Three metaphysical questions

From three different Cosmic Uplink articles. On consciousness-

“[What] is equally specific about the release from the curse, it is the touch of Rama’s foot, not the mere sight of Rama or the words of Rama that will release Ahalya (because a stone can’t see or hear!)” At a deeper level, however, the Indian monistic tradition sees only degrees of difference which separate a stone from a sensuous siren! “This accords with the view of western science that everything is matter, only if you minus consciousness from it,” writes Swami Shankarananda in Happy For No Good Reason: Start Meditating Now: “Science however has a problem for accounting for consciousness.

It is an embarrassment. How did consciousness suddenly spring into being? No material solution satisfies. However, the presence of consciousness utterly transforms reality. Reality is unthinkable without consciousness. Kashmiri Shaivism says that, far from being a by-product of a material process, consciousness or Chitti, is the primary stuff of the universe.”

On perception and “real” reality-

To create an image, eyes are required. In this way it has been argued that reality needs to be observed in order to realise its full potential of being…

…Those light waves will generate a different image of a tree to a person with normal eyesight than they would to a person who is colour-blind to, say, green and we would consider the former image a more complete representation of the tree because it’s not deficient in any colour….

Many animals, for instance, can see polarised light or hear ultrasonic sound frequencies which we can’t….

What can be said though is that their reality is different from ours and that if human eyes and ears could process such additional sensory information then we would be able to look deeper into the nature of reality. But, then too, not deeply enough. Because even if we could absorb all the different senses of every living creature on earth it would still not suffice since who is to say some putative extraterrestrials may have senses we can’t begin to imagine.

So at least for the purposes of the argument mentioned earlier, it stands to reason that for reality to manifest its full potential it requires a truly extraordinary observer in possession of every sense possible to be perceiving it.

And that in order to gain such a sort of capability, this hypothetical observer would have to know everything about what was, is and can ever be in existence in the first place. This obviously also means that if a universe has to be observer-dependent it must either be created by or same as the observer.

Again, on illusions – “maya” – and perception-

Once upon a time, Adi Shankaracharaya fought a verbal duel with a formidable scholar named Mandana Mishra in the ancient town of Mithila in Bihar. Mandana Mishra was a follower of Karma Mimamsa and ardently believed in the Big Bang Theory of Language called Sphota.

After his defeat, however, he got converted to Advaita and became known as Sureshvaracharya. During the debate Adi Shankara is said to have told the following story to his learned rival.

“During my discourse in Banaras, an elephant came into musth and began to gore and trample down people. I was passing by that street on my way to bathing ghats of the Ganga with my disciples.

Seeing the elephant charging towards us, all of us ran for our dear lives. A pandit who saw the incident from the safety of his mansion prodded me about this incident during my talk that evening: “O Master, if the entire world is maya [illusion] as you say and the soul alone is real and indestructible, why did you, a self-realised one, run for safety seeing that elephant of Maya running wildly?’ ‘Well asked,’ I replied. ‘The elephant was maya, as you say, and so was my running!’”

—

On the question of primacy of existence, there can be no debate – existence precedes consciousness. “We don’t know that,” is not an argument. That which is conscious, “exists.” How can something that doesn’t exist be “conscious?” So, consciousness cannot be the “primary stuff,” whatever that means. As for the sudden appearance of consciousness (by which I refer to whatever it is that differentiates the dead from the living), I don’t think there is anything extraordinary there. It’s evolution that was responsible – chemicals interacting with each other which first created “life” and then millions of years later “humans.” Humans are animals who have “volition.” The mind is part of the brain. Consciousness is part of the mind. And volition is an attribute of human consciousness.

On the question of perception, there is a difference between perceiving and knowing. Perception is the subject matter of the senses; knowledge, of experience and conceptualization. Just because a color blind person cannot differentiate between red and green, it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t understand that he suffers from a defect in his sight; it doesn’t change the fact that red and green exist. Further, human beings who don’t suffer from any “defects” cannot “see” Oxygen, or black holes; but their existence can be proved. Reality is not subjective. There is only one reality for all. Our senses may be limited, our ability to know isn’t.

On illusions, it is unfortunate that the erudite sankaracharya died before meeting the great pragmatist William James. Copleston writes-

In origin and primarily pragmatism is, James tells us, ‘a method only.’ For it is in the first place ‘a method of settling metaphysical disputes that might otherwise be interminable.’ That is to say, if A proposes theory x while B proposes theory y, the pragmatist will examine the practical consequences of each theory. And if he can find no difference between the respective practical consequences of the two theories, he will conclude that they are to all intents and purposes one and the same theory, the difference being purely verbal. In this case further dispute between A and B will be seen to be pointless.

Thus, if the illusory sankaracharya makes an illusory escape from an illusory elephant in an illusory world just like the real sankaracharya would have made a real escape from a real elephant in the real world, meaning the illusory world follows the same rules that the real world does, there is no point differentiating the illusory from the real – the illusory is just another name for the real. You could call it “maya” or you could call it Bush’s backside and it would make no difference to anyone. Its much ado about nothing.

Most of this – what I write here, not the ET articles – can be categorized under metaphysical naturalism, a common sense view of the world.

[I have left out two articles, one on free will, the other on objective reality. I will write about them sometime in the future.]

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