The Mind & Life Institute (http://www.mindandlife.org/) has published a series of books, largely transcriptions of discussions between the Dalai Lama and western scientists and philosophers, on the philosophy and science of mind in the west and its relationship to Buddhist philosophy.

The Prasangika Madhyamika and Yogachara schools of Mahayana Buddhism differ in terms of their characterization of the relationship between self and the “external” world. The debate is extensive and complex, and I don’t claim to be an expert on the subject.

That said, here is the gross distinction, as quoted in “Gentle Bridges: Conversations with the Dalai Lama on the Sciences of MInd” (Hayward, Varela, Shambhala Publications, 1992):

“Within Mahayana there are two main approaches or avenues of philosophical investigation, with their corresponding schools. One of these, the Yogachara school, arrives at the conclusion that there is indeed no objective world out there. The other one, the Prasangika Madhyamika, asserts that there is an objective world, although not in the old Cartesian sense of being totally independent of consciousness (41).”

B. ALAN WALLACE [interpreter]: “For the Pasangika Madhyamika there are objective entities buty in a very special fashion that is non-Cartesian, non-Newtonian. For the Prasangika, if you investigate an object that seems to be out there, really seeking out its essential nature, asking what is the nature of this phenomenon from its own side exclusively, you don’t find something out there as an objective entity. It winds up to be something unfindable under analysis. Then the Prasangika says that although it is not findable under analysis, nevertheless it exists in a conventional fashion by the force of verbal and/or conceptual designation or imputation (41).”

“The Prasangika view…engages in an analysis of apparently objective phenomena and finds that under analysis they simply cannot be found…the Prasangika then does not conclude there is therefore no objective world but says there is an objective world—that verbal or conceptual designation is sufficient for an objective phenomenon to exist, but that this conventional nature is the only kind of existence it has as an object. So here is a school of Buddhism, the Prasangika, that says yes, there is an objective world, yes, there is a subjective world, a subjective mind. And in fact it says these are both equally weighty. It is not a view that says it is all purely a world of mind, nor is it a materialisitic view. Both mind and matter exist; they both have a conventional, conceptually designated existence (42).”

In contrast to the Prasangika view, which asserts the conventional existence of an external world or objective entities, there is another view among the Mahayana views, the Yogachara, which in its own fashion really investigates, really analyzes: Do these phenomena that appear to be objectively existent in fact have objective existence? The Yogacharins also say that objective existence is not findable under analysis, but they come to the conclusion that although these things appear to have objective existence out there, in fact this does not stand up to analysis, and therefore they are purely of the nature of mind. But there is another problem. As soon as you say that these phenomena that appear to be objective out there are of the nature of mind, then the question is: Is it possible for the mind that cognizes these phenomena to be in error? Is there realistic cognition as opposed to unrealistic cognition? The Yogacharins must say, Yes, there is. But how do they establish that one thing is realistic and another is unrealistic when everything is coming from the nature of mind anyway? This becomes problematic.

See also pages 157-158 on the three levels of consciousness and their relationship to distinctions between mind and brain in western science and philosophy.

Adrian

“…what we consider the mind – at least in my understanding – is reliant on our comprehension of reality, information, and experience,…”

reminded me of the discussion about Popper’s three worlds in

Rethinking Learning
CARL BEREITER
MARLENE SCARDAMALIA

http://www.ikit.org/fulltext/1996rethinking.pdf

This was an alternative reading in week two of CCK08. I’ve gone on to read more of Popper’s writings. He divides the creation of knowledge (my word) into the combination of three worlds. His World 1 aligns with “reality” (empirical) World 2 with what goes on in the mind (information processing) and World 3 with the production of and critic of human knowledge (experience). My take on this is since all three of these worlds are in constant flux – the world is constantly being re-created not just re-run like an older film.

Going on with the film analogy, the beginning learner is going to take the general plot of a (1935) film and re-write, re-cast and most importantly re-style it to fit into their world vision. The basic “facts” of the film may still be the same but the message — well it will be at least be distorted perhaps even chaotic to the person trying to see it through the lense (their original experience) of the older film.

Ignoring Stephen’s suggestion of a story at the beginning, I’ll put mine at the end.
My daughter (22) insisted that we see the just released “Pulp Fiction” in the theatre. At the end of the film she shocked me. Her critic of the film was that it was “so real.” I realized that she no longer was experiencing a film but experiencing the art of the filmmaker as representative of how her world “worked.” Her vision of the world was much more chaotic than her graduate course of study (education) promoted. She was especially impressed by how the entwined stories could be told out of order and reassembled. She was thrilled by being mystified by the disorder. (BTW so was I and she has been teaching 6th graders for the last 11 years.

B-ob

Thanks for the blog.

This is one of my favorite weeks in the course. I have been interested in chaos theory for quite a while, although I still can’t pretend to truly understand it. The Heylighen articles (http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/papers/Info-overload.pdf) were especially thought provoking and worth reading. William E. Doll (http://www.lsu.edu/faculty/wdoll/index.htm) is another author that I like who has written quite a bit about chaos theory and how it applies to curriculum. His book Post Modern Perspective on Curriculum (1993) is a little dated now but still a great read.

I like the idea of tying what we are learning to an ancient philosophy. It seems natural and it underlines two things. The first is that in most cases, nothing that we learn is really new. Second, an idea that became clear as I read your post and which has been slowly forming from my own introspective wanderings through this course is that we seem to be dealing with connectivism more as a philosophy of learning, rather than a scientific theory of learning.

I’ve also been intrigued about Buddhism. One of these days I’ll to make some time in my life to learn a little more about that as well.

Take care.