Emma Irwin-Herzog

This dissertation examines the linguistic nature of metaphysical theorizing about consciousness. Phenomenal consciousness is typically characterized in terms of the subjective character of experience (Nagel 1974). But the conventional reference of the term encompasses the brute fact of phenomenal character (phenomenality for short), which, unlike subjective experience, is neither attached to a point of view nor outside the realm of objective facts par excellance (Ibid). Utilizing classical nondualist Vedānta, I show that phenomenality invariantly pervades all subjective and objective phenomena, including all linguistic phenomena. I argue that we would need to express determinate knowledge of phenomenality to express determinate knowledge of phenomenal consciousness, but would face a powerful dilemma in trying to do so. On the one hand, because it cannot be differentiated from language, phenomenality cannot be tracked as a referent by our determinative linguistic utterances; it is inexpressible in this sense. On the other hand, for the same reason, it also cannot be coherently extended in concept by any utterance expressing its inexpressibility. To untangle this impasse, I engage the Jaina theory of sevenfold modal description (syād-vāda) and the Neo-Vedāntic concept of alternation to demonstrate the semantic functionality of a description of phenomenality consisting in an unconstrained series of qualified determinative linguistic utterances. Then, engaging the Pratyabhijñā Śaiva tradition and the Bhagavad Gītā, I argue that such a dynamic description would embody a distinctive species of knowledge by acquaintance with its ‘referent’ and an intersubjectively accessible variant of release (Mokṣa) from the existential anxiety of seeking absolutist knowledge. I argue systematically for these theses and, along the way, offer a reading of several schools in the Indian philosophical tradition which foregrounds their consensus on our inability to linguistically capture that luminosity which pervades all things and what it is like to know it.

_Contemporary discussions of self and consciousness have for some time incorporated Hindu-Buddhist dialogue on the existence and nature of self (Ram-Prasad 2012). The ideal of responsibly_ _incorporating this dialogue raises an interpretive dilemma: on the one hand, we should eschew the simplistic picture of a “sterile contest” in which all Hindu schools are committed to the doctrine of the self (ātmavāda) and all Buddhists are invariantly committed to denying its existence (2012: 3). To treat Hindu ātmavādins as monolithically opposed to Buddhist no-self theorists without attending to disagreements within the two camps would be to woefully underrepresent the complexity of the terrain at hand. Yet, we should not forget that what we are dealing with is still a structured debate of some sort. I propose that two Jaina “disambiguation strategies” (Balcerowicz 2017)—the theory of viewpoints (naya-vāda) and the theory of sevenfold predication (syād-vāda), also called the sevenfold formula (__sapta-bha__ṅ__g__ī__)—can together facilitate a re-imaginative reconstruction of Hindu-Buddhist dialogue on the self as something other than a two-sided battle or an arbitrary cluster of views. Following superimposition of the __sapta-bha__ṅ__g__ī__ onto what I temporarily term “the debate,” wherein each figure (bha__ṅ__ga)__ is understood as indexed in part by a specific viewpoint (naya) or a set thereof, we find a dynamic description of an indeterminate phenomenon, embracing affirmation and negation of the “self” (ātman) without antecedent commitment to the substantive existence of the referent of the term. This exercise in working with Jaina tools has implications for broader methodological concerns facing cross-cultural philosophical projects, and bears on how we might fruitfully re-imagine otherwise stymied contemporary debates. _.