Human beings, individually or collectively, create mentalities -- as acts of self-creation. By mentality I mean a particular mental disposition which guides and shapes the way one thinks about, perceives, believes in, or acts towards some aspect of the (inner or outer) world.
The Indo-Western mind is one such mentality that is rooted in Indian culture and addresses Indian issues, problems, and themes but which draws upon cognitive resources strongly characteristic of, and rooted in, Western thought and tradition. The Indo-Western mind is an instance of what in an earlier study I called cross-cultural mentality.
This talk is in the nature of a prolegomenon to a series of case studies of Indo-Western minds from 20th century India. Here I will address the very idea of mentality and the design of a mentality-level cognitive architecture as a framework for these studies.