380
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>is inside of us, not properties that are simply out there that we detect.

1073
01:18:40,380 --> 01:18:48,270
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>So in all of these ways, the kind of realism that we want to endorse, itself loops

1074
01:18:48,270 --> 01:18:53,400
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>back into a kind of anti realism about the world that we actually experience.

1075
01:18:53,400 --> 01:19:00,150
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Not an anti realism that says that world is non-existent, but an anti realism that

1076
01:19:00,150 --> 01:19:05,430
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>tells us that world is illusory, as it's often put in the Indian text, illusion-like.

1077
01:19:05,430 --> 01:19:09,540
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>That it appears in one way, but exists in another.

1078
01:19:09,540 --> 01:19:14,250
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>It appears to be dualistically related to our consciousness, but it's not.

1079
01:19:14,250 --> 01:19:20,010
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>It appears to exist independently with the properties we ascribe to it, but it doesn't.

1080
01:19:20,010 --> 01:19:23,580
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>It appears to exist intrinsically, but it doesn't.

1081
01:19:23,580 --> 01:19:29,280
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>The objects that we see appear to exist independently, but they don't.

1082
01:19:29,280 --> 01:19:33,600
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>So we need to have an illusionism that's coupled with our realism.

1083
01:19:33,600 --> 01:19:38,910
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And to recognize that scientific realism and the kind of experiential illusionism

1084
01:19:38,910 --> 01:19:42,840
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>are two sides of the same coin, not dualling positions.

1085
01:19:44,310 --> 01:19:44,310
<v.speaker Sam>Yeah.

1086
01:19:44,310 --> 01:19:49,290
<v.speaker Sam>To bring this back to the underlying neurology of it all and the lived experience,

1087
01:19:49,290 --> 01:19:55,230
<v.speaker Sam>these claims can sound spooky, but they're completely straightforward.

1088
01:19:55,230 --> 01:20:01,770
<v.speaker Sam>The world you see with your open eyes; the world, you see your body inhabit in this

1089
01:20:01,770 --> 01:20:06,480
<v.speaker Sam>moment; if you look down and you see your hands and you see them against the background

1090
01:20:06,480 --> 01:20:14,340
<v.speaker Sam>of the rest of what's in your visual field, the world, that is, neurologically speaking,

1091
01:20:14,340 --> 01:20:22,080
<v.speaker Sam>every bit as much a visionary experience as a dream is that you experience while you're

1092
01:20:22,080 --> 01:20:22,830
<v.speaker Sam>sleeping, right?

1093
01:20:22,830 --> 01:20:32,430
<v.speaker Sam>I mean, what you experience as a matter of your visual field is as much due to the

1094
01:20:32,430 --> 01:20:37,110
<v.speaker Sam>activity in your visual cortex now, as a dream vision ever is-

1095
01:20:38,000 --> 01:20:38,000
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>.

1096
01:20:38,000 --> 01:20:39,630
<v.speaker Sam>Not even slightly less than that.

1097
01:20:39,630 --> 01:20:45,030
<v.speaker Sam>It's just the only difference is the vision you're having now, in the waking state,

1098
01:20:45,030 --> 01:20:52,500
<v.speaker Sam>with your eyes open, is to some degree driven and constrained by the entanglement

1099
01:20:52,500 --> 01:20:55,380
<v.speaker Sam>of your nervous system with the external world.

1100
01:20:55,380 --> 01:20:57,120
<v.speaker Sam>That is, light coming into your eyes.

1101
01:20:57,120 --> 01:21:03,600
<v.speaker Sam>But the place you see with your eyes open, the world you see with your eyes open,

1102
01:21:03,600 --> 01:21:08,250
<v.speaker Sam>is the same place where your mind is.

1103
01:21:08,250 --> 01:21:09,180
<v.speaker Sam>It is your mind.

