Materialism

What is a Machine?

A few articles ago, I discussed the nature of Personhood as six traits—self-awareness, intention, emotion, cognition, conation, and relation. Then we discussed Personalism vs. Depersonalization: A person is governed by free will and the depersonalized is governed by laws. As a follow-up, in this article, I will discuss what I mean by a machine in contrast to a person. I will...

How To Debate a Skeptic?

The following is an expanded version of the response I sent to someone after watching his debate with a Skeptic/Atheist. I had posted a critique of his approach on that video, which I have since deleted because I don’t want to be polemical about the efforts of people trying to do something. They are certainly to be lauded for their courage,...

Material vs. Spiritual Realism

In the last post, I described the sense in which Vedic philosophy is realist—a soul moves in a space of meaning-states called childhood, youth, and old age (higher) and hungry, thirsty, lusty (lower). All these states are fixed and eternal, but the soul’s connection to these states is temporary. Western material realism instead claims that there is a world of moving...

Voidism and Oneness in the Philosophy of Sri Chaitanya

In Indian philosophy, the voidism of Buddhist philosophy is seen as the opposition to the materialism of demigod worship and rituals. Then, classical impersonalism or Advaita is seen as the opposition to voidism in Buddhist philosophy. Finally, classical personalism or Vaishnavism is seen as the opposition to the impersonalism of Advaita. However, Sri Chaitanya’s philosophy reconciles the reality of the material...