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Buddhaghosa, James, and Thompson on Conscious Flow

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 August 2021

MARK FORTNEY
MARK FORTNEY*
Affiliation:
THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO AT SCARBOROUGHmark.fortney@mail.utoronto.ca
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Abstract

This paper is about whether consciousness flows. Evan Thompson (2014) has recently claimed that the study of binocular rivalry shows that there are some moments where consciousness does not flow, contra William James (1890). Moreover, he has claimed that Abhidharma philosophers reject James's claim that consciousness flows. I argue that binocular rivalry poses no special challenge to James. Second, I argue that because Thompson did not take up the question of how James and Abhidharma philosophers analyze or define flow, he underdescribed their disagreement in a way that obscures an important conceptual contribution that Abhidharma philosophers make to the study of flow. They reject James's claim that there are only two conceivable ways for consciousness to fail to flow and suggest that there is a third way for consciousness to fail to flow—a way that James's imagination did not reveal to be possible.

Keywords

philosophy of mindconsciousnessBuddhaghosa
Type
Article
Information
Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 7 , Issue 4 , Winter 2021 , pp. 569 - 581
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Copyright
Copyright © American Philosophical Association 2021

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Footnotes

Thanks to two anonymous referees from The Journal of the American Philosophical Association for their very helpful comments on a previous version of this paper.

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