Jain Journal 2009 07

Author(s): Satyaranjan Banerjee
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 16

JAIN JOURNAL : VOL-XLIV. NO. I JULY 2009
features of the brain system". While Searle claims himself to be vehemently opposed to materialism and speaks of conscious state as subjective states and "ontologically irreducible,” he yet adopts the untenable position akin to materialists when be asserts that the subjective states of feeling and thinking are produced or caused by brain processes, which are objective, third person biological, chemical and electrical processes, that conscious states are “causally reducible to neurobiological processes”, and that they are realized in the brain and have “absolutely no life of their own, independent of the neurobiology [i.e. brain states)”. Nevertheless, Searle is candid enough to acknowledge that his arguments against dualism (of conscious states and brain states] “still leaves dualism as a logical possibility"}
According to Jainism, the nature of jīva or the principle of life is cetanā (sentiency or consciousness) Kundakunda, Pañcāstikāya prābhsta, 16), which is not reducible to matter. Its existence is proved by self-intuition for self-consciousness] (svasamvedanā). We feel pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, which presuppose a conscious substance as their substratum. By svasamvedanā we mean the experiencing of the self in every bit of our conscious activities. So, where there is a conscious activity like cognition, affection, and conation (volition), the attendant consciousness of the self or soul must also be there. The object about which one has doubt may be non-existent, but the existence of the doubter cannot be denied. Max Müller puts it as "There is in man something that can be called atman or self. It requires no proof, but if a proof were wanted it would be found in the fact that no one can say I am not (I being the disguised atman).” Moreover, “cognitions and emotions cannot inhere in
3. 4. 5.
Searle, cited in Jagdish Prasad Jain, n. 2, pp. 59-60. Vidyanand, cited in ibid., p.60 S.C. Jain, Introducing Jainism (Delhi: B.R. Publishing Corporation, 2006), p. 53 Cited in ibid, p. 54
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