Connecting Consciousness to Physical Causality: Abhinavagupta’s Phenomenology of Subjectivity and Tononi’s Integrated Information Theory
Journal Title: Religions - Year 2016, Vol 7, Issue 7
Abstract
This article demonstrates remarkably similar methods for linking mind and body to address the “hard problem” in the work of 11th-century Indian philosopher Abhinavagupta with a currently prominent neuroscienctific theory, Tononi’s Integrated Information Theory 3.0. Both Abhinavagupta and Tononi and Christof Koch hinge their theories on the identity of phenomenal subjective experience with causality. Giulio Tononi’s Integrated Information Theory is remarkable precisely in its method for dealing with the mind-body problem; namely, Tononi’s mathematically oriented systems neurology proposes something we typically do not find in neuroscientific literature—that we start from a phenomenology of experience. Abhinavagupta’s sophisticated and, for his milieu, novel way of linking subjectivity and objectivity in the concepts of knowledge (jñana) and action (kriy ¯ a) also offers ¯ a way of understanding how subjectivity can be linked to causality. This particular configuration is mostly absent in Western Cartesian models for understanding consciousness and in Indian philosophical speculations on consciousness. However, this, in any case, is precisely the move that Tononi makes when he proposes that information is both “causal and intrinsic.” Abhinavagupta’s similar linkage of subjectivity with causality can help us to think about Tononi’s neuroscientific mathematical model.
Authors and Affiliations
Loriliai Biernacki
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP25582
- DOI https://doi.org/10.3390/rel7070087
- Views 362
- Downloads 6
Women and Ultramodern Buddhism in Australia
Buddhists started arriving in Australia in large numbers during the mid-1800s, and the first Buddhist societies and centres began to be formed in the mid-late 1900s. This paper examines the role of women in bringing Bu...
Erich Auerbach and His "Figura": An Apology for the Old Testament in an Age of Aryan Philology
Auerbach‘s goal in writing ―Figura‖ and Mimesis was the rejection of Aryan philology and Nazi barbarism, based on racism, chauvinism and the mythologies of Blood, Volk and Soil, which eliminated the Old Testament from...
Between Toleration and Emancipation: The Self-Empowerment of Jewish Intellectuals in the Habsburg Monarchy
Analyzing a sample of prominent Jewish intellectuals from the Bohemian lands, this article explores Jewish networks as well as cultural and political activism in the Vormärz period and during the 1848 revolution. It se...
Entering the Mindset of Violent Religious Activists
How can one enter the mindset of religious activists whose worldview and values are different from one’s own? This is the challenge for analyzing contemporary violent religious movements and individuals around the worl...
Spiritual Identity: Personal Narratives for Faith and Spiritual Living
In this article we outline a theoretical and methodological framework for spiritual identity as meaning in folk psychology. Identity is associated with psychological elements of personality that help people manage a ti...