1104
01:21:09,180 --> 01:21:13,590
<v.speaker Sam>I mean, this is the same place in which you are thinking, in which your thoughts are

1105
01:21:13,590 --> 01:21:13,650
<v.speaker Sam>arising.

1106
01:21:13,650 --> 01:21:21,390
<v.speaker Sam>You can illustrate that for yourself by just visualizing something and foisting it

1107
01:21:21,390 --> 01:21:21,870
<v.speaker Sam>upon the world.

1108
01:21:21,870 --> 01:21:28,560
<v.speaker Sam>I mean, you can hold out your hands and visualize a tiny elephant in your hands right

1109
01:21:28,560 --> 01:21:28,830
<v.speaker Sam>now.

1110
01:21:28,830 --> 01:21:33,630
<v.speaker Sam>Now some people are very good visualizers and some aren't, but most people will get

1111
01:21:33,630 --> 01:21:37,350
<v.speaker Sam>a little intimation of something when they broadcast an elephant into their hands.

1112
01:21:37,350 --> 01:21:41,820
<v.speaker Sam>And it'll be a different something than when they broadcast an apple, or a chariot,

1113
01:21:41,820 --> 01:21:44,730
<v.speaker Sam>or a pair of skis, et cetera.

1114
01:21:44,730 --> 01:21:50,640
<v.speaker Sam>So as I change those objects for you, you see a wisp of something that is super imposed

1115
01:21:50,640 --> 01:21:51,360
<v.speaker Sam>on the world.

1116
01:21:51,360 --> 01:21:57,450
<v.speaker Sam>All of this, as a matter of neurology, requires the functioning of your visual cortex.

1117
01:21:57,450 --> 01:22:03,930
<v.speaker Sam>And when you're broadcasting objects there, we're dealing with a kind of top down

1118
01:22:03,930 --> 01:22:06,570
<v.speaker Sam>modulation of the activity in your visual cortex.

1119
01:22:06,570 --> 01:22:09,270
<v.speaker Sam>All of this is a construction of mind.

1120
01:22:09,270 --> 01:22:13,200
<v.speaker Sam>And that is the place you see with your eyes open.

1121
01:22:13,200 --> 01:22:13,920
<v.speaker Sam>Right?

1122
01:22:13,920 --> 01:22:18,720
<v.speaker Sam>And so the claim about non-duality, the claim about the illusoriness of the self,

1123
01:22:18,720 --> 01:22:24,840
<v.speaker Sam>is that the default experience that people are having of their being an experiencer

1124
01:22:24,840 --> 01:22:32,400
<v.speaker Sam>in the middle of experience, to which experience refers the self that is appropriating

1125
01:22:32,400 --> 01:22:33,330
<v.speaker Sam>experience.

1126
01:22:33,330 --> 01:22:41,310
<v.speaker Sam>The locus of consciousness that's on the edge of experience, that thing is either

1127
01:22:41,310 --> 01:22:46,380
<v.speaker Sam>also part of experience, and therefore there's only experience.

1128
01:22:46,380 --> 01:22:46,380
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Yeah.

1129
01:22:47,910 --> 01:22:49,590
<v.speaker Sam>Or it doesn't exist at all.

1130
01:22:49,590 --> 01:22:49,980
<v.speaker Sam>Right?

1131
01:22:50,000 --> 01:22:50,000
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>.

1132
01:22:50,160 --> 01:22:56,280
<v.speaker Sam>So it's like, if it exists, it's part of experience, and therefore is not at all what

1133
01:22:56,280 --> 01:22:56,970
<v.speaker Sam>it seems to be.

1134
01:22:57,600 --> 01:22:57,600
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Yep.

1135
01:22:58,050 --> 01:23:01,440
<v.speaker Sam>And so there really is, as a matter of experience, only experience.

1136
01:23:01,440 --> 01:23:03,870
<v.speaker Sam>So you're not on the edge of it.

1137
01:23:03,870 --> 01:23:05,160
<v.speaker Sam>You're not in the middle of it.

