Lalit Saraswat

Consciousness, a perplexing scientific mystery acknowledged since ancient times in both Eastern and Western cultures, continues to elude modern science. We are all familiar with the subjective experience of consciousness but where does it originate? What creates consciousness? The prevailing assumption in modern neuroscience is that every aspect of consciousness emerges entirely from neural interactions within the brain. This materialistic worldview that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain is inadequate in explaining the subjective experience of consciousness. The reason and process behind this phenomenon remain poorly understood. If consciousness is more than the complex neural interactions, we need to explore new ways of thinking. This study endeavours to address the enigma of consciousness—its origin—by integrating insights from Madhyasth Darshan (MD) to bridge the gap in our current understanding of reality. Lastly, the author concludes that MD’s view on Consciousness, that it is a fundamental property of a constitutionally complete evolved atom, which is yet to be discovered experimentally is more promising as it may solve the conundrum “what is or what creates consciousness” and also explains some of the mysterious phenomena of consciousness.

John Searle argues for a notion of ‘collective intentionality’ that produces social actions with the attributed deontic status function on an external reason, simultaneously recognized by all the members. Social actions depend on the acceptance of a propositional attitude in the light of a constitutive rule and the ‘we intention’ of each member. However, Searle’s intentional theory of actions argues that human beings are rational in nature and freely choose to act as per a desire independent of reason; hence, offering a possibility of unreflective obedience towards social rules. What implications and considerations may emerge while explicating relationships between intentionality, intentional action, the notion of power, and coerced life? This paper assesses the scope of such collective participation (in the Searlean sense) that boils down to a coerced life. The viewpoint of a coerced life is examined along with the notion of intentionality and background, and how these notions translate into a concept of power.

Simona Ginsburg & Eva Jablonka (G&J), in _The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul (2019)_, explore the nature and status of the mind and subjective experiences from an evolutionary perspective. They raise a fundamental question about ‘the origin of animal consciousness during evolution’ (pg.1). The book begins by tracing the roots of consciousness studies from the Aristotelian perspective on the sensitive soul, referring to the dynamics of the living organization, percepts, and feelings. They use “subjective experiencing” to refer to both sentience and consciousness. They argue that to have an evolutionary account of subjective experiences, we need to develop an understanding of minimal consciousness or a marker like unlimited associative learning (UAL) indicating subjective experiences. In the book, the origin of life is marked by the evolution of goal-directed systems where the system can manifest unlimited heredity. They state that all the questions about the origin of minimal consciousness deal with ‘the emergence of new types of goal-directed systems’ (p.1).

Meno’s paradox raises serious challenges against most fundamental epistemological quest regarding the possibility of inquiry and discovery. In his response, Socrates proposes the theory of anamnesis and his ingenious distinction between doxa and episteme. But, he fails in his attempt to solve the paradox and some recent responses have also not succeeded in settling it, satisfactorily. We shall argue that epistemological issues approached in a Darwinian spirit offer a therapeutic resolution without rejecting the basic tenets of Plato’s epistemology. Drawing from Popper’s evolutionary theory of knowledge, Darwinism is regarded as a metaphysical research program, rather than using it to collapse Plato’s metaphysics into biology.