I recently came across an article with the provocative title “Yes, There Is A Self” by David Mc Donald. To get the full context, I recommend reading David’s original essay and the discussion in the comments:
(Thank you for this reply. I will make some brief comments here and I may reply in more depth in a post. Although my post was mainly directed at the form of no self thougth by radical online non duality teachers (Pretty low hanging fruit, I know) I still have major issues with what your arguing for as well. I still think its riddled with pre assumed axiomatic assumptions that allow for no self to sound plausable.
Firstly, a brief point from a cognitive science perspective. The ancient Buddhist taxonomy of the things like the six sense doors and the five aggregates are thoroughly inadequate. It artificially dichotomizes the senses, and so can’t handle synaesthesia and complex forms of cross-modal integration. It doesn’t properly describe interoception, proprioception, and kinaesthesia. It also doesn’t distinguish between all the varieties of mental processes (mental attention, working memory, metacognition, etc.) Its an ancient way of artificially breaking up the mind, and its pre assumed. You are going to have to first of all defend the validity of the 6 sense doors and aggregates. To me, they are outdated assumptions that don’t and cant account for the above. pre-scientific taxonomies like this have a lot of issues. But, science alone cannot answer this question, I will admit. That’s where we will have to resort to philosophical lines of reasoning.
If I take a philosophical angle (Aristotle, Aquinas) I still hold that Mental states are attributes, and attributes cannot be identified or individuated except by reference to a substance in which they inhere. (And this does not contradict cognitive science, nore is it at odds with it) There is no way to identify the relevant causal relations between mental states without reference to a self. The self is real and irreducible which entails that it is a substance that persists through changes of its attributes and cannot coherently be identified with the collection of attributes themselves. Edward Feser defined it as “The substance—a unified, immaterial, rational soul—which underlies, unifies, and endures through the various psychological states, bodily changes, and experiences of a human person”
Permanence and independence are also not the essential criteria for selfhood. what defines the self is that it is a metaphysical subject, the locus in which mental events inhere, and which gives them unity and ownership. Even if coherence and substance are impermanent, they are still features that require grounding. To deny their grounding is not to refute the self but to destroy the intelligibility of experience itself:
Non-self doesn’t deny a “percipient”??? But if that’s the case then you must answer: what is the percipient? What is this “not-self” that nonetheless perceives? Its like youre trying to keep music while denying vibration. I see this as absolutely insurmountable and impossible to get around, so I am looking forward to your response.
If no experience can yield a self, then the very act of evaluating experience for selfhood becomes unintelligible. Who is the evaluator? Who is performing this epistemic abstention? I have found all answers to this question form a Buddhist perspective to be circular, or they in some way smuggle in a self.
From an Advaita perspective, If you’re analyzing and negating each aggregate in turn, you're relying on a continuity of awareness across time. But that continuity isn’t in the aggregates, it’s what binds them. You can't deconstruct a rope by inspecting and discarding its threads while still holding the rope.
The very act of disidentification presupposes a unified subject of experience. Its also a textbook category error, confusing the attributes of a thing with the thing itself(As mentioned above). As Edward Feser argued in his book on the nature of persons “changeability in attributes doesn’t imply the nonexistence of the subject that possesses them.
Your argument also assumes that selfhood would require omnipotent control. But no serious philosophical tradition—not Aristotelian, not Cartesian, not even most forms of Vedānta, claims that the self, as such, entails sovereign power over all aspects of its condition. Agency doesn’t require omnipotence; it requires unity, intention, and continuity. And that is a pretty deep conversation in and of itself, control and free will. It would end up being an entire discussion in itself.
“Attributes cannot be identified or individuated apart from the substance in which they inhere… identifying the bundles by reference to the individual mental states, and identifying the individual mental states by reference to the bundles of which they are members, would only yield a viciously circular “ explanation
Insight into anattā isn’t just a technique; it’s what liberates (SN 22.59). If clinging to the five aggregates as self results in dukkha, and releasing that clinging leads to cessation, this points to an ontological insight: things are not-self. It works because it gets at what’s really going on. The dual role of pragmatic fruit and doctrinal truth isn’t a contradiction in early Buddhism; it’s a convergence.
You claim that it would be circular to define the whole by its parts, and vice versa, but that’s not how the aggregates are formulated. Indeed, the aggregates function together in a way that gives rise to a unified experience; that’s precisely why the appearance of a self arises. But this does not require positing a self as an entity behind them. EBT distinguishes between conventional appearance (sammuti sacca) and ultimate reality (paramattha sacca). The everyday sense of “I” is just a handy way of speaking, like calling the moon ‘half’ when it’s just our angle on it (SN 1.25). As I briefly touched on in my original response, the aggregates are like foam, a mirage, or a magical illusion appearing to cohere but empty of essence (SN 22.95). You argue that only a self can explain the unity of experience, but this assumes that unity requires a metaphysical ground. EBT explains unity as emergent: viññāṇa arises in dependence on nāma-rūpa (SN 12.67), and the aggregates condition each other. Coherence doesn’t imply a self; it reflects causal coordination. The sense of self is what arises from that coordination, not what explains it. That’s the point the earlier analogy was meant to show: the sense of a unified self is not denied, but it is explained as an illusion arising from dependently arisen processes. It doesn’t point to a thing that exists in its own right.
