Theory of knowledge

[Guy Werlings]

nanda chandran wrote on Wed 9 Sep :

> Yes, there's just a disagreement in the words being used. But again
> aren't words the verbal expression of ideas?
>
> I'm not denying the continum which still persists while we're in deep
> sleep. Obviously there is. What I'm unable to understand is how this
> continum can be termed consciousness, for <<all consciousness imply a
> subject and an object>>.



namaste !

Excuse me to interfere so late with this quite interesting debate, but
please  also remember I am disabled and typing is quite a problem for
me and requires quite a long time, and, second, there are so many
messages and interesting discussions in this list that just reading all
the messages is quite exhausting for my very limited capacity of
concentration.

I was quite surprised to read the statemenbetween <<...>> above under
the pen or more exactly the keyboard of Nanda Chandran, as this is a
very typical Western position (In our times a basic position, I think,
of the French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre).

I thought it was the privilege of the Indian philosophy, and
particularly of SAmkhya, Yoga, but also VedAnta, to have clearly
established a distinction between

- svarUpa caitanya, consciousness as it is in itelf

and

- vRtti caitanya, empirical consciousness, subject-object.

I think all Western philosophers would deny any kind of svarUpa
caitanya, but I am not learned enough in Western academical philosophy
to prove the fact. I think they would even use this statement of svarUpa
caitanya as a proof that there is no real philosophy as such in India,
but only at best theology.

Regards

Guy