Attention and self in Buddhist philosophy of mind
Ratio August 2, 2018 Jonardon Ganeri 2 citations
Buddhist philosophy of mind denies that the self is the agent of actions, including thinking. In the 5th-century thinker Buddhaghosa's account, attention replaces self in explaining how cognition is grounded in perception and action. Attention performs two simultaneous functions: placing and focusing. A comparison with Brian O'Shaughnessy's thought clarifies what is at stake when the concept of self is used as a derived rather than a primitive notion.