Abstract
Not only the view that there is no constant self ('no-self' in short) is a common view of all different schools among Indian Buddhist philosophers, but also has extremely important implications in religious liberating meanings. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the reasons behind these various arguments that ancient Indian Buddhist philosophers offered for this important no-self view. The author looks into both the ancient Indian Buddhist literature that he can understand and some modern Buddhist literature and proposes that there are at least four different arguments for the no-self view in Indian Buddhism: the argument that appeals to observations and Occam's razor, the argument that appeals to Leibniz's Law, the argument that appeals to the eductio sorites, and the argument that appeals to special composition question. Not only does the author indicate the possible origins of these arguments, but also make a connection to related modern discussions in analytical philosopy that can be found. In the final part of the paper, the author briefly evaluates the strength of these arguments and reminds the readers several points that should be kept in mind when evaluating.
Translated title of the contribution | Four No-Self Arguments in Indian Buddhism |
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Original language | Chinese (Traditional) |
Pages (from-to) | 1-26 |
Number of pages | 26 |
Journal | 玄奘佛學研究 |
Issue number | 31 |
State | Published - 1 Mar 2019 |
Keywords
- Indian Buddhism
- no-self
- Leibniz's Law
- the sorties argument
- special composition question