You might ask, ‘what is it that goes through dependent origination?’ But that question already assumes there’s a thing going through it. The Buddha cautions against reifying what arises dependently (SN 22.82). To insist there must be a bearer or substrate is to smuggle in a metaphysics the Buddha refused to endorse. The aggregates are impermanent and conditioned, and what’s conditioned is ultimately not fit to be taken as self. The khandhas work precisely because they co-arise in dependency, not because they’re anchored in a metaphysical ground.
“Who is the evaluator?" This is a classic fallacy, once again assuming the truth of its premise. It’s not that there’s no evaluating going on, just that it doesn’t need a permanent ‘evaluator’ behind it. Pratītyasamutpāda perfectly accounts for this. Intention (cetanā), as part of the volitional formations (saṅkhāra) (as I listed in my response), is not-self (SN 22.59); it arises due to conditions and ceases when those conditions end. To clarify, when EBT describes phenomena like perception, agency, or unity, it does so without ontological reification. These are emergent and contingent processes, not indicators of a metaphysical self. The suttas keep showing that things like perception and intention arise through causes, and don’t have some deeper essence behind them. They operate conventionally, but do not imply a subject behind them that doesn’t require a metaphysical agent. Just like fire doesn’t need a fire-being, intention doesn’t need some hidden “intender” behind it.
As for cognitive science, it’s a common misconception nowadays that Buddhism is somehow obligated to prove its legitimacy to modern science, when this was never the aim in the first place. As the Buddha famously said, he teaches only suffering and the cessation of suffering (MN 22). Your point that Buddhism “doesn’t properly describe interoception, proprioception, and kinaesthesia… doesn’t distinguish between all the varieties of mental processes (mental attention, working memory, metacognition, etc.)” assumes that it needs to. It’s kind of an apples-to-oranges situation. The Buddha's classification isn’t biological; it’s phenomenological, and the examples you bring up don’t reveal anything unaccounted for. A simple Google search will show that these concepts are defined by awareness and perception, falling under the aggregates of saññā (perception), viññāṇa (consciousness), and saṅkhāra (formations); Buddhism just groups them functionally rather than anatomically. Also, the categories aren’t as rigid as you make them out to be; they work in conjunction (i.e., perception and consciousness; it’s impossible to perceive without being conscious).
It’s perfectly valid to hold a view informed by cognitive science, but to claim it disproves Buddhism is to presume falsely that the two disciplines share the same aims and methods. It’s not that Buddhism is refuted by cognitive science, but that the aims are incommensurate: one tracks conditions mechanistically, the other tracks them existentially and ethically. In that same vein, Buddhism doesn’t deny science as much as it proposes an entirely different viewpoint.
You might argue that labeling the self an illusion is itself a kind of explanatory gap-filling. But Buddhism doesn’t just say it’s an illusion and stop there, it explains how that illusion comes about. It tracks it causally, tracing it to contact, feeling, craving, clinging, and becoming (SN 12.2). The sense of self is not dismissed as meaningless, but diagnosed and disarmed. So it’s not hand-waving, it’s an explanation. The doctrine of non-self is not a placeholder, but a path of investigation: the sense of self arises under specific conditions and ceases when those conditions are uprooted.
My framing of the theoretical self was based on the antithesis of Buddhist analysis (anicca and dukkha being signs of anattā, therefore permanence and non-suffering being signs of self). Admittedly, this was a bit naive, given my unfamiliarity with the opposing thinkers, but even the more nuanced takes don’t escape the trap of laden assumption.
On that note, here’s a question: not to dodge anything, but to clarify where the weight of proof lies. Since the EBT view provides a detailed and internally coherent account of perception, subjectivity, and unity of experience without positing a metaphysical self, on what basis should we abandon that framework in favor of one that introduces additional ontological commitments? If the self is to be affirmed, what positive evidence can be offered beyond the feeling of selfhood or conceptual necessity to warrant that claim? Because otherwise, the explanatory burden lies with the one making the greater assertion.
Again, all best wishes, and thanks for engaging in this challenging and thought-provoking discussion. As Thanissaro Bhikkhu says, “Don’t let the Buddha off the hook.” Putting the teaching to the test is important. Sorry for the rather late response, been vacationing in Las Vegas, coming across casino Buddhas and fake street monks (jokes aside, the city is gorgeous). Anyway, looking forward to some elaboration, whether in response to this comment or a separate article.
Thanks for the thought-out response, it's definitely something to chew on. You brought up a lot of strong points; here are some responses and clarifications:
You’re right to call out the lack of clarity in my response. In my earlier phrasing, I was saying it’s a fallacy to suggest that Buddhism denies the percipient, leaving much room for misunderstanding. What I meant wasn’t that early Buddhism affirms a subject who perceives, but that it accounts for perception without needing to invent some deeper 'self' behind it. It’s important to separate what’s just a way of describing experience from what’s being claimed to exist at some deeper level. The doctrine of anattā doesn’t erase the empirical phenomena we associate with agency or subjectivity; it reframes them as contingent and processual, not absolute.
