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What is ‘rationality’? primitivism, philosophy and semiotics
[Part I / Part II]
[Introduction will be revised / completed in due course – Sunthar]
(Matthijs Cornelissen,
The discussants in Part I of this
‘multilogue’ (samvâda) that took place on the ‘Yoga Psychology’ (and
Abhinavagupta) Yahoo Group(s) include both Western scholars of Eastern
spirituality and Indian scholars of Western thought: a Hindu
‘Occidentalist’ (Rajiv Malhotra), a trained psychologist (Don
Salmon), a Hindu specialist of comparative cognitive theory (Sangeetha
Menon), a resident of Auroville who has been playing an active role in
introducing traditional Hindu-Buddhist categories of thought into the
departments of ‘scientific’ psychology at Indian universities
(Matthijs Cornelissen), a nod from a life-long specialist of Western philosophy
and founder of the Abhinavagupta forum (Gary C. Moore), and a chameleon who
draws his inspiration from Abhinavagupta. This particular thread
(links provided to the original unedited posts at the Abhinava forum) began
with Sunthar’s response to Don’s open request for help in filling
out his listing of Sanskrit technical terms for the variety of
‘psychological’ faculties and processes. Sparked of by my
inadvertent use of the term 'pre-rational' (within 'scare quotes') to describe
certain key aspects of Hindu tradition, the discussion provided the occasion to
‘unpack’ many of the presuppositions and prejudices hiding within
the term ‘reason’. Rehabilitating the ‘primitive’
mythico-ritual mode of apprehending the world—within philosophical
discourse itself—by resorting to semiotics, is crucial for a full
appreciation of Abhinava's thought. I had followed up over the next couple of
years with numerous posts on deciphering the iconography of Ganesha, etc., that
have been the object of bitter controversy largely on account of such
misunderstanding. The debate has been resumed in June 2004 (see Part II), quite
independently, by more recent members at the Abhinavagupta forum. I have inserted introductory
comments to contextualize some of the posts [Do let me know if your views have been inadvertently omitted
or distorted: this is an evolving archive!]. Having decided to
make this archive available to the public, I would like to offer some concise
clarifications—a conceptual grid as it were—of my own take on the
various perspectives that are under scrutiny in this discussion:
Primitivism:
Rationality:
Semiotics:
History:
Related threads at svAbhinava:
Hermeneutics of Ganesha: Psychoanalysis, Hindu Wisdom and Transgressive Sacrality
Problematizing God’s interventions in History: Historicism, East and West
Trinity in Christianity and Hinduism: Sacrifice, Love (Bhakti) and Acculturation
Christian taste, Hindu taste, Ecumenical taste: Enjoying the Rasa of Babette's Feast!
This compilation will be eventually complemented by others
including those listed above; in the meantime please check out the (incomplete)
Index to threads below on the ‘Primitivism’ dialogue:
Sanskrit equivalents of
neuroscientific terminology [Sunthar
Visuvalingam]
.... Re: Sanskrit equivalents of neuroscientific
terminology [Don Salmon]
Contemporary
psychology versus traditional knowledge systems—‘consciousness
studies’ in India [Sunthar V]
Neuroscience
and traditional knowledge systems—need for ‘bisociative’
thinking [Sunthar Visuvalingam]
.... Re: Neuroscience and traditional
knowledge systems—need for ‘bisociative’ thinking
[Don Salmon]
Problematizing
‘Consciousness’ in the Indic traditions—what would his
“I”-ness Abhinava say today? [Sunthar Visuvalingam]
.... RE: Problematizing
‘Consciousness’ in the Indic traditions—what would his
“I”-ness Abhinava say today? [Rajiv Malhotra]
.... RE: Problematizing
‘Consciousness’ in the Indic traditions [Sangeetha Menon]
.... RE: Problematizing
‘Consciousness’ in the Indic traditions [Rajiv Malhotra]
Have
‘consciousness studies’ anything to learn from the semiotics of
‘primitive’ cultures? [Sunthar
V.]
.... Re: Have ‘consciousness
studies’ anything to learn from the semiotics of ‘primitive’
cultures? [Don Salmon]
.... RE: Have ‘consciousness
studies’ anything to learn from the semiotics of ‘primitive’
cultures? [Rajiv M.]
RE:
Problematizing ‘Consciousness’ in the Indic
traditions—distinguishing modes of ‘rationality’
[Sunthar V.]
