Words&Dirt

“You could see anything in the rain. The individual drops became streaks with the slowness of the eye; they merged and re-emerged as ciphers for the shapes you carried inside you; they lasted less than a heartbeat in your sight and they went on forever.

He saw a chair, and a ship that was not a ship; he saw a man with two shadows, and he saw that which cannot be seen––a concept; the adaptive, self-seeking urge to survive, to bend everything that can be reached to that end, and to remove and to add and to smash and to create so that one particular collection of cells can go on, can move onward and decide, and keeping moving and keeping deciding, knowing that––if nothing else––at least it lives.

And it had two shadows, it was two things: it was the need and it was the method. The need was obvious: to defeat what opposed its life. The method was the taking and bending of materials and people to one purpose, the outlook that everything could be used in the fight; that nothing could be excluded, that everything was a weapon, and the ability to handle those weapons, to find them and choose which one to aim and fire; that talent, that ability, that use of weapons.”

––Use of Weapons, by Iain M. Banks, loc. 2378-86

“The unease I have expressed about the theoretical usefulness, or lack thereof, of the colloquial concept of happiness ought to be shared by Buddhist practitioners and Buddhist studies experts. Unless the concept of happiness is being put forward in a theory-specific way, we might for now be best advised to stop talking about it, at least to stop using the everyday term happiness in philosophical or scientific contexts. Scientists are, of course, also entitled, indeed encouraged, if it is possible, to try to draw out and specify the ordinary understanding of the constituents of positive states of mind such as happiness. They will then have regimented, in a precise way or ways, the meaning(s) of happiness according to folk psychology.

The more theory-specific conceptions of virtue, well-being, flourishing, and happiness that we have, so much the better will our understanding be of these components of good lives. Overlapping consensus on the constituents of these things might reveal itself. Importantly, differences in conceptions of virtue, well-being, flourishing, and happiness will also reveal themselves. The overlaps and differences can be discussed and debated at the philosophical level. Comparative philosophers, psychological anthropologists, historians, and neuroscientists can chime in, wearing philosophical hats if they wish, but equally important, telling us how the brains of practitioners from different traditions light up, which neurochemicals rise and fall, and so on.

Intertheoretical conversation such as I am envisioning will put us in the exciting position of being able to have a better idea of the fine-grained states we are looking for, and to compare different theories in terms of the goods they claim to produce and hopefully do, in fact, produce.

Overall, this sort of inquiry provides a truly exciting, unique, and heretofore unimagined opportunity for mind scientists, practitioners, and philosophers from different traditions to join together in a conversation that combines time-tested noble ideals with newfangled gadgetry to understand ourselves more deeply and to live well, better than we do now. On the other hand, we need to avoid overrating brain imagery and what it shows. Some days when I think about brain imaging I am reminded of this joke: ‘In the beginning there was nothing and then God said “Let there be Light.” There was still nothing, but you could see it much better’”

––The Bodhisattva’s Brain: Buddhism Naturalized, by Owen Flanagan, pg. 57-8