This point about non-self not requiring the negation of a percipient had to do with the non-dual lens (‘all is one, so there is no individual percipient or perception’). Your original critique was based on these theories. I described it as a straw man because you implied that the non-dual philosophy itself needs to hold water for the doctrine of non-self to be coherent, which doesn't account for the EBT perspective, positing perception as simply dependently arisen from contact, notably not necessitating self (MN 18). I should have fleshed this out more in my response, and ‘percipient’ wasn't the right word for my framing. My point was simply that perception doesn’t entail a self behind it, but I assumed that the section on the aggregates themselves being of a non-self nature made this clear enough. Apologies for the lack of clarity.
I’m not trying to dodge the question, just trying to make clear the framework I’m working from. One can meaningfully speak of perception and cognition without committing to a self in the metaphysical sense. This isn't to redefine self out of existence but to show that what the term ‘self’ is often made to stand for, perceptual unity, decision-making, and memory, can be better explained through dependently arisen processes without appeal to essence or substratum.
The notion that perception itself implies self is a loaded assumption. Concluding that perception needs to be negated because of the nature of self is a straw man. After all, this framework isn't what is used in EBT. I'm not familiar with the Aristotle, Aquinas, Feser, etc. schools of thought (perhaps something to cover more in depth in the separate post you might plan on making), so I can't go into much depth here, but your definition of self is as follows: "it is a substance that persists through changes of its attributes and cannot coherently be identified with the collection of attributes themselves." If that's the case, then this completely falls into the realm of speculative assumption. The view that something persists is the core point of contention here. It's something that requires belief. Now you're free to accept that belief, but basing your argument on this doesn’t pose a challenge to non-self, just a differing view that’s far less grounded.
Not all disagreement is just speculation, but once a claim hinges on some unseen essence that only makes sense logically, that’s where Buddhist thought tends to cut it down. The Buddha isn’t saying ‘you can’t think that,’ but ‘is it observable? Is it verifiable? Is it useful?’ What passes for metaphysical necessity often turns out, under scrutiny, to be a projection of habit and conceptual dependence.
You posit that this self would be unity or the locus in which mental states occur, but this itself smuggles in presumptions: that unity requires a metaphysical self, experience must inhere in a locus, and that this is necessary for intelligibility. I simply don’t see how any of these claims meant to challenge non-self can be made without the immense baggage. This is exactly what the Buddha teaches to investigate, not accept. To say the self is some kind of hidden essence just assumes the very thing you’re trying to prove. If someone says, ‘we need a bearer of experience,’ Buddhism replies, ‘what do you call bearer that isn’t just the process itself misread?’
I get that I’m also working from some basic assumptions, like how impermanence and suffering point to not-self, but I think the Buddha is asking us to buy a lot less than the abstract metaphysics you propose; this is displayed in how he rejected many metaphysical speculations. Not because they are inherently false, but due to their loaded premises [i.e., not responding to the question of where Tathagatas go after death because the question itself contains a metaphysical assumption (MN 63)]. This isn’t a dodge, it’s methodological consistency and clarity.
That’s basically what I was getting at with the ‘wager’ idea: in a practical sense (not to insinuate that pragmatism is measured by truth, it functions as a tool), would it be better to assume anatta or a theoretical postulation of self? My position is that non-self is more empirically grounded, in addition to the view reaping benefit, as opposed to the harmful processes of I-making and mine-making of its antithesis (The canon thoroughly elaborates how differing manifestations of conceit lead to harm). And we shouldn’t underestimate the epistemic value of soteriology. If a view actually ends suffering, that says something real about its truth, not just its usefulness.
Having read through this back and forth, I've come to realize there's a deeper divide here than it appears, and we don't necessarily need to use the justification of no-self in Buddhism to critique David's points, as I suggested in my original follow-up in his article. Rather than respond to him though, seeing as he isn't seriously engaging with your clarifications nor did he with mine to come to any shared understanding, I thought I might attempt to settle the confusion here, or at least point it in a different direction.
The core of the issue is about how we apply models of a substance vs process ontology, and David's article only really engaged with the former, albeit in a limited way. His argument assumes a substance ontology, where thoughts and similar attributes must inhere in some persisting “thing," but never actually demonstrates that such a substance exists beyond inference, making the burden of proof for that still on him. Cognitive science often works just as well, if not better, with a process ontology, where our mental states are understood as events arising from dynamic, interacting processes of our biological systems, without positing a fixed, substantial subject. Our everyday sense of an “observer” is explained as a natural byproduct of the reflexivity of consciousness (i.e. that it's always "of" something), not proof of a soul or essence.
Thinkers like Thomas Metzinger and Derek Parfit have also shown how selfhood can be understood as a constructed narrative that unifies experience without requiring an underlying substance. This aligns with Buddhist thought, where the Buddha neither affirmed nor denied a self to Vacchagotta (to not have to affirm eternalism or nihilism), but instead pointed out that the sense of “I”-ness is a conceptual projection onto impermanent processes (the aggregates) rather than something inherently existing (for a liberative purpose, of course).
