CONCEPT
The Middle Way
Varela's application of the Madhyamaka Buddhist teaching to cognitive science: a position between representationalism and idealism that dissolves the foundational assumption behind both — and between AI worship and AI refusal.
The Middle Way (Madhyamaka in Sanskrit) is the Buddhist philosophical tradition Varela drew on most systematically to formulate his cognitive science. The tradition teaches a middle path between two errors that look opposed but share a hidden assumption. Eternalism treats phenomena as having fixed, independent, self-sustaining essences. Nihilism denies that phenomena have any reality at all. Both positions assume that reality requires a fixed foundation — either there is one, or nothing is real. The Madhyamaka position dissolves the opposition: phenomena are real, but they arise in dependence on other phenomena, without fixed essence. The world exists; nothing in it has independent, self-sustaining being.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Varela saw in the Madhyamaka teaching a confirmation of what autopoietic biology had independently demonstrated. The living system has no fixed essence — it is a process of self-production that must be continuously sustained. Its identity is not a property it possesses but an activity it performs. This is the Madhyamaka