PHL 301 1st Edition Lecture 29Outline of Last Lecture I.Berkeley against Skepticisma.Argument against primary qualitiesb.Argument against substanceII.Humea.Esse est Percipib.Bundle Theory of SelfOutline of Current LectureI. Questions about King MilindaII.Absent selfIII.BuddhagosaCurrent LectureIn Buddhist Idealism, everything is mind-dependent. We divide the world into object, which are bundles of qualities, as opposed to the Realist view that the world is divided into substances, which are bearers of qualities. Buddhist Idealists believe that there are no joints, so the world is like scrambled eggs compared to the Realist belief that we carve the world at it’s joints, creating something more like a hard-boiled egg. “Questions to King Milinda” is a story about the king meeting a monk, who claims that he does not exist. King Milinda demands to know whom he is talking to, and the monk gives his name, Nagasena, but says that names reflect no reality. He then asks King Milinda how he got there, and the king replies that he rode his chariot. Nagasena asks what the chariot is, and King Milinda replies the sum of its parts. However, Nagasena argues that none of the parts are the chariot. He also says that the form is not that specific chariot because what if it was mass-produced and there were many chariots that were just like it? What made that chariot specifically that chariot? It cannot be a combination of its parts because the parts can change while the object remains the same.Nagasena then applies this concept to people. What makes a person a person? It could be personality, but how would we describe that? It cannot be a soul because according to Buddhism, there is no soul because there is no self to fulfill. Seeking things for yourself is useless. The concept of the “absent self” refers to the idea that you cannot find yourself These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor’s lecture. GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes, not as a substitute.because you are just a bundle of thoughts. Instead, you create yourself by living. Buddhists believe that we group objects together. Buddhagosa claims that there are 89 different kinds of un-unified consciousness. Nothing unites past, present, and future. A living being lasts only as long as one thought. The problem that Buddhagosa identifies is: how can we group objects together if there is no self to divide up the world? We divide up the world almost pointlessly, anyway. For example, if a person travels on a plane to a place and then back, she counts as two passengers, but only one person. We could things arbitrarily. Similarly, we can reconstruct people across the bounds of death, which makes reincarnation
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