Thompson responds to Garfield

Continuing this post, Thompson's response to Garfield is in this document starting on p. 991. Read the rest for the detailed, precise parsing. He said he was using the notion of a conventional self "in order to criticize contemporary views, such as Thomas Metzinger’s, that argue that there is no self in any sense because there is no substantially existent self. In my view and in Madhyamaka terms, such views, while avoiding the extreme of 'reification,' fall prey to the other extreme of 'nihilism.' So what was at stake for me in using Madhyamaka was to show why 'neuro-nihilism' is misguided, and how the Madhyamaka idea of the person as conventionally existent can be illuminated by a cognitive-science account of how the conventional self gets constituted."

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