Pranam
CONCEPT OF EAST AND WEST PHILOSOPHY
” overlap to a particular extent, but there exist specific differences. The
views in Western and Eastern philosophy are diametrically opposite. In the
West, there exists a multitude of definitions of the “self”, whereas in
the East the predominant view is that the self is rather an illusion.
Taking this is in consideration, the issue of the status of the human self
requires a new linguistic-philosophical analysis in the light of both
contemporary science and philosophy. Today, in neurosciences and
neuropsychology the material substrate of the self is sought in the face of
the brain. Nonetheless, the use of unclear notions is a linguistic
confusion that undermines this process.
On the one hand, in Western philosophy many philosophers and psychologists
have advanced conceptions of the self, such as René Descartes, John Locke,
David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Johann Fichte, Georg Hegel, Sigmund Freud, Carl
Jung, Alfred Adler, William James, Karen Horny, Erich Fromm, Burrhus
Skinner and other (Bachvarov, Draganov & Stoev, 1978; Mosig, 2006; Zhu &
Han, 2008). In a closer temporal perspective, Daniel Dennett conceived of
the self as a homunculus, Patricia Churchland in the light of eliminative
materialism denies the existence of the self, whereas Charles Taylor, Marya
Chechtmann and Hilde Nelson introduced the narrative theory of self and
personal identity (see Sturm, 2007; Renz, 2017; Berčić, 2017; Dimkov,
2019a). On the other hand, in Eastern philosophy, the most well-known
conceptions of the self are represented by the views of Confucianism,
Taoism, Buddhism and Hinduism (Ho, 1995; Mosig, 2006).
2. Etymologico-philosophical analysis of the notion of “self” in Western
philosophy The notion of “self” has a derivative connotation from, perhaps,
the most famous thought of the French scientist and philosopher René
Descartes (XVII century) – “Cogito, ergo sum” – which introduced the
dualism of soul (mind) and body (Dekart, 1978). Descartes identifies
consciousness with thinking (Ivanov, 1985: 16). The laic notion of “soul”
is considered identical with the philosophical notion of “self”. In fact,
this connotation comes from the Judeo-Christian religion (Mosig, 2006: 39;
Zhu & Han, 2008: 1800). In former epochs of human history, the soul was
associated with the so-called animism (Ivanov, 1985: 15). The scientific
notion of “soul” is defined as “immediate experience” or “the constitutive
part of the self, remaining after the exclusion of the body (Krechmer,
1996: 5-6; translation P.R.D.). The self or the soul, in turn, is the “act
of experience”, contrasted with the “content of experience” (world or
matter) (Krechmer, 1996: 7; see Deikman, 1982). Baruch Spinoza conceived of
thinking as self-consciousness of nature (Ivanov, 1985: 17). Gottfried
Leibniz used the notion of “apperception” as a connotation of
“self-consciousness” (Ivanov, 1985: 16-17). David Hume thought of the mind
as a theatrical stage, composed of a flow of continuous, but inconstant
perceptions, which vary all the time. According to Hume, “identity” is
solely a quality, which we attribute to an object, including the self, but
due to the inconstancy of our perception, the self is a fiction (Hume,
1738/2003: 179-188; see Giles, 1993). Immanuel Kant in the XVIII century
adopted the view of the soul as a “transcendental ego” or a “synthetic
unity of consciousness” (Kant, 1781/1967). For Kant, the self, as such, is
a noumenon (a Ding-an-sich) and not a phenomenon. Georg Hegel viewed
consciousness as spirit (Ivanov, 1985: 17). He asserted that when the self
thinks about itself, it has to include itself in the thought, which,
according to him, represents a paradox (Hegel, 1832/2010: 691). The notion
of “transcendental ego” has been elaborated further in the works of Edmund
Husserl (Gradinarov, 1996). Martin Heidegger, a student of Husserl,
introduced the term “Dasein” to annotate the self and the term “care” to
define the “ontological a priori structure of man” (Needleman, 1963: 17,
22).
