School
Nyaya
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I have grown cocoa for thirty years and never seen chocolate made. How do I know that is where it goes?
I farm eleven acres of cocoa near Kumasi and sell through a cooperative. My son is at university and sends me articles from his course, and I send him back proverbs. Last week he sent one that said most of what any…
Started by Akosua Mensah5 replies207 views -
Testimony as an information channel: Nyāya’s śabda next to Dretske
I've been reading Dretske for a seminar alongside the Nyāya Sūtra, and I think they illuminate each other on testimony in a way neither does alone. Nyāya counts four means of knowing (pramāṇa): perception, inference, comparison, and śabda, word or testimony. The…
Started by Meera Kulkarni3 replies113 views -
Udayana, Ibn Sina and Leibniz: three arguments for a first cause that do not need a beginning
People often assume that arguments for a first cause depend on the universe having a beginning. I want to compare three that don't, from three traditions. Udayana (Nyāya, eleventh century). In the Nyāyakusumāñjali he gives a series of inferences for Īśvara, starting…
Started by Meera Kulkarni6 replies231 views -
Dignāga cut the Nyāya inference from five members to three. What did the example member become?
I have been translating some passages on Buddhist logic for a seminar in Pune and keep getting stuck on one question. The Nyāya inference for others has five members: thesis, reason, example, application, conclusion ("this hill has fire, because it has smoke,…
Started by Meera Kulkarni5 replies206 views -
Kumārila said a cognition is valid until shown otherwise. Is that internalism or externalism?
In our school we teach the Mīmāṃsā doctrine called svataḥ prāmāṇya, intrinsic validity. I have been reading the internalism and externalism debate in English, and I would like to know whether this doctrine belongs on one side, or whether the map does…
Started by Govinda Prasad Mishra5 replies204 views -
Navya-Nyāya’s language of limitors, and what it was built to do
My MA is on Nyāya, and every few months someone tells me that Navya-Nyāya was "Indian predicate logic". I'd like to test that claim with people who know Frege better than I do. The school is usually dated from Gaṅgeśa's Tattvacintāmaṇi in…
Started by Meera Kulkarni5 replies279 views -
A scripture with no author: what Mīmāṃsā does to the intention debate
The Western argument about artistic intention assumes there is an author whose mind we either consult or ignore. My tradition has a case where, on its own account, there is no author at all. Pūrva Mīmāṃsā holds that the Veda is apauruṣeya:…
Started by Govinda Prasad Mishra4 replies208 views -
Devadatta is fat but never eats by day: is Mīmāṃsā “postulation” just inference to the best explanation?
When I teach sources of knowledge comparatively, I like to point out that the European and Indian debates ask different questions. The European one asks which source does the real work, senses or reason. The Indian one asks how many irreducible sources…
Started by Kenneth Leung Chi-ho5 replies195 views -
‘Illa, kāraṇa, gù: what each tradition’s word for ’cause’ lets it ask
I research classical Arabic philosophy in Beirut, and I've been thinking about how the translators of the ninth and tenth centuries handled Aristotle's aitia. They used 'illa and sabab, and here is the interesting part: 'illa already had, or soon acquired, a…
Started by Layla Haddad6 replies246 views