Anand Vaidya: Consciousness, Truth, Belief, Time

This is a banger. Prof. Anand Vaidya of philosophy specializes in Vedic philosophy, epistemology, and we talk about God, free will, mathematics, Kripke, and even the ego as both an illusion and real.

LINKS MENTIONED:
- Podcast w/ Dave Chalmers on TOE: COMING

TIMESTAMPS:
- 00:00:00 Introduction
- 00:02:36 Indian theories of knowledge and sentience
- 00:08:00 Hedonic Tone and the mathematics of pleasure
- 00:18:15 Exploration of non-dualism vs. unity with God & absence of subject-object distinction
- 00:35:00 Misconceptions about non-dualism and the importance of rationality and logic
- 00:46:41 Materialism in Indian philosophy
- 01:56:00 Time, impermanence, and suffering
- 01:15:01 Truth, falsity, and the ineffable
- 01:35:19 Shankara philosophy and Dan Dennett's rebut against Mary
- 01:47:00 Chomsky vs. Kripke regarding reference and naming
- 02:03:00 Metaphysically possible worlds
- 02:31:10 Inflationary and deflationary approaches
- 02:47:07 The Integration Challenge and the paradox of mathematical knowledge
- 02:57:06 Donald Hoffman's perception theory
- 03:07:04 Free will and determinism
- 03:21:43 Grounding and grading of moral standing
- 03:33:35 Modal logic
- 03:43:02 Belief in belief

[pierluigiciccotti]

It'd be amazing if you could invite Swami Sarvapryananda and he agrees to engage in a discussion with Anand. Very helpful for us, TOE aficionados, and for Anand's

[strumspicks]

This is a quality conversation, well informed and articulate people who make clear distinctions between what they know and what they don't... refreshing in the era of hype and vacuous personalities discussing philosophy and other topics in the most clumsy way

[danielross]

This discussion is a super helpful bridge for me, coming from a western philosophical education, but having also for years investigated Buddhist traditions in search of a link between east and west. Thank you.

[williamjmccartan]

If I could, around 50-52 minutes constraints being created by objects, I'm sitting on my balcony looking at the cars in the parking lot, they are all on, wheels, as an object in the world the wheel constrains our ability to see other options that might make the way a car travels other than on wheels. Hope I was listening correctly Anand 55 minutes, if we are made up of the stuff of the stars, how can we be illusory or temporary, as what we are returns to stuff of stars. 147 minutes, Anand, if something is 2core, is that like the real McCoy, or the OG? I'm into the 4th hour, I'm wondering how long Anand and Gregg Henriques could keep talking. This has been a lot of fun, exploring faith, language, semantics, perception of all three. Thank you both Anand and Curt for a great conversation, peace

Anand, I also suffer from aphantasia, can't see nothing mentally, and I mean nothing.

[alanhehe]

I usually don't leave 2 comments on 1 video, but I just wanted to say, this guy is really brilliant, and I love how he drew a distinction between dualism as it exists conceptually and the dualism that is natural, i.e., light and dark, male and female, high and low, etc.
One of mankind's biggest problems is mistaking the symbol for the reality. It's a function of language and logic, to dissect and label things. But sometimes you have to step back to see the whole, to see "the bigger picture."
Occasionally, we must cleanse the doors of perception, perhaps..😉

[shafi]

Condolences 🙏🏼. His departure leaves a gap unfilled in contemporary philosophy.

[nil]

Prof. Vaidya has incredible breadth of knowledge ang great job in posing such intelligent questions, Curt. I wish you guys dwell more on Indian philosophical views on semantics and epistemology. We only got a glimpse here. Generally when it comes to Indian philosophy Vedantic metaphysics hogs all the limelight but there's a lot more and Vaidya can bring all that out. Also try to bring Jonordon Ganeri, he is one of the leading figures in academic Indian philosophy.

[gloriaharbin]

Curt, I love your beautiful, clear, curious inquiring mind and what I perceive as such a good soul(warts and all). Thank you for being and sharing your podcasts with all of us!

[Nonconceptuality]

The illusion is a separately existing individual self. The statement: "Illusion of the self" may lead some to believe that their existence itself is an illusion. The Self/Observer is fundamental Reality, and It is singular.