.... Re:
Problematizing ‘Consciousness’ in the Indic
traditions—distinguishing modes of ‘rationality’
[Sangeetha Menon]
RE: Have
‘consciousness studies’ anything to learn from the semiotics of
‘primitive’ cultures? [Sunthar
V.]
Distinguishing
modes of ‘rationality’—is there a ‘logic’ to the
evolution of Indian culture? [Sunthar
V.]
.... RE: Distinguishing modes of
‘rationality’… [Sangeetha
Menon]
Appreciation of "Distinguishing Modes Of
Rationality" [Gary C Moore]
Philosophy as a frozen art form [Matthijs Cornelissen]
Mythico-ritual roots of rational (aesthetic and
philosophical) thought—some concrete examples [Sunthar V.]
Subject: Sanskrit
equivalents of neuroscientific terminology
From: Sunthar Visuvalingam
Date: Tue Feb 12, 2002 8:53 am
To:
“Man is not a
thinking machine but a feeling machine that thinks!” - Private Life of the Brain
I’ve inserted my suggestions below in
brackets. Also, please consider including the following terms (from
Abhinava’s vocabulary): […]
camatkâra - state of wonderous ‘rapture’ (a sort of ‘self-pleasure’ inherent in reflexive consciousness)
nirveda - overwhelming ‘feelingless’ depression (resulting in pursuit of mokSa)
cit / citi / cetanâ - consciousness in its widest sense
prakâza - consciousness in its capacity to ‘illumine’
vimarza - reflective (‘linguistic’] awareness
pradhâna parâmarza - focal awareness
gauNa parâmarza - subsidiary (including ‘tacit’) awareness
samskâra - latent traces of experiences (underlying all memory and learning)
nir-anusandhâna - indeterminate (e.g., experience of surprise)
sânusandhâna - determinate (e.g., formulation of a tendentious joke)
pramâtr - the knowing synthesizing subject
pramâna - (esp. valid) cognition
prameya - knowables
pramiti - the fruit of cognitive activity
buddhi - discriminative faculty
citti - the ‘mind-stuff’ including the ‘unconscious’ (from a ‘psychological’ perspective)
citta-vrtti - mental modifications
svalakSaNa - ‘raw’ undifferentiated perception (corresponding to yogic perception for the Buddhists)
Regards,
Sunthar
Subject: Re:
Sanskrit equivalents of neuroscientific terminology
From: Don Salmon
Date: Fri Feb 15, 2002 3:29 pm
To:
Hi:
Thanks to all for help with the Sanskrit.
I’d like to follow this up with some further comparisons between Indian
psychological knowledge and contemporary neuroscience, cognitive science and
various areas of developmental psychology—particularly those areas where
scholars like Charles Tart and Daniel Goleman claim contemporary psychology
knows more “details” than Indian psychology. I don’t have
time right now, as I’m leaving for
Don
Subject:
Contemporary psychology versus traditional knowledge
systems—‘consciousness studies’ in
From: Sunthar Visuvalingam
Date: Fri Feb 15, 2002 12:53 pm
To:
Hello Don,
Tart and Goleman may well be right in claiming that psychology (like other contemporary sciences) knows more details than traditional (and not just Indian) knowledge systems (TKS). After all, ‘western’ science has been (selectively) assimilating, within its own framework (see Foucault on the ‘human’ sciences revolving around an ‘empirico-transcendental doublet’ called ‘Man’....) the knowledge bases of all other cultures and has been integrating them without the socio-religious restrictions (starting with, say, the restriction of writing/reading so as to ensure oral transmission...). So, I would not start thinking about ‘Consciousness’ from some fundamental West-Other opposition, even while remaining acutely aware of the latter.