1138
01:23:05,160 --> 01:23:12,360
<v.speaker Sam>There is simply everything that's arising coincident with the condition in which it's

1139
01:23:12,360 --> 01:23:15,900
<v.speaker Sam>arising, which is, subjectively speaking, we call consciousness.

1140
01:23:15,900 --> 01:23:21,270
<v.speaker Sam>Objectively, or in a third person sense, we can describe that at various different

1141
01:23:21,270 --> 01:23:25,800
<v.speaker Sam>levels of what people are in relation to the rest of the world.

1142
01:23:25,800 --> 01:23:33,120
<v.speaker Sam>But at no point, does it make sense to put a rider on the horse of consciousness here

1143
01:23:33,120 --> 01:23:38,040
<v.speaker Sam>and say, "It is this separable point of view to which everything refers."

1144
01:23:39,300 --> 01:23:39,300
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Yeah.

1145
01:23:39,300 --> 01:23:41,730
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And here's the real cool kicker for that one.

1146
01:23:41,730 --> 01:23:48,060
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>What goes for the visual faculty that we've been focusing on as our central example,

1147
01:23:48,060 --> 01:23:52,110
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>goes for the introspective faculty as well.

1148
01:23:52,110 --> 01:23:56,370
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>One of the things that people learn when they start engaging with Indian philosophy,

1149
01:23:56,370 --> 01:24:01,410
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>is that in the Indian world, we always talk about six sense faculties, not five.

1150
01:24:01,410 --> 01:24:08,070
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Because the introspective faculty is taken to have the same structure as the external

1151
01:24:08,070 --> 01:24:08,550
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>senses.

1152
01:24:08,550 --> 01:24:13,980
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>That is it kind of detects objects and delivers them to us and helps and constructs

1153
01:24:13,980 --> 01:24:14,550
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>them.

1154
01:24:14,550 --> 01:24:21,870
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And it's worth pointing out that we have this powerful instinct, just as we take our

1155
01:24:21,870 --> 01:24:28,350
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>visual faculty to deliver the world to us just as it is, and we know that doesn't

1156
01:24:28,350 --> 01:24:28,950
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>make any sense.

1157
01:24:28,950 --> 01:24:34,770
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>We have this powerful tendency to think that our introspective sense faculty delivers

1158
01:24:34,770 --> 01:24:40,950
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>our inner world; our thoughts, our emotions, our feelings, our sensations to us, just

1159
01:24:40,950 --> 01:24:42,090
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>as they are.

1160
01:24:42,090 --> 01:24:48,630
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>But that makes just as little sense, because our introspective sense faculty can only

1161
01:24:48,630 --> 01:24:55,320
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>deliver our inner states to us as they appear to, and as they are constructed by that

1162
01:24:55,320 --> 01:24:55,560
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>faculty.

1163
01:24:55,560 --> 01:25:01,710
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And so when we talk about the illusion that the external world just has the properties

1164
01:25:01,710 --> 01:25:06,330
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>we see it to have, rather than that those properties are part of our construction,

1165
01:25:06,330 --> 01:25:12,990
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>we have to apply the same principle to the inner world and say that we don't know

1166
01:25:12,990 --> 01:25:15,360
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>ourselves immediately either.

1167
01:25:15,360 --> 01:25:21,030
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>But rather we know our inner lives only through the mediation of the introspective

1168
01:25:21,030 --> 01:25:21,690
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>faculty.

1169
01:25:21,690 --> 01:25:28,410
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And that's why to say, "I look inside and just find myself" or the for-me-ness, or

1170
01:25:28,410 --> 01:25:33,240
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>the subject behind that, doesn't tell you anything at all.

1171
01:25:33,240 --> 01:25:38,100
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Because even if you found that, all that would tell you, is that the way your experience

1172
01:25:38,100 --> 01:25:41,910
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>appears to you in introspection is thematized in that way.