This brings us to a larger issue that effectively undermines this discussion on the whole, and which you briefly touched on with the matter of the usefulness of these ontologies as models. A substance ontology doesn't have to be in conflict with a process ontology so long as its purpose and application is also made clear, part of what Wittgenstein's philosophy of language points to with "meaning as use." He effectively understood many philosophical problems like this as confusions, with misplaced expectations about how language is intended to be communicated to express the same insights into the nature of private experience (part of different "language games" or "forms of life").
So the apparent “conflict” is really a category error of treating models designed for one context (one with phenomenological and soteriological frameworks) as if they were designed for another (an empirical framework for cataloging what exists “out there” independent of experience). We're not disagreeing about reality, just misunderstanding how these concepts can function. This also undermines his claim that the six sense doors and five aggregates are some outdated proto-science of the senses when that was never the intention behind them anyway (i.e. in fact, proprioception and the other ones he mentions can be applied as extensions of the six sense doors rather than missing parts of them, but that's besides the point). When you strip away the assumption that there’s a single metaphysical fact of the matter for a “self” that both of us must be answering, what remains is a pluralism of conceptual tools for different purposes. In that light, David’s whole argument stops looking like “Buddhism vs. science” or “no-self vs. self” and more like two different toolkits that he’s trying to force into the same blueprint when it isn't necessary.
Thanks for this insightful comment. I would like to mention that David and I continued the discussion in the comments on his later article: "A Critique of 'Ego Disillusionment' Teachers."
The thread is rather lengthy, but if you'd like to see more of his perspective, it would be useful to read. I agree with your reply, you're putting words to a similar idea that I have been attempting to express. It seems that the fundamental disagreement is whether or not Buddhism can function separately from cognitive science, which he believes it cannot, due to conflicts between the latter and doctrines of craving being the cause of all suffering, appropriation leading to suffering, etc. (which he claims are indemonstrable). I have highlighted the Buddhist context of "suffering and the cessation of suffering", not what the best mental health treatment is, how to reduce stress for work life, etc., which are subjects meant to be tackled by CS. Similar to your point in this reply, I think it's unfair to insist that these two mutually exclusive frameworks must function in harmony. Not only is this a misinterpretation of Buddhism, but also a misinterpretation of religion as a whole. This leads to a seeming double standard from David, as he holds that Christian/Islamic mysticism are acceptable self-help tools, while Buddhism isn't. This I see as an insurmountable contradiction, as then you would have to explain how Christian/Islamic mysticism can function in harmony with CS (I am still awaiting David's explanation on this).
I'm also struggling to see how I'm supposed to prove or demonstrate the aggregate model and craving leading to suffering, given that I see these as empirical aspects of existence rather than some abstract doctrine akin to a creator god or rebirth.
There's also the question of how one should approach suffering as a whole, which David sees as a beautiful aspect of human existence rather than a problem to get rid of. I am also awaiting David's explanation on this, as I struggle to see how pain, despair, etc. can be seen as a positive. I understand that these can serve as tools for personal growth, but again, Buddhism isn't about that; it's about the cessation of personality as a whole. I've seen posts on Substack arguing that this is 'philosophical overkill'; however, these proponents would have to engage in a sort of apologetics for suffering, which I see as dangerous and out of touch (see my replies in David's new post for more on this). In short, it's easier to accept suffering as a part of beautiful human existence when you're not suffering much in the first place; it's a privileged perspective that lacks self-awareness.
I admit that I am not well-versed in these philosophical concepts that you are alluding to, which are of great use in settling this discussion. I appreciate these pointers, and I will look into the thinkers and ideas that you have outlined. EBT has served as my introduction to this field of study, which can be awkward given the contrasting aims of EBT. If anything, this discussion has been a big eye-opener for me and hopefully for David as well.
I echo your sentiment that the issue is more one of confusion rather than 'One answer is absolutely correct, and everything else is wrong' - this line of thought was vehemently rejected by the Buddha, as you know.
Thanks again for this comment, and I'd look forward to any further engagement from your part, if that's something you're interested in, of course.
Yes, that's why I would think getting the context right and establishing what standards for argumentation we're using matters in this case. Why certain things were taught have to be understood on their own terms, which requires examining the intentions, definitions, and assumptions at play, which requires we expect that these topics have been debated about and explored for centuries already.
At that point, there's either a discussion that's already taken place that answers our questions and dissolves our confusions (e.g. see Dharmakirti's replies to the Nyaya schools' critiques of no-self/emptiness), or there's something they don't take into account that no one else has brought up in the history of the world which I doubt given the breadth and depth of philosophical literature. It's just important that we know where to look to deepen what we understand about what we're claiming.
If we're motivated instead to prove a point, or hold onto a dogma, that's anyone's prerogative, but there are still reasons these concepts are used and function for many people in practice, which we can either consider better understanding, or to ignore at the cost of strengthening how well informed our opinions could be. I'll admit even my own reply here in the thread isn't as exhaustive or nuanced as I'd have wanted it to be, as that would be a much larger conversation than I have time for, but I do hope some of the ideas I introduced change how we ordinarily think about this subject in a wider sense.