Later, in the 20th century, the father of psychoanalysis, the Austrian
neuroanatomist and neurologist Sigmund Freud introduced his famous
structural model of the psychic apparatus – id, ego and superego, in which
the ego or the self takes the middle position and thus becomes a symbol of
personal identity (Freud, 1923/1961). The word “ego” comes from Latin and
corresponds to the pronoun “I”. Exactly after the introduction of Freud’s
model, at least in post[1]socialist Bulgaria, the notion of “self” is
written with a capital letter. Arthur Deikman speaks of a transcendental
element, the so-called “observing self” in contrast to the “objective
self”, which can be cognized, but not seen, nor localized (Deikman, 1982:
95). According to Deikman, the awareness or the “observing self” is primal,
whereas its contents or intentionality are secondary. Of big importance is
the difference of the following notions to be elucidated: “consciousness”,
“self-consciousness”, “self” and “personal identity”. On the one hand, the
notions of “consciousness”, “soul” and “self” can be identified as
identical. On the other hand, self[1]consciousness emerges when the
attention of the self is directed towards itself. Furthermore, the
attention of the self towards experiential objects should be identified
with the self as such – the self is both the observing subject, which,
however, has its own personal history. As far as it concerns the notion of
“personal identity” – it represents the sum total of experiences and their
derivatives (thoughts, values, et cetera), which are related to the self
and are positioned in an interpretative system, which is constantly
enriched by each new experience.
3. The concept of self in Eastern philosophy In Eastern philosophy, the
most well-known conceptions of the self are represented by the views of
Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism and Hinduism (Ho, 1995; Mosig, 2006).
Confucianism. The concept of self, according to Confucianism, is related to
the social aspect of human existence. The self is conceived as a
“relational self” – “one which is intensely aware of the social presence of
other human beings” (Ho, 1995: 117). In this way, the individual self is
dependent on all other selves. The self is thus an obedient self, which
follows the appeals of social requirements, rather than its own needs and
desires. The ideal self, according to this doctrine, can be achieved
through a harmonization of one’s everyday communication with other
individuals in society at large (Ho, 1995: 118). Taoism. Taoism accentuates
the falsehood of language, way before the philosophy of linguistic analysis
and the deconstruction of Jacques Derrida. The so-called “Tao”, the essence
of life and the universe, or the Way, cannot be described by human
language. That is why paradoxes, contradictions, anecdotes, metaphors and
aphorisms are used. Tao is ineffable. According to the doctrine of Taoism,
“the self is but one of the countless manifestations of the Tao. It is an
extension of the cosmos” (Ho, 1995: 120). Taoism, in its idiosyncratic
style of exposition, describes the self in the following way: “The perfect
man has no self; the spiritual man has no achievement; the true sage has no
name” (Ibid.). The ideal of Taoism, therefore, is the achievement of a lack
of self or “selflessness”. Buddhism. Buddha advised that one should abstain
from dealing with metaphysics, because this activity is futile
(Radhakrishnan, 1996: 236-261). Nonetheless, Buddhism argues that the self
as such does not exist, that it is an illusion – “The self does not exist
apart from the states of consciousness […] [It] represents incessant series
of transient psychological states – this is everything, which we subsume
under the term ‘self’” (Radhakrishnan, 1996: 219-220; accent in the
original; cf. Hume, 1738/2003: 179-188; see Giles, 1993); there is no god,
nor matter, neither is there a phenomenal world. Thus, the doctrine of
“no-self” or “no-soul” emerged (Ho, 1995: 121; see Giles, 1993). No-self is
achieved through a self-negation in the state of nirvana, which is a “state
of absolute, eternal quiescence-a transcendent state of supreme equanimity
beyond the comprehension of ordinary people unawaken from the illusion of
selfhood” (Ho, 1995: 121). The schools of Mahayana define this state not as
nirvana, but rather as “emptiness” (Ho, 1995: 122). Nirvana, in turn, is a
very close state to what is called mystical experience (Dimkov, 2015, 2017,
2019c). Mystical experience is defined as follows (Gellman, 2014, italics
P.R.D.; Dimkov, 2017: 315-316): A. Broad use: A (purportedly) super
sense-perceptual or sub sense-perceptual experience granting acquaintance
of realities or states of affairs that are of a kind not accessible by way
of sense perception, somatosensory modalities, or standard introspection.
B. Narrow use: A (purportedly) super sense-perceptual or sub
sense-perceptual unitive experience granting acquaintance of realities or
states of affairs that are of a kind not accessible by way of
sense-perception, somatosensory modalities, or standard introspection. C.