On the other hand, much of TKS is implicit within
‘pre-rational’ (e.g., myth and ritual) forms of representation and
in actual practice, which is able to capture ‘tacit’ knowledge (see
Michael Polanyi on the role of the latter even within modern ‘scientific
tradition’) that’s difficult to conceptualize in the either/or
categories of reason. Such ‘tacit’ knowledge in traditional
Have a great stay in
Sunthar
PS. See the questions on (Vedantic) ‘consciousness’ raised by [Nanda Kumar] at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Abhinavagupta/message/149
and also Sangeetha Menon’s essay at
http://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/i_pr/i_pr_menon_paper_frameset.htm
Subject:
Neuroscience and traditional knowledge systems—need for
‘bisociative’ thinking
From: Sunthar Visuvalingam
Date: Sat Feb 16, 2002 10:02 am
To:
The Author fully substantiates the need to consider separately this peculiar relationship between love and humor. He shows in the course of a very detailed study the exact way these two are intertwined and what is the import of their union for the sahrdaya [connoisseur]. All the while the theory of bisociation stands him in good stead, explicating convincingly the functioning of humor also in the context of love-in-union (sambhoga-shrngâra). This chapter also very forcefully argues for the perfect utility and psychological validity of the traditional Indian aesthetical notions and terminology. Indeed it seems at times that Western thinking on the subject to a certain extent can be considered deficient without the notions of vibhâva, anubhâva, vyabhicâribhâva, et. al. The argument in this chapter is very well substantiated by the methodical analysis of chosen examples from the Sanskrit kâvya and mainly from Amaru.
M.C. Byrski on chapter 8 of Abhinavagupta’s Conception of Humor
In addition to the compasses mentioned above, the Austronesian navigator often possessed a sort of internal compass as well. The tremendous orientation ability of these navigators has been recorded on a number of occasions. [...] The technique is quite a bit more complicated than that of using bearing stars that one sails towards directly. In fact, the etak stars are not truly bearing stars, but simply reference stars. The ability of the navigator to equate distance traveled in a tangent to the etak island, to the angular distance between etak stars is baffling. Even more unfathomable, is how the navigator is able to adjust the system and select new etak stars when driven off course by gales and storms. In modern navigation, this would require complicated right-angled or spherical trigonometry solutions. [...] Investigations of Austronesian survivals of navigational lore leave little doubt that they possessed skills that surpassed those of Columbus or Magellan who could only sail by means of latitude sailing.
Paul Kekai Manansala on Austronesian
Navigation and Migration
Being a commentator on existing artistic practice based on the rasa-aesthetic and not a systematic theoretician aiming at a universal theory of humor and laughter, Abhinava has naturally completely neglected these aspects of humor theory. What is significant however is that hâsya [‘humor’], insofar as it is the aestheticization or relishing of the emotional bisociation that constitutes hâsa, is based not on the divorce of thought from the inertia of the constituent emotions but rather on their reconciliation. More than that, the cognitive strategies and identificatory mechanisms involved are subordinated to the evocation of emotion and it is their indispensable mediation that ensures that the emotions evoked are purified of their biological inertia into the relishable state of rasa. One would be justified in claiming that the rasa-aesthetic, including hâsya, is based not so much on the principle of Consciousness seeking to escape its biological determinations but rather on the quasi-tantric principle of its turning back to infuse the biological functions, in their emotional expression, with its own lightness, mobility and detachment. Unless this principle is kept in mind, one is bound to lose sight of what is specific to the exploitation of the universally valid bisociative structure in the aesthetics of hâsya.
Sunthar
Visuvalingam, Conclusion to Abhinavagupta’s
Conception of Humor
The above serves to clarify what I mean by
‘theorizing’ the largely ‘tacit’ understanding
reflected in traditional ‘know-how’ (savor-faire), whether in
synchronizing an internalized body-clock with external orientation for navigational
‘homing’ or developing a discriminating ‘taste’ for
barely perceptible and fleeting emotional nuances and immortalizing them in
poetic language. Rasa (‘aesthetic emotion’) is one Sanskrit
term—with a lot of experiential, cultural and conceptual baggage—that
has no satisfactory equivalent in contemporary psychology. These Indian
researches into ‘cognitive science’ were driven by the pursuit and use of a ‘pleasure’ that did not oppose the
bodily to the spiritual. Tax-funded neuroscience, embodying the latest
advances of a promethean ‘health’ enterprise (to defeat biological
death...?), might learn a great deal by attempting to integrate the uniqueness
of rasa, its sui generis character,
within its modeling of the emotional-cognitive circuitry....
Sunthar
[rest of this thread at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Abhinavagupta/message/174]
Subject: Re:
Neuroscience and traditional knowledge systems—need for
‘bisociative’ thinking
From: Don Salmon
Date: Sat Feb 16, 2002 4:02 pm
To:
“The above [below now :>)))] serves to clarify what I mean by ‘theorizing’ the largely ‘tacit’ understanding reflected in traditional ‘know-how’”
I like very much what you write here, Sunthar. I do have a slight concern—I think I understand what you mean by ‘tacit’ understanding (though I’m not convinced the traditional knowledge is as “tacit” as you seem to be saying here). My particular concern is that the typical view of moderns toward “non-Western” (a questionable term itself!) civilizations is that their brand of thinking is mythic; i.e. inferior.
