Sangeetha Menon

The study aims to address the existing research gap through a thematic comparison between the aesthetics of Kant and Abhinavagupta. This paper explores Kant’s notion of aesthetic judgment based on disinterestedness with Abhinavagupta’s analysis of sādhāraṇīkaraṇa. We argue that the notions of “disinterested judgment” in Kant and sādhāraṇīkaraṇa in Abhinavagupta points towards the impersonal nature of aesthetic delight which makes the universality of aesthetic experience possible. Hence, aesthetics in both Kant and Abhinavgupta are not the personal and subjective experience but a kind of universality based on the ability to experience the impersonal joy. However, the notion of aesthetic delight in Kant is confined to the agreeable mental states only while in Abhinavgupta the notion of rasa includes both positive as well as the negative mental states like fear, disgust, etc. In this regard, the paper will also analyze the affinity between notion of sensus communius in Kant and sahṛdaya in Abhinavagupta which highlights the importance of aesthetic community and the impersonal nature of aesthetic delight.

Abstract The word ‘meme’ was first used by Richard Dawkins (Dawkins, 1976)1 in the sense of a replicator to introduce the idea of cultural transmission through the process of imitation, just as genes are responsible for the evolution of organisms. Following Dawkins several writers came forth to have a closer look at ‘meme’. The consensus was that this was a fascinating way of explaining cultural evolution and transmission; that meme is the basic unit of (cultural) information whose existence influences events so as to make more copies of itself (Brodie, 1996).2 The book which got most attention in this line of literature wasThe Meme Machine (Blackmore, 1993),3 which favours the idea that culture, like biology, evolves through the process of variation, selection and replication. Something striking in Blackmore’s thesis is that emotions and attitudes do not count as memes since they are subjective and never get passed on. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF02780405?LI=true

In current trends in cognitive sciences, the discussion on body crosses the classical divide between the body and the self in terms of nature and function. Embodiment theories have helped to bring in the importance of the role of subjective experiences to understand cognition, and place the process of knowing in a cultural and social context. This article is a critique of the growing trend in cognitive sciences, particularly in affective neurosciences, and approaches, to reduce the experiential self to a nonentity. It is shown that though the apparent goal is to highlight the inner qualitative nature of experience, what is happening in the background is a role reversal. The outer body becomes the inner self. The inner self becomes the outer body. The nature and functions of the self are founded on the body by theorizing embodiment as an alternate to neural reductionism. This article argues that one of the negative consequences of embodiment theories is that age-old concepts of freewill, character and moral choices become flimsy and fleeting in the process of embodying cognition.

This edited volume presents perspectives from computer science, information theory, neuroscience and brain imaging, aesthetics, social sciences, psychiatry, and philosophy to answer frontier questions related to artificial intelligence and human experience. Can a machine think, believe, aspire and be purposeful as a human? What is the place in the machine world for hope, meaning and transformative enlightenment that inspires human existence? How, or are, the minds of machines different from that of humans and other species? These questions are responded to along with questions in the intersection of health, intelligence and the brain. It highlights the place of consciousness by attempting to respond to questions with the help of fundamental reflections on human existence, its life-purposes and machine intelligence. The volume is a must-read for interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary researchers in humanities and social sciences and philosophy of science who wish to understand the future of AI and society.

This volume brings together the primary challenges for 21st century cognitive sciences and cultural neuroscience in responding to the nature of human identity, self, and evolution of life itself. Through chapters devoted to intricate but focused models, empirical findings, theories, and experiential data, the contributors reflect upon the most exciting possibilities, and debate upon the fundamental aspects of consciousness and self in the context of cultural, philosophical, and multidisciplinary divergences and convergences. Such an understanding and the ensuing insights lie in the cusp of philosophy, neurosciences, psychiatry, and medical humanities. In this volume, the editors and contributors explore the foundations of human thinking and being and discuss both evolutionary/cultural embeddedness, and the self-orientation, of consciousness, keeping in mind questions that bring in the interdisciplinary complexity of issues such as the emergence of consciousness, relation between healing and agency, models of altered self, how cognition impacts the social self, experiential primacy as the hallmark of consciousness, and alternate epistemologies to understand these interdisciplinary puzzles.

This book brings together ancient spiritual wisdom and modern science and philosophy to address age-old questions regarding our existence, free will and the nature of conscious awareness. Stuart Hameroff MD Professor, Anesthesiology and Psychology, and Director, Center for Consciousness Studies The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona This book presents a rich, broad-ranging overview of contemporary research and scholarship into consciousness and the self.... It is... to their credit that the editors have assembled a highly stimulating set of scholars whose expertise cover all the relevant areas. I strongly recommend the book to anyone with an interest in understanding the directions in which contemporary thinking about the nature of consciousness is headed. B. Les Lancaster Emeritus Professor of Transpersonal Psychology Liverpool John Moores University, UK This volume is a collection of 17 essays that contribute to the emerging discipline of consciousness studies with particular focus on the concept of the self. The essays together argue that to understand consciousness is to understand the self that beholds consciousness. Two broad issues are addressed in the volume: the place of the self in the lives of humans and nonhuman primates; and the interrelations between the self and consciousness, which contribute to the understanding of cognitive functions, awareness, free will, nature of reality, and the complex experiential and behavioural attributes of consciousness. The book presents cutting-edge and original work from well-known authors and scholars of philosophy, psychiatry, behavioural sciences and physics. This is a pioneering attempt to present to the reader multiple ways of conceptualizing and thus understanding the relation between consciousness and self in a nuanced manner.

