Description
Book SynopsisExplores complex questions about the nature of reality, philosophy, and religion, and how we reconcile our often-conflicting beliefs about these questions.
Trade Review“For the student or teacher of cross-cultural philosophy and theology, and even the scientist, mathematician, and psychologist, Dr. Brainard’s work offers a fresh, penetrating interdisciplinary approach to studying the nature and products of human awareness. In a clear and rigorous manner, this work weaves together the themes of reality, consciousness, and existence with various frameworks of interpretation, challenging us to rethink our referential fields and the meanings we attach to terms such as ‘objective,’ ‘subjective,’ ‘universal,’ ‘particular,’ ‘atom,’ and ‘void.’”
—Stephanie Theodorou,coeditor of Animal Experience: Consciousness and Emotions in the Natural World
“This book invites you into the music of the world religions and the richness of timeless philosophical questions. Rather than siding with one answer or another, Brainard combines them together, each one dancing with the others like melodies in a classical fugue. The interplay of all the perspectives, he suggests, creates a new and richer level of awareness. Come join the dance . . .”
—Philip Clayton,author of In Quest of Freedom: The Emergence of Spirit in the Natural World
“Brainard presents a series of compelling arguments concerning the nature of reality and, more importantly, the connections between reality and awareness. In doing so, he engages with several important philosophical problems—among them Cartesian dualism, free will, and the problem of evil.”
—Ian Alexander Cuthbertson Reading Religion
Table of ContentsContents
List of Illustrations
Preface
Introduction
PART ONE: What Is Real?
The Predicament
• Of Schizophrenia, Religions, and Conflicting Views of Reality
• Science’s Limitations
• Three Usual Ways to Resolve Conflicting Views of Reality
• Fugues and a Fourth Option
• Another Kind of Fugue
• Summary
Two Views of Reality
• The Need for New Philosophical Tools
• First-Person versus Third-Person Views
• The Two Views before and after René Descartes
• The Concept of “Reality”
• Three Accounts of Reality
• Summary
PART TWO: Three Themes
Universals and Particulars
• The Third-Person View Divides into Universals and Particulars
• Some Historical Roots of the Universal-Particular Distinction
• Universals and Particulars as Principles of Nature
• Universals and Particulars Have an Ambiguous Relationship
• Universals, Particulars, and Accounts of Reality
• Summary
Hinduism and the Third-Person View
• Why Hinduism?
• Brahman
• The Everyday World
• Enlightenment
• The Five Cloaks of Brahman
• The Different Philosophical Schools
• Summary with Strengths and Weaknesses of this Strategy
Awareness and Its Objects
• First-Person Accounts of Reality
• The Cartesian Roots of Western First-Person Philosophy
• A Phenomenological Illustration of First-Person Philosophy
• Awareness and Conscious Awareness
• Summary
Buddhism and the First-Person View
• Why Buddhism?
• The Buddha and the Four Nobel Truths
• The Nature of Reality
• Universals as Arising through Causal Interaction
• Enlightenment and “Presence”
• History after the Buddha
• Summary with Strengths and Weaknesses of this Strategy
The Dualism of Everyday Reality
• Dualist Accounts of Reality
• Reality as What Is “Public”
• Reality as What Is “Present”
• Phusis versus Techne: The Natural versus the Artificial
• Individual and Collective Agency
• Summary
Western Theism and the Dualist View
• Everyday Dualism versus a Higher Truth
• Polytheism
• From Polytheism to Monotheism
• Philosophical Influences
• Human Nature and Life Goals
• Summary with Strengths and Weaknesses of this Strategy
PART THREE: Reality As Fugue
Introduction to Part Three
Awareness’ Two Roles
• Who Are We Really?
• Awareness’ Two Roles
• Sitting in a Café
• The Consciousness Problem
• Summary
Artifacts of Awareness
• A Definition for Awareness
• A Mosaic of Groups: CORs, Classes, and CODs
• Descartes Reconsidered
• Our Concept of Self in Space and Time
• Summary
Physical Reality
• Reality as Emergent
• Mathematics and the Behavior of the Universe
• Two Pictures of Physical Reality
• Quantum Strangeness
• Schrödinger's Cat
• Summary
Religions Revisited
• Philosophy, Religion, and Mystery
• A Riddle Blocks Our Way
• At Home in the Everyday Puzzle of Reality
• Gateless Gates
• Moving On
Postscript 1: Scale as a Dimension of Reality
Postscript 2: A Definition for Truth
Acknowledgements
Terms Defined in this Book
Glossary of Hindu and Buddhist Terms
Notes
References
