This paper supports the scientific position that panpsychism is a valid category of possible resolutions to the hard problem of consciousness, and it focuses on a solution to the 'combination problem' in panpsychism. I argue for a new way of thinking about consciousness in which consciousness is not viewed in reference to subjects, and that the concept of a 'subject' is borne of the illusion of self. Therefore, we don't face a combination problem if the notion of a subject is (...) superfluous and consciousness itself is pervasive in the form of a field. The paper is also a more general discussion about the importance of pursuing this scientific question in the twenty-first century: is consciousness a more fundamental aspect of the universe than we have previously assumed? (shrink)

Complete works of a Bengali Marxist philosopher and author.

Open peer commentary on the article “Towards a PL-Metaphysics of Perception: In Search of the Metaphysical Roots of Constructivism” by Konrad Werner. Upshot: In his target article, Werner focuses his efforts on finding a metaphysical paradigm in which it would be suitable to embed - as he puts it - some movements in contemporary philosophy and cognitive science, and especially radical constructivism and the embodied cognition approach. In my commentary, I shall briefly discuss the question of metaphysical grounding or embedding (...) of radical constructivism, and make an attempt to show that the author has failed to explain what this grounding is supposed to be, and that radical constructivism has to remain characteristically an anti-metaphysical doctrine. Of course, I do appreciate the ingenious efforts to find the metaphysical grounding of radical constructivism, as far as the question of cognitive access to and the knowability of reality is concerned, but I would like to undermine the key tenet of the article that radical constructivism is in the pressing need of a metaphysics of some sort. (shrink)

Articles, on metaphysics, originally published in Siḷumiṇa, weekly Sinhalese newspaper and written by Ven. Baḷangoḍa Ānandamaitreya.

Originally published in 1923, this title is a critical examination of Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis. A contemporary of Freud, the author sets out to evaluate his theories in a scientific manner, searching for evidence. The result is a rather scathing review of where this is lacking.

In his recent work, Dretske offers a new account of what it is for a mental state, in particular, a sensory experience, to be conscious. According to Dretske’sproposal, subject S’s experience of object O is conscious if and only if it makes S aware of O. This proposal is argued to be open to only two serious interpretations. The first takes it to mean that S’s experience of O is conscious if and only if it constitutes S’s awareness of O, (...) whereas the second takes it to mean that S’s experience of O is conscious if and only if it causes S’s awareness of O. It is argued that neither is a plausible way to understand the nature of state consciousness, because the constitutive interpretation implausibly denies the existence of unconscious veridical experiences, whereas the causal interpretation implausibly casts S’s veridical experience of O, rather than O or a certain external event involving O, as the relevant cause of S’s awareness of O. (shrink)

Aṣṭāvakragītā, Hindu philosophical work; retold.

We report a magnetization, magnetostriction, electrical resistivity, specific heat and neutron scattering study of a UNi 2/3 Rh 1/3 Al single crystal, a solid solution of an antiferromagnet UNiAl and a ferromagnet URhAl. The huge uniaxial magnetic anisotropy confining the principal magnetic response to the c axis in the parent compounds persists also for the solid solution. The magnetization curve at 1.6 K has a pronounced S shape with an inflection at 12 T. The temperature dependence of magnetic susceptibility exhibits (...) a maximum around 10 K and is magnetic history dependent at lower temperatures where the resistivity increases linearly with decreasing temperature. The low-temperature „ anomaly is removed in a magnetic field applied along c , which yields a large negative magnetoresistance amounting to m 46 z in 14 T . The C/T values exhibit a minimum around 12 K and below 8 K they become nearly constant , which is strongly affected by magnetic fields. Neutron scattering data confirm a non-magnetic ground state of UNi 2/3 Rh 1/3 Al. The bulk properties at low temperatures are tentatively attributed to the freezing of U magnetic moments with antiferromagnetic correlations. The additional intensities detected on top of nuclear reflections in neutron diffraction in a magnetic field applied along c are found to be proportional to the field-induced magnetization, which reflects field-induced ferromagnetic coupling of U magnetic moments. This scenario is corroborated also by finding low-temperature magnetostriction data that also scale with the square of magnetization. (shrink)