Western and Indian theories of consciousness confronted A comparative overview of continental and analytic philosophy with Advaita Vedanta and Madhyamaka Buddhism

Abstract

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.