No-Self and the Phenomenology of Ownership

CFS Lecture by Monima Chadha, Department of Philosophy, Monash University, Australia.

Abstract

No-Self and the Phenomenology of Ownership 

The Abhidharma Buddhist revisionary metaphysics aims to provide an intellectually and morally preferred picture of the world that lacks a self. The paper claims that the Abhidharma ‘no-self’ view can be plausibly interpreted as a no-ownership view, according to which there is no locus or subject of experience and thus no owner of mental or bodily awarenesses. On this interpretation of the no-self view the Abhidharma Buddhist metaphysicians are committed to denying the ownership of experiences, and thereby apparently obliged to explain our  sense of ownership. Our experiences allegedly come with the sense that I am the one who is undergoing this experience. But is there a really an experience of ownership, i.e., an experience of being a subject that grounds our sense of ownership? I argue that there is nothing that it is like to be an owner of experiences in the sense that there is no experiential phenomenology associated with the ownership of experience. 

Bio

Monima Chadha is Head of Philosophy at Monash University. She works in Buddhist Philosophy of Mind and has published in many interdisciplinary and cross cultural Philosophy journals including Mind and Language, Phenomenology and Cognitive Sciences, Philosophy East and West, etc. 
Homepage: http://profiles.arts.monash.edu.au/monima-chadha/

Registration

The workshop is free and open to all, no registration is needed.