The argumentative skeptic and enlightenment

The two varieties of enlightenment:

The word enlightenment has at least two different senses when it comes to its exalted usages. Firstly, there is the Indian sub-continental or far-eastern civilizational sense. In this case it refers to say, as the famous example goes, what must have happened to Siddhartha Gautama under the Bodhi tree in Gaya around the time he awakened into the Buddha all those centuries ago. It is referred to variously as Nirvana and Moksha in Buddhist and Hindu traditions respectively, and possibly also includes the attainment of the Dao or Zen from other traditions. There is also the notion of Brahman in Hindu or Vedic line of thought which is like a subtle substratum underlying our sense perceptions and mental life. Awakening or Moksha then refers to a sort of full embodiment and realization or an immediate, direct inner awareness of this while the mundane things of life keep happening. 

For the purpose of this essay, we may at the minimum take it to be the attainment of a mental state which is not quite tethered or bounded by the social mores and customs, yet is a deeply peaceful and liberated state with a keeping-to-oneself attitude. Think hermits who have renounced society or mendicants who are singing happily outside your nearby place of worship. Or even better the happy-go-lucky family member who is almost always at ease despite office politics, family drama, traffic snarls and long queues in the big city. To put it more abstrusely, the soul of the enlightened one is more or less unaffected by the presence of egos and minds in their vicinity, and ideally, not at all. He or she does not resist the unavoidable biologically mandated mental reflexes but processes it differently than the common person on the street.

Then there is the second sense associated with the enlightenment of reason originating during the Renaissance period in Europe. We may take it here to be the effort to understand our immediate surroundings not through a supernatural or magical lens, but through an empirical approach grounded in observation. Such an approach carried through repeated experimentation with increasing precision often leads to predictive power and eventually the potential for technological applications. This is essentially one of the foundations of the modern industrial society. Of course we now routinely apply this attitude -- also called the scientific method -- to natural phenomena that range from the cosmic to the microscopic. This attitude or method includes supplementing observation by parsimonious model-building and all the theoretical machinery needed to enable it such as the invention of their respective calculi by Newton or Liebniz [0]. 

Some pertinent and prominent current, advanced examples are the use of general relativity corrections for GPS predictions in our smartphone map apps and the use of magnetic resonance and positron emission phenomena in medical imaging. Some pertinent and prominent old examples are the use of concepts from the study of thermodynamics such as entropy and heat to the development of steam engines and refrigerators, and the classic application of Newtonian physics and Faraday-Maxwell electrodynamics to many day-to-day tools and objects like bicycles, knifes, toaster ovens and other daily implements, electric motors and generators taken at random from a very long list. Another fascinating example is our still evolving understanding and knowledge of materials and states of matter that has essentially defined the distinct ages of human society from its hunter-gatherer cohort days to bigger agricultural settlements to the present day industrial age with its plastics, polymers, solid state batteries, advanced alloy composites and so on, now going towards an era where materials with dominant quantum mechanical properties are promising to play bigger and bigger roles.

Not that surprisingly, we are also applying this attitude or method to understand the singular phenomenon of animal consciousness or awareness in the present day and quite vigorously so. It was perhaps considered to be furthest away from its purview, landing squarely in the domain of the first sense of enlightenment. Some of the results from these efforts are hard to miss such as drugs for anaesthetic purposes as well as psychiatric interventions to an extent, and somewhat indirectly the development of neural network based algorithms to mimic human intelligence. The second example is more directly related to understanding how computation occurs in the human brain more generally speaking, rather than how consciousness arises in the brain or is experienced by us. 

In relation to the calculus example above, it is interesting to note that the advancements in this direction -- making use of infinitesimals coherently and rigorously -- by Madhava and the Kerela school of mathematics before the time of Newton and Liebniz [1] may probably be better seen in light of the "eastern" sense of "inner" enlightenment, i.e. pursuit of mathematical truth by the seeker as the chosen instrument to inner enlightenment. This may be true in spite of the fact that these fundamental mathematical advancements -- like the sine and cosine infinite series formulas among others -- occurred in the context of making better astronomical predictions perhaps for the purposes of rituals and rites, or perhaps just to find platonic, eternal truths. The coexistence or confluence of these two "eastern" and "western" senses of enlightenment as in the example of Madhava's infinite series formulas is the subject of this essay. We will however avoid using these adjectives and use the "inner" adjective to distinguish the first sense from the second one described above as per necessity. The caveat is that this "inner" adjective may be superfluous in the eastern traditions and is just being used for the purpose of this essay.

