"Philosophy" in India

Angot, in the book discussed in my last post, defines philosophy as intimately connected to the exercise of doubt:

*Since* the method of (ancient) Nyāya includes the methodological doubt and inquires *without limitations* and in all domains of knowledge, the label "philosophy" is appropriate for it, although Vātsyāyana etc. did not ask the same questions as Socrates or Kant. But outside ancient Nyāya and Sāṅkhya the situation (=i.e., the appropriateness of the label "philosophy") becomes more complicated. And the fact that Nyāya is considered philosophy does not exclude the reflection we need to do on the modern usage of this term (=philosophy) in the Indian context.
(my translation, my parentheses and emphases, p. 23)

I like the last sentence, but for the last words. In fact, as Angot himself points out, we need to question our usage of "philosophy" altogether, since we have no problem in considering Nietzsche, the Aquinas, Epicurus, and so on as "philosophers". As another French philosopher, P. Hadot (also quoted by Angot) notes, "philosophy" in Ancient Greece (and in India? and in some Christian authors? and in the contemporary "Applied Philosophy"?) includes a practice of life. This is quite far from the "philosophy" at the time it "became professionalizes in Europe, by the end of the 18th c." (p. 24). As for Angot, he is fine with this use of "philosophy", if only –so it seems– the requisite doubt and scope mentioned above are also there.

But does this make sense?
A part from possible problems within Western philosophy, I wonder:

• whether a generalised doubt is altogether possible
• why should not specialised inquiries not be considered "philosophy"?

Nāvya Nyāya seems a plausible candidate as "philosophy", although it focuses (only) on certain topics. But, if so, then why not accepting as "philosophy" those schools which explicitly acknowledge the authority of the Veda and then philosophize in other domains?

Doubt in Nyaya Philosphy

I started reading M. Angot's introduction to his translation of the Nyayabhasya. The text is fascinating because and although it is very provocative. The author maintains that Indian philosophers were first of all performers, namely they performed debates. They were not contemplative sould detached from worldly worries, but rather sanguinely engaged in confrontations. The standard form of expression in Sanskrit, writes the author, is indeed that of confrontation.
Angot then adds, without any apparent explanation, that philosophy after the Nyayabhasya "surrendered to religion". Abhinavagupta could be a great philosopher, but only insofar as he was first of all a theologian, and so on. On the contrary, authors until the NBh could doubt everything, including the Veda. They were, Angot suggests, like the sophists in Ancient Greece.
What do readers think? So much food for thought and I've only read the first 12 pages;-)

Is there a "norm" in the Upaniṣads?

Were "norms" already availble to the authors of the oldest Upaniṣads? If so, how did they identify the breaking of a norm? Can contemporary readers detect the authors' identifications of some episodes as counter-normative?
Sven Wortmann, using Brian Black's narratological approach (already discussed in this blog here), read a paper at the IIGRS2 conference in Cambridge on these themes. He maintains that through a narratological reading one can identify the cases where a norm is broken. Specifically, one could use as identification marks the following ones:

1. 1. the text explicitly indicates the content as counter-normative
2. 2. other texts indicate it as such
3. 3. the content becomes a motif
   
4. 4. the content is deleted in other parallel or later texts

To elaborate, S.Wortmann discussed two cases (the king Ajātaśatru which teaches and initiates a brahmin BĀUp 2.1, and Satyakāma and his mother Jāvalā, who does not know to which gotra his father belongs, in ChUp). The paper has raised a very interesting discussion. Personally, I can't see why point 2. should yield any evidence in favour of the breaking of a norm (there are many motives which re-inforce a norm or that are norm-neutral). Others objected against the very idea of the normative in the Upaniṣads, or against the examples chosen. Are casts already fix at the time of the BĀUp? Don't they rather refer to specializations (so that it is strange that a king initiates a i, but it is not counter-normative)?
A last interesting questions regard the context of this allegedly counter-normative motives: have they been composed by kṣatriyas? By urbanised (i.e., progressive) brahmins?

Is there time without consciousness?

Time, as is well known, is according to Augustine extensio animi, an extension of one's soul. Hence, it does not exist apart from it.
However, Sartre maintained that the most fundamental level of consciousness is pre-egological and Husserl supported (only) a transcendental ego –that is, one which does not appear as such in consciousness. Buddhist thinkers were explicitly non-substantialist, at least after Vasubandhu.
Does time-consciousness entail a (transcendental, at least) ego?
Husserl's claim that there is a moment of retention within every instant of experience, might help one in avoiding to postulate an ego and yet account for time-consciousness. However, one might object, such a retention is itself momentary and hence cannot account for long-term memory.
While dealing with such questions, Matt MacKenzie admitted that retention is one of the conditions of possibility of memory, and it is still not the depiction implied by memory. In order to get it, one needs to add an account of the sedimentation of retention-traces (in Sanskrit one would call them vāsanā or saṃskāra). This is the role of the depository consciousnessm the ālayavijñāna. A presentist (and at the conference on Self: Hindu Responses to Buddhist Critiques this role has been performed by Jan Westerhoff) could instead object that there are, in fact, NO RECORDS of the past. What appears as a record of the past is in fact a present cognition, which we misinterpret as relating to the past. In other words, it only "looks" as a record, but it exists in the present as something else.

