An Argumentative Theory of Reason

This post is a précis and review of:

Mercier, Hugo & Sperber, Dan. 'Why Do Humans Reason. Arguments for an Argumentative Theory.' Behavioral and Brain Sciences. (2011)  34: 57 – 111. doi:10.1017/S0140525X10000968. Available from Dan Sperber's website.

I'm making these notes and observations in order to better understand a new idea that I find intriguing. I have recently argued that the legacy of philosophical thought may be obscuring what is actually going on in our minds by imposing pre-scientific or non-scientific conceptual frameworks over the subject. I see this rethinking of reason as a case in point. 

In this long article, Mercier & Sperber's contribution runs from pp.57-74. What follows are comments from other scholars titled "Open Peer commentary"  (pp.74-101) and 10 pages of bibliography. The addition of commentary by peers (as opposed to silent peer review pre-publication) is an interesting approach. Non-specialists are given an opportunity to see how specialists view the thesis of the article.

The article begins with a few general remarks about reasoning. Since at least the Enlightenment it has been assumed that reasoning is a way to discover truth through applying logic. As another reviewer puts it:

Almost all classical philosophy—and nowadays, the “critical thinking” we in higher education tout so automatically—rests on the unexamined idea that reasoning is about individuals examining their unexamined beliefs in order to discover the truth. (The Chronicle of Higher Education. 2011)

Over a considerable period now, tests of reasoning capability have documented the simple but troubling fact that people are not very good discovering the truth through reasoning. We fail at simple logical tasks, commit "egregious mistakes in probabilistic reasoning", and we are subject to "sundry irrational biases in decision making". Our generally poor reasoning is so well established that it hardly needs insisting on. Wikipedia has a wonderful long list of logical fallacies and an equally long list of cognitive biases, though of course Mercier & Sperber cite the academic literature which has formally documented these errors. The faculty ostensibly designed to help us discover the truth, more often than not leads us to falsehood.

One thing to draw attention to, which is almost buried on p.71 is that "demonstrations that reasoning leads to errors are much more publishable that reports of its success." Thus all the results cited in the article may be accurate and yet still reflect a bias in the literature. The authors attempt to ameliorate this in their conclusions, but if you're reading the article (or this summary) this is something to keep in mind. 

However, given that there is plenty of evidence that reason leads us to false conclusions, what is the point of reason? Why did we evolve reason if it's mostly worse that useless? The problem may well be in our assumptions about what reason is and does. The radical thesis of this article is that we do not reason in order to find or establish truth, but that we reason in order to argue. The argument is that viewed in its proper context--social arguments--reason works very well. 

It has long been known that there are appear to be two mental processes for reaching conclusions: system 1 (intuition) in which we are not aware of the process; and system 2 (reasoning) in which we are aware of the process. Mercier & Sperber outline a variation on this. Inference is a process where representational output follows representational input; a process which augments and corrects information. Evolutionary approaches point to multiple inferential processes which work unconsciously in different domains of knowledge. Intuitive beliefs arise from 'sub-personal' intuitive inferential processes. Reflective beliefs arise from conscious inference, i.e.  reasoning proper:

"What characterises reasoning proper is indeed the awareness not just of a conclusion but of an argument that justifies accepting that conclusion." (58).

That is to say, we accept conclusions on the basis of arguments. "All arguments must ultimately be grounded in intuitive judgements that given conclusions follow from given premises." (59) The arguments which provide the justification are themselves the product of a system 1 sub-personal inferential system. Thus even though we may reach a conclusion using reason proper, our arguments for accepting the conclusion are selected by intuition.

What this suggests to the authors it that reasoning is best adapted, not for truth seeking, but for winning arguments! They argue that this is its "main function" (60) which is to say the reason we evolved the faculty. Furthermore reasoning helps to make communication more reliable because arguments put forward for a proposition may be weak or strong, and counter arguments expose this. Reasoning used in dialogue helps to ensure communication is honest (hence I suppose we intuit that it leads towards truth - though truthfulness and Truth are different).

Of course this is counter intuitive claim and thus strong arguments must be evinced in its favour. Working with this idea is itself a test of the idea. Anticipating this the authors propose several features which reasoning ought to have if it evolved for the purpose of argumentation.

1. It ought to help produce and evaluate arguments.
2. It ought to exhibit strong confirmation bias.
3. It ought to aim at convincing others rather than arriving at the best decision.

The authors set out to show that these qualities are indeed prevalent in reasoning through citing a huge amount of evidence from the literature the study of reasoning. This is where the peer evaluation provides an important perspective. If we are not familiar with the literature being cited, with its methods and conclusions, it is difficult to judge the competence of the authors, and the soundness of their conclusions. Even so most of us have to take quite a lot of what is said on trust. That it intuitively seems right is no reason to believe it.

1. Producing and Evaluating Arguments

On the first point we have already mentioned that reasoning is poor. However, because we see reasoning as an abstract faculty, testing reasoning is often done out of context. In studies of reasoning in pursuit of an argument, or trying to persuade someone, our reasoning powers improve dramatically. We are much more sensitive to logical fallacies when evaluating a proposition than when doing an abstract task. When we hear a weak argument we are much less likely to be convinced by it. In addition people will often settle for providing weak arguments if they are not challenged to come up with something better. If an experimenter testing someone's ability to construct an argument offers no challenge there is no motivation to pursue a stronger line of reasoning. This changes when challenges are offered. Reasoning only seems to really kick in when there is disagreement. The effect is even clearer in group settings. For a group to accept an argument requires that everyone be convinced or at least convinced that disagreeing is not in their interest. Our ability to reason well is strongly enhanced in these settings - known as the assembly bonus effect. 

"To sum up, people can be skilled arguers, producing and evaluating arguments felicitously. This good performance stands in sharp contrast with the abysmal results found in other, nonargumentative settings, a contrast made clear by the comparison between individual and group performance." (62) 

On the first point the literature of reasoning appears to confirm the idea that reason helps to produce and evaluate arguments. This does not prove that reasoning evolved for this reason or that arguing is the "main function" of reasoning, but it does show that reasoning works a great deal better in this setting than in the abstract.

2. Confirmation Bias

Confirmation bias is the most widely studied of all the cognitive biases and "it seems that everybody is affected to some degree, irrespective of factors like general intelligence or open-mindedness." (63). The authors say that in their model of reasoning confirmation bias is a feature.

Confirmation bias has been used in two different ways:

• Where we only seek arguments that support our own conclusion and ignore counter-arguments because we are trying to persuade others of our view. 
• Where we test our own existing belief by only looking at positive inference. For example if I think I left my keys in my jacket pocket it makes more sense to look in my jacket pocket, than in my trouser pockets. "This is just trusting use of our beliefs, not a confirmation bias." (64) Later they call this "a sound heuristic" rather than a bias.

Thus the authors focus on the first situation since they don't see the second as a genuine case of confirmation bias. The theory being proposed makes three broad predictions about confirmation bias

1. It should only occur in argumentative situations
2. It should only occur in the production of arguments
3. It is a bias only in favour of confirming one's own claims with a complementary bias against opposing claims or counter-arguments. 

I confess that what follows seems to be a bit disconnected from these predictions. The evidence cited seems to support the predictions, but they are not explicitly discussed. This seems to be a structural fault in the article that an editor should have picked them up on. Having proposed three predictions they ought to have dealt with them more specifically.

In the Wason rule discovery task participants are presented with 3 numbers. They are told that the experimenter has used a rule to generate them and asked to guess that rule. They are able to test their hypothesis by offering another triplet of number. The experimenter will say whether or not it conforms to the rule. The overwhelming majority look for confirmation rather than trying to falsify their hypothesis. However the authors take this to be a sound heuristic rather than confirmation bias. The approach remains the same even when the participants are instructed to attempt to falsify their hypothesis. However if the hypothesis comes from another person, or from a weaker member of a group then participants are much more likely to attempt to falsify it and more ready to abandon it in favour of another. "Thus falsification is accessible provided that the situation encourages participants to argue against a hypothesis that is not their own." (64)

A similar effect is noted in the Wason selection task (the link enables you to participate in a version of this task) The participant is give cards marked with numbers and letters which are paired up on opposite sides of the card according to rules. The participant it given a rule and asked which card to turn over in order to test the rule. If the rule is phrased positively participants seek to confirm it, and if negatively to falsify it. Again this is an example of a "sound heuristic" rather the confirmation bias. However "Once  the participant's attention has been drawn to some of the cards, and they have arrived at an intuitive answer to the question, reasoning is used not to evaluate and correct their initial intuition but to find justifications for it. This is genuine confirmation bias." (64)

One of the key observations the authors make is that participants of studies must be motivated to falsify. They draw out this conclusion by looking at syllogisms e.g. No C are B; All B are A; therefore some A are not C. Apparently the success rate of dealing with such syllogisms is about 10%. What seems to happen is that people go with their initial intuitive conclusion and do not take the time to test it by looking for counter-examples. Mercier & Sperber argue that this is simply because they are not motivated to do so. On the other hand if people are trying to prove something wrong--if for example we ask them to consider a statement like "all fish are trout"--they readily find ways to disprove this. Participants will spend an equal amount of time on the different tasks.

"If they have arrived at the conclusion themselves, or if they agree with it they try to confirm it. If they disagree with it then they try to prove it wrong." (65) 

But doesn't confirmation bias lead to poor conclusions? Isn't this why we criticise it as faulty reasoning? It leads to conservatism in science for example and to the dreaded groupthink. Mercier& Sperber argue that confirmation bias in these cases is problematic because it is being used outside its "normal context: that is the resolution of a disagreement through discussion." (65) When used in this context confirmation bias works to produce the strongest, most persuasive arguments. Scholarship at its best ought to be like this.