The argumentative skeptic and the seeker:

In Hindu philosophical systems for thought and being, there are several paths to attaining moksha or inner enlightenment. My goal is not to expound here on these paths not only because I am not an expert enough on the related scholarly matters as say compared to someone like Swami Sarvapriyananda [2], but also because that is not my main interest. I primarily want to put forward some arguments to interest and, hopefully, spur the reader. Thus I will be speaking from my experience and from what I have listened to, thought about in my leisure. My main interest is in exploring how the jnana yoga path to moksha connects to how a philosophically minded but skeptical and argumentative thinker may approach life [3]. This I consider to be distinct from professional philosophy pursued in academia, and more in the spirit of e.g. the school of life videos on the Youtube channel of Alain de Botton [4]. The gist of the main point of this essay has already been made in the Madhava example above. 

Let me start with some of the other paths. One of them is the bhakti yoga path. This may be considered to be a non-argumentative path towards inner enlightenment. The idea is to surrender to the bigger world or universe out there which is beyond the control of that single person in search of moksha. It may be considered a religious or a sober, measured attitude towards life. Here I am using religion in the personal sense and not in the sense of organized religion. This bigger aspect of reality may be conflated with God by a skeptic who subscribes to faith, but an atheist or agnostic person may call it the divine or the sublime element of human experience without any reference to god. Operationally, the peaceful seekers along this path often take refuge in religious music and art and the sense of shared community. 

Then there is karma yoga which is another path famously advocated by the Bhagavat Gita. The idea here is to busy oneself with the right action or activities in line with one's dharma and not try to "rebel" against the neeti or laws underlying the entire creation or brahman [5]. It is not easy to make precise this idea for someone not steeped in this way of thinking, but we may try to put it simply by saying that it is a way to focus one's attention and energies towards goal-oriented tasks without the final goal in mind while doing the action -- but of course with the final goal in mind when deliberating what action to pursue in commensuration with our natural talents and gifts! The result of pursuing this path is a sort of oneness with the bigger flow patterns that exist in Nature similar to the singular pursuit of refinement by the craftsmen in Japanese society. Along the way the hope is that one achieves enlightenment, i.e. the untethering of oneself from other egos and minds in one's vicinity and, ideally, even one's own ego! The stoic tradition originating in the western civilization is another path that may be considered a cousin of the karma yoga path towards enlightenment.

Argumentative approach to effect change:

Now we come to the path of jnana yoga proper which is the object of this essay. We can take it to be the practice of argumentation, deliberation and reflection in order to aid in a progressively more refined and nuanced appreciation of truth and reality vis-a-vis the direct sense experiences and mental post-processing that happens in each of us. "The truth is out there, but so are lies." This quote is spoken by the character Dana Scully from the popular sci-fi TV show The X-Files along with some supernatural bells and whistles [6]. To capture the need for the jnana yoga path, we can invert the quote as, "The eternal truth is inside us, but so are eternal lies." How is one supposed to tell the truth from the lies. Jnana yoga offers a possible way to make progress usually under the tutelage of a master from one of the philosophical traditions such as the advaita vedantic tradition. The hope is that if one masters this path, it can ultimately even lead to nirvana. 

The details of this process is not the focus of this essay, except that argumentation has been found to be a useful tool towards inner enlightenment by experts. And it goes without saying that civil argumentation -- along with the attitude of skeptical inquiry and the flexibility to change one's mind when evidence to the contrary is overwhelming -- is a core pillar of European enlightenment. This is further supplemented by written records in the form of essays, dialogues, treatises and papers both in philosophical and modern scientific literature. We will put forth some arguments in what follows in order to show the natural confluence of the two varieties of enlightenment for the argumentative skeptical thinker such as the archetypical natural philosopher of yore. Hopefully the modern day professional super-specialized scientist also finds some use in this point of view.

