Response and Reply: Viśiṣṭādvaita's cosmopsychism

This article consists of a critical response from a scholar to a journal article and reply from the paper's authors.

Response from Prof. Hari Narayanan V

(Professor, School of Liberal Arts, IIT Jodhpur)

Siddharth's paper "The universe as aṁsá of Brahman: towards a Visíṣṭādvaita existence-cosmopsychism" is undoubtedly a significant contribution to the ongoing attempts to build a metaphysics of consciousness by harnessing insights from Indian philosophical traditions.

I have the following questions about the paper:

1. What independent reason do we have for thinking that human beings are only phenomenological monads rather than ontologically distinct subjects, apart from the fact that this move solves the decombination problem? Further the claim that phenomenological monads explain ontological privacy is not clear. Can't it be called phenomenological privacy? If we accept the possibility that we are monads only phenomenologically, does it entail that, at least in principle, we can have access to other people's mind and experiences? Further, at one point it is written that "Phenomenological unity (or phenomenology of any kind) entails that it is for an ontologically unified subject". The difference between ontologically unified subject and ontological monad is not clear.

2. Can we reinterpret the notion that Brahman has all positive qualities but no negative qualities by holding that it is a matter of going beyond ordinary opposites?

3. While undertaking a 21st century reconstruction of Ramanuja's position, how far can we be sympathetic to the practice of appealing to the scriptures? Is it similar to our current practice of appealing to peer-reviewed literature?

Reply from Siddharth S

(Assistant Professor, Sai University)

I am thankful to Prof. Hari Narayanan for raising thought-provoking questions on my paper, which gives me an opportunity to clarify certain important points.

Part of the motivation for positing individual selves as phenomenological monads (ultimately experienced by the only pure subject, Brahman) is the concern raised by the decombination problem that is discussed in contemporary panpsychism. However, the underlying issues go beyond this combination/decombination problem debates, and as I show in the paper, are acknowledged and dwelt upon by the Vedāntins themselves. The imperative for such an interpretation comes from having to balance and allow the following two commitments which seem to go against each other : a). The individual self is aṇu, or a 'monad'/unity of some kind, while b). The individual self is an attribute of Brahman, and inseparable from it. While the Visíṣṭādvaitins, as I show in my paper, seems to appeal to scriptures to reconcile the two, my aim in the paper was to raise and respond to the question of how the individual self (and its relation to Brahman) must be for this to be possible. Hence, the motivation for my thesis goes beyond the decombination problem (which nevertheless brings the issue into sharper focus).

A phenomenological monad is such that its qualitative contents (say q1, q2…etc.) are experientially unified with each other, and not with the contents of another phenomenological monad (with its contents mutually unified, call them c1, c2….etc.). It is the fact that q1, q2…are unified with each other but not c1, c2…that makes them a phenomenological unity, such that q1, q2 etc. are private to one cluster and not another. Is it possible for q1, q2… and c1, c2…to become mutually unified with each other? It seems to me that in principle they could; whether this does happen among living selves is an empirical questions. This is an interesting question, and a line of thought that is worth exploring further.

It is possible to appeal to Brahman having only positive and no negative qualities by appealing to a logic that goes beyond rational binaries; however, my attempt here has been to explore if this can be reconciled within the bounds of rational deliberation, and how the relation between Brahman and individual selves must be for this to be possible. Appeals to extra-rational means weakens my case dialectically—if this were allowed, the purported advantage of the view I defend would not be any better than various other solutions to the combination/decombination problem, or the hard problem of consciousness that face similar contradictions (that manifest as explanatory gaps).

The question of the validity of the testimony of scriptures as sources of knowledge, and whether this is acceptable in contemporary, cross-cultural debates is a contentious issue; in this case, not least because it is unlikely to be acceptable to those beyond the Vedāntic umbrella (to whom it likely holds much greater validity and significance than peer-reviewed literature does for scholars today). While I note that the Visíṣṭādvaitins appeal to scriptures at certain junctures—often when they are in dialogue with other Vedāntins or schools that do accept them—my aim in the paper has been to explore of the inseparability yet distinctness of individual selves and Brahman/cosmic subject can be reconciled without appealing to scriptures or other to trans-rational means. The proposal, that individual selves are phenomenological monads that are ultimately experienced by the only subject there is (Brahman) is a step towards this end.