Indian philosophy: The Mind-Matter Divide  

By RANJIT NAIR  

Indian philosophy: The Mind-Matter Divide  

The root formulation of Indian philosophy goes back to Dirghatamas, the Rig Vedic philosopher, who said: ekam sat vipra bahudha vadanti, or the Real is one, though the wise speak of it variously. How the fundamental unity of the Real could be reconciled with the diversity of phenomena was a key problem in Indian philosophy. Philosophy in India emerged as a rational, discursive exercise when orthodoxy, which regarded the Vedas as revelation, was challenged by major schools like that of Buddhism, Jainism, the Ajivika and the Lokayata .

The origins of western philosophy are usually attributed to Plato challenging the gods of Homer for their all-too-human behaviour, substituting in their place truths established through dialectical argument. Indian philosophy arose against the demand that claims on the veracity of a text or principle should be subjected to the canons of argumentation.

The schools of logic emerged out of the attempt to formalise rational debate, to distinguish between valid arguments and fallacies. It is remarkable that all schools of Indian philosophy accepted perception as a means of knowledge. The great Shankara asserted that even if hundred scriptures maintain that fire is cool and non-radiant, that would not prove it.

Indian philosophy and modern science share common features, at the level of parallels, isomorphic themes and problems. First, the search for unity resonates with the holy grail of the theory of everything in theoretical physics, which began with Albert Einstein. The search for a fundamental theory, Steven Weinberg says, lifts human life above the level of farce and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.

The second similarity concerns the debate on the nature of reality and the ability of our concepts to represent reality. Vedantic and Buddhist schools rejected the Nyaya view that the real was expressible. For the Upanishads, the fundamental realm is where words return, unable to reach with the mind. Nagarjuna, the Madhyamika Buddhist philosopher, argued that concepts were inadequate to describe reality by exposing the inner contradictions of concepts like motion and rest, somewhat in the manner of Zeno, the Eleatic philosopher.

Here we may recall the debate between Einstein and Niels Bohr, the former maintaining that physics should give a causal, observer-independent account of reality, while the latter believed that microphysics had to be content with a pastiche of concepts for the same physical system.

Third, the mystery of the self or consciousness, which, as atman, is identified with the fundamental reality or Brahman in the Upanishads. Modern science lacks an adequate account of the mind. The strict separation between mind and matter enforced by Descartes, allowed matter to be viewed as pure mechanism, explicable in causal terms.

Major schools in Indian philosophy such as the Advaita Vedanta, posit the atman / brahman as the sole reality and phenomenal reality as maya, neither absolutely true nor absolutely false. Barring the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrodinger, who affirmed his commitment to the Advaita Vedanta in a tract written shortly before his fundamental papers on wave mechanics, few physicists regard a unitary consciousness as the fundamental reality. Buddhist philosophers, on the other hand, regarded consciousness as a composite of factors.

However, the application of quantum theory runs against the Cartesian grain of disenchanting the material world. It unifies East and West, mind and matter.

(The author is Director, Centre for Philosophy and Foundations of Science, New Delhi)

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More from same author see: RANJIT NAIR  

See also: Indian philosophy, Faith and Belief, Spiritual Guidance, God and Religion, Peace on Earth, Peace of Mind, Love and Happiness, Life and Beyond, Body Mind and Soul)