Dual-Aspect Reflexivism in Śāntarakṣita's Philosophy of Mind

1. Introduction

In this paper, I will pursue a contemporary philosophical reconstruction of the connections, both conceptual and phenomenological, between reflexive awareness (svasaṃvedana) and the subjective and objective aspects (svākāra, viṣayākāra) of experience in Śāntarakṣita's philosophy of mind.¹ Focusing on the Madhyamakālaṁkāra (with Mipham's commentary),² I argue that there is a deep connection between (1) the rejection of the transparency of experience (namely, sākāravāda); (2) the dual-aspect (dvairūpya) structure of experience; (3) reflexive awareness as the distinguishing mark (svalakṣana) and ineliminable core of conscious experience; and (4) the embrace of a form of idealism at the conventional level.

These connected ideas, taken together, form an integrated, multimodal theory of consciousness that can be brought into fruitful dialogue with contemporary philosophy of mind and phenomenology.

Śāntarakṣita begins his discussion of these issues in the Madhyamakālaṁkāra in verses 16–18:

16Consciousness arises as the contraryOf matter, gross, inanimate.By nature mind is immaterialAnd it is self-aware.

17A mind that is by nature one and without partsCannot possess a threefold character;Self-awareness thus does not entailAn object and an agent as real entities.

18Because this is its very nature,Consciousness is apt for self-cognition.But how can consciousness cognizeThose things of nature foreign to itself?

(2005, 194–204)³

Here we see Śāntarakṣita introduce three interconnected concerns at the conventional level of analysis. First, in verse 16 he is concerned with the nature of consciousness as immaterial and self-luminous (svaprakāśya). Second, in verse 17 he is concerned with the internal structure of a moment of consciousness. Third, in verse 18 he is concerned with the relation between consciousness and its cognitive or intentional object, both phenomenologically and ontologically. That is, in terms of a proper analysis of experiential structure and in terms of the reality of mind-independent objects. In what follows, I will take up each concern in turn, starting with the third, Śāntarakṣita's rejection of the transparency of consciousness and (provisional)⁴ affirmation of the theory of mental aspects or phenomenal form (ākāra).

2. Against Transparency

Proponents of nirākāravāda argue that consciousness is transparent or without form (ākāra). That is, in cases of veridical cognition, consciousness provides a direct or phenomenologically and epistemically unmediated presentation of its object. Thus, like a transparent window, consciousness presents no phenomenal form of its own. As Mipham puts it in his gloss on Vaibhāṣika nirākāravāda:

Consciousness is like a crystal sphere and does not grasp the aspects of objects. On the contrary, the object (such as material form) is apprehended directly, "nakedly" by the sense organ itself, supplied with its support. What need is there, they ask, for a mental aspect to act as the connecting link between the subject and the object? The Vaibhasikas [sic] consider that when one sees a pot, for example, one beholds directly and nakedly the specific characteristics of the pot precisely in the location occupied by the object in question.

(2005, 194–95)

In the classical Indian context, this view was closely associated with an other-illuminationist (paraprakāśavāda) account of intentionality. In this view, the presenting or revealing capacity of consciousness (its luminosity, prakāśyatā) is essentially other-directed. Consciousness exclusively reveals that which is other, and hence no aspect of consciousness itself is revealed.

Note there are two philosophically important dimensions to the debate over ākāra: one having to do with the philosophy of perception and the other with introspection. Is a perceiver immediately aware of a nonmental object of perception? If consciousness is transparent, then when I perceive a pot, I am directly aware of the pot itself, and the phenomenal character of my experience is exhaustively fixed by the features of the pot. Thus, nirākāravāda is associated with direct realism about perception. Further, if I introspectively reflect on my perceptual...