The relationship of the most persuasive argument to truth is debatable, but the authors suppose that the truth will emerge if that is the subject of disagreement. If each person presents their best arguments, and the group evaluate them then this would seem to be an advantageous way of arriving at the best solution the group is capable of. Challenging conclusions leads people to improve their arguments, thus the small group may produce a better conclusion than the best individual in the group operating alone. Thus:

confirmation bias is a feature not a bug. 

This is the result that seems to have most captured the imaginations of the reading public. However the feature only works well in the context of a small group of mildly dissenting (not polarised) members. The individual, the group with no dissent, and the polarised group with implacable dissent are at a distinct disadvantage in reasoning! Conformation bias works well for the production of arguments, but not so well for evaluation, though the later seemed less of a problem.

Does this fulfil the three broad predictions made about confirmation bias? We have seen that confirmation bias is not triggered unless these is a need to defend a claim (1). Confirmation bias does appear to be more prevalent when producing arguments than in evaluating them, and that we do tend to argue for our own claims and against the claims of others (2 & 3). However the predictions included the word only, and I'm not sure that they have, or could have, demonstrated the exclusiveness of their claims. More evidence emerges in the next section which deals (rather more obliquely with convincing others).

3. Convincing others.

Proactive Reasoning  in belief formation.

The authors' thesis is that reasoning ought to aim at convincing others rather than arriving at the best decision. This section discusses the possibility that, while we do tend to favour our own argument, we may also anticipate objections. The latter is said to be the mark of a good scholar, though the article is looking at reasoning more generally. There is an interesting distinction here between beliefs we expect to be challenged and those which are not:

"While we think most of our beliefs--to the extent that we think about them at all--not as beliefs but just as pieces of knowledge, we are also aware that some of them are unlikely to be universally shared, or to be accepted on trust just because we express them. When we pay attention to the contentious nature of these beliefs we typically think of them as opinions." (66) 

And knowing that our opinions might be challenged we may be motivated to think about counter-arguments and be ready for them with our own arguments. This is known as motivated reasoning. Interestingly from my point of view, because I think I have experienced this, one of the examples they give is: "Reviewers fall prey to motivated reasoning and look for flaws in a paper in order to justify its rejection when they don't agree with its conclusions." (66).

The point being that from the authors' perspective it seems that what people are doing in this situation is not seeking truth, but only seeking to justify an opinion.

"All these experiments demonstrate that people sometimes look for reasons to justify  From an argumentative perspective, they do this not to convince themselves of the truth of their opinion but to be ready to meet the challenges of others." (66)

If we approach a discussion or a decision with an opinion, then we our goal in evaluating another's argument is often not to find the truth, but to show that the argument is wrong. The goal is argumentative rather than epistemic (seeking knowledge). We will comb through an argument looking for flaws for example, finding fault with study design, use of statistics or employing logical fallacies. Thus although there are benefits to confirmation bias in the production of arguments, confirmation bias in the evaluation of arguments can be a serious problem: it may lead to nitpicking, polarisation or strengthening of existing polarisation.

Two more effects of motivated reasoning are particularly relevant to my interests: belief perseverance and violation of moral norms. The phenomenon of belief perseverance (holding onto a belief despite evidence that a view is ill founded) is extremely common in religious settings. The argumentative theory sees belief perseverance as a form of motivated reasoning: when presented with counter-arguments the believer focuses on finding fault, and actively disregards information which runs counter to the belief. If the argument is particularly unconvincing--"not credible"--it can lead to further polarisation. And in the moral sphere reasoning is often used to come up with justifications for breaking moral precepts. Here reasoning can be clearly seen to be in service of argument rather than knowledge or truth.

Thus in many cases reasoning is used precisely to convince others rather than arriving at the best decision, even when this results in poor decisions or immoral behaviour. We use reason to find justifications for our intuitive beliefs or opinions.

Proactive Reasoning

The previous section was mainly concerned with defending opinions, while the next (and final) sections looks at how reason relates to decisions and actions more broadly. On the classical argument we expect reasoning to help us make better decisions. But this turns out not to be the case. Indeed in experiments people who spend time reasoning about their decisions consistently make decisions that are less consistent with their own previously stated attitudes. They also get worse at predicting the results of basketball games. "People who think too much are also less likely to understand other people's behavior." (69). A warning note is sounded here that some of the studies which showed that intuitive decisions were always better than thought out decisions have not be able to be replicated. So Malcolm Gladwell's popularisation of this idea in his book Blink may have over-stated the case. However the evidence suggests that reasoning does not necessarily confer advantage. Which to my mind is in line with what I would expect.

The argumentative theory suggests that reasoning should have most influence where our intuitions are weak - where we are not trying to justify a pre-formed opinion. One can then at least defend a choice if it proves to be unsatisfactory later. In line with research dating back to the 1980s this is called reason-based choice. reason-based choice is able to explain a number of unsound uses of reasoning noted by social psychologists: the disjunction effect, the sunk-cost fallacy, framing effects, and preference inversion.

The connecting factor is the desire to justify a choice or decision. We can see this in action in many countries today with the insistence on fiscal austerity as a response to economic crisis. Evidence is mounting that cutting government spending only causes further harm, but many governments remain committed to it. As long as they can produce arguments for the idea, they refuse to consider arguments against.

Conclusions

Some important contextualising remarks are made in the concluding section, many of which are very optimistic about reasoning. Reasoning as understood here makes human communication more reliable and more potent.

"Reasoning can lead to poor outcomes not because humans are bad at it but because they systematically look for arguments to justify their beliefs or actions.... Human reasoning is not a profoundly flawed general mechanism: it is a remarkably efficient specialized device adapted to a certain type of social and cognitive interaction at which it excels" (72) 

The authors stress the social nature of reasoning. Generally speaking it is groups of people that use reason to make progress not individuals, though a small number of individuals are capable of being their own critics. Indeed the skill can be learned, though only with difficulty and one only ever mitigates and does not eliminate the tendency towards justification. Thus though confirmation bias seems inevitable in producing arguments, it is balanced out in the evaluation by other people.

"To conclude, we note that the argumentative theory of reasoning should be congenial to those of us who enjoy spending endless hours debating ideas - but this, of course, is not an argument for (or against) the theory. (73)

~o~ 

Comments

It ought to come as no surprise that a faculty of a social ape is evolved to function best in small groups. The puzzle is why we ever thought of the individual as capable of standing alone and apart from their peers. It's a conceit of Western thinking that is going to come under increasing attack I think.

This review is also sort of a follow up to an earlier blog Thinking it Through sparked by a conversation with Elisa Freschi in comments on her blog post: Hindu-Christian and interreligious dialogue: has it any religious value? I think Mercier & Sperber raise some serious questions about this issue. Reasoning does work well in polarising environments. And religious views tend to be mutually exclusive. 

I think it's unlikely that we'll ever be able to say that we evolved x for the purposes of y except in a very general sense. Certainly eyes enable us to see, but it is simplistic to say that eyes evolved in order for us to see. We assume that evolution has endowed us with traits for a purpose, even when the purpose is unclear. And we observe that we have certain traits which serve to make us evolutionarily fit in some capacity. In this case the trait--reason--does not perform the function we have traditionally assigned to it. We are in poor at discovering the truth through reasoning alone, and much of the time not even looking. Therefore we must look again at what reason does. This is what Mercier and Sperber have done. Whether their idea will stand the text of time remains to be seen. My intuitive response is that they have noticed something very important in this paper.

My own interest in decision making stems from the work of Antonio Damasio, particular in Descartes's Error. My argument has been that decision making is unconscious and emotional and that reasons come afterwards. Mercier & Sperber are pursuing a similar idea at a different level. Damasio suggests that we make decisions using unconscious emotional responses to information and then justify our decision by finding arguments. And we can see the different parts of the process disrupted by brain injuries or abnormalities in specific locations. Thus neuroscience provides a confirmation of Mercier & Sperber's theory and correlates the behavioural observation with brain function. Neither cites the work of the other.

I presaged this review and my reading of this article in my essay The Myth of Subjectivity when I claimed that objectivity emerges from scientists working together. Mercier & Sperber confirm my intuition about how science works, including my note that scientists love to prove each other wrong. However they take it further and argue that this is the natural way that humans operate, and emphasise the social, interactional nature of progress in any field. And after all even Einstein went in search of support for his intuitions about the speed of light. He did not set out to disprove it. Thus we must reassess the role of falsification in science. It may be asking too much for any individual to seek to falsify their own work; but we can rely on the scientific community to provide evaluation and especially disagreement!

Those wishing to comment on this review should read Mercier & Sperber First. There's not much point in simply arguing with me. I've done my best to represent the ideas in the article, but I may have missed nuances, or got things wrong - I'm new to this subject. By all means let us discuss the article, or correct errors I have made, but let's do it on the basis of having read the article in question. OK?

~~oOo~~

Other reading. 

My attention was draw to this article by an economist! Edward Harrison pointed to The Reason We Reason by Jonah Lehrer in Wired Magazine. (Be sure to read the comment from Hugo Mercier which follows the article). Amongst Lehrer's useful links was one to the original article. 

Hugo Mercier's website, particularly his account of the Argumentative Theory of Reasoning; and on Academia.edu.
Dan Sperber's website, and on  Academia.edu.

