Reality’s Fugue

F. Samuel Brainard is an independent scholar of Asian and Western religion and philosophy. He is the author of Reality and Mystical Experience, also published by Penn State University Press.

Contents

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