With responses from Mark Siderits (Illinois State University)
"“The Self that Appears:
Causality and Identity in Yogācāra Thought”
Philosophers in the Indian Yogācāra tradition of Buddhism developed a variety of unique terms and concepts in order to deal with the conflicting requirements of the view of emptiness (śūnyatā), on the one hand, and the detailed analysis of the elements of reality (dharmas) associated with Abhidharma thought, on the other. Chief among these concepts are the three: (1) the notion of mental events as “non-dual” (advaya), (2) the “store consciousness” (ālayavijñāna), and (3) the “three natures” (trisvabhāva).
In this lecture Jonathan Gold shows how these three concepts provide a unique way of conceiving of the appearance of subjectivity. Bringing this view into conversation with modern philosophy, Gold asserts that it successfully circumvents Kantian and related phenomenological “proofs” of the self, while maintaining a quintessentially Buddhist conceptual methodology for eradicating false views of the self.
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