18 Aug 2016

Hugo Mercier has uploaded a new paper to academia.edu

The Argumentative Theory: Predictions and Empirical Evidence A Social Turn in the Study of Higher Cognition. Trends in Cognitive Science. September 2016, 20(9): 689-700. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2016.07.001

Abstract

The argumentative theory of reasoning suggests that the main function of reasoning is to exchange arguments with others. This theory explains key properties of reasoning. When reasoners produce arguments, they are biased and lazy, as can be expected if reasoning is a mechanism that aims at convincing others in interactive contexts. By contrast, reasoners are more objective and demanding when they evaluate arguments provided by others. This fundamental asymmetry between production and evaluation explains the effects of reasoning in different contexts: the more debate and conflict between opinions there is, the more argument evaluation prevails over argument production, resulting in better outcomes. Here I review how the argumentative theory of reasoning helps integrate a wide range of empirical findings in reasoning research.

The Simile of the Raft

allposters.com

THERE are a small number of texts which are quoted again and again by Western Buddhists. Perhaps the most common is the so-called Kālāma Sutta and I have already spent several essays trying to demonstrate that it does not support the uses to which it is put (now combined into a booklet called Talking to the Kālāmas). Western Buddhists are simply mistaken about that text.

If the Kālāma Sutta is the most cited text then the Simile of the Raft from the Alagaddūpama Sutta (MN 22; M i.130) would be a good contender for second. This is the text that tells us that the Dharma is a raft to get us to the other side, where it must be abandoned. What follows is an extract from my translation and commentary on the Alagaddūpama Sutta which I hope to publish at some point.

The Simile of the Raft

(M i.134-5)

Bhikkhus I will teach you the simile of ‘the raft for the purpose of getting across’. Pay attention and listen to what I will say. 

“Yes, Bhante,” the bhikkhus replied. 

The Bhagavan said, “Suppose a man is following a stretch of road, and he comes to a great flood. The near bank is dangerous and frightening, the far bank is safe and secure. There is no boat or bridge to cross the water. He thinks, ‘what if I were to were to gather grass, wood, sticks and leaves and having woven them into a raft, I should swim, and safely cross to the other side?’ So he makes a raft and crosses the flood. Then once he has crossed over to the far bank he thinks: ‘this raft was very helpful to me in crossing the flood, what if I were to pick it up and carry it on my head or shoulders and go on my way?’”. 

“What do you think, bhikkhus, is this man acting sensibly if he takes the raft with him?” 

“No, Bhante.” 

“What would the sensible thing to do be? Here bhikkhus, he has crossed over to the far bank he thinks: ‘this raft was very helpful to me in crossing the flood, now let me haul it up to dry ground, or sink it in the water, and be on my way.’ That, bhikkhus, is the sensible way to act towards the raft. Just so, bhikkhus, I have taught the Dhamma as like a raft for ferrying, for getting across. 

Bhikkhus, through understanding the Dhamma in terms of this parable, you should renounce dhammas, and more-so non-dhammas.”

~o~

In this passage the Buddha certainly says that his dhamma is like a raft for crossing a river. And it is clear that having crossed a river, it is foolish to carry the raft along with you. However, this is a simile or, really, a parable, and the interpretation of what this parable means hinges on how we read the last sentence. The last sentence is the critical part of this passage, and it is also the most difficult to understand.

Now most people take this simile as saying that we don't need the Dhamma when we are enlightened, but this was not the Buddha's view as I will show below. The Buddha never abandoned the Dhamma as a refuge. So we can exclude this meaning. In order to understand the whole passage, to understand what the parable is pointing at with it's comparison of crossing a river, we need to understand this last sentence.

dhamma and adhamma

The passage tells us that, having understood the Dhamma in terms of the parable of the raft, then, we ought to  renounce dhammā and more so adhammā (both in the plural): dhammāpi vo pahātabbā pageva adhammā. The words dhammā and adhammā have evoked a variety of renderings.

Buddhaghosa (MA ii.109) says that ‘dhammā’ here means calm and insight (samatha-vipassanā), specifically craving for calm and insight, but this does not make a great deal of sense; someone on the other shore has no craving to give up and one cannot abandon the raft before getting across. No modern exegetes seem to accept Buddhaghosa’s suggested interpretation. Horner interpreted the phrase as suggesting that we give up morality at the further shore (see Keown 1992: 93). Horner’s (1954) translation is “you should get rid even of (right) mental objects, all the more of wrong ones.” (p.173-4). Gethin (2008) interprets dhammā/adhammā as “good practices and bad practices” (p.161), which echoes Buddhaghosa but is less specific. However, ‘practice’ is hardly a usual translation for dhamma (one might even say it is a mistranslation). Also, there is plenty of evidence that the Buddha did not give up practice after his awakening.

Ñānamoli and Bodhi (2001) opt for the “teachings and things contrary to the teachings” which is at least a possible translation. I am doubtful about dhammā in the plural being interpreted in the sense of ‘teaching’ (I’ll return to this). Bodhi’s footnote (p. 1209, n.255) acknowledges the ambiguity and justifies their translation with a pious homily. Thanissaro (2010) does not translate the key terms: “you should let go even of Dhammas, to say nothing of non-Dhammas." The capitalisation implies that he understands ‘teachings’, as dhammā as ‘things’ is seldom capitalised and he therefore has the same problem as Ñānamoli and Bodhi. Piya (2003) also avoids committing himself: “you should abandon even the dharmas, how much more that which is not dharmas” [sic]. He refers to MA and Bodhi’s footnote for an explanation, thus seems to be accepting Ñānamoli and Bodhi's reading.

Richard Gombrich (1996) has weighed in with support for translating ‘teachings’ and ‘non-teachings’: “The Buddha concludes that his dhammā, his teachings are to be let go of, let alone adhammā. The occasion for this whole discourse is given by Ariṭṭha, who obstinately declared that he understood the Buddha’s teaching in a certain [wrong] sense.” (p.24). The argument that dhammā in the last sentence is not the dhamma referred to in the earlier parts of the passage Gombrich declares to be “sheer scholastic literalism” (p.24), but I have been unable to locate another passage in which the Buddha uses dhammā in the plural to describe his teaching. Gombrich comments on the irony of taking literally a text preaching against literalism (p.22), with the implication that Ariṭṭha--to whom he emphasises the sutta was directed--is guilty of literalism, or of clinging to the Dhamma. However, Ariṭṭha was guilty of stubbornly refusing to relinquish a completely wrong interpretation. He is not a literalist, but simply has a wrong view. His problem is that he does not take the Buddha’s injunction literally enough! That the simile of grasping the snake at the wrong end, which immediately precedes the raft simile, applies to Ariṭṭha we cannot doubt. Ariṭṭha has misunderstood the teaching. The simile of the raft appears to be talking about something entirely different, and unrelated to Ariṭṭha. This is so striking when reading the text that I am inclined to agree with Keown who speculates that the sutta is a composite of originally separate sections (p.96).

Basing his discussion solely on Ñānamoli and Bodhi’s translation, Jonardon Ganeri has attempted to problematise the idea of abandoning the teachings. Firstly, he says that if we take dhammā to mean teachings then the teachings only have instrumental value (p.132). Ironically, this is not really a problem from a Buddhist point of view as we tend to see the teachings instrumentally (though there are Buddhist fundamentalists). His other argument, which relies on interpreting the Buddha’s word as ‘Truth’, is that for one on the other side “truth ceases altogether to be something of value” (p.132). Again, this is not really an issue for Buddhism as truth as expressed in language is always provisional. The ‘Truth’ (if there is such a thing) is experiential, and on experiencing bodhi and vimutti one does not need provisional truth any more. Ganeri seems to misunderstand the pragmatic way Buddhism values truth – truth is whatever is helpful. This is epitomised in two now clichéd passages: in the Kesamutti Sutta (A i.188ff) where the Buddha tells the Kālāma people to trust their own experience in determining right and wrong conduct; and at Vin ii.10 where the Buddha tells his aunt Mahāpajāpatī that the Dhamma is whatever conducive to nibbāna.

If we accept Ñānamoli and Bodhi’s ‘teachings and things contrary to the teachings’ then we must state the standard caveat, which is that one only abandons the teachings after reaching the further shore. Too often this passage is used to attack doctrine being applied on this shore, or in the flood. There is no suggestion but that we absolutely need the raft until we are safely on the other side. 

Thus from various reputable scholars we get the full range of possibilities for translating dhammā: ‘teaching, morality, things, mental objects’.

This parable is also examined in depth by Keown (1992), where he points out that this is the only mention of abandoning the raft (p.95) and that in other texts “it is made perfectly clear that sīla along with samādhi and paññā are part of the further shore and are not left behind on the near side after enlightenment.” (p.95). As Keown points out, in some texts the further shore is morality (e.g., A v.232, and v.252f ). I would add that this idea that one abandons the Dhamma after enlightenment is flatly contradicted in the Gārava Sutta:

Yaṃnūnāhaṃ yvāyaṃ dhammo mayā abhisambuddho tameva dhammaṃ sakkatvā garuṃ katvā upanissāya vihareyyanti. (S i.139) 

“I will reverence, pay my respects, and dwell in subordination to that very dhamma to which I have fully-awakened” 

The Buddha himself does not give up on Dhamma, why should anyone else? This militates against interpreting dhammā as ‘teachings’. Keown’s tentative translation is “…good things (dhammā) must be left behind, much more so evil things (adhammā)” though he affirms the ambiguity. Keown notes that in other places where dhammā and adhammā are contrasted, they seem to mean good things and bad things (p.101). He concludes that the simile has two purposes: 1. to affirm that the dhamma is for the purpose of salvation and no other purpose (this being the main point of the first part of the Alagaddūpama Sutta); and 2. that we must not become emotionally attached to particular doctrines, practices, teachings or philosophical views, and that none should assume a disproportionate status. But that things which are unambiguously evil must certainly be rejected (p.102). Keown is at least thorough and pays attention to the text, and tries to take the text on its own terms, but I still don't find his interpretation satisfying because, again, the Buddha does not give up good things after his awakening. 

