Buddhist Psychology and the Revolution in Cognitive Sciences

Abstract

Today, the early stages of the Jamesian dream are being realised. Renowned Buddhist scholars have joined psychologists, cognitive scientists and neurologists in integrating the methodologies of Buddhism to a specific discipline, which, following Alan Wallace, may be described as ‘contemplative science’. This emerging framework has located both Buddhist psychology and counselling practices within this contemporary convergence of contemplative practices and the cognitive sciences. While I shall trace below these stages in the interface between Buddhism and cognitive science, Wallace feels that the cognitive sciences have yet to undergo a complete revolution, overcoming the domination of scientific materialism and devise rigorous and precise introspective methods for observing mental phenomena.³

Cognitive science is a child of the 1950s, the product of a time when psychology, anthropology and linguistics were redefining themselves and computer science and neuroscience as disciplines were coming into existence. Psychology could not participate in the cognitive revolution until it had freed itself from behaviourism, thus restoring cognition to scientific respectability. By then, it was becoming clear in several disciplines that that the solution to some of their problems depended on solving problems traditionally allocated to other disciplines.¹

James further speculated that the stream of consciousness may be a different type of phenomenon than the brain, one that interacts with the brain while alive, absorbs and retains the identity, personality, and memories constitutive in this interaction, and can continue without the brain. While James is still widely respected among contemporary cognitive scientists, his views on the origin and nature of consciousness have been largely ignored or rejected.²