That which is looking through these (my) eyes is that which is looking through those (your) eyes. That which is seen is the illusion

[Stephenskandhas]

Sat Cit Ananda. Existence Consciousness Bliss. Shivoham, Shivoham. God alone exists, and I, along with all sentient beings, are only ever That at their deepest identity. It is very difficult to point at these intellectually, using modern western nomenclature, and he’s making an effort to help people understand theses truths. It’s a worthy endeavor imo

[AdvaiticOneness]

Advaitians have no birth nor death, Om Shanti 🙏

[Mortimerhun]

Wow! I would really want to hear he exchanges ideas with Bernardo!

[nanshex]

Would like to point out the Madhyamaka point of view for the two schools, Svatantrika and Prasangika re: self, (im)permanence, dependent arising, etc.. for a deeper understanding. Tibetan Buddhism can get very granular, which I appreciate. Then there’s Dzogchen and Mahamudra also appreciative. Such a deep reservoir. Much praise to Nalanda University as the genesis.

[wendellvoisin]

I am not so well read and studied up on philosophy and mathametics to fully grasp all the inflection of the conversation, however I'd like to inject that I do understand the ascension of pain into the realm of pleasure. Anyone who has worked their body until every muscle is crying out to their consciouness in pain even to their heart muscle pounding is painful knows what I am talking about. There is a point where you push past that and you begin to "feel" every thing in and around your life. A drop of sweat hanging from the tip of your nose you can feel the weight of it as sways, or sweat trickling down your back until it flows like at stream. You can sense the slightest movement of air, and hear your drops of sweat as they hit the floor. You have worked past pain into relam of pleasure, all of your senses are heightened and your body almost seems massless. This may be what drives some people to love working in gyms. I have always thought this phenomon to be due solely to bodily chemistry at work on the brain. I don't know how such a thing could be studied or measured, but I'm sure people like you can figure that out. Its enough for me that it is.

[aqualuxx]

Min marker 2:51 referenced the Hermetic axiom“all is nous” all is mind

This does not mean all is in _your_ mind - it merely means that consciousness proceeds matter

This concept can be found in many eastern schools as well Zen Buddhism included expressed in one instance by the zen expression “who thinks the thoughts”

Perhaps a reference or implication that we are not necessarily responsible for the thoughts but rather they pass through us like electricity through a conductor

[stringsseeds]

Hedonic tones in Buddhism is in the Aggregates of Sensation - one of the 5 Aggregates where all sentient are temporary collection of 5 Aggregates. It (AoS) has 5 basic states: Satisfaction, Disatisfaction, Pleasure, Displeasure, and Indifference. This number can be expanded to 128 or more for different tones. The first 2 of the five are related to bodily or physical while the last three are psychological. The first 2 are electric +/-, the next 2 are magnetic n/s, and the last is monopole.

In Buddhism, there are conscious beings which have gotten ride of these (hedonic) in stages and they are the Rupaloka or Form beings with non-organic bodies:

1st Jhana - achieved Pleasure - weak, irregular, to regular magnetic field (3sub-levels) and they are the various types of planets

2nd Jhana - achieved wonderful Pleasure - strong and full magnetic field (3 sub-levels) and they are the stars

3rd Jhana - discarded Pleasure and achieved wonderful Satisfaction (3 sub-levels) and they are the nebulae with remnants of magnetic lines as previous life as stars with strong electric field

4th Jhana - only left with Indifference which is monopoles (5 sub-levels) and these are black holes

[G-Man]

This is real Veda and Hinduism. People underrate it.

[JiminiCrikkit]

Kurt you keep on pulling out these excellent speakers... Prof. Anand Vaidya I'd love to see you talk with John Vervaeke on much of what has been talked about. Excellent questions again Kurt.

[adamd]

This was a great interview! Went down rabbit holes that I didn't even know existed. Super articulate guy. The ideas he brought up made me think that we're really close to having some major discovery about the mind. Great work!

[cryoshakespeare]

Personally, I think free will (and quantum mechanics) are intimately tied to Wolfram's computational irreducibility - if you have a system that is impossible to fully predict without simply running the system, then your epistemic modelling of that system is always going to have some level of approximation or error, which will appear as degrees of freedom the system has in how it progresses. Our own metacognitive processes try to intercept and crystallise our fluid minds, in an attempt to predict and formalise some sense of what we will do, but we ourselves are computationally irreducible - even to our own self-inquiry (since that's really just inquiry on "ourselves" as an object).

Hence, we appear to have degrees of freedom in our ultimate "choice", and we *cannot* predict those choices via any comparable computational method. I think we simply ascribe "randomness" to quantum systems in this same way, an attempt to reconcile a deterministic, law-abiding outcome with our inevitable epistemic limitations, based on the computational irreducibility of most all non-trivial systems.