Buddhist phenomenological steps to an intercultural cognitive semiotics: A Yogācāra view on the bio-cybernetic complexities of living systems
Alina Therese Lettner
https://uni-kassel.academia.edu/AlinaThereseLettner
Paper accepted for a 20-minute presentation during the Fourth Conference of the International Association for Cognitive Semiotics (IACS4) to be held at RWTH Aachen University, Germany, originally planned for July 2–4, 2020 (conference date postponed).
Abstract (as submitted for review, to be revised for inclusion in the book of abstracts)
Buddhist phenomenological steps to an intercultural cognitive semiotics: A Yogācāra view on the bio-cybernetic complexities of living systems
Keywords (5): Peirce, cognitive semiotics, Abhidharma theory of cognition,
Yogācāra Buddhist phenomenology, cybersemiotics
Starting from the cognitive triad of “sense” (indriya), “object” (viṣaya) and “consciousness” (vijñāna), this paper is going to reconstruct in Peircean terms the way in which a bio-cybernetic interpretation of (“scholastic”) Abhidharma Buddhist theories of cognition and their Yogācāra developments can serve us as a basis for integrating classical and current theories in an intercultural cognitive semiotics (Davis & Thompson 2013). Taking into account the functioning of Buddhist conceptions within their original systematic context, the philological “data” for this study is going to be gleaned from Buddhist textual corpora in
Sanskrit: the Abhidharmakośa-bhāṣyam (“Treasury of the higher teaching” and commentary) by Vasubandhu (5th cent. CE), which sets out the Vaibhāṣika (“direct realist”) and Sautrāntika (“representationist”) epistemological positions, as well as texts of Yogācāra philosophy, i.e. the Buddhist phenomenological approach par excellence (Lusthaus 2002). Just as Peirce’s philosophical framework is ideally suited for bringing into view the relationship between the immediacy of
“feeling” (phenomenal consciousness) and “thought” or “reason” as a habitual faculty of recognition, the relationship between minimal phenomenological constituents (“dharmas”) and higher-order representational complexities is a core topic of Buddhist epistemological analysis. The broad range of elaborate terminology (vijñāna, i.e. momentary “cognitive awareness” or “pure consciousness”; citta “thought”, caitta [pl.] “thought concomitants”, manas “mind”, mano-vijñāna “mental cognitive awareness”, saṁjñā “apperception”/ “conceptual identification” etc.) can be exploited for capturing phenosemiotic nuances of cognitive states encountered in meditation as well as metalinguistic complexities.
By mapping the Abhidharma model of “sensory bases” (āyatana) with its six modalities of sensory (or cognitive) awareness (vijñāna) onto Peirce’s model of semiosis, we can develop an “impersonal” model of cognition along the lines of Peirce’s semiosis. According to the Buddhist cognitive arising of the world (Waldron 2002), the “elements” (dhātu) of consciousness simply appear under certain conditions without requiring any notion of permanent self or
(transcendental) subject. By contrast, the classification of dharmas into the “five aggregates” (pañca-skandha) of empirical personality allow us to view living systems in terms of feedback loops between more immediate forms of “cognitive awareness” (vijñāna) and latent evolutionary dispositions (saṁskāra). In the hypercomplexity of reality and its flux of constantly changing phenomena both cognitions and disclosed “objects” can be seen to exist only as aggregated phenomena of experience (Coseru 2012). The attempted analytic progression beyond the cognitive closure of self-made (subjective) “minds” and sensorially
condensed “objects” is hoped to come full circle by inverting the observational trajectory: for digging cybersemiotically within the self-organising dynamics of cognitive emergence that arises from structural couplings between the organism and its environment through complex patterns of autopoietic closure (Brier 2008). Exploring such current formations of cognitive activity in terms
of the Yogācāra innovation of “store consciousness” (ālaya-vijñāna) we can seek assistance from Peirce’s notion of consciousness as a “bottomless lake”: just as in Buddhist terms residual traces (vāsanā, lit. “scents”) of past experiences are understood to mature until their actualisation, in Peirce’s view “our whole past experience is continually in our consciousness, though most of it sunk to a great depth of dimness” (CP 7.547).
References:
Brier, S. (2008). Cybersemiotics: Why information is not enough. Toronto: Toronto Univ. Press. Coseru, C. (2012). Perceiving reality: Consciousness, intentionality, and cognition in Buddhist philosophy. New York, NY: Oxford Univ. Press.
Davis, J. H. & Evan Thompson (2013). From the five aggregates to phenomenal consciousness: Towards a cross-cultural cognitive science. In S. M. Emmanuel (Ed.), A companion to Buddhist philosophy (pp.585–597). Malden, MA: Wiley & Blackwell.
Lusthaus, D. (2002). Buddhist phenomenology: A philosophical investigation of Yogācāra Buddhism and the Ch’eng wei-shih lun. London: RoutledgeCourzon.
Waldron, W. S. (2002). Buddhist steps to an ecology of mind: Thinking about 'thoughts without a thinker'. Eastern Buddhist 34(1),1-52: [Online PDF, pp. 1-63]. Retrieved from http://www.middlebury.edu/media/view/440049/original/waldron_buddhist_steps_to_an_ ecology_of_mind0.pdf.
Please cite this abstract as:
Lettner, Alina Therese 2020. Abstract as submitted for review and accepted for the Fourth Conference of the International Association for Cognitive Semiotics (IACS4 Aachen 2020, original conference date postponed) on “Buddhist phenomenological steps to an intercultural cognitive semiotics: A Yogācāra view on the bio-cybernetic complexities of living systems”. Retrieved from
https://www.academia.edu/43136371/_Buddhist_phenomenological_steps_to_an_intercult ural_cognitive_semiotics_A_Yog%C4%81c%C4%81ra_view_on_the_biocybernetic_complexities_of_living_systems_IACS4_Aachen_2020_.