Kalupahana (1986: 183) agrees with Keown’s interpretation of adharma in discussing chapter 8 of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. “While it is true that the term dharma is used in the Buddhist texts, both in an ontological sense (referring to ‘phenomena’) and in a more ethical sense (meaning ‘good’), there is no evidence at all that the negative term a-dharma was ever used in the former sense.” Thus he treats it as synonymous with akuśala. However, we have to take Kalupahana with a grain of salt, because neither the Buddha nor Nāgārjuna thought of dhamma as having an "ontological sense". Indeed, both go out of their way to deny this. Dhamma qua phenomena have no ontological status: they are neither existent nor non-existent. It is Kalupahana himself who draws attention to the role of the Kaccānagotta Sutta (S 12.15) in the Mūlamadhyamakārikā. And it is in the Kaccānagotta Sutta where this is plainly stated. Kalupahana himself constantly rejects ontology in his discussion of the texts. His desire to squeeze Buddhism into a Western mould has mixed success. 

Despite this plethora of interpretations by leading interpreters of Buddhism, I can offer yet another. A little later in the Alagaddūpama Sutta one of the bhikkhus asks: “could one be tormented by something externally non-existing (bahiddhā asati)?” The reply is:

“You could, bhikkhu,” replied the Bhagavan. “Suppose one thought like this: ‘it was mine, [now] it is not mine; it might be mine, but I can’t get it.’ They are upset and miserable; distressed and depressed. They are tormented by something externally non-existing.”

By something externally non-existing is meant 'something that they do not possess'. Note here that the thing desired is not non-existent (asati) in the absolute sense, but is merely something lost, or unobtainable. In light of this I suggest that dhammā here could also be ‘things’ (that exist) and adhammā is ‘non-things’ (things that don’t exist in this sense). That is to say we must abandon attachment to what we have, and to what we wish to have. This is not a perfect answer to the problem, but it has the real advantage of not requiring the arahant to give up something that arahants were extremely unlikely to give up!

In the Gārava Sutta (SN 6.2 PTS S i.139) we find the Buddha explicitly turning to the Dharma as his refuge:

Yaṃnūnāhaṃ yvāyaṃ dhammo mayā abhisambuddho tameva dhammaṃ sakkatvā garuṃ katvā upanissāya vihareyyanti. 

I will reverence, pay my respects, and dwell in subordination to that very Dhamma to which I have fully-awakened.

However, no single view of this simile appears to be unproblematic. All we can say with any certainty is that the pop-Buddhism answer that one gives up the Dharma as teaching when one is enlightened is a non-starter. Nor do we give up practising the Dharma. As far as I am aware, none of the enlightened figures of history ever renounced the Dharma. 

~~oOo~~

Note: 17 Jan 2017

Na hi dhammo adhammo ca, ubho samavipākino;
Adhammo nirayaṃ neti, dhammo pāpeti suggatin ti. (Thag. 304)

          For virtue and vice do not have equal results

          Vice leads to hell, virtue causes a good rebirth.

In this view, one would give up both dhamma and adhamma because they both lead to rebirth. Albeit that virtue (dhamma) causes on to attain (pāpeti < causative from pāpuṇāti) a good rebirth (suggati), it is still a rebirth and thus still within saṃsāra. The goal of Buddhism is to end rebirth.


Note: 26 Aug 2019

The most ancient retrievable understanding of (DHp 1-2) is that 1. mental action precedes bodily and verbal actions (dharmā), 2. among them, mental action is the most important one, and 3. they are prompted by mental action. All Buddhists would accept these statements, and it will suffice to quote Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakośa IV 1c-d: cetanā mānasaṃ karma tajjaṃ vākkāyakarmaṇī ‘mental action is volition, and what arises from it are verbal and bodily actions’. (24)

Agostini, Giulio. 2010. 'Preceded by Thought Are the Dhammas': The Ancient Exegesis on Dhp 1-2. Buddhist Asia 2: Papers from the Second Conference of Buddhist Studies Held in Naples in June 2004, 1-34.

The argument is that in this context dhammā means actions. 

Bibliography

Ganeri, Jonardon. 2002. 'Why truth? The Snake Sūtra.' Contemporary Buddhism, 3,2 2002: 127-139.

Gethin, Rupert. 2008. Sayings of the Buddha. Oxford University Press, p.156-167.

Gombrich, Richard. 1996. How Buddhism Began : The Conditioned Genesis of the Early Teachings. London: Athlone.

Horner, I.B. 1954. 'Discourse on the Parable of the Water-Snake.' The Collection of Middle Length Sayings. London: Luzac, p.167-182.

Kalupahana, David J. (1986) Nāgārjuna: The Philosophy of the Middle Way. Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. State University of New York Press.

Keown, Damien. 1992 The Nature of Buddhist Ethics. London: Macmillan, 1992.

Ñānamoli and Bodhi. 2001. The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha. 2nd ed. Wisdom, p.224-236.

Piya Tan. 2003. Alagaddūpama Sutta: The Discourse on the Parable of the Water-snake [Proper grasp of the Buddha’s Teaching], Majjhima Nikāya (22/1:130-142). Online: http://dharmafarer.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/3.13-Alagaddupama-S-m22-piya.pdf

Thanissaro. (trans.) 2010a 'Alagaddupama Sutta: The Water-Snake Simile.' Access to Insight. Online: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.022.than.html.

Metaphors and Materialism

brain pathways
human connectome project

OVER the years I've been puzzled by the horror of materialism that some people exhibit. Materialism never really bothered me. It's been pretty successful and I like some of the stuff it comes up with: medicines, computers and communications tech, air and space travel, electric guitars. Cool stuff.

More recently, however, I have tried to explain that I am philosophically not a materialist. I don't think we have direct contact with the material world. My understanding is that we can infer things about that world, but not know it directly. Any explanations relating to the world are perforce explanations of our experience of the world, rather than the world itself, something I try to make explicit in my writing. I'm chiefly concerned with the nature of experience rather than the nature of reality.

In the course of exchanging comments on the different ways of understanding consciousness I had a little breakthrough in understanding the aversion to materialism. Michael Dorfman, said this:

"I'm just saying that there's no good reason to assume that consciousness/qualia/etc. are reducible to matter."

I have read the works of George Lakoff for many years now, with varying degrees of comprehension. To be honest some of it is still over my head. However, it's from Lakoff that I learned about the idea of embodied cognition (which makes me think a disembodied mind is an oxymoron). I learned about metaphor from Lakoff and his writing partner Mark Johnson. And it was seeing this statement by Michael in the light of Lakoff & Johnson's work in a book called Metaphors We Live By that lead to an insight. I hasten to add that Michael chastised me at some length for suggesting that he might think the way I'm about to describe. But I think we all do at least to some extent, myself included.

The phrase "reducible to matter" is an abstraction. Lakoff & Johnson show that virtually all abstract thought is carried out metaphorically. And that the metaphors we use to manage abstractions are rooted in our experiences of the world and the way we interact with it. "Reducible to matter" implies that matter is more fundamental than other kinds of substance. The metaphor is: MATTER IS BASIC (I'll follow Lakoff & Johnson's convention of putting explicit metaphors in upper-case). The major contrast with matter in the West is spirit.

Spirit is what animates or vivifies dead matter, but it is a separate kind of substance which can be independent of matter. It may or may not reside in a separate realm of spirit and may or may not be associated with an afterlife. Where matter can collapse back into its inanimate state, spirit is the opposite. Freed of its association with matter, spirit rises up. Although spirit is associated with animation, motion and change it seems not to be affected by these. Spirit is like a catalyst that is involved in a chemical reaction, but remains unchanged at the end. These days we often hear spirit referred to as 'energy', a word borrowed from physics. As frustrating as it can be to hear this word misused, energy is what animates matter (or what makes matter animate). Spirit which is a pre-scientific concept does have affinities with energy in the scientific sense, especially if we are not very sophisticated in thinking about science. Another cross over area is quantum mechanics. The popular versions of quantum mechanics emphasise the apparent subjectivity involved in the world (the observer effect was originally pointed out as a flaw in the Copenhagen Interpretation) which hints at spirit underlying even matter at the most basic level. As post-Christians we may not explicitly believe in spirit, but I think it lurks in the background.

Metaphors exist in webs of relationship. For example what is fundamental is (practically and metaphorically) lower down. And with respect to spirit: MATTER IS LOWER; SPIRIT IS HIGHER. This is a spatial metaphor. Lakoff & Johnson relate it to our experience of being bipeds: when we are alive, healthy and active we are upright; when we are dead, unhealthy and inactive we are prostrate. That is to say the spatially vertical metaphor can be understood to relate to our experience of physical verticality. The metaphor MATTER IS LOWER; SPIRIT IS HIGHER is related to the more basic metaphor UP IS GOOD; DOWN IS BAD. And thus logically MATTER IS BAD; SPIRIT IS GOOD. Metaphors are thus not stand-alone, but interdependent and interconnected. We begin see the metaphorical implications of "reducible to matter".

Because GOOD IS UP, and SPIRIT IS UP, heaven above is the realm of spirit (or is it vice versa?). Earth (down here) is the realm of matter. Below earth at the nadir (down there) is Hell. So we have heaven, the world, and the underworld as the basic pre-scientific structure of our cosmos. This structure emerges from the notion of good-and-evil combined with an afterlife. [1] We might not believe in God or heaven or any of this, but we understand these metaphors because we have grown up in a society where these are part of the landscape of abstract thought.

