Logical Refutaions & Establishment of the Knower (original) (raw)
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Ratio, 2018
This article examines contemporary Buddhist defences of the idea that consciousness is reflexively aware or self-aware. Call this the Self-Awareness Thesis. A version of this thesis was historically defended by Dignāga but rejected by Prāsaṅgika Mādhyamika Buddhists. Prāsaṅgikas historically advanced four main arguments against this thesis. In this paper I consider whether some contemporary defence of the Self-Awareness Thesis can withstand these Prāsaṅgika objections. A problem is that contemporary defenders of the Self-Awareness Thesis have subtly different accounts with different assessment criteria. I start by providing a fourfold taxonomy of these different views and then progressively show how each can withstand Prāsaṅgika objections. And I conclude by giving reasons to think that even some Prāsaṅgikas can accept some version of the Self-Awareness Thesis.
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I contrast briefly the Buddhist concept of Self as a process and a conditional reality with the concept of the substantial metaphysical concept of Self in Brahmanism and Hinduism. I present the criticism of the Buddhist thinkers, such as Nāgārjuna, who criticize any idea of the metaphysical Self. They deny the idea of the Self as its own being or as a possessor of its mental acts. However, they do not reject all sense of Self; they allow a pure process of knowledge (first of all, Self-knowledge) without a fixed subject or “owner” of knowledge. This idea is in a deep accord with some Chan stories and paradoxes of the Self and knowledge.
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Cracow Indological Studies, 2019
By pointing out different forms of pre-reflective consciousness and comparing them to the concepts of self in Advaita and Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta, it could be shown that both schools apply a kind of consciousness that corresponds to Frank’s concept of self-consciousness and self-knowledge. As demonstrated, the first form of pre-reflective consciousness complies with the advaitic teaching of an unchangeable eternity of consciousness, which is subjectless and understood as being without time and space, even as being omnipresent. It appears impossible to relate it to something else without it being objectified. The Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta school reinterprets the concept of pure consciousness and accepts it as objectifiable consciousness, which is now considered “knowledge”. At the same time it presupposes a kind of individual consciousness which is called “I”. Moreover, this school uses the argument that consciousness is unobjectifiable against the Advaitin to establish that objectifying d...
2014
The burgeoning field of cognitive studies in the West is motivated by a renewed interest in conscious experience, which arose in the postmodern zeitgeist in response to the positivist, scientific ideal of objectivity. This work presents a historical overview of Western philosophy from its dawn, focusing on the evolution of key concepts in metaphysics, ontology and epistemology, to arrive at the examination of modern theories on consciousness. The monist systems of pre-Socratic philosophers, the empiricism and rationalism of the Humanism, Kant's critique and the post-Kantian split of traditions in the analytic and continental branches are surveyed. A summary of the key historical concepts of consciousness in the continental tradition, and especially in German idealism and phenomenology is presented. Modern physicalist theories of mind based on epistemological realism, in the analytic tradition are sketched, and critical aspects of the realist viewpoint discussed. The reintroduction of the phenomenal perspective in philosophy of mind, is argued, represents an important turning point in analytic philosophy. In the second part, the philosophic-religious traditions of Advaita Vedanta and Mahayana Buddhism, in its Madhyamaka branch, are presented, and their respective notions of self, mind and reality confronted. The concept of consciousness as an ontological substance is, in Buddhism, deconstructed through the analysis of impermanence and interdependent origination of phenomena. In Advaita philosophy consciousness is equated with the universal Brahman, although no duality is admitted between Brahman and the world. The phenomenological analysis of self in this tradition differs from the Western notion of "transcendental ego" through an understanding of intentionality as a superimposition of subject-object duality on pure consciousness. A core theory of nonduality between the conscious principle and the world is then extracted from the apparently opposite ontological stances of Mahayana and Advaita. This theory is finally compared with the Western idealist and realist conceptions of consciousness, intentionality and subject-object duality. The nondualism of the Indian systems, is argued, represents a possible resolution of the ontological and epistemological problems of Western philosophy.