This book discusses consciousness from the perspectives of neuroscience, neuropsychiatry and philosophy. The author argues that the central issue in brain studies is to explain the unity, continuity, and adherence of experience, whether it is sensory or mental awareness, phenomenal- or self-consciousness. The fascinating discussion that this book presents is: How do the brain and the self create the conspiracy of experience where the physicality of the brain is lost in the subjectivity of the self?

With the focus on the concepts of desire and self-representation, in this paper we present a philosophical analysis of the Malayalam novelette “Agnisakshi” by Lalithambika Antharjanam, which narrates the customs and taboos that existed in the Namboothiri community in Kerala in the early twentieth century. Through a method of narrative analysis supplemented by philosophical reflections, the study brings forth the living conditions of Brahmin women in the Namboothiri society in Kerala and their self-representations in the text. Engaging with the characters of the novelette, we discuss desire and agency in the light of the larger narrative of the text, and how the psychosocial factors influence them. One of the conclusions we arrive at, analysing the tensions between patriarchy and female individuality, is that it is important to understand the psychological formation of desires and its philosophical transformations. The study depicts desire and self-representation as two important concepts, and the understanding of the relation between them as crucial, in the formation of personal identity.

The emergence of self in an artificial entity is a topic that is greeted with disbelief, fear, and finally dismissal of the topic itself as a scientific impossibility. The presence of sentience in a large language model (LLM) chatbot such as LaMDA inspires to examine the notions and theories of self, its construction, and reconstruction in the digital space as a result of interaction. The question whether the concept of sentience can be correlated with a digital self without a place for personhood undermines the place of sapience and such/their/other high-order capabilities. The concepts of sentience, self, personhood, and consciousness require discrete reflections and theorisations.

The major discussions on altruism today, particularly in the area of sociobiology, give exclusive attention to altruism as an act that favors evolutionary or social benefits. That altruism is a phenomenon exhibited by a self is almost neglected. To understand altruism it is also important to look at the nature of 'self-space' that constitutes various levels of altruism. Self-space, as presented in the Indian philosophical literature, refers to a reified self-identity that would reflect ethical and spiritual concerns.

Brain studies, theoretical analysis, cognitive science and cultural studies have, jointly in the last ten years, redefined the complexity of ‘consciousness’ by the factorisation of otherwise considered two less important categories. These categories are of analysis and understanding of the way we approach the problem itself into the definition of the problem. The major epistemological worry faced equally by the empirical analyst as well as the philosopher and psychologist is based on the central feature of ‘consciousness’ which is ‘experience’. Prima facie, this worry could be described as how to have a theoretical explanation for the mutual influence of neural events and subjective experiences and which one (neural events/subjective experience) is the defining characteristic of consciousness. Nevertheless, it is recognised that the field of consciousness studies is no more a school of reductionism, whether it is the case of understanding segregated mechanisms for neural events or mystifying experiences under unexplained ‘transcendences’. Interestingly, any attempt to understand ‘experience’, such as simple physical pain or much complex psychological pain, will have to cross the epistemological barriers of hierarchies and causal relationships, demanding a non-linear path. The classical description of consciousness as ‘unitary’ has even evolved, to accommodate the questions emerging in interdisciplinary dialogues, to present the term ‘self’ which was once considered metaphysical, but very much scientific today. The epistemological transition, however implicit it is, is from a third-person perspective to a first-person perspective. It is from linear thinking to non-linear thinking. In this discussion I will attempt to juxtapose two scenarios. The first scenario will look at: i) the recent semantic trends in interdisciplinary dialogues on ‘consciousness’, ii) how ‘experience’ itself is defined in these dialogues as a problematic, iii) how far non-linear and integral are the categories of thinking employed in the analysis, and iv) how far holistic are the larger goals of these dialogues towards health, creativity and personal growth. The second scenario will look at the distinctive styles of approach and analysis engaged in by three saints from Kerala: Adi Sankaracarya ( 8th c.A.D.), Tuncettu Ramanujan Ezuttacchan (16th c.A.D.) and Sri Narayana Guru (19th c.A.D.) towards understanding human mind. I will be, in my discussion of the philosophies of these three literary stalwarts and spiritual leaders, looking at: i) alternative epistemological tools used by them such as ‘metaphors’ and ‘imageries’ facilitating ‘transcendental thinking’, ii) first-person and ‘Self’-oriented analysis of experience, iii) phenomenological descriptions of ordinary and transcendental states and experiences, iv) ‘complexity’ as not a property of the phenomenon but of the epistemological devices needed for the integral and the transpersonal understanding of the problem, v) personal growth, self-healing, self-identities and relationships as important factors in understanding the reality of the ‘given’ and the possibility of the ‘unknown’, and vi) therapeutic value of their methods of analysis and presentation.