Release of My New Book - On the Existence of the Self
Chittaranjan Naik
BOOK SYNOPSIS – ON THE EXISTENCE OF THE SELF
The atman or the self holds central place in the Indian civilization. Indeed, the pursuit of atma-jnana or self-knowledge constitutes the highest goal of human life. Yet, in the modern and post-modern eras, the topic of the self has been relegated to the background with most scientists and philosophers regarding the notion of the self to be some kind of an illusion. The philosopher Daniel Dennett, for example, says that the self is a theoretical construct, just like the notion of center of gravity is, and he characterizes the self as a ‘center of narrative gravity’. Unfortunately, today these kinds of ideas have seeped into the soil of our country to an alarming extent and, even more unfortunately, Indian scholars have failed to respond to this pernicious onslaught on the most central feature of Vedic culture. The book ‘On the Existence of the Self’ seeks to make up for this neglect.
The book takes up the question of the existence of the self from two perspectives. The first is the historical perspective engendered by the premise of the empirical sciences that all things in the universe can be explained solely from physical causes, an idea that has led to the belief that the physical world forms a causal closure, and the consequent dogma that has taken root that consciousness can be explained as an emergent property or epiphenomenon of brain processes. The second is the philosophical perspective, in particular the perspective that has gained ground from the arguments of David Hume and Emmanuel Kant against substance ontology and the consequent discarding of the idea of self as substance; the result is that the self has come to be treated as an illusion or a theoretical construct.
The book ‘On the Existence of the Self’ confronts both these perspectives before re-establishing the existence of the self. The book is divided into two parts. The first part presents a fresh proof of the existence of the self. The book takes a different approach than the normal one towards proving the existence of the self. Normally, the proof of the existence of the self is provided on the basis of its witnessing power; there would be no awareness or knowledge of the world in the absence of a witnessing consciousness; thus the presence of the self would have to be accepted so that the existence of conscious experience may be made explicable. In this book, the proof of the existence of the self has been provided on the basis of a power that the self is recognize to have in Indian philosophy namely the self’s kriya shakti (along with its ichha shakti and jnana shakti). Kriya shakti, as a power of the self, is generally not recognized in Western philosophy. When we invoke our karmendriyas into action, as for example when we move our hands or legs, the origin of this action is the sentient self and not any physical activity or physical phenomenon in the body. But how can it be proved? In order to prove it, the unique characteristic possessed by the self’s actions become the focal point of the proof. This unique characteristic is goal-orientation. It is argued in the book that goal-oriented actions can never originate in purely physical processes acting solely under the laws of physics and that the presence of goal-oriented actions is evidence of an incorporeal entity residing within living beings. This proof, along with some supplementary matter, forms the first part of the book. (The approach of proving the existence of the self from its kriya shakti achieves another important objective: that of dismantling the Charvaka / Epicurean idea that the physical world forms a causal closure and thus laying the door open for a domain of knowledge beyond empirical science.) The second part undertakes a systematic examination of the arguments of three philosophers – David Hume, Emmanuel Kant and Gregory McCullock – from the perspective of the Indian philosophical tradition and shows that their arguments against the existence of the self are products of fallacious reasoning.
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Chittaranjan Naik
Kuntimaddi Sadananda
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Chittaranjan Naik
dwa...@advaita.org.uk
Dear Chitta-ji,
I’ve been meaning to write a book on ‘Consciousness’ for ages. I wrote the article ‘Not such a hard problem’ in 2015 for a Philosophy Magazine (not published) – https://www.advaita-vision.org/consciousness-not-such-a-hard-problem-1-of-2/
Thank you for getting around to it for me 😊! Based upon your ‘Natural Realism’ book, I’m sure you will have done a more thorough job than I would have done. I very much look forward to reading it.
Best wishes,
Dennis
From: adva...@googlegroups.com <adva...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Chittaranjan Naik
Sent: 07 August 2021 14:33
To: advaitin <adva...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [advaitin] Release of My New Book - On the Existence of the Self
Namaste,
I would like to inform the group that my second book has been published. It is titled 'On the Existence of the Self'. A brief synopsis of the book is given below:
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