scholarly journals Dreamless Sleep, the Embodied Mind, and Consciousness: The Relevance of a Classical Indian Debate to Cognitive Science

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evan Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Indian Philosophy ◽  
The Body ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Advaita Vedānta ◽  
Advaita Vedanta ◽  
Classical Indian Philosophy ◽  
Mind Training ◽  
Dreamless Sleep

One of the major debates in classical Indian philosophy concerned whether consciousness is present or absent in dreamless sleep. The philosophical schools of Advaita Vedānta and Yoga maintained that consciousness is present in dreamless sleep, whereas the Nyāya school maintained that it is absent. Consideration of this debate, especially the reasoning used by Advaita Vedānta to rebut the Nyāya view, calls into question the standard neuroscientific way of operationally defining consciousness as “that which disappears in dreamless sleep and reappears when we wake up or dream.” The Indian debate also offers new resources for contemporary philosophy of mind. At the same time, findings from cognitive neuroscience have important implications for Indian debates about cognition during sleep, as well as for Indian and Western philosophical discussions of the self and its relationship to the body. Finally, considerations about sleep drawn from the Indianmaterials suggest that we need a more refined taxonomy of sleep states than that which sleep science currently employs, and that contemplative methods of mind training are relevant for advancing the neurophenomenology of sleep and consciousness.

scholarly journals Mente, consciencia y cuerpo en la obra de Friedrich Nietzsche / Mind, Consciousness and the Body in Friedrich Nietzsche’s Opus

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-82
Author(s):  
Mario Colon
Keyword(s):  
Friedrich Nietzsche ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
The Body ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Causal Determinism ◽  
German Philosopher ◽  
The Mind

ABSTRACTThe study of consciousness possess considerable relevance in contemporary philosophy of mind. However, the “scientistic” approach that dominates the aforementioned discipline, although of undisputed usefulness, contributes to the rejection of other approaches whose explanatory value has proven to be illuminating in the study of mind, consciousness and the body. One of these approaches can be found in the philosophical works of Friedrich Nietzsche. The causal determinism of the mind-body relation proposed by the german philosopher has been posited through similar proposals for renowned neuroscientists and philosophers. Nevertheless, the historical and theoretical importance of Nietzsche’s contributions hasn’t been recognized as such. The purpose of this article is to show the subtleties of the causal determination in the mind-body relation and its implications in the actual discussions about the nature of consciousness.RESUMENEl estudio de la conciencia es de considerable relevancia en la filosofía de la mente contemporánea. Sin embargo, el enfoque “cientificista” imperante en esta disciplina, aunque de indiscutible utilidad, ha contribuido al rechazo de perspectivas cuyo valor explicativo resulta revelador en la investigación sobre la mente, la consciencia y el cuerpo. Una de estas perspectivas la podemos encontrar en la obra filosófica de Friedrich Nietzsche. El determinismo causal de la relación mente-cuerpo que propuso el filósofo alemán ha sido defendido por medio de propuestas similares de neurocientíficos y filósofos de probada pericia. No obstante, la relevancia de la aportación nietzscheana no ha sido reconocida en su importancia histórica y teórica. El propósito de este artículo es señalar las particularidades sobre la determinación causal de la relación mente/cuerpo y sus implicaciones en los debates actuales sobre la naturaleza de la consciencia.

scholarly journals Modern Evolutionist Naturalism And Šankara’s Arguments Contra Sankhya

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. p5
Author(s):  
Vladimir K. Shokhin
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Indian Philosophy ◽  
Philosophical Theology ◽  
Indian Species ◽  
Strict Sense ◽  
Advaita Vedānta ◽  
Advaita Vedanta ◽  
Similar Attitude ◽  
Philosophical School ◽  
Thomas Huxley

This comparative study aims at juxtaposition of modern Western naturalistic evolutionism and the mostly similar attitude in the classic Indian philosophy in the shape of Sankhya’s cosmology in the context of their corresponding critiques by contemporary creationists and Advaita-Vedanta. The long and pointed polemics with Sankhya in the Brahmasutrabhasya by Šankaracharya (7th-8th centuries A.D.) is in the focus of this investigation along with numerous references to the Sankhya-karika by Isvarakrsna (5th century A.D.) as the basic text of the philosophical school criticized by its most powerful opponent. Comparing Western and Indian evolutionism reveals some very important differences to such a degree that the Indian species of the genus would be, in the author’s opinion, better identified as not evolutionism in the strict sense but as a “développisme” combining features of evolutionism with those of emanationism. As to Sankhya’s naturalism, it turns to be much more “sophisticated” than that, e.g., of Thomas Huxley or the so-called New Atheists because its “stuff” is more psychological than material. Nevertheless, crucial logical gaps remain the same in both cases (along with an antitheistic “faith” instead of rationalism), while their taking into account by opponents of naturalism offers a challenge for comparative philosophical theology.