Are objects enough or do we need a subject experiencing them?

Are external objects able to convey information? Are they, that is, independent of me meaningful objects?
During the open discussion following the paper of Wolfgang Fasching I have summarised before, Joel Krueger (who asked, by the way, some among the most interesting questions during the whole conference) challenged Fasching's approach from the point of view of Gilbert's ecological psychology. In summary, Gilbert proposed that the only world we experience is a world made of already meaningful objects. That is, they are already meaningful, even before me attributing them a meaning. Consequently, they are also able to tell me some information about myself. Hence, the world itself is a continuous space of self-specifying information (=information specifying myself, yourself, etc.). If this all is true, we would need nothing more than a consciousness interpreted as sheer openness.
Instinctively, I would have objected like Irina Kusnetsova did, that is by claiming that objects can convey self-specifying information only in relation of me. They are telling insofar as I "interrogate" them, they tell me about me because they tell me how I like or dislike or am attracted, etc. them.
Once again, I am back at the problem that if all we want to establish is a sheer consciousness, without personal characteristic, then it seems that even less than that would do (just the saṃskāras instead of the owner of memories, for instance). A full-shaped sense of mineness seems to me the minimal requisite to distinguish between a "mental state" and a subejct.

Why talking about methodology?

A primary concern of mine is to become more and more aware of the plurality of possible methodological approaches within every field of study, and of the non-neutrality of the choice of one approach over another.
An acknowledged methodology, I believe, might be challenged and discussed, whereas an apparent “non-methodology” might be much riskier and subtler. In fact, an absolute absence of methodology is just impossible. Hence, authors who avoid methodological questions, or claim they do not need to face them, actually implement one methodology and suggest to their readers that this is the “natural”, the “right” or the only plausible one. In some cases, this amounts to say that one subliminally absorbs a methodological approach (for instance, one teachers' one) and then tends to reproduce it uncritically. In others, a similar procedure may have the negative output of making its upholders sure that there is no space for authentic research outside it. Hence, adopting another methodological approach would be tantamount to being no “appropriate” researcher at all.

Does a phenomenological approach lead us to a self-as-consciousness?

I have argued in this blog (see label "subject") and elsewhere in favour of a phenomenological interpretation of the Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā theories of the self. I understand them as referring to the kind of persons we experience in our everyday life and not to take into account "minimal selves", since they have nothing to do with such an experience. Even if there were one, it would be as remote from my experience as the Buddhist ālayavijñāna and saṃskāras. But one can use phenomenology to achieve different conclusions (favouring a self-qua-consciousness vs. a person).
In the Self: Hindu Responses to Buddhist Critiques conference, the phenomenologist Wolfgang Fasching was probably the only speaker being a "pure" philosopher (with no training in Indian languages). The fact that everyone enjoyed is paper and that some of us thought it was the best one, is a further evidence of the fact that one can start thinking philosophically about Indian texts –even as an outsider lacking an accurate knowledge of Sanskrit. Obviously enough, this does not imply that no further work on primary sources is required, nor that everyone can understand all kind of Sanskrit texts. Nonetheless, Fasching's paper was an interesting example of philosophical acumen applied to Advaita Vedānta.

The paper examines the idea (possibly akin to the one proposed by C. Ram-Prasad in the same conference) of an ego-substance "beyond or behind the experiential realm":

Such an entity would have to remain a purely metaphysical conjecture […] and it is not even clear whether the position of such an ego-entity would in fact provude us with an adequate answer to our question [namely: what *is* this experiencing I that constitutes the essential subjectivity of experience?] […] On the other hand, […] we cannot seem to do *without* an I that experiences its experiences, since mineness belongs to the very essence of experience itself. (p.3)

Fasching maintains that the Advaita Vedāntic ātman is a fitting answer for the above question:

So the self in the Advaitic sense is not a particular entity I could find in addition to the things in the world which I experience as being external to me –it is rather the world-experiencing itself (p.4).

What are we left with, now? Is this self-as-consciousness still something graspable, or is it nothing more than a minimal requisite, a "purely metaphysical conjecture"? In fact, several questions at the end of Fasching's presentation, focused on similar objections. M.MacKenzie claimed, for instance, that mental states are such because they are undergone, *but* asking "undergone by *whom*?" points to nothing more than a grammatical problem. Ram-Prasad added further insights on the evolution of the Advaita Vedāntic teaching on this point after the disapperance of Buddhism from India. In fact, until Buddhist opponents challenged them, Advaita Vedāntins sticked at their claim of a difference between vṛttijñāna (intentional knowledge of the world) and sākṣījñāna (consciousness). But thereafter, departing from Madhusudana Sārasvati, one wanted to avoid to end up with the sākṣin as a substance.