(May 19, 2016 at 7:51 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Anatta. The claim is that there is no unchanging, permanent soul in human beings. Well, agreed.
The conclusion drawn from this claim, however, what buddhists take this to mean....is that there is no self. That if ghosts aren't real.........self isn't real. A complete non-sequitur based upon abject ignorance. Simple mistakes like this might be avoided, if they weren't so quick to discard reason.
Different Buddhist will have a different understanding of this. I would say Anatta means that self isn't fundamental. In the sense that atoms, however real they are, aren't fundamental, but are composed of other entities. To cash this out, protons, neutrons, and electrons are useful ways of thinking about reality at one level, but they don't exist as particulars inhered by properties (which is a to say, fundamentally complex entities). Likewise, self is a useful way of thinking about certain experiences, but it doesn't exist as a fundamentally complex entity, but as an aggregate of entities, which are categorically removed from concepts of "self."
