Main Page
From Samsara: The Life World
Samsara
In India, in street talk as well as in sophisticated philosophical discussions, Samsara denotes the usual human and nonhuman life world, the world that we experience and in which we act. Modern science has mostly lost touch with samsara; we either reduce the life world to other, seemingly more fundamental entities like quarks or strings, or deny the life world alltogether. In the first instance - usually under the rubric of physicalism - we run into problems such as the hard problem of consciousness and in the second, even the existence of categories such as person is denied. I believe that a return to Samsara is necessary for scientific as well as ethical reasons. A successful science of the mind will need to keep samsara as a constant background, both the object of explanation and the context in which that explanation makes sense. The study of samsara requires a synthetic approach to science.
Synthetic Science
From Cognition and Synthetic Biology to Climate Change and Animal Rights, the central questions in the natural and social sciences now concern synthetic systems, i.e., systems that display a combination of 'found' and 'built' aspects. To the extent that these systems are 'found' their structure and evolution is ahistoric and independent of the activity of agents that constitute the system. To the extent these systems are 'built' their structure and evolution is historically conditioned and dependent on the particular choices (need not be intentional choices) made by agents within the system. Further, explicit human intervention is now a major factor in many synthetic systems. The study of synthetic systems calls for a range of skills and techniques ranging from the natural sciences to the social sciences and the humanities. In an ideal world, science and technology should be appropriate to the needs of the society in which the technology is being introduced. However, the reality is rather different. Traditional disciplines are poorly situated to address these complex problems. A synthetic approach is not a luxury, but a necessity; equally importantly, I believe that the skills necessary to understand these new developments should be part of the public domain, as an information commons. These pages are an attempt to develop the study of synthetic systems and to apply these techniques to our understanding of Samsara.The underlying methodological principle is simply stated: it is better to study everything rather than something. This motto is diametrically opposite to the reigning ideologies of academic professionalism, but I hope that after reading these pages, you will be convinced that there is something to a synthetic approach. This website is organized in several sections that integrate philosophy, science, speculation and contemplation. Some of the prominent sections are:
- Cognition. This is my core academic work, where my goal is to look at the cognitive foundations of the mind - as opposed to the usual computational foundations of the mind - and to apply these ideas to analyses of language, imagination & perception, emotion & ethics and to the cognitive foundations of mathematics and social phenomena.
- Space. Space has always fascinated me, both as a mathematician and as a cognitive scientist. More recently, in collaboration with scientists, artists and designers I have explored a synthetic approach to the study of space.
- Street Metaphysics. This is the most experimental part of my work, which is somewhere between cultural archeology, contemplation and pure speculation.
Some of these ideas have also been explored in other online spaces such as the distributed mind, the laboratory of life and India Together.
About Me
I am an associate professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bangalore, where I run the cognition programme.You can contact me at the following email address: rkasturi at nias.iisc.ernet.in
