Calendar

There is a clear need for a worldview that includes science and contemplation, arguably the two greatest achievements of humanity in studying the nature of reality. In my talk I will focus on the possibilities for future integration of aspects of science and contemplation, and perhaps even some far-future form of unification.

For these developments to proceed, two things must happen. From the science side, the role of the subject needs to be analyzed in qualitatively more detail, as different from a complex object that performs complex cognitive tasks. From the contemplation side, experts from different traditions with deep contemplative experience need to get together to establish a common language in which to talk across the cultural and dogmatic barriers, in order to find a more universal appreciation of the core of contemplation, akin to what science accomplished in the last few centuries.

In order to even start talking about a new worldview, the foundation for any conversation should be respect. Those scientists who view contemplation as at best a form of therapy, and at worst a form of superstition, will not be able to constructively engage in a dialogue. Neither will those contemplatives who view the scientific enterprise as necessarily reductionist and incapable of leaving any room for contemplation.

Note: here I use the word ‘contemplative’ to indicate those who actively engage in a form or spiritual practice, through meditation or prayer or a mixture of both. I prefer the word ‘contemplative’ or ‘mystic’ rather than ‘spiritual’ since the word ‘spirit’ can easily lead to inappropriate connotations.  Unfortunately, mysticism got a bad rap with current connotations like mystification as intentionally obscuring things.

Faculty House, Garden Room 1

https://goo.gl/maps/vEhBDixJV942

In the early part of the 20^th century, Joseph Needham formulated a substantial claim concerning the Chinese predilection for self-generated creation rather than creator gods and myths. Half a century later, scholars working in the West like Frederick Mote, Derk Bodde, and Chang Kwang-chih picked up on Needham’s insight to discuss the so-called lack of a “creation myth” in early Chinese culture, basing their arguments on what they called the “inner necessity” or “spontaneously self-generating” nature of things in the cosmos. While the claim that there are no creator gods or myths in early China is false and has since been convincingly refuted by many scholars, there may indeed be a way in which Bodde and company were onto something. In this talk, I will show how the notions of “inner necessity” and “spontaneity” are close but not the best fit for understanding certain early Chinese accounts of creation and the creative process. Through an analysis of claims about time, space, and boundaries in the recently excavated text, the Heng xian (The Primordial state of Constancy), I present an account of creativity – not “inner necessity” or “spontaneity” – that presupposes a rich and complicated philosophy of the self and change in the world. I make brief comparisons with ancient Vedic and Buddhist thought and ultimately show how scholars of early Chinese philosophy could benefit from more comparative work on these various traditions.

With a response from:

Christopher Gowans (Fordham University)

The Vaiśeṣika school of Indian philosophy is known for its distinctive doctrine of “individuators” (viśeṣāḥ), by means of which the various entities of the mundane world—substances, qualities, and motions—can be distinguished as unique individuals on purely formal grounds. As straightforward as the account is for these entities, the problem of individuation becomes much more complicated for universals. This paper uses the question “Can the Vaiśeṣika individuate universals?” to explore the next three categories in the Vaiśeṣika ontology: universals, individuators, and inherence. This is at once a discourse internal to the Vaiśeṣika, raising and attempting to solve a problem as it arises within that school’s basic framework, and simultaneously a comparative project, drawing especially on discussions of individuation in classical Platonism and its contemporary interpreters.

As an historical and interpretive study, the paper shows the inadequacy of Jonardon Ganeri’s “graph-theoretic” account of the Vaiśeṣika ontology, and presents Udayana as an troubled innovator who struggles to fully reckon with the traditional account of individuation and commonality as it was attested in the commentaries of Praśastapāda and Śrīdhara. I argue that the three categories of universals, individuators, and inherence are best understood as metaphysical principles of commonality, peculiarity, and relation quite distinct from the first three mundane categories. This has important implications for Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika understandings of causality, time and eternity, the process of inferential reasoning, and the limited extent to which the basic Vaiśeṣika framework can be understood as describing cosmogony, and not merely cosmology. I conclude with some brief reflections on the challenges of practicing ontology in purely abstract terms, as Udayana and the mature Platonists sometimes attempt.