As I mentioned in [3], the arguments in this essay were prompted by an initial position that the enlightened one should not feel the need for argumentation. I will be taking a contrary position, i.e. there is no conflict between inner enlightenment and argumentation [7], and in fact they naturally can coexist as is the main thesis. There is one case where this coexistence is rather necessary. This is in relation to change-makers and reformists when it comes to social change. It is none too surprising that consensus is not the path to big changes or reforms since the party with vested interests that stands to lose after the change is quite unlikely to agree to the consensus! This point is made wonderfully in a lecture by Sanjeev Sanyal on process reforms in governance [8]. Thus an enlightened leader, ruler, minister, judge or even a civil servant in the local municipality down the hierarchy chain will have to wield argumentation and persuasion as instruments just to do his or her job. There is no other way around it in a democratic society for its people are neither all enlightened nor all unenlightened, neither all kind and well-meaning nor all malicious.

Argumentation for its own sake:

We now come to the final few points of this essay that hopefully build into a nice climax. Even in the completely personal situation of a seeker in search of inner enlightenment, argumentation and skeptical inquiry are not unnatural instruments once the emphasis is on the journey or path of the seeker. For starters, let us assume the position that upon attaining enlightenment, one does not feel the need for any further argumentation. This may be so perhaps because one has by definition embodied or manifested the eternal underlying truth or the brahman -- rather removed the illusory veils put on by various forms of social and personal conditioning and hard biological constraints -- in say the way of the Advaita Vedanta. Thus it is not unnatural to conclude if there is anything left further to argue about. We generally do not argue if the Sun or the Moon continues to exist or not when we are not looking, and definitely not when we are looking at them. And so it could be the situation for the enlightened one in relation to perceiving reality after the awakening. Even so, there is clearly no contradiction with using argumentation to arrive at the state of enlightenment before the awakening. 

This is the promise of the path of jnana yoga where one rather trains to use argumentation, along with deliberation, reflection and also instruction from a learned master to aid the seeker in their search. There are in fact quite elaborate traditions of how to use argumentation in debates to remove misconceptions, establish truths and refine understanding of matters in relation to inner enlightenment [9]. Here is where the argumentative skeptical thinker -- a natural philosopher being the canonical example -- has an advantage for the lack of a better term [10]. This is because the natural philosopher is trained to use well these instruments in order to understand the external physical reality. They may thus bring to bear the power of these instruments towards say the inquiry of the underlying substratum reality or the brahman that is the object of inner enlightenment according to vedantic traditions. This is thus especially naturally accommodated in the jnana yoga path. 

A caveat here is that the quantitative and phenomenological model-building aspects of natural philosophy is not quite apropos of the search for inner enlightenment since it is a personal journey for the seeker almost by definition. However we may fruitfully describe the search process as an empirical one whereby the seeker develops various rules of thumb, identifies repeating patterns in the inner processes, etc. to develop a coherent picture as one makes progress in their search. It can even be a practical attitude such as that of a hard-nosed experimenter in a physical laboratory. If one can remain honest with oneself, for example by writing down one's observations and reflections or other means, this hard-nosed approach can also be used to give coherence to the decidedly non-quantitative process of seeking enlightenment, however now grounded in an empiricism at the level of a single individual quite like a philosopher stuck in Plato's cave [11]. Eventually when a community of like-minded seekers get together say in a monastic order or environment, a sort of phenomenological model-building or book-keeping process does take place in relation to the awakening process and related issues and becomes part of the written record, however conducted differently from the scientific literature. This thus generally finds a place in theological or metaphysical literature or perhaps philosophical literature in the form of scriptures and commentaries. Of course they naturally abound in religious literature, and also in secular literature to some extent -- this essay being one such instance.

Finally, let us consider the role of argumentation after attaining the supposed state of enlightenment. The enlightened state can not be a static state. It must be a dynamic state whose maintenance requires practice and self-evaluation. In other words it is an unnatural state. This follows by the simple fact that most individuals in this game — the ultimate game for reflective Hindus — are seekers and not enlightened beings! Thus we may also take it that the enlightened one can come out of the enlightened state unless special care is taken. It is in this part of the process of maintenance of the enlightened state where I believe that argumentation and skeptical inquiry can continue to play a role. An analogy would be world-class sportspersons and musicians who have to constantly keep at it to remain at the highest level. In a similar vein, one can continue to keep using the instruments of argumentation and skeptical inquiry to maintain the health of the attained enlightenment apart from the other instruments from the bhakti, dhyana, jnana and raja yoga paths. This is somewhat like the attitude of the karma yogi or the stoic individual but now brought to bear on the jnana yogi after having attained enlightenment! 

