Friday, December 09, 2011

Review of Owen Flanagan's "The Bodhisattva's Brain: Buddhism naturalized"

Book review at The Existential Buddhist blog:

Owen Flanagan [1], is my favorite living analytical philosopher because he writes clearly, deals with topics (theory of mind, ethics, what it means to live well) that I actually care about, is what smart would be if smart was on steroids, and has a wonderfully dry sense of humor. He’s a Naturalist, which is to say, he eschews supernatural explanations, dislikes dualism, and is disinterested in questions that are unfalsifiable by either logic or empirical observation. He’s not a Buddhist, but he has a keen interest in (and sufficiently deep understanding of) Buddhism, as well as recent efforts to test Buddhist claims using scientific methods. He wonders whether Buddhism can be tamed sufficiently to be of interest to Naturalists. He also wonders, once one has stripped Buddhism of everything supernatural or dualistic, whether what remains is recognizably Buddhist, and whether it is philosophically deep, interesting, or useful.

Continue reading here at The Existential Buddhist

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