A metaphor like UP IS GOOD is not an absolute. For instance: more inflation is bad, but the vertical spatial metaphor also applies like this: MORE IS UP and LESS IS DOWN. In this case because MORE IS BAD, UP IS BAD. We don't usually struggle with deciphering these metaphors despite the complexity and conflict. Indeed we may not even notice that we are using metaphors. There are many ways in which metaphors based on experience can be used. We can say that a house "burned up" and also that it "burned down". Two distinct metaphors are involved. "Burning down" means that the house was reduced to a more basic state (the construction falls down or is reduced to ash); "burning up" means the substance was consumed. Compare "eaten up" and "used up", which reflect another metaphor: EATING IS FIRE. Fire sends flames, smoke, and sparks upwards, into the realm of heaven. This is important for fire sacrifices - the substance of the oblation is converted into flame and smoke (which is more like spirit than solid matter) and is wafted upwards into the sky, to the realm of spirit. Fire is the agent in both cases, and the result is the same, but it is reached via two distinct metaphorical routes, reflecting different experiences of, and interactions with, fire. The appetitive aspect of fire is prominent in Buddhism, particularly in the Ādittapariyāya Sutta (SN 35.28, PTS iv.19) aka the Fire Sermon. And the goal of Buddhism is for the fires of greed and aversion to be extinguished (nirvāṇa 'blown out').

For the most part we use these metaphors unconsciously. When we say that we grasp what someone is saying we don't consciously translate the metaphor, we don't need to. We automatically understand the metaphor because it is part of the language and culture and it is rooted in our own experience of the world. Words are not real entities and cannot be physically grasped. However we intuitively understand the metaphor WORDS ARE OBJECTS. And any conceivable physical manipulation of objects can be applied to abstract objects such as words. Words can be twisted, spun, or thrown back and forth. Words can lift us up, put us down and spin us around for example. Words can be hurtful. What I say may come "as a blow". Also words can take on any property that an object might have. Words can abrasive and hard or smooth and soft. Hard words are uncomfortable, soft words soothing. Colourful language can shock or stimulate. None of these statements are perplexing to an English speaker, even for a second, but all of them are metaphorical manipulations of an abstraction. We understand these metaphors because from the moment we began to think abstractly they have structured our thoughts. (This idea is related to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, but that digression must wait for another essay).

I've already applied Lakoff & Johnson's ideas to the CONSCIOUSNESS IS A CONTAINER metaphor (see The Mind as Container Metaphor). I'm trying to steer away from the word consciousness at the moment since it seems tied up in the myth of subjectivity and no one seems to know exactly what it is. In that previous essay I tried to show that this container metaphor for the mind is essentially absent from early Buddhism. For us the MIND IS A CONTAINER and THOUGHTS ARE OBJECTS; and thus THE MIND IS A CONTAINER OF THOUGHTS: viz. "What do you have in mind?" "open your mind to me", "keep a lid on your thoughts". The physical basis for this metaphor is fairly obvious since our head is literally a container and we have extensive experience of the properties of containers.

All metaphors are possible, but we tend to use them selectively. Because the head is a container and contains the brain and since the mind is also an object: THE MIND IS IN THE HEAD. The mind and the brain occupy the same container. So there is no cognitive dissonance for us in saying for example: "the thoughts in my brain" as opposed to "the thoughts in my head". Both metaphors work. The limit seems to come around the metaphor THE MIND IS IN THE BRAIN. The metaphor THE BRAIN IS A CONTAINER is just about acceptable, but to go further and say that THE BRAIN PRODUCES THE MIND is a step too far. The problem seems to be a conflict related to matter and spirit. For matter to become living and conscious requires an infusion of spirit from the outside. Also the container is generally conceived of as passive. The container itself does not manipulate the object it contains. The thought object in the mind container is like a marble in a jar. What does the manipulating of the thoughts (the "grasping" of ideas) in the container is generally understood to be 'I'. Despite all the arguments of scientists and philosophers, intuitively there seems to be a homunculus at work. The result is that:

Matter can be animated by spirit; but spirit cannot be animated by matter.

This metaphysical proposition is transparently obvious to a native English speaker and has far reaching implications. I suspect it's true in other languages as well. The equation of life featuring matter and spirit is not associative. The order of the words is important - one cannot take on the function of the other. It's only with conscious effort that we think differently, and even then we still behave as if this is true. Profession of belief is very often distinct from intuitive belief. One of the purposes of Buddhist practice is to try to align the two. Flesh is a special form of animated matter, which I will come back to shortly.

Most Buddhists seem to be at home with the concept of disembodied consciousness moving between lives to be reborn, manifesting as ghosts, leaving the body at times, and all the other supernatural phenomena. We have no problems with 'subtle energy' or 'subtle bodies'. Cakras, nadī, Qi, and prāna are all fine by Buddhists these days. Buddhism seems to be compatible with Reiki, Kinesiology, homeopathy, shiatsu and acupuncture; with Hatha Yoga, Qigong and Taijiquan. We Buddhists happily use words like 'spirit', 'spirits', 'spiritual', and 'spirituality'; and phrases like 'spiritual life', 'spiritual death', 'spiritual rebirth', 'spiritual healing', 'spiritual welfare', 'spiritual awakening', 'spiritual practice' and so on. Of course when pressed we will deny an unchanging spirit, because we know by rote that it is a wrong view.

With regard to flesh we need to look again at the metaphor MATTER IS BASIC. This entails matter being simple, which draws us towards Lakoff's contribution on the subject of categories (from the book Women, Fire and Dangerous Things). Lakoff uses Wittgenstein's "family resemblances" but also draws on contemporary research to elaborate a theory of how we think in categories. When I use the word 'matter' it will evoke a mental category; and in that category each reader will have a prototypical image that represents the category for them. The prototype for 'matter' may well be something simple, like a lump of rock. Matter has the characteristic property of resistance (similar to rūpa in Indian thought). Matter has mass. Matter is lifeless. Matter tends to be dull. Matter is the opposite of spirit which is massless, light, free, colourful and animating. So in terms of prototypes we can see that flesh is a member of the category 'matter' but that it is rather peripheral to that category. Flesh has some of the characteristics of matter, but is more complex and more flexible than the prototype. The living creature occupies a liminal space between matter and spirit. Bridging them as angels bridge heaven and earth (the realms of spirit and matter respectively). Life comes from dust and returns to dust. Spirit is the catalyst which temporarily makes dust more than the sum of its parts.

I well remember seeing my father's dead body in 1991. I can bring to mind the image very clearly. He had been tidied up by the undertaker and was dressed as he often was in slacks and a woollen jumper. His receding hair line was even covered by a comb-over. Long eyebrows. His face was composed, frozen and waxen, but instantly recognisable. Indeed I experienced the emotional tremor of recognition that comes with meeting a loved one. However the body was entirely lifeless; completely unresponsive and inanimate. My father was both present and absent. He had been reduced to matter. I instinctively knew something was missing. I intuited at the time that the missing element was something like "spirit", though I did not use that word. Even now the experience is vivid and the dichotomy between matter and spirit remains the most obvious interpretation, though it is one that I reject on philosophical grounds.

I suspect this experience of dead loved ones may well be the source of our fundamental distinction between matter and spirit. And the source of our quest to understand what animates living things; what separates the quick and the dead.

The situation is further complicated by Romanticism. Most Buddhists I know are crypto-Romantics. They espouse the ideas of Romanticism without knowing or acknowledging that they are adopting a Romantic view of the world. Indeed some seem to imply that Romanticism is an expression of things as they are. My disgruntlement with this uncritical adoption of Romanticism has been steadily growing since reading David McMahan's book The Making of Buddhist Modernism and Thanissaro's essay on The Roots of Buddhist Romanticism. The Romantic is inevitably a dualists and focused on spirit. Romantics see matter as a mere surface beneath which they can penetrate to discover the spirit lurking within. Romantics I know love to quote Blake saying he could see the world in a grain of sand as a very profound statement. Indeed Blake did have a tendency to see things that weren't visible to anyone else. Romantics are the first to argue that Blake was a genius rather than a madman. He saw and conversed with angels, Jesus and God on a daily basis and that ought to make him a saint or a madman (and how often the line between them is blurred). Mere matter, mere flesh, is not of much interest to Romantics, though many of the Victorian Romantics sought ecstasy through the pleasures of the flesh. The original Romantics liked to get "out of their skulls" in various ways. Romantic Buddhists do it with meditation. In meditation one can withdraw from awareness of the body and float about in la la land. Which is not to say that some people are not seeking something a little more satisfying or profound through their practice.

When we put all this together the horror of materialism begins to come into focus. Matter might be suitable to be a container for mind, but not to be the womb which gives birth to it. Mind, rather, is clearly related to spirit. Matter has all the wrong qualities, whereas spirit has all the right qualities. The images conjured up by matter do not fit our images of consciousness. Thus, on an unconscious level, the idea that the mind is strongly associated with matter creates a cognitive dissonance. Unless one has studied chemistry.

Now chemistry is interesting because it combines practical applications (synthesis and analysis) with elegant models and theories about the processes involved. Chemistry in practice is fizzes, fumes, bangs, bubbles, colours, odours, and all manner of exciting transformations. In theory it has a vision of matter which is entirely different from the popular imagination. Atoms are composed mostly of space. They are entities in which there is constant movement and a tug of war between competing forces of attraction and repulsion. Atoms are little bundles of kinetic energy. They combine into molecules which rather violently vibrate, spin, twist, flex, and wriggle; molecules which give off light of every colour of the rainbow and far into the infra-red and ultraviolet. Chemistry is the study of the reactions and transformations of supposedly inert matter. When two or more molecules react they are changed into other molecules: trans-substantiated. There is still a little alchemy present in the science of chemistry. That changing world held me spell-bound for many years (and resulted in a bachelor's degree). I was an adept of that art and science of transforming matter. The possibilities of form and structure are seemingly infinite. Carbon compounds are seemingly uncountable. Every year new compounds are made or discovered and used in various ways. One molecule will kill cancer cells for example. Another can potentially be used to create a room temperature super-conductor. Chemical analysis can tell us what killed Richard III or about how the moon was created. In this world illuminated by chemistry everything is animated . Everything is moving and changing. Matter is solid, liquid, gas, plasma, super-fluid, Bose-Einstein condensate. Even such solidity as it has, is only on the surface: literally surface tension, beneath which lies pure energy. m = E/c². Thus my prototype of matter is something very different from a lifeless, grey, cold rock!

