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How Do Theories of Cognition and Consciousness in Ancient Indian Thought Systems Relate to Current Western Theorizing and Research?

ABSTRACT: Unknown to most Western psychologists, ancient Indian scriptures contain very rich, empirically derived psychological theories that are, however, intertwined with religious and philosophical content. This article represents our attempt to extract the psychological theory of cognition and consciousness from a prominent ancient Indian thought system: Samkhya-Yoga. We derive rather broad hypotheses from this approach that may complement and extend Western mainstream theorizing. These hypotheses address an ancient personality theory, the effects of practicing the applied part of Samkhya-Yoga on normal and extraordinary cognition, as well as different ways of perceiving reality. We summarize empirical evidence collected (mostly without reference to the Indian thought system) in diverse fields of research that allows for making judgments about the hypotheses, and suggest more specific hypotheses to be examined in future research. We conclude that the existing evidence for the (broad) hypotheses is substantial but that there are still considerable gaps in theory and research to be filled. Theories of cognition contained in the ancient Indian systems have the potential to modify and complement existing Western mainstream accounts of cognition. In particular, they might serve as a basis for arriving at more comprehensive theories for several research areas that, so far, lack strong theoretical grounding, such as meditation research or research on aspects of consciousness.

SUBMITTER: Sedlmeier P

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4791389 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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How Do Theories of Cognition and Consciousness in Ancient Indian Thought Systems Relate to Current Western Theorizing and Research?

Sedlmeier Peter P Srinivas Kunchapudi K

Frontiers in psychology 20160315

Unknown to most Western psychologists, ancient Indian scriptures contain very rich, empirically derived psychological theories that are, however, intertwined with religious and philosophical content. This article represents our attempt to extract the psychological theory of cognition and consciousness from a prominent ancient Indian thought system: Samkhya-Yoga. We derive rather broad hypotheses from this approach that may complement and extend Western mainstream theorizing. These hypotheses add ...[more]

PMID: 27014150

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Project description:The scientific study of consciousness is currently undergoing a critical transition in the form of a rapidly evolving scientific debate regarding whether or not currently proposed theories can be assessed for their scientific validity. At the forefront of this debate is Integrated Information Theory (IIT), widely regarded as the preeminent theory of consciousness because it quantified subjective experience in a scalar mathematical measure called Φ that is in principle measurable. Epistemological issues in the form of the "unfolding argument" have provided a concrete refutation of IIT by demonstrating how it permits functionally identical systems to have differences in their predicted consciousness. The implication is that IIT and any other proposed theory based on a physical system's causal structure may already be falsified even in the absence of experimental refutation. However, so far many of these arguments surrounding the epistemological foundations of falsification arguments, such as the unfolding argument, are too abstract to determine the full scope of their implications. Here, we make these abstract arguments concrete, by providing a simple example of functionally equivalent machines realizable with table-top electronics that take the form of isomorphic digital circuits with and without feedback. This allows us to explicitly demonstrate the different levels of abstraction at which a theory of consciousness can be assessed. Within this computational hierarchy, we show how IIT is simultaneously falsified at the finite-state automaton level and unfalsifiable at the combinatorial-state automaton level. We use this example to illustrate a more general set of falsification criteria for theories of consciousness: to avoid being already falsified, or conversely unfalsifiable, scientific theories of consciousness must be invariant with respect to changes that leave the inference procedure fixed at a particular level in a computational hierarchy.

Dataset Information

How Do Theories of Cognition and Consciousness in Ancient Indian Thought Systems Relate to Current Western Theorizing and Research?

Publications

How Do Theories of Cognition and Consciousness in Ancient Indian Thought Systems Relate to Current Western Theorizing and Research?

Similar Datasets

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