Body schema and pain

2021 ◽  
pp. 301-315
Author(s):  
Katsunori Miyahara
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Pathological Condition ◽  
Body Schema ◽  
The Body ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Enactive Approach ◽  
The Third ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
Conceptual Distinction

This chapter aims to situate Merleau-Ponty’s notion of body schema within the context of contemporary philosophy of pain. In the first section, the chapter starts by introducing his notion of body schema and its role in his account of the experience of pain. It then briefly reviews current theoretical treatments of pain in the analytic philosophy of mind. It outlines representational and imperative theories of pain by mapping them onto the conceptual distinction between body image and body schema. In the second section, the chapter further argues that they are both deeply entrenched in a Cartesian dualistic picture of mind and body. To be fair, imperativism partly overcomes the Cartesian conception of the body by acknowledging the significance of the body schema. To see how theories of pain can escape the dualistic picture, thus, it will be helpful to examine imperativist explanations. The chapter undertakes this task by closely examining Colin Klein’s imperativist account of a rare pathological condition called pain asymbolia. This account, it suggests in the third section, leads to an unacceptably over-intellectual view of the body because of hidden Cartesian assumptions. It concludes by contrasting this with an enactive approach to pain, deeply inspired by Merleau-Ponty. In the last section, the chapter turns to phenomenological grounds to clarify and support this alternative approach.

scholarly journals Husserl on Minimal Mind and the Origins of Consciousness in the Natural World

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bence Peter Marosan
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Natural World ◽  
The Body ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Animal Mind ◽  
Level Of Consciousness ◽  
Phenomenological Perspective

AbstractThe main aim of this article is to offer a systematic reconstruction of Husserl’s theory of minimal mind and his ideas pertaining to the lowest level of consciousness in living beings. In this context, the term ‘minimal mind’ refers to the mental sphere and capacities of the simplest conceivable subject. This topic is of significant contemporary interest for philosophy of mind and empirical research into the origins of consciousness. I contend that Husserl’s reflections on minimal mind offer a fruitful contribution to this ongoing debate. For Husserl, the embodied character of subjectivity, or consciousness, is essential for understanding minimal mind. In his view, there is an a priori necessary constitutive connection between the subjective and objective aspects of the body, between Leib and Körper, and this connection is especially important for exploring minimal mind from a phenomenological perspective. Thematically, the essay has three main parts. In Sect. 2, I present an overview of how minimal mind is framed in contemporary philosophy of mind and empirical research. I then analyse Husserl’s conception of embodiment with regard to the problem of minimal mind in Sect. 3. Finally, I present a more detailed investigation into Husserl’s account of minimal mind, highlighting features from his descriptions of animal mind and consciousness in early infancy (Sects. 4 and 5).

Monism, Indian

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen H. Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Mystical Experience ◽  
Indian Philosophy ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Advaita Vedānta ◽  
Advaita Vedanta ◽  
Native State ◽  
True Self ◽  
The World ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Almost All

The prominent classical and modern Indian philosophy known as Advaita Vedānta, which insists on the single reality of Brahman (the Absolute), is often identified as Indian monism. But the monism of Advaita is only a portion, albeit central, of the Advaita view. Furthermore, a monism in theology (Brahman as God) is important to almost all expressions, classical and modern, of Indian theism. The monism of Advaita is principally psychological. Nondual awareness is considered the true self; that is to say, in the self’s native state, the object of awareness and awareness itself are identical. This kind of awareness is claimed to be presupposed by all dualistic consciousness. Moreover, it is said that only self-aware self-awareness itself cannot be revealed by experience to be illusory. And according to Advaita, a supreme mystical experience, popularly called liberation, does in fact, when it occurs, reveal self-awareness to be the sole reality. A dialectical Advaita adds the further contention that it is impossible to define and explain coherently diverse appearances. This contention is cashed out by long and intricate attacks on the pluralistic ontologies of rival schools, particularly Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika. The monism of Indian theism centres on the reality of God, who is constrained by metaphysical law to create out of the single spiritual substance that God is. The world is commonly said to be God’s body. Various ramifications of God’s being in some way everything can be discerned in Indian theology.

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