How might Western Metaphysicists respond to the puzzle of King Milinda/Nagasena’s Chariot

Question

Example of the puzzle

How might Western Philosophers like Mereologcial Universalists or naturalistic metaphysicians reply to this?

Answer 1

I would say that modern philosophers with a highly naturalized epistemology would agree strongly with the notion that human identity is largely non-material, ephemeral, and emerges temporarily out of the physical systems that lead to human life. Case in point is how abnormal psychology shows that psychological personality is contingent upon a great number of subsystems of the human brain in a metaphysical sense, that there are regularities in terms of etiology. Lessions in the prefrontal cortex cause show that the human mind that excels at planning or delaying gratification will change in the same way, by losing those intelligences. Talented language production is affected both syntactically and semantically depending on whether lesions occur in Wernicke's or Broca's areas. Anesthetics can deprive a person temporarily of consciousness is predictable ways, and severing the corpus callosum results in subtle deficiencies regarding perceptions of bodily symmetry.

Thus, what most call the human personality and personal consciousness which is a distinct manifestation of what we presume causally to be a mind is, like the wheel of a chariot, is composed of many spokes, and that spokes can be removed and alter the performance of the wheel in subtle manners; eventually, if enough spokes are affected, then the wheel ceases to be functional, and in the extreme case, the wheel itself, once obliterated, demonstrates that the wheel can cease to exist under the right circumstances.

Buddha says that those who talk about wanting to release the soul from suffering are mistaken. They speak as if they are certain that there is a distinct soul that from one birth to another occupying different bodies until it is finally released. But their certainty is as misconceived as the case of someone who falls in love with the most beautiful woman, who has never been seen or known by anyone. Buddha also compares the efforts directed at freeing a soul, to the efforts of a delusionary person who builds a stairway to get to a place that does not exist on any map.

Human minds, then, are conceived in much the same way by modern atheistic/scientific interpretations of existences. The mind does not survive the death of the body. The mind is an abstraction, a word, a linguistic artifact for a phenomenon, which much like a wave, comes into being when a physical medium develops in a certain way, and disappears when it reverts state. The notion that our minds transcend and go elsewhere is misleading, because there is no elsewhere to go, and that freeing the mind means freeing the mind from logical fallacy, not physically untethering it from the body, since the mind is wholly dependent upon the body.