The most recent (2001) cognitive psychology text I
have says that contemporary cognitive studies have not much of substance to say
about so-called “higher order thinking” (the author lists
“comprehension, problem-solving and decision-making”) while ancient
Sanskrit texts present crystal clear descriptions of
“thinking”—or rather, Knowing—far beyond anything
recognized by cognitive science. Given this, it might not be completely out of
place for the Indian psychologist (if you accept the term) to be a bit smug
toward the tacit understanding of true knowledge evidenced in modern cognitive
studies. But then, if the Indian psychologist were smug in return it would
betray his lack of understanding of his own traditional Knowledge!
Smiles,
[Don Salmon]
Subject:
Problematizing ‘Consciousness’ in the Indic traditions—what
would his “I”-ness Abhinava say today?
From: Sunthar Visuvalingam
Date: Sun Feb 17, 2002 4:19 pm
To:
What follows is in no way intended as to provide
(by now long overdue...) answers to the penetrating questions raised, but
instead to widen the discussion by introducing other, particularly the
Pratyabhijñâ, perspectives and thereby to problematize the issue
of Consciousness even within Indic discourse (instead of
through a comparison with contemporary neuroscience on sleep, amnesia, memory,
etc.).
Advaita’s systematic ‘nay-saying’ (neti—via negativa)
is replaced in the Pratyabhijñâ by an exuberant world-affirming
‘yea-saying’ that above all seeks to universalize the egoistic
“I” consciousness (aham-kâra)
into a plenitude of Self (pûrnâhantâ).
However, the two ways are ultimately not opposed as Abhinava affirms
that such ‘universalization’ necessarily presupposes a
‘purity’ of Consciousness (vizva-rûpâvibheditvam
zuddhatvâd eva jâyate...), which is the aim of most other,
including Buddhist, soteriologies. Moreover, all spiritual realization is
dependent on grace (anugraha—Christianity
has seen the works versus grace controversy), and its most extreme (tîvra-tîvra-zakti-pâta) results in
imminent death.
Self as actor (nartaka
âtmâ—Vijñâna-Bhairava
Tantra)—for Abhinava, for whom the preferred model is the drama,
God (îzvara) becomes (not just) the
multiplicity of selves (but the whole universe) just as an actor assumes
various roles in a play, with the difference that some point along the way He
(i.e., we) willfully ‘forgets’ his own true nature and assumes
limitation (the 5 kañcukas). The
implication would be that at some fundamental level we have never forgotten,
and the problematic becomes one of delineating the space within the
‘individualized’ self whether this forgetful ‘beginingless
ignorance’ (anâdi avidyâ) ‘takes
root’ (not in a temporal sense). For the moment, I’d simply
point out such a paradox is not unknown to psychoanalysis,
where ’my’ (this time the) ‘Unconscious’
knows things that I’m not aware of and would be shocked to know.
Consciousness is never known ‘in-itself’
apart from ‘empirical’ perceptions—this is precisely the
argument of the Buddhist Logicians, for whom the only ‘reality’ are
spontaneous flashing points of awareness, accessible only to supra-normal
cognition (yogi-pratyakSa), which underlie and
engender differentiated perception. Continuity of self (âtman) is an illusory notion that is a
sort of by-product of the synthesizing activity that takes place within these
‘self-aware’ (sva-samvedana) moments
of ‘things-in-themselves’ (sva-lakSana).
What’s particularly interesting is that such an
‘anti-subjective’ stance did not result in an
empirical materialism (isn’t ‘matter’ a metaphysical
notion?). Instead, it was integral to a larger philosophical project of
‘deconstructing’ the brahmanical notion of (a permanent) Self (âtman) in the spiritual pursuit of
‘self-extinction’ (nirvâna).
Memory as the crux of the Buddhist-Brahmanical
debate—Utpaladeva’s arguments against Dharmakîrti hinge
around the need for a satisfactory account of the phenomenon of memory, which
is not so much a reliving of a past experience (as in trauma patients) as the
contemporary recall of a past event,
with its own distinct spatio-temporal orientation, within the coordinates of
the present. This may also be contrasted to the peculiar cognition of a
drama, where the opposing sets of coordinates simply cancel each other out,
resulting in the ‘universalization’ (sâdhâraNî-karaNa)
of the aesthetic experience. The Buddhists come up with sophisticated
psychological analyses to explain how an already non-existent moment (kSaNa-bhanga) of consciousness could become the
‘object’ of the current moment without relying on the continuity of
a fictitious self. Abhinava responds by positing the synthesizing activity of
the knowing subject (pramâtr) resulting
in a dynamic (personal) Self (ultimately God = îzvara).
