Conventional or emergent persons? Navigating a dispute in Abhidharma Buddhism

Bronwyn Finnigan (Australian National University)

On Tuesday, 24th of February, the Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia of the Austrian Academy of Sciences will be hosting Bronwyn Finnigan, who is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Australian National University. Her talk will take place at 5pm in Room 5, on the 4th floor of the Austrian Academy of Sciences building, Georg-Coch-Platz 2, 1010. Please see details below.

Conventional or emergent persons? Navigating a dispute in Abhidharma Buddhism

Bronwyn Finnigan (Australian National University)

An increasing number of contemporary scholars have argued that in denying a substantial self, the Buddha nevertheless endorses, or his teaching is consistent with, an emergentist account of the self. This position – which I call Buddhist emergentism – is advanced as a corrective to the perceived explanatory deficiencies of Buddhist reductionism with respect to personal identity. This talk both motivates and critically examines the debate between Buddhist reductionists and emergentists by contextualising it within the historical dispute between Vasubandhu and Pudgalavāda Buddhists concerning the ontological status of the person (pudgala). I will defend an intermediate position in this dispute. I will argue that while (1) Vasubandhu provides reasons to reject the strong emergence of persons, and (2) Buddhist reductionism can evade several standard criticisms invoked to support an emergentist view, (3) Buddhist emergentists rightly emphasize the need for richer, non-linear causal relations to account for the functional properties of conventionally real persons. Drawing on Abhidharma analyses of dependent arising, I defend a middle position in which persons are conventionally real and exhibit weakly emergent functional capacities grounded in complex relational structures among aggregates, without positing emergent selves.

It is possible to attend the talk online via Zoom. If you are interested in doing it, please let me know at [email protected].

I’m looking forward to seeing many of you there!

All the best,

Szymon