Buddhist Philosophy of Mind

Abstract

Buddhist Philosophy of Mind Gereon Kopf Welcome to the third issue of the Journal of Buddhist Philosophy. As it has been our practice, this issue contains a special issue on Buddhist psychology graciously guest edited by Christian Coseru, philosophical reflections on the purpose of Buddhist philosophy, peer-reviewed essays on a variety of topics, and reviews of recent publications in our field. It is a rather fortunate coincidence that some of the peer-reviewed papers, the papers by Robert Feleppa and Matthew MacKenzie, also choose consciousness as their topic. Thomas Doctor provides a critical and insightful discussion of one of the most central topics in classical Buddhist philosophy, namely the question whether it is possible to transcend the perspectivalism of the human condition. One particular highlight is Brook Ziporyn's brilliant essay on why it is important to include Chinese Buddhist philosophy in discourses on Buddhist philosophy in particular and philosophy in general. We had so many excellent submissions this time that volume 4 is already in print and is expected to be released in early 2022. I would like to thank the acquisitions editor in our field at SUNY Press, James Peltz; the members of the editorial and advisory boards; the designer of our logo, Hannah Lund; the guest editor of our special topic section in volume 3, Christian Coseru; our book review editor, Pascale Hugon; Marcus Bingenheimer, who has maintained our website and fixed the glitches that occurred; and Agnieszka Rostalska as well as Francesca Soans who served as associate editors for the third issue. Without the help of these amazing people, this volume 3 of the Journal of Buddhist Philosophy would not have been possible. [End Page 1] I am very excited that the special topic section of this issue is dedicated to Buddhist philosophies of mind. Not only is Buddhist philosophy of mind/consciousness one of the areas in in which Buddhist philosophies has made significant contributions to the general philosophical discourse, it also has long been a research interest of mine. Some of the contributions of Buddhist philosophy to the interdisciplinary study of the mind have made it into the discussions of contemplative science and cognitive science. For the former see, for example, James H. Austin's Zen and the Brain: Toward and Understanding of Meditation and Consciousness (1998), B. Alan Wallace's Mind in Balance: Meditation in Science, Buddhism, and Christianity (2009), and Marjorie Woollacott's Infinite Awareness: The Awakening of a Scientific Mind (2018). For the latter I suggest Francisco J. Varela, Eleanor Rosch, and Evan Thompson's The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (1991), Owen Flanagan's The Bodhisattva Brain: Buddhism Naturalized (2013), and Evan Thompson's Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, and Philosophy (2017). Then there is Yuasa Yasuo's The Body, Self-Cultivation, and Ki-Energy (1993), which is little known in Anglophone literature. I tend to agree with Evan Thompson that it is Buddhist philosophy and not mindfulness practices that can contribute to philosophy of mind in addition to cognitive science, facilitating an interdisciplinary and cosmopolitan effort to envision new ways of studying the mind, "pursu[ing] an epistemological critique of science" (Thompson 2020, 47) and developing inclusive, sophisticated, and transformative conceptions of "consciousness" and "mind." I further believe that Buddhist philosophy can provide a framework for such an interdisciplinary and cosmopolitan investigation of the mind. In my recent work, I have, for example, suggested that certain conceptions of consciousness in Chan/Zen Buddhist texts not only defy the simplistic division of consciousness studies, as well as philosophy in general, into First-Person and Third-Person approaches but also suggest as alternatives to those approaches to consciousness studies what I call Second-Person1 and Fourth Person2 approaches. Both approaches are able to negotiate the claims to subjectivity of a First-Person and the objectivity of the Third-Person approach. They also provide a solution to Ray Jackendoff's "mind-mind problem" (Varela et al. 1991, 52). Be that as it may, it is obvious that Buddhist philosophy offers deep insights into the mind and the systematic study of it that are relevant not only for Buddhists and scholars in Buddhist studies...

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