ALTERNATIVE TALK OF THE INDEFINITE: A CROSS-CULTURAL EXAMINATION OF EPISTEMIC AND SEMANTIC PROBLEMS IN THE METAPHYSICS OF CONSCIOUSNESS
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2024
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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.
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Philosophy, Advaita Vedānta, Indian Philosophy, Ineffability, Jainism, Paradox, Phenomenal Consciousness
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285 pages
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