The philosophy of Gauḍapāda, although found in a small treatise, has remained obscure, as both the classical and contemporary approaches to reading this philosopher have overlooked his highly original contributions. This essay explores the scope of imagination in Gauḍapāda?s philosophy, with a focus on terms such as kalpanā and ābhāsa. This reading of Gauḍapāda?s philosophy tallies with some of the findings in contemporary consciousness studies.

The main aim of this paper is to discuss a recently discovered manuscript of Vāsudēvappāṭṭu and to comment on the characteristic features of the text: its devotional content, language and philosophy. Vāsudēvappāṭṭu is a bhakti song written in the Tamil-Maṇipravāḷa language and attributed to Pūntānam (1547–1640), one of the prominent devotional poets of Kerala, who is often praised as a talented and prolific writer and an ardent devotee of Kṛṣṇa. The first section of the paper investigates the linguistic features of (...) the work, the writing style, and the characteristics of the manuscript itself. The second part focuses on the content of the poem: its style, tone, and religious motives. Furthermore, the article suggests that Vāsudēvappāṭṭu belongs to the South-Indian pāṭṭu genre and discusses the work in the context of the pāṭṭu literature of Kerala. Moreover, to highlight the performative aspects of pāṭṭu, the authors have recorded a traditional recitation of Vāsudēvappāṭṭu, which can be found attached to this paper. The paper also considers the features of the manuscript and therefore contributes to current research on Keralan Bhakti literature and participates in ongoing debates on the production of pre-modern Indian texts and manuscriptology. (shrink)

Brahmānanda Sarasvatī has written an elaborate comment on the following inference cited in Advaitasiddhi: attribute etc. are identical to and different from attributee etc. since they are co-referential. There he wants to prove that every significant case of attribution is a case of identity that coexists with a difference between two demarcators. The identity that coexists with difference is called ‘equality’. This paper will argue that in each case of equality, the realist ontology chooses either identity over difference or the (...) reverse. In the case of ‘the black pot’, the realist ontology prefers difference over identity. In the case of ‘the qualified object is the mere object’, the same ontology prefers identity over difference. Accordingly the ontological ‘entity’ gets projected. This is perhaps because the realist ontology is guided by Ockham’s razor and the grammatical classification of objects. (shrink)

A growing movement in contemporary philosophy of mind is looking back on Indian thought to gain new insights into the problem of consciousness. This paper weighs the prospects of thinking about mentality through the lenses of Śaṅkaran Advaita Vedānta. To start, I outline micropsychist and cosmopsychist accounts of consciousness, introduce Śaṅkaran monism, and describe a potential reason of attraction of the framework over micropsychist and cosmopsychist alternatives. I then show that the eliminativist commitments of the view threaten to yield a (...) self-defeating account of ordinary experience, and that Advaitins took the accommodation of the issue to be beyond the reach of rational inquiry. Finally, I discuss how the analytical debate over Śaṅkaran monism might proceed based on these premises. (shrink)

Beginning from some passages by Vācaspati Miśra and Bhāskararāya Makhin discussing the relationship between a crown and the gold of which it is made, this paper investigates the complex underlying connections among difference, non-difference, coreferentiality, and qualification qua relations. Methodologically, philological care is paired with formal logical analysis on the basis of ‘Navya-Nyāya Formal Language’ premises and an axiomatic set theory-based approach. This study is intended as the first step of a broader investigation dedicated to analysing causation and transformation in (...) non-difference. (shrink)

According to the current scientific paradigm, what we call ‘life’, ‘mind’, and ‘consciousness’ are considered epiphenomenal occurrences, or emergent properties or functions of matter and energy. Science does not associate these with an inherent and distinct existence beyond a materialistic/energetic conception. ‘Life’ is a word pointing at cellular and multicellular processes forming organisms capable of specific functions and skills. ‘Mind’ is a cognitive ability emerging from a matrix of complex interactions of neuronal processes, while ‘consciousness’ is an even more elusive (...) concept, deemed a subjective epiphenomenon of brain activity. Historically, however, this has not always been the case, even in the scientific and academic context. Several prominent figures took vitalism seriously, while some schools of Western philosophical idealism and Eastern traditions promoted conceptions in which reality is reducible to mind or consciousness rather than matter. We will argue that current biological sciences did not falsify these alternative paradigms and that some forms of vitalism could be linked to some forms of idealism if we posit life and cognition as two distinct aspects of consciousness preeminent over matter. However, we will not argue in favor of vitalistic and idealistic conceptions. Rather, contrary to a physicalist doctrine, these were and remain coherent worldviews and cannot be ruled out by modern science. (shrink)

This chapter considers the literature associated with explorations of consciousness in Indian philosophy. It focuses on a range of methodological and conceptual issues, drawing on three main sources: the naturalist theories of mind of Nyaya and Vaisesika, the mainly phenomenological accounts of mental activity and consciousness of Abhidharma and Yogacara Buddhism, and the subjective transcendental theory of consciousness of Advaita Vedanta. The contributions of Indian philosophers to the study of consciousness are examined not simply as a contribution to intellectual history, (...) but rather with a view to evaluating their relevance to contemporary issues, specifically to the mind-body problem. The presence of dualist positions with strong naturalist undercurrents in Indian philosophy, especially in the Nyaya and Samkhya traditions, rules out the possibility of treating the mind-body problem as an idiosyncratic feature of Cartesian metaphysics. (shrink)