6 papers in the library · 4 citations · publishing 2011-2023
July 10, 2023 Loriliai Biernacki
This chapter offers a comparative assessment of the 11th-century Hindu philosopher Abhinavagupta’s nondualist Tantric panentheism, the Pratyabhijñā, or Recognition philosophy in relation to a contemporary, currently popular neuroscientific theory addressing the relation between the mind and the body, Integrated Information Theory (IIT 3.0). Drawing on earlier work pointing to the logical...
The Matter of Wonder April 3, 2023 Loriliai Biernacki
Abstract This chapter addresses a key element of Abhinavagupta’s panentheism: the question of how we get sentience, through looking at the possibilities for computer sentience, machine AI, and specifically Nick Bostrom’s discussion of a paperclip apocalypse. Abhinavagupta locates the essence of sentience in the term vimarśa. I suggest Abhinavagupta’s use of the term vimarśa more closely...
January 23, 2017 Loriliai Biernacki
This paper addresses imagination, focusing on two words, bhāvana and vikalpa, both frequently translated as "imagination," and addresses the connections imagination has with the body, specifically within the context of contemplative practices. Drawing primarily from the 10th and 11th century philosophical school of the Pratyabhijñā of Abhinavagupta and Utpaladeva, this paper proposes a more...
Religions July 1, 2016 Loriliai Biernacki
This article demonstrates remarkably similar methods for linking mind and body to address the “hard problem” in the work of 11th-century Indian philosopher Abhinavagupta with a currently prominent neuroscienctific theory, Tononi’s Integrated Information Theory 3.0. Both Abhinavagupta and Tononi and Christof Koch hinge their theories on the identity of phenomenal subjective experience with...
Religions August 13, 2014 Loriliai Biernacki
This paper offers a comparative analysis of the nature of consciousness correlating the insights of the 11th century Śaiva philosopher Abhinavagupta with the work of some contemporary philosophers of consciousness. Ultimately these comparisons especially bring to light possibilities for constructing a materialist paradigm that might operate from a prioritization of subjectivity rather than...
The Journal of Hindu Studies October 1, 2011 Loriliai Biernacki 4 citations
In a famous pronouncement on the defects of India’s monistic traditions, the German scholar Paul Hacker declared that advaita, or nondualist, traditions could never achieve the ethical pre-eminence of Christianity since in the ultimate analysis, in a world where all is ultimately the ‘absolute one’, there is no room for the ethical engagement inspired by the Other. This article explores what I...