A few weeks ago I introduced the term apophenia: "the ability to attribute meaning to patterns or events; and significance to stimuli." Psychologist Justin Barrett has proposed that we also have a faculty he dubs Hyperactive Agency Detection Device (HADD). This is a fancy way of saying that we are a bit too ready to assign agency to objects in our experience. Barrett uses this to explain the pervasive belief in gods, but agency is a sign of life more generally; and of sentience in particular (see particularly Why Would Anyone Believe in God??). Humans have a strong tendency to see patterns, assign them significance, and attribute agency to them. We do this even where no pattern exists, the significance is entirely projection, and no agency operates. Something we did not notice until we started to look objectively at ourselves.

Perhaps what we think of as spirit is a product of our ability to attribute meaning and agency where none exists? If we go in search of spirit we never find it because it's just a story told by our over-active imaginations. We imagine ourselves to be so much more than we are and yet we have to continually paper over the cracks of our failures. We can imagine the world a better place, people as better people, but somehow reality always spoils the vision. As Buddhists we nod sagely and intone "saṃsāra" as if we understand.

Whatever the answer is, this story of matter and spirit rolls on in the West. It syncretises with our Buddhism and unconsciously informs our attitudes and approaches. We end up embracing our conditioning rather than transcending it, because we don't even notice that we are conditioned. This is the value of the work of someone like Lakoff. It exposes the structures and patterns of our mind at work. We think we are free to think new thoughts, but really we are constrained in narrow ruts.

There remains this gap in our knowledge; which because of our culture appears to be a spirit shaped gap. We are still unsure how to get from mere matter to the simplest living bacteria without invoking spirit (and in fact most scientists gloss over the part of the equation that says 'and then a miracle happens'). And for some people matter and spirit will remain forever apart. I understand this. I empathise because of my experience with my father, and because I've studied living and dead matter in some detail. However I think the horror of materialism is irrational. I don't have a problem with "we don't yet know" but I don't accept "we can never know" because that argument smells like Romantic spirit.

In fact we don't know if it will be possible to understand the mind. The answer to that problem is difficult to find because the question remains poorly defined. This in turn is (at least in part) because we still struggle on with pre-scientific legacy concepts from philosophy. We do not yet think clearly enough about what the mind is to be able to understand it. In the mean time we seem to be learning a lot. Some of it has practical applications, but all of it is fascinating. If your position is "we'll ever understand the mind" that's fine. But my challenge to you would be to justify such an epistemological position. I don't believe that anyone is in a position to know this. I don't believe it is possible to be categorical about it. By contrast I find myself optimistic about the attempt and enthusiastic about what we are discovering along the way.

~~oOo~~

Notes

1. This basic threefold structure is found in ancient Egypt. From there is seems to have influenced Zoroastrianism in Iran. In one published and one forthcoming article I argue that from there, via the Śākya tribe, Zoroastrianism influenced the development of Buddhism. See:

   Possible Iranian Origins for Sākyas and Aspects of Buddhism. Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies. Vol.3 2012. Paid Access.

   The way that ideas about ethics and afterlife combine to produce this threefold structure are discussed in Gananath Obeyesekere's book Imagining Karma. I summarise my own thinking in various essays including:
• Possible History for the Buddhist Idea of Karma
• How Buddhist Rebirth Changes Over Time.

29 Apr 2013 - I saw this today:

"Free will as an emergent phenomenon can be perfectly compatible with an underlying materialist view of the world." Preposterous Universe.

30 June 2015.

"The fact was that, as droves of demon kings had noticed, there was a limit to what you could do to a soul with, e.g., red-hot tweezers, because even fairly evil and corrupt souls were bright enough to realize that since they didn't have the concomitant body and nerve endings attached to them there was no real reason, other than force of habit, why they should suffer excruciating agony." - Terry Pratchett, Eric.

This is an interesting theological point. The very idea of a soul is that it is not part of the realm of matter, but purely of the realm of spirit. Lacking a body, the soul would be free of all the functions that go with having a body. Thus torturing or pleasuring a soul is impossible. So all narratives of Hell or Paradise are logically false. Not just ridiculous or fantastic, but false on their own terms.

On the other hand if a soul is susceptible to pleasure and pain, then that would imply that it cannot be purely of the world of spirit and must in fact be partially made of matter. And that contradicts the very idea of a soul.

Of course if one is bodily resurrected then that's a different story. But if the body is resurrected, then what is the point of a soul?

The Myth of Subjectivity

BUDDHISTS keep implying that I'm a materialist. I've tried expanding the discussion by pointing out alternatives and nuances, but it seems hopeless. Buddhists only seem to have two categories: materialist and non-materialist. All scientists are materialists. Because I talk about science, I'm advocating materialism. It has become quite tedious. 

In response I've been thinking about subjectivity. We so often hear that the much vaunted objectivity of scientists is a myth. Yeah, we know. It's old news. This critique over-emphasises the role of the individual in science. Each scientist might bring an irreducible element of subjectivity to their observation and interpretation, but millions of scientists working together can sort out what is noise and what is signal. Objectivity is an emergent property of collective observation and criticism. Individuals certainly make contributions to science, but they almost always work in teams, and in concert with peers and critics. Scientists like nothing better than to prove a rival wrong, or at least criticise their sloppy use of statistics. And the success of this manner of working has produced breakthroughs that have changed the world, for better or worse. The infrastructure of the internet stands out as an monument to objectivity - virtually every branch of science is represented in some form.

The emphasis on the individual betrays the influence of Romanticism in these anti-science critiques. For the Romantic the individual--the subject--is at the forefront of their world. They resist making the subject an object of study because axiomatically the subject is indefinable and ineffable. To define and understand the subject would be to destroy the edifice of Romanticism entirely. Which I'd happily participate in.

How ironic, then, that so many Buddhists are crypto-Romantics since one of the main themes of Buddhist thought is the deconstruction of the subject. This takes many forms including an outright denial of the existence of a self. The early Buddhist critique of the self or perceiving subject is a little more subtle.  It assumes that all experiences arise in dependence on conditions, and examines the claim of an existent self accordingly. 

The five branches of experience (pañcaskandhāḥ) according to early Buddhism are: a body endowed with senses (rūpa), sensations (vedanā), names (samjñā), volitional responses (saṃskāra) and cognitions (vijñāna). When we take each of these in turn, or all at once, we do not discover any basis for an existent self. The classic formula is:

netam mama, nesohamasmi, na meso attā

this is not mine, I am not this, this is my not self.

In other words there is no subject: you don't own or control your experience; you are not found in the parts or the sum of your experience; and there is no entity which is you. What we experience as  "I", or the first person perspective, is simply another aspect of the processes of experience. It is an experience we can have, but no more than this.

In an earlier essay these three statements were equated with the three target properties for a first-person perspective outlined by Thomas Metzinger (See First Person Perspective). 

1. mineness - a sense of ownership, particularly over the body.
2. selfhood - the sense that "I am someone", and continuity through time.
3. centredness - the sense that "I am the centre of my own subjective self".

When experience is endowed with these three factors, then experience appears to be centred on a perceiving self. The Buddha's deconstruction of the self rests on the inability to find a definite basis for the permanent self - nothing in experience is able to be a basis for the existence of any permanent entity since experience is an ephemeral process. Experience is quick-sand on which no castle may be built.

Metzinger's approach is to show how each of these target properties can be altered or disrupted in specific ways, by brain damage for example. The way that the sense of self can be disrupted implies that the properties must be virtual rather than real. In other words Metzinger also argues the sense of self is not intrinsic to experience. We might think of selfhood as like a Kantian a priori. The three target properties are a priori structures that our organism uses to make sense of experience in the same way that time, space, and causality are. Our interpretations of experience rely on properties that are projected onto experience, which by itself is otherwise incomprehensible. 

The intense experience of apparently being a self is a simulation--and every night it must be switched off and on again. The self is a myth, therefore what we think of as subjectivity is also a myth. All the beliefs we have about subjectivity are questionable. All the speculative philosophy about the nature of consciousness over centuries is based on reified subjectivity - making an experience into an entity. Subjectivity is simply what the brain presents to awareness in the absence of, or indifferently to, external stimuli. Subjectivity is a story, a myth, that informs our experience of the world, but has no basis in fact.

Romantics tend to play up the importance of our inner life. Dreams, for example, take on deep significance. Our unconscious urges, the Freudian Id, become reified into entities that enact a little psychodrama "inside our head". Romantic Buddhism emphasises the forms of ideology which posit a pure self covered in defilements just waiting to be freed from the constraints imposed by conditioning and society. The free individual is, in particular, spontaneous: their behaviour and utterances come bubbling up without being filtered through imposed frameworks like morality. In other words at the same time as attacking the myth of objectivity, Romantics affirm the various myths of subjectivity and reify the subject into a self. Romantic Buddhism is thus a total contradiction.

The Romantics were immune to the petty conceits of conventional morality. Some of the key figures of the Romantic movement were drug addicts. They eschewed conventional mores and sought to justify their hedonistic indulgence in the pleasures of the flesh. They sought to leave their bodies behind through ecstasy, and like many people in history sought short-cuts to the realm of spirit. Some Buddhists have, incomprehensibly, gone down this road as well. 

