Despite mine, and others’, outspoken criticism of George Johnson’s review of the Dalai Lama’s book The Universe in a Single Atom in The New York Times Book Review (see October 10th posting: “Is Karma Intelligent Design?”), I think Johnson’s intentions were to offer what he perceived as a “religious” alternative to the nation’s preoccupation with intelligent design and evolution.
Latching on to “hidden causality” as a surrogate for a theistic Creator, Johnson’s analysis tragically misconstrued Buddhism as superstitiously dualistic and neglected the Dalai Lama’s more provocative statements about mind and matter being “codependent” with ”no absolute division.” Instead he chose to focus on Tenzin Gyatso’s rejection of wholly materialist explanations for mind and gives no philosophical consideration to the metaphysical implications of his rationale—namely—that materialism does not seem to account for the ‘’subjective experience of the individual.”
I don’t blame Johnson for steering clear of this debate. The Dalai Lama himself has advised mind scientists to shelve their metaphysical conclusions in trying to reconcile consciousness and matter. Nevertheless, philosophy as an education is not so much about arriving at answers as it is about learning how to ask the really interesting questions. It was with this in mind that I recently posed a few questions to two of the foremost thinkers in contemporary consciousness studies: B. Alan Wallace (Buddhism) and Owen Flanagan (philosophy). Their dialogue contains insightful commentary on each other’s ideas as well as suggestions for further reading.ༀ
Click on the highlighted text to read their responses.
B. Alan Wallace: “Materialism of the Gaps”
Owen Flanagan: Response
(see also Flanagan’s “Subjective Realism and Phenomenal Consciousness”&“Reversing the Arrow of Explanation in the Relational Blockworld: Why Temporal Becoming, the Dynamical Brain and the External World are all “in the Mind.”)
B. Alan Wallace: Response
Owen Flanagan: Re: non-physical mental properties
B. Alan Wallace: Response
Please make note of their forthcoming books: The Attention Revolution by B. Alan Wallace (Wisdom Publications, 2006), and The Bodhisattva’s Brain: Neuroscience, Virtue & Happiness by Owen Flanagan (2006).
