Global Philosophy Research Interest Group Talk (Amit Chaturvedi, Hong Kong)

The Global Philosophy Research Interest Group is delighted to welcome as guest speaker Amit Chaturvedi, an assistant professor of Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong. Dr. Chaturvedi has a particular interest in the contributions of Indian philosophical traditions to contemporary debates concerning non-conceptual perception and reflexive self-awareness. His research examines the roles of concepts, attention, and memory in structuring the contents of conscious perceptual experience, as well as how these roles were understood by Buddhist and Nyāya philosophers.

This is an in-person event, but those unable to join on campus are invited to do so via Zoom.

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Talk Title

Awareness-Atoms, Alone in the Dark: The Problems with a Possible Buddhist Panpsychism

Talk Abstract

Some scholars have claimed that Buddhist philosophers in the Sautrāntika and Yogācāra traditions developed a plausible version of the panpsychist view that mental qualities are fundamental and ubiquitous. Monima Chadha in particular has suggested that Sautrāntika-Yogācāra Buddhists offer useful responses to the various “combination problems” that challenge panpsychists to explain how a unified, introspectable phenomenal experience can emerge from the aggregation of many microphenomenal entities. In this paper, I consider certain arguments by classical Yogācāra and Śaiva idealists against the possibility of microphenomenal combination, which follow from the assumption that awareness-states are reflexively aware. Whereas Chadha takes the posit of reflexive awareness (svasaṃvedana) to explain how individual mental states could belong to a unified conscious experience, these idealists argue that the essential reflexivity of awareness is precisely what would prevent microscopic “awareness-atoms” (jñānaparamāṇu) from being accessible to other mental states, and combining their respective phenomenal characters into a macroscopic experience.

The Global Philosophy Research Interest Group explores the benefits of drawing on diverse traditions of thought in approaching philosophical questions. These include novel insights into familiar problems, new questions and research directions, and fresh methodologies. We work to deprovincialize and decolonize all aspects of philosophy in the academy. The group currently has strengths in Sanskrit philosophy, and Chinese philosophy, Indian philosophy in English, and classical Islamic philosophy.