Integral Review

A Transdisciplinary and Transcultural Journal For New Thought, Research, and Praxis

Posts Tagged ‘philosophy of mind.’

The Integral Cosmology of Sri Aurobindo: An Introduction from the Perspective of Consciousness Studies

Marco Masi

Abstract: In the contemporary philosophy of mind and consciousness studies, views such as panpsychism or theories of universal consciousness, have enjoyed a recent renaissance of metaphysical speculations in Western philosophy. Its similarities with Eastern philosophical traditions went not unnoticed. However, the potential contribution that the evolutionary cosmology of the Indian poet, mystic and philosopher Sri Aurobindo can offer to these ontologies, remains largely unknown or unexplored. Here, consciousness, mind, life, matter and evolution are interpreted in an extended metaphysical framework, uniting Western and Eastern traditions inside a modern philosophical system where materialism, panpsychism, cosmopsychism and philosophical idealism are not seen as irreconcilable exclusives, but different points of view that can be reconciled in a synthesis of knowledge, as envisioned from higher states of consciousness. This integral view of reality offers a conceptual platform that can complement and incorporate current theoretical approaches in modern philosophy, where their present internal inconsistencies do not emerge, and can be suggestive for scientists as well, especially in the fields of biology and physical sciences.

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No Ontological Leaps: A Primer on Scientific Materialism

Christian de Quincey

Abstract: When the issue is intelligence in nature, arguments about whether science supports neo-Darwinian theory or intelligent design miss the point. The details of evolution or the structure of the brain are irrelevant because biology and neuroscience have nothing to say about consciousness. Science informs us only about the physical world. However, consciousness/mind/intelligence is non-physical, and no amount of evolution or complexity of purely physical processes could ever produce anything non-physical. There are no ontological jumps. You don’t get something from nothing—or, more precisely, you don’t get “no-thing” from anything. How, then, do we account for the fact that consciousness exists in an otherwise physical universe? It all comes down to our basic metaphysical beliefs.

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