Ignorance, sleep and learning—if all
knowing were adventitious to a passive permanent consciousness (as seems to be
the case in Advaita), sleep becomes a logical impossibility! In fact, other
then for a refreshed state of awareness, there is no waking recollection of a
cognition in the form of “I did not know anything” or “I was
ignorant”. Is all learning necessarily conscious? There’s increasing
evidence that the brain not only processes and consolidates the sensory input
and psychic activities of the previous day, but actually learns during sleep by
imposing further organization on these knowledge fragments. If we imagine
consciousness as ‘flowing’ back-and-forth across neural networks
during problem-solving, attention is always focused on a certain restricted set
of nodes at any one time. What happens during sleep, seems to be the forging of
new neuronal connections and pathways based on the tendencies and momentum of
waking efforts. Why do we spend half our life sleeping?
Inertness of the sleeping
‘consciousness’—without reflexivity (vimarza), consciousness, already for Bhartrhari, is
as inert as a crystal that reflects luminous images without ever
‘knowing’ them (prakâzo’pi na
prakâzeta, sphaTikâdi-jaDopamah). The state of deep-sleep
(‘merging of knower, knowing and known’) amounts to ignorance,
perhaps because of this absence of reflexivity, which most of us are familiar
with only in the context of the knowledge of something, other than the knower,
whose apprehension is imbued with linguistic structures. Such
‘self-awareness’ is not simply a characteristic of thought but also
of emotion (exemplified by rasa) and is the
blissful source (ânanda) of all
conditioned pleasure. Without some minimal trace of such reflexivity, even the
physical input of the senses does not become the fruit of
‘knowledge’ (pramiti).
What qualifies as ‘real’?—whereas
the Buddhists claim that the only ‘reality’ are these
‘self-aware moments’ on whom the notion of self-identity is
superimposed through the synthesizing activity of an illusory subject to
sustain practical activity (artha-kriyâ-kâritva),
Abhinava retorts: what other criteria of reality is there than this ‘pragmatic’
axiom of our pre-Dewey Hindu Logicians (naiyâyikas)?
if it works, it’s real! However, if we follow his constructive analyses
of the synthesizing subject (pramâtr) it
becomes increasingly evident that this innate creativity ultimately belongs
to the supreme “I”-ness, God, and that the individual
consciousness is a sort of self-deluding ‘by-product’ of his?/her?
powers of knowledge and action. The defense of Self is undertaken more for
ideological purpose, viz. the cultural project of maintaining a stable
tradition (âgama). What’s
interesting is that this is a wholly dynamic notion of self and the
“I”-function that accepts the principle of momentariness (kSaNa-bhanga-vâda).
My aim in offering the above observations is to
caution against taking a particular Indian philosophical system (even the
Pratyabhijñâ, for that matter) and extrapolating its analyses into
a ‘neutral’ discipline labeled ‘consciousness studies’
(let alone ‘psychology’). Though there is a vast amount of valuable
observations about the properties of consciousness, these have been threaded
together to serve specific religious choices and orientation. The more
difficult, and hence more fruitful, approach would be problematize the
Indic discourse before attempting to compare it with a likewise problematized
(hence I keep dragging in Foucault, etc.) contemporary discourse on the nature
of consciousness.
Very best regards,
Sunthar
P.S. I’m well aware that I have not really attempted to answer your far-reaching questions.... :-(
[Response to Nanda Kumar’s post of
Subject: RE: Problematizing ‘Consciousness’ in the Indic traditions—what would his “I”-ness Abhinava say today?
From: Rajiv Malhotra
Date: Mon Feb 18, 2002 10:06 am
To: yogapsychology@yahoogroups.com
Wilber is simply the latest amongst many
western thinkers, who after studying Indian thought and incorporating it as
their own, formulate the following narrative of
“Westernism”—the theory of history of a superior West:
1. Consciousness goes thru the following stages of evolution: (A) pre-rational, (B) rational, and (C) post-rational.
2. Indian thought is at A. Western is at stage B and now advancing to C. Hence, non-westerners must first westernize (so as to become rational), in order to be able to mov