It is my fixed view that the Vedic philosopher theologians while unaffected by Western thoughts generated broadly similar responses to the aporiai of consciousness, identity, and memory. Here in his commentary on Kena Upanishad II.4 Sankara rejects the idea of the aloof Self as an agent of the act of knowing.
“On the other hand, the explanation my run like this; “The Self being the agent of the act of knowing, one infers It to be the agent of the action from the fact of the cognitive act itself, just as one knows that it is the wind which moves a tree”.”
The Self then is understood as being aware of what is going on in the mind. It is not the knowledge itself. As knowledge occurs via perception, inference etc. the Self is activated like a substance undergoing modification. There appears to be two processes going on here, mental activity producing knowledge and the modification of the Self producing awareness of this activity. The changeability of the Self per this theory counters our sense of the permanence of the Self.
A view ascribed by Sankara to the school of Kannada:
“Knowledge arising from the contact of the soul and the mind, inheres in the soul; hence is the soul endowed with knowership. But it is not changeable; it is merely a substance just like a pot in which colour inheres” - since according to this view, too, Brahman is a mere substance without consciousness, it contradicts such Vedic texts as, “Knowledge, Bliss, Brahman” (Br.Up. III.ix.28), “Brahman is Consciousness” (Ai. V.3) And as the soul is partless and hence has no locality in it, and as the mind is ever in contact with it, the consequent illogicality of admitting any law regarding the origination of memory becomes insurmountable.”
This remark about memory in its extreme allusiveness is somewhat inscrutable but if connected to the critique of Buddhist annica (momentariness) becomes intelligible. The soul and the mind being viewed on the analogy of mental subject and mental objects requires that some mark of the supposed mental data must be discovered for them to be recognised as memory. Thus you might have the thought, ‘someone won the lotto and yes now that I think of it, it was me’.
“Remembrance means recalling to mind something after its perception, and that can happen only when the agent of perception and memory is the same; for one person is not seen to remember something perceived by another. How can there be an awareness of the form, “I who saw earlier see now”, arise unless the earlier and later perceiver be the same? Moreover, it is well known to all that direct experience in the form of recognition, such as “I who saw that, see this now”, occurs only when the agent of seeing and remembering is the same. Should their agents be different, then the awareness will take such a form, “I remember, but somebody else saw”; but nobody in fact experiences in this way. Where cognition takes such a form, all understand the agents of seeing and remembering to be different, as for instance in, “I remember that he saw this then”. (from Brahma-Sutra-Bhasya II.ii.25 pg.412 trans. Swami Gambhirananda, pub. Advaita Ashrama)
This critique of Sankaracarya’s would also apply to Hume’s fardel.
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