Thursday July 25, 2024
11:30am (HST)

Title of Dissertation: Alternative Talk of the Indefinite: A Cross-Cultural Examination of Epistemic and Semantic Problems in the Metaphysics of Consciousness

Doctoral Advisory Committee:
Arindam Chakrabarti, Dept. of Philosophy (chair)
Sean Smith, Dept. of Philosophy
Franklin Perkins, Dept. of Philosophy
George Tsai, Dept. of Philosophy

External members:
Sai Bhatawadekar, Indo-Pacific Lang. and Lit., UHM
Anand Vaidya, Dept. of Philosophy, San Jose State Univ.

Abstract:

This dissertation examines the linguistic nature of metaphysical theorizing about consciousness. I engage both contemporary analytical frameworks and classical non-dualist Vedanta to show that the ubiquity of brute phenomenal character across subjective and objective domains limits our capacity to express determinate knowledge of phenomenal consciousness, as well as our capacity to coherently assert that it cannot be expressed. To untangle this impasse, I model a dynamic description of this inescapable but paradoxically inexpressible phenomenal character on the Jaina theory of sevenfold predication (syad-vada) and the Neo-Vedantic concept of alternation. Utilizing the Pratyabhijna Saiva tradition and the Bhagavad Gita, I argue that the enactment of this alternatively formulated description would embody a distinctive species of knowledge by acquaintance with its ‘referent’ and an intersubjectively accessible variant of release (moksa) from the existential anxiety of seeking to express absolutist knowledge.