Of course, one may choose to retire from being an enlightened jnana yogi after a good stint, and shift to the bhakti yoga path to give the illusory mind its due rest :) In this scenario it goes without saying that the substratum eternal Brahman never needs any of this hard work but rather verily just is and continue to be for eternity! An even more extreme position would be that there is no absolute need for inner spiritual enlightenment to begin with. This is the reason why we encounter so many interesting individuals both from the Hindu culture and other cultures who are at ease and pretty much sorted in life by somehow subconsciously accepting at least the first noble truth [12] without being awakened like the Buddha, our archetypical enlightened seeker. A non-seeker in these terms can have a fulfilling life perhaps by being aware or rather entertaining -- or not -- just the possibility of an underlying substratum reality for the purpose of self-inquiry and engagement with some schools of thought that have a long and still continuing legacy. In this case there is no need anymore to go all the way and manifest or embody the posited brahman in opposition to what many serious Hindu seekers claim as the primary goal of human existence. The non-seeker would anyway already be a part of the one and the universal Brahman if this possibility of an underlying substratum brahman were to be the actual state of affairs! [13]

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[0] See e.g. this wonderful documentary here.

[1] See the works of K. Ramsubramaniam here; also see these set of scholarly talks by Prof. P. P. Divakaran at ICTS, Bengaluru that are not quite meant to entertain :)

[2] The interested reader may benefit well from his talks and videos to learn more about these things.

[3] As an aside, this essay was prompted by a lunch time conversation with Nisheeta Desai who started with the position that the enlightened one should not feel the need for argumentation. This was in turn prompted by my stating that I was feeling enlightened enough these days that I could dispassionately engage or argue with her mother Ujjwala Desai -- unlike in the past, seven years ago from now -- on some scientific point related to food safety of fast foods with paneer or Indian cottage cheese! After writing this essay, I know that I am not enlightened :)

[4] See here.

[5] See here for meanings of the various terms. I am not trying to be very precise, but using the terms colloquially from my past experience.

[6] See here or here. See also here.

[7] Even the great Richard Feynman had used the word "soul" while describing his fundamentally skeptical attitude to life and science. See the documentary interview "The pleasure of finding things out" from the BBC Horizon series. See around the 48 minute mark here. See also here for the same with a nice music in background. The slight snicker when the word "soul" is uttered is noteworthy even though his views are irreligious. Even so I would go so far as to claim that he was an enlightened philosopher scientist at least at an individual level. A response to Feynman's point in the above videos is here. As you may have or may figure out, I am a bit of a fan boy of his, and more generally of physics, science and its great figures in general :)

[8] The lecture is available here. See around the 58 minute 40 second mark.

[9] See here for an example.

[10] The category of natural philosophy can now be primarily associated with Renaissance and post-Renaissance scientific activity such as that of Descartes, Galileo and Newton which has the level of rigour that we normally associate with present day scientific activity. However there have been other more ancient schools of natural philosophy that reject supernatural effects. There is the ancient Indian school of philosophy based on a materialistic philosophy without the supernatural that is more or less equivalent to the category of natural philosophy more generally speaking. See here for more details. The experts would be able to tell the level of mathematical rigour -- we can trust the level of logical rigour to be pretty high -- that is present in this school of thought when explaining natural phenomena. Of course, the association made earlier is not historically correct and natural philosophy extends to the time long before Renaissance going back to Aristotle and before, including the prominent Greek philosophers such as Democritus, Pythagoras among others.

[11] See this wiki article for example. 

[12] See this wiki article for example.

[13] Some of the readers may wonder as to my position on the existence of the underlying substratum reality also called as the Brahman in many schools of Hindu philosophical thought. At the moment, I am quite agnostic to it. More precisely, it is self-evident that consciousness is a distinct element or category of our experiential reality. It is not unnatural, rather quite natural in fact, to include our personal experiential realities as part of physical reality. By physical, I mean what is generally referred to as "physical" in physical sciences such as physics. Consciousness is clearly an element of physical reality in this sense. Thus the question is does it have a separate existence from the known constituents of physical reality as we know it (i.e. the brain substratum for mental processes, the known forces and matter constituents of Nature, etc.) or is it an emergent phenomenon of the putting together of known elements of physical reality in the spirit of "more is different" propounded first by P. W. Anderson. I am agnostic about this.