It is quite true that objectivity has distinct limits, even when applied by millions of individuals working together. Yes, there have been a continuous stream of stunning insights into the world and how it works that have totally changed the way we live, but some things are, and may remain, beyond our understanding. The contrary holds for subjectivity. Subjectivity is not what it seems and is, and will increasing become, accessible to study. Subjectivity is not unlimited or ineffable - these are just stories we tell because we are intoxicated with experience. By the way the Buddha seemed to take a dim view of intoxication with experience. We are quite capable of conceiving of the subject as an object. Subjectivity is amenable to study.

A major aspect of the myth of subjectivity is the search for something we call "consciousness". The search for consciousness is first and foremost hampered by philosophy and philosophers. Consciousness  has been the subject of wild speculation which mostly seems to take everyday hallucinations as real. If we were setting out to explore the phenomena of the mind today we would not, on the basis of anecdote and generalising from personal experience, invent a whole raft of wild speculative theories, each with their own jargon and then set about trying to prove one of them right. I suggest that the scientific study of consciousness needs to detach itself from centuries of metaphysical speculation however interesting and concentrate on making observations.

Let's not assume that the way we talk about consciousness has any basis in fact until we can show that it is so. Where is the evidence, for example, for a theatre of consciousness? We really only have personal anecdote! But, since the idea infects our intellectual landscape, we grow up with this as an unchallenged background assumption. If there is in fact no entity which might be called a subject in the brain or mind, then we need to start again and work out how to talk about the phenomena we can experience, including the experience of selfhood. The simple fact is that how experience seems to us, is not how it is. We should no more trust individual subjectivity than we trust individual objectivity. That we do trust it is a barrier to progress. For example we still spill huge amounts of ink and research funding on the fundamentally Christian notion of free will. Of course there are juridicial repercussions to doing away with the notion of free will, but recent research is showing that the question of freedom is badly phrased because of legacy arguments that have now lost their relevance (we're not longer interested in how God came to be so incompetent as to allow evil; Buddhists never were). Freedom is relative to a number of constraints. We now know, from scientific investigation, that all of our actions are initiated unconsciously and the appearance of a decision in our awareness is timed to make it seem like we consciously willed the action to happen. Whence free will now? How do we even conceive of morality in this new light?

I imagine that there will be great hostility to the downgrading of the individual to a biologically convenient fiction. Not only from libertarians, but from Romantics. We might be forced to admit that the Chinese view of a person, with it's emphasis on collectivity, relationships and obligations is more in tune with reality. Individual behaviour is not simply the product simply of psychology. Individuals are frequently responding to environmental factors, especially social cues. But Western society is founded on basis that individual liberty is a high good, if not the highest good. And if the individual is a fiction? Then what? There's certainly a lot at stake. 

I could briefly mention Lynn Margulis's observations that we are not individuals but communities. We are colonies of symbiotic organisms, some tightly bound in our cells and some loosely bound in our bodies. For every human cell in this colony there are 100 bacterial cells without which we probably wouldn't survive. Bacteria mediate our physical interactions with the world! I might also cite the fact that the smallest viable unit of humanity is not the individual nor even the family. It must be the troop of several families, or even the clan of several troops, for our genes not to become overly recessive and kill us.

Individuality, the autonomy of a self, is another myth; another Romantic myth. We are emeshed in webs of dependency and obligation from the molecular to the societal level. The myth of individuality is central to the divide and conquer policy of NeoLiberalism, and to the transfer of wealth to the wealthy creating disastrous levels of economic inequality in nations and globally. At present the rogue individual is free to exploit the community to their own advantage. Such individuals are even admired and made the subject of movies. Survival of the fittest ought to refer to the community best able to cooperate, but it seems to have become affixed to the predator best able to kill it's prey (this is a kind of Romantic Victorian fiction about how nature operates that modern science has yet to eliminate). We're a social primate species which is evolutionarily successful through our ability to empathise and cooperate,  so why do we admire rogue predators rather than successful team members? Something is deeply wrong with this picture!

Most people I meet have a crude, but effective, critique of materialism, though little appreciation of the sophisticated views of contemporary scientists and thus no way to really engage with what science is telling them about their world. I certainly value contact with people that don't fit this narrow mould but they are a minority. Almost no one I meet is aware of their Romantic conditioning or how it manoeuvres them towards particular conclusions about their experience of the world. Reifying the subject ought to be anathema to Buddhists. Ironically, it seems to be the norm.

~~oOo~~

What is Consciousness Anyway?

I'm often frustrated by simplistic worldviews, especially when I fall into one myself. A couple of years back I wrote a response to the charge that is frequently levelled at me, namely that I am a materialist (gasp!). The choices in these cases seem to be materialist or non-materialist (where the latter involves believing in a range of supernatural entities and forces). Similarly there seems to be an assumption that if one is a materialist that one considers consciousness to be a mere epiphenomena. The suggestion is often that if you don't think that consciousness is an ineffable supernatural entity then you must believe it to be mere epiphenomena. But these are not the only two choices. 

A related subject is the idea that science can and does tell us nothing about consciousness. This is clearly not true, as scientists who study the mind are able to tell us a great deal about it. The idea that science cannot explain consciousness seem to be rooted in particular views rather than based on familiarity with scientific inquiry. In other words it's just an ideological position.

I don't think scientists have fully explained consciousness by any means, but there are some very interesting observations of, and ideas about, the mind, and a lot of really insightful deductive work on how the mind must function in order to exhibit the features it does (aka reverse engineering). At present we have some interesting conjectures about how the mind might work that are guiding our search for more data. Scientists are busy trying to disprove one theory or another.

Now, I happen to be a fan of info-graphic guru David McCandless and recently bought a copy of his book Information is Beautiful. One of his infographics lists 12 explanations for consciousness (including a Buddhist version). Each is represented by a graphic and a sentence. The same information with animations is online here. (At time of writing they are conducting a survey of opinions about consciousness using this set). Below is his set of 12 with a couple of additions. The heading in bold and the summary in italics come from McCandless. I have added a few explanatory comments in each case.

Substance Dualism

Consciousness is a field that exists in its own parallel "realm" of existence outside reality so can't be seen.

Aka Cartesian Duality. Strict separation between mind and body. Consciousness and matter are two distinct types of substance. The problems with this view are legend and almost no one takes it seriously any more. Still, if you believe in ghosts or psychic powers then you have a foot in this camp!

Substance Monism

The entire universe is one substance, 

All is one, dude. Included in this is the form of idealism which says that everything is the mind, and physical objects don't really exist. Buddhists sometimes flirt with idealism e.g 'mind only' cittamātra. The opposite extreme, which is more popular in the West is that everything is just material, which is covered by epiphenomenalism, behaviourism and functionalism.

Emergent Dualism

Consciousness is a sensation that "grows" inevitably out of complicated brain states.

This features in a common science fiction theme: a computer network becomes so complex that it spontaneously develops consciousness. As a philosophy of mind this view relies on observations about complex systems emerging from simpler units interacting. One of the central insights of work on fractals and complexity theory is that simple repeating units can produce patterns and processes of startling complexity. The view accepts that we are constructed from matter, but argues that complex arrangements of matter are capable of displaying properties which are greater than the sum of their parts - consciousness and even a soul are attributable to this by proponents.

Property Dualism

Consciousness is a physical property of all matter, like electromagnetism, just not one the scientists know about.

Science is making new discoveries all the time right? So why should we assume that all the properties of matter have been discovered yet? The idea here is that everything is made of one substance, matter, (and it is  thus a form of substance monism) but that matter has multiple properties. In particular matter has physical properties and mental properties. In this view all matter has a psychic component.

This is similar to the Jain view of the world which considered that everything was conscious. Consciousness exists in a hierarchy depending on how many senses the entity possesses. Rock only has the sense of touch, so is only minimally conscious. Some animals have more or different senses than we do.

As a way around both materialism and idealism this view has some merits.

Pan Psychism

All matter has a psychic part. Consciousness is just the psychic part of our brain.

This seems to be a popular view amongst my colleagues. Sometimes its described in terms of the brain being like an radio that 'picks up' consciousness and tunes it in so we can be aware of it. Not very different from property dualism, indeed it is sometimes called Panpsychic property dualism. However Pan Psychism treats everything as mind, where mind has physical and mental properties. As I understand it Theravāda Abhidhamma sees the world in this way. Many Buddhists argue that in our world mind creates the physical world, possibly on the basis of the Nidāna sequence in which viññāna is the condition for nāmarūpa.

Identity Theory

Mental states are simply physical events that we can see in brain scans.

Aka type physicalism or reductive materialism. In this view the states and processes of the mind are identical to states and processes of the brain. In other words what you think of as your consciousness is simply the physical states of the brain. This is a form of monism - it doesn't see the mind as substantially different from the brain. 

Functionalism

Consciousness and its states (belief, desire, pain) are simply functions the brain performs.

Consciousness is the sum of the functions of the brain. Mental states are constituted solely by causal relations to other mental states, sensory inputs, and behavioural outputs. Presumably this does away with the hard problem of consciousness? Functionalism has it's origins in Aristotle's idea of a soul: that it is just that which enables us to function as a human being. Functionalism can be thought of as behaviourism as seen through the lens of cognitive psychology.

Behaviourism

Consciousness is literally just behaviour. When we behave in a certain way, we appear conscious.

