If the truth is beyond words, how can we find it?: An inquiry into inquiries into consciousness
Abstract
In this paper, I examine the Western and Chinese philosophical paradigms regarding their influence on the school's respective inquiries into consciousness, and I contend that the West will be soon be forced to reconsider its paradigm on the basis of scientific research into meditation and psychedelic experience. Specifically, I argue that current Western metaphysics of mind are constrained by the school’s paradigmatic reliance on propositional argumentation as an effective net within which to capture facts of consciousness, and that Chinese philosophers are a step ahead in their recognition that language is and will always be insufficient for understanding the mind and its relation to the body. And finally I argue the most fruitful soil in which to plant novel theorizing about the mind is rooted in the burgeoning field of psychedelic science, the rigorous yet thus far largely unexplored study of altered states of consciousness as occasioned by psychedelic drugs.