In the vein of the first possibility of consciousness having a separate status than the well-known constituents of physical reality as described by say modern day theoretical physics, one may posit a consciousness "field" vis-a-vis say the observer in quantum physics. It could be then that what has been identified as the brahman by say subscribers of advaita vedanta through practical human experience such as by the use of the instruments of the various yoga paths like bhakti and dhyana is this posited consciousness field. This idea has even been explored some. See here and here which could be entry points into related literature. Even if it were true, the reason for my agnosticism is my lack of clarity as to what kind of empirical tests can lend to quantitative verification and predictions as is the custom of physical sciences. However I can not outright dismiss this possibility given the well-documented cases of various enlightened individuals. I trust that they have explored well uncommon and subtle corners of the human perception faculties. If a subset of them comes to the conclusion that there must be an underlying substratum reality, then it does not seem far-fetched to entertain this possibility. 

See here and here also for why one may dismiss such a possibility. I do not fully subscribe to this view because I am not confident enough in my understanding of the known laws and constituents of nature to conclude that there is nothing more than what is presently known. Another reason for why not to reject outright this possibility of an underlying substratum or brahman is by analogy to the various interpretations of quantum mechanics that exist in relation to the role of observer in physical phenomena. The fact that multiple interpretations exist on this issue neither makes this issue unphysical or moot, nor voids the interpretations that we do not subscribe to. Having said this, I do not spend my much of my time -- and certainly not any of my day job time -- on this issue of the observer in quantum physics and am quite satisfied to follow the line of thought expressed by the great cigarette-smoking Sidney Coleman with his carefully prepared spontaneous jokes! By a similar token, I do not spend my time seeking to embody the potential brahman aspect of reality even for a short while as such. However it is on my wish-list out of a simple curiosity to experience the psychological feeling or sensation during the awakening process that must be taking place in the minds of the advanced yogis and enlightened ones, more than any other deeper goal or, to use a term that is perhaps antithetical to the whole idea of inner enlightenment, desire such as to realize the brahman or become one with the universe. If you wish this is akin to other entries on my curiosity wish-list -- not quite applicable anymore -- as to how far I could have gone had I had pursued professionally cricket, chess or some other sport from an young age, or to a lesser extent some form of classical music or literary writing.

In the second vein of consciousness as an emergent phenomenon in the brain or elsewhere, there are of course many researches. See here, here, here and here for example. This might very well be the case and the experiences of the enlightened individuals can also probably be well accommodated within this paradigm. I.e. they are somehow able to control their brain circuits in qualitatively different ways than the majority of us to afford them unusual ways of experiencing physical reality, which is then given the name of moksha, nirvana to form a mental category for the purposes of communication between individuals. There is even the hypothesis that enlightenment corresponds to quite specific and identifiable brain activity or lack thereof in awakened individuals. One nice case of this is the suppression of brain activity in the regions associated with making us feel as if we are distinct from other objects in our surroundings. A simple example of that we can relate to is this: after prolonged use, we become unaware of clothes and rings on our bodies, or rather this region in the brain stops considering these objects as separate from our human flesh body. In individuals with brain hemorrhage where this brain circuit gets affected, it has been documented that there is a feeling of oneness with the rest of the universe and the loss of this sense of separation of the body from the surroundings [14]. There could very well be such expert control on the activity of other brain regions in enlightened individuals and the scientific community is trying hard to quantify and model -- i.e. apply the scientific method -- using e.g. functional magnetic resonance imaging (again!) and other tools.

This point of view somewhat connects to the Buddhist concept of Shunyata which essentially posits that there is no brahman or "consciousness field" as I described before. I.e. everything relating to our mental perceptions including consciousness is illusory and empty -- whatever that means --, which might just be another way of saying that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon or epiphenomenon. See here for more details on the concept of shunyata. It is to be noted that the concept of shunyata is contraposed to that of the brahman concept, and also that Buddhism arose as a reaction to and amidst the existing philosophies at the time based on the Hindu vedic traditions. I am agnostic about this as well, however if I had to bet at the point of a gun I probably would go with the possibility of shunyata as the stand-in for consciousness as an emergent phenomenon. I had had a similar realization a long while back which is described here.

[14] See here for an example related to the wonderful book "My stroke of insight" by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroanatomist.

Some AI art prompted by "The argumentative skeptic and the Buddha" in the style of Renaissance paintings: