[Advaita-l] Fwd: [advaitin] Release of My New Book - On the Existence of the Self

[V Subrahmanian]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Chittaranjan Naik <chitnaik at gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Aug 7, 2021 at 7:03 PM
Subject: [advaitin] Release of My New Book - On the Existence of the Self
To: advaitin <advaitin at googlegroups.com>


Namaste,

I would like to inform the group that my second book has been published. It
is titled '*On the Existence of the Self'*. A brief synopsis of the book is
given below:


BOOK SYNOPSIS  – ON THE EXISTENCE OF THE SELF



The atman or the self holds central place in the Indian civilization.
Indeed, the pursuit of *atma-jnana* or self-knowledge constitutes the
highest goal of human life. Yet, in the modern and post-modern eras, the
topic of the self has been relegated to the background with most scientists
and philosophers regarding the notion of the self to be some kind of an
illusion. The philosopher Daniel Dennett, for example, says that the self
is a theoretical construct, just like the notion of center of gravity is,
and he characterizes the self as a ‘*center of narrative gravity’*.
Unfortunately, today these kinds of ideas have seeped into the soil of our
country to an alarming extent and, even more unfortunately, Indian scholars
have failed to respond to this pernicious onslaught on the most central
feature of Vedic culture. The book *‘On the Existence of the Self’* seeks
to make up for this neglect.



The book takes up the question of the existence of the self from two
perspectives. The first is the historical perspective engendered by the
premise of the empirical sciences that all things in the universe can be
explained solely from physical causes, an idea that has led to the belief
that the physical world forms a causal closure, and the consequent dogma
that has taken root that consciousness can be explained as an emergent
property or epiphenomenon of brain processes. The second is the
philosophical perspective, in particular the perspective that has gained
ground from the arguments of David Hume and Emmanuel Kant against *substance
ontology* and the consequent discarding of the idea of self as substance;
the result is that the self has come to be treated as an illusion or a
theoretical construct.



The book ‘*On the Existence of the Self*’ confronts both these perspectives
before re-establishing the existence of the self. The book is divided into
two parts. The first part presents a fresh proof of the existence of the
self. The book takes a different approach than the normal one towards
proving the existence of the self. Normally, the proof of the existence of
the self is provided on the basis of its witnessing power; there would be
no awareness or knowledge of the world in the absence of a witnessing
consciousness; thus the presence of the self would have to be accepted so
that the existence of conscious experience may be made explicable. In this
book, the proof of the existence of the self has been provided on the basis
of a power that the self is recognize to have in Indian philosophy namely
the self’s *kriya shakti* (along with its *ichha shakti* and *jnana shakti*).
*Kriya shakti*, as a power of the self, is generally not recognized in
Western philosophy. When we invoke our karmendriyas into action, as for
example when we move our hands or legs, the origin of this action is the
sentient self and not any physical activity or physical phenomenon in the
body. But how can it be proved? In order to prove it, the unique
characteristic possessed by the self’s actions become the focal point of
the proof. This unique characteristic is goal-orientation. It is argued in
the book that goal-oriented actions can never originate in purely physical
processes acting solely under the laws of physics and that the presence of
goal-oriented actions is evidence of an incorporeal entity residing within
living beings. This proof, along with some supplementary matter, forms the
first part of the book. (The approach of proving the existence of the self
from its kriya shakti achieves another important objective: that of
dismantling the Charvaka / Epicurean idea that the physical world forms a
causal closure and thus laying the door open for a domain of knowledge
beyond empirical science.) The second part undertakes a systematic
examination of the arguments of three philosophers – David Hume, Emmanuel
Kant and Gregory McCullock – from the perspective of the Indian
philosophical tradition and shows that their arguments against the
existence of the self are products of fallacious reasoning.



*****


The book is published by Indic Academy. For those interested in reading the
book, it is available on the site of Notion Press and Amazon India. It will
be available on Amazon USA & UK by next week.

https://notionpress.com/read/on-the-existence-of-the-self

https://www.amazon.in/Existence-Self-Dismantling-Physical-Argument/dp/1639976477/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=chittaranjan+naik&qid=1628338320&sr=8-4


Warm regards,
Chittaranjan






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