Once a very popular view behaviourism dispenses with the idea of consciousness. Life is just stimulus and response. In higher animals such as humans this is so complex that it appears to be consciousness, but really it isn't. This kind of mechanistic thinking about humans was popular early in the Enlightenment period when clockwork was the complex mode. I associate behaviourism with the advent of computers. The mind is often likened to the most complex human creation of the moment. Cavemen no doubt thought of the mind as a flint knife. When computers came along as they seemed like a metaphor for the mind. But in practice computers work very differently from the mind. However the invention of neural networks showed that it is possible to imitate more closely how the human mind works. This is the subject of one of De Bono's lesser known works: I am Right You Are Wrong (which I recommend).

Epiphenomenalism

Consciousness is an accidental side effect of complex physical processes in the brain.

This is the view that seems to get Buddhists most steamed up. Another form of mechanistic thinking which down plays the hard problem of consciousness by denying that anything is going on. "Move along folks, there's nothing to see here." It arose out of attempts to get around mind/body dualism.

If this view were to hold then we ought to be able to build a sufficiently complex clockwork device that was indistinguishable from a conscious being.

Quantum Consciousness

Not sure what consciousness is, but quantum phsyics over classical physics, can better explain it.

There is no reason why the mind should not involve quantum phenomena. But there is no evidence that it does. For some time it has been trendy to invoke quantum mechanics as an explanation for all sorts of things. But those attempting this seem to be philosophers rather than quantum theorists (Dennett for instance) and I'm doubtful. I've attempted to debunk the idea that Buddhism has anything in common with quantum mechanics (see Erwin Schrödinger Didn't Have a Cat).

100 billion cells each with 1000 connections is really very complex, so I don't see an a priori need to invoke quantum mechanics in order to explain or describe consciousness. On the other hand the adaptability of an amoeba might make us think again since it is capable of remarkably sophisticated responses to its environment given its relative simplicity of form. However until there's actual evidence of quantum effects this remains in the realm of speculation. Maybe someone more familiar with Dennett can point to the evidence that he cites?

Cognitivism

Consciousness is the sensation of your most significant thoughts being highlighted

Quite a lot in common with Functionalism, in that it uses insights from cognitive psychology to improve on Behaviourism. In a sense it highlight thinking as a distinct kind of behaviour. It incorporates the idea of the mind as a computer which processes information and produces behaviour (Behaviourism only acknowledges behaviour).

Higher Order Theory

Consciousness is just higher order thoughts (thoughts about other thoughts)

The approach emerges from the understanding that there are different types of thoughts, and that they operate at different levels of organisation. One of the basic distinctions being between unconscious perception and conscious perception. Another is between intransitive consciousness (mere consciousness) and transitive consciousness (consciousness of some object). Distinctions amongst philosophers of mind often depend on finding the right level at which to describe it. Higher Order  Theory is primarily concerned with understanding conscious, transitive mental states (in this it is similar to early Buddhism).

Buddhism(?)

Consciousness is a continuous stream of ever-recurring phenomena, pinched, like eddies, into isolated minds.

Clearly McCandless is not that well informed on Buddhist ideas about consciousness, and since he doesn't cite sources we can't get at why he thinks we think like this. The last part sounds more like Hinduism to me.

Early Buddhism 

Consciousness is always consciousness of... 

If consciousness is even a subject of inquiry (and I'm not convinced it is) then the usual way of talking about it is that consciousness arises when sense object meets sense faculty and gives rise to sense consciousness.  Early Buddhism focusses on transitive consciousness and has almost no interest in the mind otherwise. The word being translated as 'consciousness' is viññāna which probably means some more like cognition or awareness. Such a cognition which arises in dependence on conditions is referred to as conditioned (saṅkhata); it can be analysed into five branches (pañcakhandhā ≡ papañca). It is possible to have unconditioned (asaṅkhata) cognition when one sees and knows mental objects (dhammā) as they are (yathābhūta-ñānadassana). It is claimed that the six senses (eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind) and their objects make up the totality (sabbaṃ) and that any other proposition about the world is beyond the proper domain (visāya) of inquiry.

Late Buddhism

Consciousness is a manifestation of karmic seeds

Consciousness arises on the basis of a storehouse for the 'seeds' of karma (ālayavijñāna). Floating on top of this layer are the sensory cognitions which produce provisionally valid cognitions (relative truth). The extra layer at the bottom was invented to try to account for difficulties explaining rebirth (the problem of continuity of consequences). However the ālayavijñāna is a kind of permanent substrate and thus suffers from metaphysical problems related to eternalism. I argue that the problem of continuity between births cannot be practically solved without positing some kind of ātman.

Representationalism

Damasio's Model of Consciousness

This is a rubric for ideas in which consciousness is an emergent property of the brain's role of monitoring the environment and the body's own internal states using virtual representations created in the brain. Combined with temporal memories of previous states (memory), and projections of futures states (imagination) and representing the observing subject as a virtual self, consciousness is the overall effect of these functions. This emerges particularly from the work of Antonio Damasio and Thomas Metzinger and is closest to my own understanding of what consciousness is or does.

Comments

Of course it must be said that all of these are the thinnest of glosses on some quite complex ideas, and that not being expert in any of them I have probably got them wrong. My purpose here is mainly to represent the complexity of the subject matter and encourage readers to take in some of the options that are available. There are more than two choices. Being interested in the science of the mind and uninterested in the supernatural leaves me choices other the epiphenomenalism.

In trying to understand McCandless's categories it becomes obvious that many of them have substantial cross-over. Some are in fact subsets of broader categories. So I wouldn't put too much store by his list. It illustrates the point that there are a lot of theories, but not much more.

It seems to me that if we are to make any progress in understanding ourselves then we need to begin with observation and allow understanding to emerge. My beef with philosophy is that it starts with theories and searches for facts to fit. Indeed the vast legacy of philosophical speculation of the mind completely divorced from observation would seem to be a major impediment to progress.

My enthusiasm for Thomas Metzinger is precisely that he starts with observations and works towards an explanation. I'm also interested George Lakoff's ideas about categorisation, metaphor and embodied cognition influence how we see cognition and selfhood. Lakoff's work also stems from observation. I don't mind being presented with a worked out theory as long as the evidence for and against the theory follows.

I tend towards rejecting any strong form of mind/body dualism. Free floating, disembodied consciousness simply does not make sense to me. All the evidence I am aware of points to an intimate connection between brain and consciousness. Metzinger's account of his out of body experiences is central to undermining the last vestiges of my dualistic thinking in this area because it showed that unusual phenomena, like religious traditions, don't have to be taken on face value. Yes, it really does seem as if the consciousness can leave the body; but no, it doesn't have to literally do so to produce a convincing illusion. Traditional Buddhist ideas about consciousness are compatible with this view, as long as we are not too literalistic.

With Kant I accept the existence of an objective world distinct from my perception of it along with the caution that we can only infer things about this world, we can never know it directly (since our only source of information about the world is our senses). However this is not a problem in the foreground of early Buddhist thought. The objective world is a given in early Buddhist texts. Our experience of the world occurs in the space of overlap between a sense endowed body, a world of objective, and attention to the overlap. The entire focus of early Buddhist practice takes place in this liminal space, where our responses to experience feedback into, and to some extent determine, the quality of our experience.

One of the main criticisms that comes from the anti-physicalist side of the argument is that theories which don't accept a supernatural aspect to mind, i.e. an aspect of mind which operates outside the known laws of nature, can't account for qualia. One of the reasons this claim stands is that such people do not keep up with neuroscience. Some recent research looks promising.

Orpwood, Roger. 'Qualia Could Arise from Information Processing in Local Cortical Networks.' Frontiers in Psychology. 2013; 4: 121. Published online 2013 March 14. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00121

Jakub Limanowski, and Felix Blankenburg. 'Minimal self-models and the free energy principle.' Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. 2013; 7: 547. Published online 2013 September 12. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00547

See also

 The Where of What: How Brains Represent Thousands of Objects by Ed Yong (Dec 2012), which summarises the state of research on this subject as of 2012. 

I also recommend A Brain in a Supercomputer, a TED talk by Henry Markham which helps with getting an idea of the complexity of the brain. Follow this up at The Blue Brain Project.

We do not yet fully understand consciousness. But this is no reason to fall back on supernatural explanations.
The route away from superstition and fearful projections onto the world has been long and difficult but it has been worth it. On the other hand what we are learning is far more sophisticated than Medieval insights from Buddhists and if we stick to what's in our ancient texts at some point we'll become irrelevant. The Mindfulness Therapy movement is already showing how this this might work since they have been far more successful in communicating their version of Buddhist methods in a shorter space of time.

~~oOo~~

See also this in the Guardian (10.4.13): Transparent brains reveal their secrets – video. A fly-through of a whole mouse brain where the non-neuronal material has been rendered transparent - every dendrite of every neuron is visible! Selective stains enable neurons of different functionality to be coloured differently. The original article is: Chung, K.,  et al (2013). 'Structural and molecular interrogation of intact biological systems.' Nature. doi:10.1038/nature12107.

I should also have given a nod to the Human Connectome Project. No doubt this new technique used above will advance their work considerably.


Brain as Receiver

One of the options that comes up regularly to explain consciousness in a dualistic frame is the brain as TV receiver analogy. This is ruled out by Steven Novella. He argues that to compare the brain to a TV that simply displays the information beamed into it the analogy would have to answer these questions positively:

A more accurate analogy would be this – can you alter the wiring of a TV in order to change the plot of a TV program? Can you change a sitcom into a drama? Can you change the dialogue of the characters? Can you stimulate one of the wires in the TV in order to make one of the on-screen characters twitch?

Disrupting the reception, via brain damage, does not simply distort the image of the show, it changes the plot and the characters. The brain simply cannot be a passive receiver. The brain creates consciousness. This is the only way to explain the correlations.