(Thank you for this reply. I will make some brief comments here and I may reply in more depth in a post. Although my post was mainly directed at the form of no self thougth by radical online non duality teachers (Pretty low hanging fruit, I know) I still have major issues with what your arguing for as well. I still think its riddled with pre assumed axiomatic assumptions that allow for no self to sound plausable.
Firstly, a brief point from a cognitive science perspective. The ancient Buddhist taxonomy of the things like the six sense doors and the five aggregates are thoroughly inadequate. It artificially dichotomizes the senses, and so can’t handle synaesthesia and complex forms of cross-modal integration. It doesn’t properly describe interoception, proprioception, and kinaesthesia. It also doesn’t distinguish between all the varieties of mental processes (mental attention, working memory, metacognition, etc.) Its an ancient way of artificially breaking up the mind, and its pre assumed. You are going to have to first of all defend the validity of the 6 sense doors and aggregates. To me, they are outdated assumptions that don’t and cant account for the above. pre-scientific taxonomies like this have a lot of issues. But, science alone cannot answer this question, I will admit. That’s where we will have to resort to philosophical lines of reasoning.
If I take a philosophical angle (Aristotle, Aquinas) I still hold that Mental states are attributes, and attributes cannot be identified or individuated except by reference to a substance in which they inhere. (And this does not contradict cognitive science, nore is it at odds with it) There is no way to identify the relevant causal relations between mental states without reference to a self. The self is real and irreducible which entails that it is a substance that persists through changes of its attributes and cannot coherently be identified with the collection of attributes themselves. Edward Feser defined it as “The substance—a unified, immaterial, rational soul—which underlies, unifies, and endures through the various psychological states, bodily changes, and experiences of a human person”
Permanence and independence are also not the essential criteria for selfhood. what defines the self is that it is a metaphysical subject, the locus in which mental events inhere, and which gives them unity and ownership. Even if coherence and substance are impermanent, they are still features that require grounding. To deny their grounding is not to refute the self but to destroy the intelligibility of experience itself:
Non-self doesn’t deny a “percipient”??? But if that’s the case then you must answer: what is the percipient? What is this “not-self” that nonetheless perceives? Its like youre trying to keep music while denying vibration. I see this as absolutely insurmountable and impossible to get around, so I am looking forward to your response.
If no experience can yield a self, then the very act of evaluating experience for selfhood becomes unintelligible. Who is the evaluator? Who is performing this epistemic abstention? I have found all answers to this question form a Buddhist perspective to be circular, or they in some way smuggle in a self.
From an Advaita perspective, If you’re analyzing and negating each aggregate in turn, you're relying on a continuity of awareness across time. But that continuity isn’t in the aggregates, it’s what binds them. You can't deconstruct a rope by inspecting and discarding its threads while still holding the rope.
The very act of disidentification presupposes a unified subject of experience. Its also a textbook category error, confusing the attributes of a thing with the thing itself(As mentioned above). As Edward Feser argued in his book on the nature of persons “changeability in attributes doesn’t imply the nonexistence of the subject that possesses them.
Your argument also assumes that selfhood would require omnipotent control. But no serious philosophical tradition—not Aristotelian, not Cartesian, not even most forms of Vedānta, claims that the self, as such, entails sovereign power over all aspects of its condition. Agency doesn’t require omnipotence; it requires unity, intention, and continuity. And that is a pretty deep conversation in and of itself, control and free will. It would end up being an entire discussion in itself.
“Attributes cannot be identified or individuated apart from the substance in which they inhere… identifying the bundles by reference to the individual mental states, and identifying the individual mental states by reference to the bundles of which they are members, would only yield a viciously circular “ explanation
That’s something to chew on for now 😊
2/2
Insight into anattā isn’t just a technique; it’s what liberates (SN 22.59). If clinging to the five aggregates as self results in dukkha, and releasing that clinging leads to cessation, this points to an ontological insight: things are not-self. It works because it gets at what’s really going on. The dual role of pragmatic fruit and doctrinal truth isn’t a contradiction in early Buddhism; it’s a convergence.
You claim that it would be circular to define the whole by its parts, and vice versa, but that’s not how the aggregates are formulated. Indeed, the aggregates function together in a way that gives rise to a unified experience; that’s precisely why the appearance of a self arises. But this does not require positing a self as an entity behind them. EBT distinguishes between conventional appearance (sammuti sacca) and ultimate reality (paramattha sacca). The everyday sense of “I” is just a handy way of speaking, like calling the moon ‘half’ when it’s just our angle on it (SN 1.25). As I briefly touched on in my original response, the aggregates are like foam, a mirage, or a magical illusion appearing to cohere but empty of essence (SN 22.95). You argue that only a self can explain the unity of experience, but this assumes that unity requires a metaphysical ground. EBT explains unity as emergent: viññāṇa arises in dependence on nāma-rūpa (SN 12.67), and the aggregates condition each other. Coherence doesn’t imply a self; it reflects causal coordination. The sense of self is what arises from that coordination, not what explains it. That’s the point the earlier analogy was meant to show: the sense of a unified self is not denied, but it is explained as an illusion arising from dependently arisen processes. It doesn’t point to a thing that exists in its own right.
