Vedanta and Cybernetics

 It’s not surprising that some scholars of Vedanta forget that the mind is inert (jada) or unconscious by nature and only ‘thinks as it were’ (Brh.Up.) due to its pervasion or transfusion by pure consciousness.  The mind then is material interacting with other material entities and objects.  Epiphenomenalism and the causal problem are not a topic in advaita per se and they arise only as controversion.  Why those scholiasts forget the jada nature is probably due to their entrancement by problems spawned by Western epistemology.

That is a very large discussion which I will get to in time.  In this note I consider the materiality of the Body/Mind/Spirit complex and its tendency to therefore fall under the sway of multiple cybernetic factors, feedback loops, the bogus homeostasis of gratified desires and if we want to stay within the purlieus of Vedanta, the good old time gunas.  To get those loops to move in an upward and not a downward spiral requires an admission that struggling at the level of vasanas (tendencies, dispositions) leaves us in the toils of cybernetic control.  Strictly; upwards, downwards and sideways are paths in the maze of maya.   Ironically by using feedback loops we can revert to the source of consciousness which frees.  Pranayama, mantra, prayer and ritual are enabling practices that we are told advance the dawn of knowledge (vidya) but however perfectly performed are not liberating of themselves.   The jnani (enlightened one) can say:

“I am the Self of all, as the intellects of all beings are illumined by Me who am of the nature of the Light of Consciousness only.” (Upadesa Sahasri Chap. XIV on Dream and Memory: #7)

Yohan J. John on the Brain/Mind Problem

In his latest two posts from the frontiers of neuroscience Yohan J John

streetlight

and:

homunculus

appears to be entertaining methodic doubt in the first and methodical doubt in the second. The very method itself or the assumption that brain events are consciousness is questioned: that ‘the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile’ (Pierre Canabis) and the more we get to know about this neuronal traffic the closer we will get to the core question of how the identity of brain and mind is effected. Is this not searching under the streetlight of immediate apparent facts? No amount of this evidence will bring one to an understanding of how the one is the other. Metaphysical analysis can eliminate epiphenomenalism or occasionalism etc but the ‘thinkability’ of brain/mind identity remains in doubt.

The methodical doubts involve the ordered, systematic application of the principle of identity in the area of phrenology, improving your brain power and other nostrums. Writing on what we now consider the daft theory of the homunculus he reflects that we ought to rein in our scorn for the little chap may still be lurking in our modern theory:


The homunculus picture can also be discerned in the idea of the genome as a "blueprint" for the organism. Before modern genetics arose at the turn of the 20th century, some scientists (the "preformationists") proposed that the sperm contained a miniature version of the future organism. Modern scientists laugh at this causal passing-of-the-buck, but conceptually, a miniature person is not really that different from a miniature blueprint of a person.

Yohan J John’s, there’s a triple barreled name, has written an informative and witty brace of articles on the hard question.

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Various formulations of the brain mind problem:
brain/mind formulas