Dharmakirti and Thomas Nagel on the Origin of Mental Activity

Dharmakirti and Thomas Nagel on the Origin of Mental Activity 

Given the aforementioned relevance of the question where mental activity comes from, and the likelihood tha twe do not fully understand the answer to this question yet, I will explore two main thinkers that have seriously considered it. The first will be Dharmakirti, a Buddhist logician from the 6th-7th century in India. The second is Thomas Nagel, who became renowned for his paper “What Is it Like to Be a Bat?” in which he explored the phenomenological character of consciousness.

Both of these thinkers present a remarkably convincing critique of a range of theories that can be characterized as “psychophysical reductionism”, or the idea that subjective state sof consciousness are caused by or identical with physical phenomena (in the body). In spite of the more than1400 years between them they also seem to use strikingly similar arguments. The main question for this thesis therefore is: “What are the relevant implications of Dharmakirti’s arguments (found in his Pramanavarttika) concerning the origin of mental activity for the contemporary philosophical discussion (as articulated by Thomas Nagel in his Mind and Cosmos) about the origin of mental activity?”

The structure of the thesis will be subdivided into the following questions:

1.1: What are the fundamental philosophical premises of Dharmakirti’s opponent?

1.2: What is the epistemological context for Dharmakirti’s philosophy of mind?

1.3: What are Dharmakirti’s arguments against his opponent’s physicalist philosophy of mind?

1.4: What are the cosmological implications ofDharmakirti’s philosophy of mind?

2.1: What are the fundamental premises of psychophysical reductionism?

2.2: What is the epistemological context for Thomas Nagel’s philosophy of mind?

2.3: What are Thomas Nagel’s arguments against psychophysical reductionism?

2.4: What are the cosmological implications of Thomas Nagel’s anti-reductionist philosophy of mind?