You might ask, ‘what is it that goes through dependent origination?’ But that question already assumes there’s a thing going through it. The Buddha cautions against reifying what arises dependently (SN 22.82). To insist there must be a bearer or substrate is to smuggle in a metaphysics the Buddha refused to endorse. The aggregates are impermanent and conditioned, and what’s conditioned is ultimately not fit to be taken as self. The khandhas work precisely because they co-arise in dependency, not because they’re anchored in a metaphysical ground.
“Who is the evaluator?" This is a classic fallacy, once again assuming the truth of its premise. It’s not that there’s no evaluating going on, just that it doesn’t need a permanent ‘evaluator’ behind it. Pratītyasamutpāda perfectly accounts for this. Intention (cetanā), as part of the volitional formations (saṅkhāra) (as I listed in my response), is not-self (SN 22.59); it arises due to conditions and ceases when those conditions end. To clarify, when EBT describes phenomena like perception, agency, or unity, it does so without ontological reification. These are emergent and contingent processes, not indicators of a metaphysical self. The suttas keep showing that things like perception and intention arise through causes, and don’t have some deeper essence behind them. They operate conventionally, but do not imply a subject behind them that doesn’t require a metaphysical agent. Just like fire doesn’t need a fire-being, intention doesn’t need some hidden “intender” behind it.
As for cognitive science, it’s a common misconception nowadays that Buddhism is somehow obligated to prove its legitimacy to modern science, when this was never the aim in the first place. As the Buddha famously said, he teaches only suffering and the cessation of suffering (MN 22). Your point that Buddhism “doesn’t properly describe interoception, proprioception, and kinaesthesia… doesn’t distinguish between all the varieties of mental processes (mental attention, working memory, metacognition, etc.)” assumes that it needs to. It’s kind of an apples-to-oranges situation. The Buddha's classification isn’t biological; it’s phenomenological, and the examples you bring up don’t reveal anything unaccounted for. A simple Google search will show that these concepts are defined by awareness and perception, falling under the aggregates of saññā (perception), viññāṇa (consciousness), and saṅkhāra (formations); Buddhism just groups them functionally rather than anatomically. Also, the categories aren’t as rigid as you make them out to be; they work in conjunction (i.e., perception and consciousness; it’s impossible to perceive without being conscious).
It’s perfectly valid to hold a view informed by cognitive science, but to claim it disproves Buddhism is to presume falsely that the two disciplines share the same aims and methods. It’s not that Buddhism is refuted by cognitive science, but that the aims are incommensurate: one tracks conditions mechanistically, the other tracks them existentially and ethically. In that same vein, Buddhism doesn’t deny science as much as it proposes an entirely different viewpoint.
You might argue that labeling the self an illusion is itself a kind of explanatory gap-filling. But Buddhism doesn’t just say it’s an illusion and stop there, it explains how that illusion comes about. It tracks it causally, tracing it to contact, feeling, craving, clinging, and becoming (SN 12.2). The sense of self is not dismissed as meaningless, but diagnosed and disarmed. So it’s not hand-waving, it’s an explanation. The doctrine of non-self is not a placeholder, but a path of investigation: the sense of self arises under specific conditions and ceases when those conditions are uprooted.
My framing of the theoretical self was based on the antithesis of Buddhist analysis (anicca and dukkha being signs of anattā, therefore permanence and non-suffering being signs of self). Admittedly, this was a bit naive, given my unfamiliarity with the opposing thinkers, but even the more nuanced takes don’t escape the trap of laden assumption.
On that note, here’s a question: not to dodge anything, but to clarify where the weight of proof lies. Since the EBT view provides a detailed and internally coherent account of perception, subjectivity, and unity of experience without positing a metaphysical self, on what basis should we abandon that framework in favor of one that introduces additional ontological commitments? If the self is to be affirmed, what positive evidence can be offered beyond the feeling of selfhood or conceptual necessity to warrant that claim? Because otherwise, the explanatory burden lies with the one making the greater assertion.
Again, all best wishes, and thanks for engaging in this challenging and thought-provoking discussion. As Thanissaro Bhikkhu says, “Don’t let the Buddha off the hook.” Putting the teaching to the test is important. Sorry for the rather late response, been vacationing in Las Vegas, coming across casino Buddhas and fake street monks (jokes aside, the city is gorgeous). Anyway, looking forward to some elaboration, whether in response to this comment or a separate article.
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Thanks for the thought-out response, it's definitely something to chew on. You brought up a lot of strong points; here are some responses and clarifications:
You’re right to call out the lack of clarity in my response. In my earlier phrasing, I was saying it’s a fallacy to suggest that Buddhism denies the percipient, leaving much room for misunderstanding. What I meant wasn’t that early Buddhism affirms a subject who perceives, but that it accounts for perception without needing to invent some deeper 'self' behind it. It’s important to separate what’s just a way of describing experience from what’s being claimed to exist at some deeper level. The doctrine of anattā doesn’t erase the empirical phenomena we associate with agency or subjectivity; it reframes them as contingent and processual, not absolute.