1173
01:25:41,910 --> 01:25:43,500
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Not that there's a self there.

1174
01:25:45,240 --> 01:25:45,240
<v.speaker Sam>Yeah.

1175
01:25:45,240 --> 01:25:54,270
<v.speaker Sam>That also opens the door to an immense freedom to deconstruct and reconstruct your

1176
01:25:54,270 --> 01:25:57,630
<v.speaker Sam>experience, internally, emotionally, subjectively.

1177
01:25:57,630 --> 01:26:07,830
<v.speaker Sam>So for instance, that is why an emotion like anxiety say, is so open to being reframed,

1178
01:26:07,830 --> 01:26:15,900
<v.speaker Sam>and compared to excitement as a matter of physiology, such that it ceases to have

1179
01:26:15,900 --> 01:26:19,650
<v.speaker Sam>the meaning it held a moment before, right?

1180
01:26:19,650 --> 01:26:25,680
<v.speaker Sam>So if you're feeling anxious about giving a lecture and then you might reflect that

1181
01:26:25,680 --> 01:26:31,110
<v.speaker Sam>the physiology of these butterflies are more or less indistinguishable from the way

1182
01:26:31,110 --> 01:26:36,270
<v.speaker Sam>you feel when you're about to do something that you find absolutely thrilling.

1183
01:26:36,270 --> 01:26:44,190
<v.speaker Sam>Whether is it bungee jumping or something about what you've made a great effort to

1184
01:26:44,190 --> 01:26:45,150
<v.speaker Sam>actually do.

1185
01:26:45,150 --> 01:26:52,410
<v.speaker Sam>And by intentionally conflating those two things, you can actually change your experience

1186
01:26:52,410 --> 01:26:54,090
<v.speaker Sam>of what anxiety is.

1187
01:26:54,090 --> 01:26:58,890
<v.speaker Sam>It ceases to have the same kind of implication, to say nothing of what it means to

1188
01:26:58,890 --> 01:27:04,320
<v.speaker Sam>actually let the feeling of self itself drop out of the experience of anxiety.

1189
01:27:04,320 --> 01:27:12,330
<v.speaker Sam>I mean, that is another equalizing experience, that, again, gives you a freedom that

1190
01:27:12,330 --> 01:27:19,710
<v.speaker Sam>wouldn't otherwise be there if you thought there was this adamantine reality being

1191
01:27:19,710 --> 01:27:23,910
<v.speaker Sam>correctly perceived that "Here's anxiety and I'm an anxious person."

1192
01:27:24,930 --> 01:27:27,210
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>That's right, because it delivers immutability to you.

1193
01:27:27,210 --> 01:27:27,210
<v.speaker Sam>Yeah.

1194
01:27:27,960 --> 01:27:29,370
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And essentialism to you.

1195
01:27:29,370 --> 01:27:30,600
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And those are just really poisonous.

1196
01:27:30,600 --> 01:27:36,240
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And just as the self illusion delivers the idea that "I'm the subject and everybody

1197
01:27:36,240 --> 01:27:41,940
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>else is the object." And so delivers to me the prima facie justifiability of egoism,

1198
01:27:41,940 --> 01:27:42,570
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>right?

1199
01:27:42,570 --> 01:27:46,800
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Or the kind of anisotries of the moral sphere, as I kind of look at it.

1200
01:27:46,890 --> 01:27:46,890
<v.speaker Sam>Yeah.

1201
01:27:46,890 --> 01:27:48,420
<v.speaker Sam>Yeah.

1202
01:27:48,420 --> 01:27:55,200
<v.speaker Sam>And it also makes sense of the role that our social entanglement with others plays

1203
01:27:55,200 --> 01:28:00,090
<v.speaker Sam>in constructing who we are as people and as minds.

1204
01:28:00,090 --> 01:28:06,600
<v.speaker Sam>And, also just the fact that our mental states can be more visible to others at times,

1205
01:28:06,600 --> 01:28:09,840
<v.speaker Sam>and perceptible to them, than they are to ourselves.

