Buddhist Philosophy and the Embodied Mind: A Constructive Engagement

by Matthew MacKenzie

Overview

In the last 30 years, embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended (4E) accounts of mind and experience have flourished. A more cosmopolitan and pluralistic approach to the philosophy of mind has also emerged, drawing on analytic, phenomenological, pragmatist, and non-Western sources and traditions. This is the first book to fully engages the 4E approach and Buddhist philosophy, drawing on and integrating the intersection of enactivism and Buddhist thought.

This book deepens and extends the dialogue between Buddhist philosophy and 4E philosophy of mind and phenomenology. It engages with core issues in the philosophy of mind broadly construed in and through the dialogue between Buddhism and enactivism. Indian philosophers developed and defended philosophically sophisticated and phenomenologically rich accounts of mind, self, cognition, perception, embodiment, and more. As a work of cross-cultural philosophy, the book investigates the nature of mind and experience in dialogue with Indian and Western thinkers. On the basis of this cross-traditional dialogue, the book articulates and defends a dynamic, non-substantialist, and embodied account of experience, subjectivity, and self.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781538160145
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	03/25/2024
Series:	Critical Inquiries in Comparative Philosophy
Pages:	196
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.45(d)

About the Author

Matthew MacKenzie is professor of philosophy at Colorado State University. MacKenzie specializes in Buddhist and Indian philosophy, philosophy of mind, and metaphysics. His research takes a cross-cultural, interdisciplinary approach to questions of consciousness, selfhood, and embodiment.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

• On Comparative Philosophy
• Overview of the Chapters

1. Enacting Selves
   • No-Self
   • Buddhist Reductionism
   • Four Problems for Buddhist Reductionism
   • The Dependent Origination of Sentient Beings
   • Sentience and Subjectivity
   • Subjectivity and Self
   • Self-Making
   • Conclusion
2. Luminosity
   • Luminosity
   • Self-Luminosity and Other-Luminosity
   • Dual-Aspect Reflexivism
   • Temporality
   • Dynamic Embodied Nondual Awareness
3. Agency and Other Minds
   • Karma
   • Agentless Agency
   • Enactive Agency
   • Psychological Agency
   • Other Minds
   • Conclusion
4. Enacting Worlds
   • The Co-Emergence of Self and World
   • Enacting Worlds
   • Enaction, Emptiness, and Realism
   • The Three Natures of Phenomena
5. Cultivating Compassion

• The Saṃsāric Framework
• Bodhicitta, Empathy, and Open Intersubjectivity
• Meditative Concentration
• The Four Point Mind Training
  • Equality of Self and Other
  • The Limits of Self-Cherishing
  • The Benefits of Altruism
  • Exchange of Self and Other

Conclusion

Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

Buddhist Philosophy and the Embodied Mind is focused, well-argued, scholarly, accessible, and worthy of discussion by others in the various fields in cognitive science, phenomenology, philosophy of mind, Buddhist studies, contemporary Indian philosophy. This material is very difficult to write about and it isn’t easy to convey it to scholars or the public; yet, Mackenzie’s writing style navigates the terrain in a powerful and inviting way.

Anand Jayprakash Vaidya