This point about non-self not requiring the negation of a percipient had to do with the non-dual lens (‘all is one, so there is no individual percipient or perception’). Your original critique was based on these theories. I described it as a straw man because you implied that the non-dual philosophy itself needs to hold water for the doctrine of non-self to be coherent, which doesn't account for the EBT perspective, positing perception as simply dependently arisen from contact, notably not necessitating self (MN 18). I should have fleshed this out more in my response, and ‘percipient’ wasn't the right word for my framing. My point was simply that perception doesn’t entail a self behind it, but I assumed that the section on the aggregates themselves being of a non-self nature made this clear enough. Apologies for the lack of clarity.
I’m not trying to dodge the question, just trying to make clear the framework I’m working from. One can meaningfully speak of perception and cognition without committing to a self in the metaphysical sense. This isn't to redefine self out of existence but to show that what the term ‘self’ is often made to stand for, perceptual unity, decision-making, and memory, can be better explained through dependently arisen processes without appeal to essence or substratum.
The notion that perception itself implies self is a loaded assumption. Concluding that perception needs to be negated because of the nature of self is a straw man. After all, this framework isn't what is used in EBT. I'm not familiar with the Aristotle, Aquinas, Feser, etc. schools of thought (perhaps something to cover more in depth in the separate post you might plan on making), so I can't go into much depth here, but your definition of self is as follows: "it is a substance that persists through changes of its attributes and cannot coherently be identified with the collection of attributes themselves." If that's the case, then this completely falls into the realm of speculative assumption. The view that something persists is the core point of contention here. It's something that requires belief. Now you're free to accept that belief, but basing your argument on this doesn’t pose a challenge to non-self, just a differing view that’s far less grounded.
Not all disagreement is just speculation, but once a claim hinges on some unseen essence that only makes sense logically, that’s where Buddhist thought tends to cut it down. The Buddha isn’t saying ‘you can’t think that,’ but ‘is it observable? Is it verifiable? Is it useful?’ What passes for metaphysical necessity often turns out, under scrutiny, to be a projection of habit and conceptual dependence.
You posit that this self would be unity or the locus in which mental states occur, but this itself smuggles in presumptions: that unity requires a metaphysical self, experience must inhere in a locus, and that this is necessary for intelligibility. I simply don’t see how any of these claims meant to challenge non-self can be made without the immense baggage. This is exactly what the Buddha teaches to investigate, not accept. To say the self is some kind of hidden essence just assumes the very thing you’re trying to prove. If someone says, ‘we need a bearer of experience,’ Buddhism replies, ‘what do you call bearer that isn’t just the process itself misread?’
I get that I’m also working from some basic assumptions, like how impermanence and suffering point to not-self, but I think the Buddha is asking us to buy a lot less than the abstract metaphysics you propose; this is displayed in how he rejected many metaphysical speculations. Not because they are inherently false, but due to their loaded premises [i.e., not responding to the question of where Tathagatas go after death because the question itself contains a metaphysical assumption (MN 63)]. This isn’t a dodge, it’s methodological consistency and clarity.
That’s basically what I was getting at with the ‘wager’ idea: in a practical sense (not to insinuate that pragmatism is measured by truth, it functions as a tool), would it be better to assume anatta or a theoretical postulation of self? My position is that non-self is more empirically grounded, in addition to the view reaping benefit, as opposed to the harmful processes of I-making and mine-making of its antithesis (The canon thoroughly elaborates how differing manifestations of conceit lead to harm). And we shouldn’t underestimate the epistemic value of soteriology. If a view actually ends suffering, that says something real about its truth, not just its usefulness.
Having read through this back and forth, I've come to realize there's a deeper divide here than it appears, and we don't necessarily need to use the justification of no-self in Buddhism to critique David's points, as I suggested in my original follow-up in his article. Rather than respond to him though, seeing as he isn't seriously engaging with your clarifications nor did he with mine to come to any shared understanding, I thought I might attempt to settle the confusion here, or at least point it in a different direction.
The core of the issue is about how we apply models of a substance vs process ontology, and David's article only really engaged with the former, albeit in a limited way. His argument assumes a substance ontology, where thoughts and similar attributes must inhere in some persisting “thing," but never actually demonstrates that such a substance exists beyond inference, making the burden of proof for that still on him. Cognitive science often works just as well, if not better, with a process ontology, where our mental states are understood as events arising from dynamic, interacting processes of our biological systems, without positing a fixed, substantial subject. Our everyday sense of an “observer” is explained as a natural byproduct of the reflexivity of consciousness (i.e. that it's always "of" something), not proof of a soul or essence.
Thinkers like Thomas Metzinger and Derek Parfit have also shown how selfhood can be understood as a constructed narrative that unifies experience without requiring an underlying substance. This aligns with Buddhist thought, where the Buddha neither affirmed nor denied a self to Vacchagotta (to not have to affirm eternalism or nihilism), but instead pointed out that the sense of “I”-ness is a conceptual projection onto impermanent processes (the aggregates) rather than something inherently existing (for a liberative purpose, of course).
