Taken by Rebecca Coombs
Miri Albahari
M207: Philosophy
The University of Western Australia
35 Stirling Highway
Crawley W.A. 6009
Australia
Telephone (+61 8) 6488 2109
Facsimile (+61 8) 6488 1182
E-mail Username: albahari (Add @arts.uwa.edu.au to the username
to form the e-mail address. Spammers use programs that
automatically extract full e-mail addresses from internet
websites; to prevent this, we list only usernames.)
Principal Research Interests
Philosophy of Mind, especially the self, consciousness and
colour theory.
Eastern Philosophies generally (e.g., Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta,
etc.), but especially in relation to their interface with issues
in Analytic Philosophy.
My book, Analytical Buddism: The Two-Tiered Illusion of
Self, focuses on advancing the Buddhist account of no-self
from a Western philosophical perspective. Unlike most Buddhist
philosophers, I do not interpret Buddhism as endorsing a
(Humean-like) bundle-theory of the self. I hold that the reality
of nibbana (the goal of Buddhist practice) would necessitate a
type of unified ‘witness-consciousness’ that, while
contributing to the illusion of self, is not itself illusory.
From 2010, I am hoping to begin a follow-up book on how Buddhist
meditation could, by utilising witness-consciousness, serve to
undermine the sense of self, while avoiding the sorts of
pathology predicted by neuroscientists such as Damasio.
Currently, I’m writing on whether the sense of self is
doxastic.
Recent Teaching
Philosophy East and West (upper-level)
Critical Thinking (first-year)
God, Mind and Knowledge (first-year)
Metaphysics: Colour, Time and Causation (honours)
Consciousness (honours)
Social Ethics: Matters of Life and Death (upper-level)
Social ethics: People and their Institutions (upper-level)
Selected Publications
Books
Analytical Buddhism: The Two-Tiered Illusion of
Self. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2006.*
* Reviewed by Charles Goodman, Australasian Journal of
Philosophy, 87/1, March 2009.
Articles
-
‘Witness-Consciousness: Its Definition, Appearance
and Reality’, Journal of Consciousness
Studies, forthcoming.
-
‘Against No-Atman Theories of Anatta’
Asian Philosophy, 12: 1, 2002, pp. 5-20.
-
‘Can Heterophenomenology Ground a Complete Science of
Consciousness?’ Noetica: a Cognitive Science
Forum (online: PDF download) 2002.
-
‘Objective Colours and Evolutionary Value: A Reply
to Dedrick’ Dialogue, XXXVIII, 1999, pp.
99-108.
Book Reviews
-
Mark Siderits, Buddhism: An Introduction,
Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. Australasian Journal of
Philosophy, 86/4, December 2008, pp. 690-3.
-
Bernard Faure, Double Exposure: Cutting Across
Buddhist and Western Discourses, trans. Janet Lloyd.
Stanford: Stanford University Press 2004. Philosophy In
Review August 2004.
Recent Talks
-
2008: ‘A Buddhist Perspective on Self: To Be or Not
to Be?’ (The Brain and Mind Club, Melbourne,
invited)
-
2008: ‘What Kind of Self Do We Think We Are?’
(Australasian Association of Philosophy, Melbourne)
-
2008: ‘A Critique of Dan Zahavi’s Subjectivity
and Selfhood’ (American Philosophical Association,
Pasadena, author-meets-critic session, invited)
-
2007: ‘Characterising No-self in Buddhism’
(Australasian Association of Philosophy, Auckland)
-
2007: ‘Clarifying the Nature of
Witness-Consciousness’ (Conference on Buddhism &
Taoism: Emptiness and Nothingness, Hong Kong University,
invited)
-
2007: ‘The Two-Tiered Illusion of Self’
(Australasian Association of Philosophy, Australia,
Armidale)
|