1206
01:28:09,840 --> 01:28:13,440
<v.speaker Sam>I mean, my wife can know I'm angry before I know I'm angry.

1207
01:28:13,950 --> 01:28:13,950
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Yeah.

1208
01:28:14,100 --> 01:28:14,820
<v.speaker Sam>Or will admit I'm angry.

1209
01:28:15,210 --> 01:28:17,610
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>My wife knows I have a headache, before I know I have a headache.

1210
01:28:18,210 --> 01:28:18,210
<v.speaker Sam>Right.

1211
01:28:18,450 --> 01:28:18,600
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>More to the point.

1212
01:28:18,600 --> 01:28:18,960
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Yeah.

1213
01:28:19,860 --> 01:28:24,990
<v.speaker Sam>Yeah, well, Jay, is there anything we, anything we haven't covered feel free to add

1214
01:28:24,990 --> 01:28:27,360
<v.speaker Sam>anything here, but I'm now mindful of your time.

1215
01:28:27,360 --> 01:28:27,960
<v.speaker Sam>So is there-

1216
01:28:27,960 --> 01:28:27,960
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Okay.

1217
01:28:28,740 --> 01:28:30,300
<v.speaker Sam>Is there anything that you think we need to touch?

1218
01:28:30,750 --> 01:28:35,910
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>One last thing I would say is, one way to see this is that when we understand our

1219
01:28:35,910 --> 01:28:42,270
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>interdependence with those around us, rather than the idea that we are independent

1220
01:28:42,270 --> 01:28:48,630
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>entities that just happen to encounter one another; then we understand the role that

1221
01:28:48,630 --> 01:28:52,410
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>others have in constituting and making possible who we are.

1222
01:28:52,410 --> 01:28:57,840
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And that can allow an attitude of competition to be replaced by an attitude of gratitude.

1223
01:28:57,840 --> 01:29:01,890
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And gratitude itself can be extraordinarily liberating.

1224
01:29:03,150 --> 01:29:03,150
<v.speaker Sam>Yeah.

1225
01:29:03,150 --> 01:29:05,220
<v.speaker Sam>Well, Jay, it's been fascinating.

1226
01:29:05,220 --> 01:29:08,730
<v.speaker Sam>Thank you for the tour of the inner and outer landscape.

1227
01:29:10,110 --> 01:29:10,470
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Well, thank you.

1228
01:29:10,650 --> 01:29:12,360
<v.speaker Sam>Yeah, it's been great.

1229
01:29:12,360 --> 01:29:17,490
<v.speaker Sam>I'll remind people they can get your book Losing Ourselves and you've written other

1230
01:29:17,490 --> 01:29:20,040
<v.speaker Sam>books, but where else can they find you?

1231
01:29:20,040 --> 01:29:23,160
<v.speaker Sam>You're at Smith College mostly now, right?

1232
01:29:23,370 --> 01:29:24,750
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>At Smith College in the Harvard Divinity School.

1233
01:29:25,470 --> 01:29:25,470
<v.speaker Sam>Okay.

1234
01:29:25,740 --> 01:29:29,820
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>And so I can easily be found there, if you just Google me, you'll find my email address.

1235
01:29:29,820 --> 01:29:34,560
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>This book is Princeton University Press and just came out a few weeks ago.

1236
01:29:35,370 --> 01:29:35,370
<v.speaker Sam>Great.

1237
01:29:35,370 --> 01:29:36,450
<v.speaker Sam>Well, thanks again.

1238
01:29:36,450 --> 01:29:39,030
<v.speaker Sam>I hope our paths cross out in the real world, at some point.

1239
01:29:39,780 --> 01:29:39,780
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Indeed.

1240
01:29:39,780 --> 01:29:40,560
<v.speaker Jay Garfield>Thanks so much.