Beyond semiosis: early Buddhist phenomenology and theory of consciousness
Cogent Arts and Humanities July 16, 2025 Federico Divino 4 citations
The Pārāyanavagga, an early Buddhist text, is argued to express a theory of intentionality. Comparing it with Husserl’s phenomenology and Peirce’s phaneroscopy, the paper contends that the text presents contemplative practice as an exercise in deconstructing semiosic forces—unconscious processes that shape intentionality and cognition of the world. The goal is to transcend these forces into a state of Beyondness, surpassing intentionality and cognitive mechanisms of world-construction. This transcendence is hypothesized to occur through three fundamental semiosic forces, one primary and two subordinate. The article offers a semiological reading in comparative analysis with phenomenology, not a philological analysis.