Alterations in affectivity (e.g. a feeling of blessedness and peace),
perception (via a spiritual sense; subjective light) or awareness of
something outside the five standard sensory modalities, acquisition or
illumination with insightful and significant information (the noetic
quality), unification of opposites (e.g. beyond good and evil),
disappearance of the subject/object barrier and the time-space continuum,
resulting in a unitive experience (with a deity, a principle or a higher
reality), partial or full lack of phenomenal contents, objective character
and indescribability. Hinduism. Hinduism explains the self through a
monistic philosophy (metaphysics). Like Buddhism, Hinduism views the
essence of human life as consisting in suffering and asserts that this is
caused by having a fallacious conception of the self: “The true self is
permanent and unchanging, the non-true self is impermanent and changes
continually” (Ho, 1995: 124). Hinduism in the face of Vedanta postulates an
essence, which stands after the so-called transcendental unity of
consciousness (Kant) or the “Self-as-Knower”, namely the non-changeable
“Self-as-Witness” (Ho, 1995: 124). This kind of self is the true self,
which cannot be described, but can be experienced (cf. the conception of
the “Observing Self” of Deikman (Deikman, 1982)). The Upanishads discuss a
zone of non-thought, in which the Self-as-Knower and the Self-as-Witness
unite and enter into a trans-cognitive state, in which there is no place
for any cognition (Ho, 1995: 125). This state is described also by other
authors as e. g. a substantial matrix of consciousness (Dimkov), a mold of
man (Castaneda), a trans-subjective self (Stace) and a field of
consciousness (Formann) (Dimkov, 2015: 110-111; 2017: 317; 2019c: 71).
4. Neuroscientific research on the self In the neurosciences and
neuropsychology, researchers today are using the concept “self-referential
processing” as a basis in the search of the material substrate of the self
in the face of the brain. In the narrow sense, this concept denotes a
processing of experiences related to the self. As potential brain
candidates (substrates) of this kind of processing, researchers have
identified the following brain areas and networks: the medial prefrontal
cortex (mPFC) and the so-called default-mode network (DMN) (Dimkov, 2019b).
Experiences related to this processing and the abovementioned brain regions
are the following ones: spontaneous thinking, stimulus[1]independent
thinking and mind-wandering, which use imagination and low-level thinking
(Dimkov, 2019b). DMN and mPFC are also related to the loading of
autobiographical memories in the working memory, anticipation of the future
(especially in social situations) and the understanding of the perspectives
of other people (Dimkov, 2019b). Nonetheless, self-referential processing,
in fact, uses the memories of personal identity and, according to my
research, this concept does not correspond to the concept of “self” as such
(Dimkov, 2015, 2019b).
There are two more large-scale brain networks – the salience network
(SN) and the central-executive network (CEN), which, when taken together,
according to my research, correspond better to the functions of the self.
SN represents a network of attention, which monitors the changes in the
inner environment of the organism as well as in the outer environment (the
external world), so that when a salient object is detected, attention is
directed towards it and this network is responsible for the taking of an
adequate decision for a behavioral response towards the salient object, in
agreement with the value system of the individual itself. CEN, in turn, is
also an attentional network (exclusively of attention towards the outer
world and stores working memory). It is necessary to be noted that between
CEN and DMN a functional antagonism exists, meaning that when one of the
networks is active, the other is deactivated. SN regulates the switching
between the other two networks – between the inner (imaginative) and the
outer (perceptual) attention. 5. Conclusion The conceptions of self in
Eastern and Western philosophy are diametrically opposite (with small
exceptions – the views of David Hume and the so-called eliminative
materialism). According to Eastern philosophy, the self as an essence does
not exist and this is due to our ignorance of the true nature of the world.
According to Western philosophy, the self does exist, but the views on the
topic are pluralistic. To date, there is no consensus about the existence
of the self and what it actually represents. These obstacles, this
linguistic confusion, undermine the research in neurosciences, in which the
material substrate of the self is sought in the face of the brain,
particular structures and networks. Currently, the research on the self is
almost exclusively theoretical (linguistic and philosophical) and it is
concerned with the definition of the term. Nonetheless, the functions of
isolated brain structures and networks deliver empirical data, which could
assist the theoretical research on the self, and vice versa. Finally, any
research on the states of nirvana and mystical experiences can help with
throwing a new light on the research of the self.
Research paper through the Descartes, Dimkov P, Fraud S and Radhakrishnan S
. KR IRS 5522
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