This brings us to a larger issue that effectively undermines this discussion on the whole, and which you briefly touched on with the matter of the usefulness of these ontologies as models. A substance ontology doesn't have to be in conflict with a process ontology so long as its purpose and application is also made clear, part of what Wittgenstein's philosophy of language points to with "meaning as use." He effectively understood many philosophical problems like this as confusions, with misplaced expectations about how language is intended to be communicated to express the same insights into the nature of private experience (part of different "language games" or "forms of life").
So the apparent “conflict” is really a category error of treating models designed for one context (one with phenomenological and soteriological frameworks) as if they were designed for another (an empirical framework for cataloging what exists “out there” independent of experience). We're not disagreeing about reality, just misunderstanding how these concepts can function. This also undermines his claim that the six sense doors and five aggregates are some outdated proto-science of the senses when that was never the intention behind them anyway (i.e. in fact, proprioception and the other ones he mentions can be applied as extensions of the six sense doors rather than missing parts of them, but that's besides the point). When you strip away the assumption that there’s a single metaphysical fact of the matter for a “self” that both of us must be answering, what remains is a pluralism of conceptual tools for different purposes. In that light, David’s whole argument stops looking like “Buddhism vs. science” or “no-self vs. self” and more like two different toolkits that he’s trying to force into the same blueprint when it isn't necessary.
Thanks for this insightful comment. I would like to mention that David and I continued the discussion in the comments on his later article: "A Critique of 'Ego Disillusionment' Teachers."
https://davidmcdonald11.substack.com/p/a-critique-of-ego-disillusionment
The thread is rather lengthy, but if you'd like to see more of his perspective, it would be useful to read. I agree with your reply, you're putting words to a similar idea that I have been attempting to express. It seems that the fundamental disagreement is whether or not Buddhism can function separately from cognitive science, which he believes it cannot, due to conflicts between the latter and doctrines of craving being the cause of all suffering, appropriation leading to suffering, etc. (which he claims are indemonstrable). I have highlighted the Buddhist context of "suffering and the cessation of suffering", not what the best mental health treatment is, how to reduce stress for work life, etc., which are subjects meant to be tackled by CS. Similar to your point in this reply, I think it's unfair to insist that these two mutually exclusive frameworks must function in harmony. Not only is this a misinterpretation of Buddhism, but also a misinterpretation of religion as a whole. This leads to a seeming double standard from David, as he holds that Christian/Islamic mysticism are acceptable self-help tools, while Buddhism isn't. This I see as an insurmountable contradiction, as then you would have to explain how Christian/Islamic mysticism can function in harmony with CS (I am still awaiting David's explanation on this).
I'm also struggling to see how I'm supposed to prove or demonstrate the aggregate model and craving leading to suffering, given that I see these as empirical aspects of existence rather than some abstract doctrine akin to a creator god or rebirth.
There's also the question of how one should approach suffering as a whole, which David sees as a beautiful aspect of human existence rather than a problem to get rid of. I am also awaiting David's explanation on this, as I struggle to see how pain, despair, etc. can be seen as a positive. I understand that these can serve as tools for personal growth, but again, Buddhism isn't about that; it's about the cessation of personality as a whole. I've seen posts on Substack arguing that this is 'philosophical overkill'; however, these proponents would have to engage in a sort of apologetics for suffering, which I see as dangerous and out of touch (see my replies in David's new post for more on this). In short, it's easier to accept suffering as a part of beautiful human existence when you're not suffering much in the first place; it's a privileged perspective that lacks self-awareness.
I admit that I am not well-versed in these philosophical concepts that you are alluding to, which are of great use in settling this discussion. I appreciate these pointers, and I will look into the thinkers and ideas that you have outlined. EBT has served as my introduction to this field of study, which can be awkward given the contrasting aims of EBT. If anything, this discussion has been a big eye-opener for me and hopefully for David as well.
I echo your sentiment that the issue is more one of confusion rather than 'One answer is absolutely correct, and everything else is wrong' - this line of thought was vehemently rejected by the Buddha, as you know.
Thanks again for this comment, and I'd look forward to any further engagement from your part, if that's something you're interested in, of course.
Yes, that's why I would think getting the context right and establishing what standards for argumentation we're using matters in this case. Why certain things were taught have to be understood on their own terms, which requires examining the intentions, definitions, and assumptions at play, which requires we expect that these topics have been debated about and explored for centuries already.
At that point, there's either a discussion that's already taken place that answers our questions and dissolves our confusions (e.g. see Dharmakirti's replies to the Nyaya schools' critiques of no-self/emptiness), or there's something they don't take into account that no one else has brought up in the history of the world which I doubt given the breadth and depth of philosophical literature. It's just important that we know where to look to deepen what we understand about what we're claiming.
If we're motivated instead to prove a point, or hold onto a dogma, that's anyone's prerogative, but there are still reasons these concepts are used and function for many people in practice, which we can either consider better understanding, or to ignore at the cost of strengthening how well informed our opinions could be. I'll admit even my own reply here in the thread isn't as exhaustive or nuanced as I'd have wanted it to be, as that would be a much larger conversation than I have time for, but I do hope some of the ideas I introduced change how we ordinarily think about this subject in a wider sense.