School
Nyaya
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Is Yājñavalkya’s unseen seer an answer to the problem of personal identity?
I study Sanskrit and Indian philosophy in Pune, and something about how Indian theories of self get slotted into Western debates bothers me. In the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, Yājñavalkya says you cannot see the seer of seeing or think the thinker of thinking,…
Started by Meera Kulkarni4 replies -
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 Upadhyaya4 replies -
Reading group: Russell’s ‘On Denoting’ (1905), and the puzzle of the hare’s horn
Bertrand Russell's "On Denoting", published in Mind in 1905, has been called a paradigm of philosophy, and it is also short. It is the best example I know of predicate logic being turned on ordinary language, so I'd like to read it…
Started by Oskar Nyberg5 replies -
Devadatta is fat but never eats by day: is Mīmāṃsā “postulation” just inference to the best explanation?
When I read about 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…
Started by Kenneth Lam Chi-ho5 replies -
‘Illa, kāraṇa, gù: what each tradition’s word for ’cause’ lets it ask
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 second life in law. In Islamic jurisprudence, the…
Started by Layla Sfeir6 replies -
Every cognition should be trusted until something defeats it: the Mīmāṃsakas were right
Let me defend my own school. One of our school's central doctrines is svataḥ prāmāṇya, the intrinsic validity of cognition. Kumārila Bhaṭṭa argued that when a cognition arises, its validity arises with it. We do not need a second cognition to certify…
Started by Govinda Prasad Upadhyaya6 replies -
Why did the Vaiśeṣikas count direction as a substance?
I teach physics and spend weekends exposing miracle tricks for a rationalist association, so I like the Indian schools that tried to describe the world piece by piece. The Vaiśeṣika list of nine substances is a favourite of mine: earth, water, fire,…
Started by Arvind Poojary3 replies -
If syllogistic logic couldn’t handle relations, why did it last two thousand years?
Working inside predicate logic every day, I'm often reminded how much it can do that the syllogism can't. The textbook example (usually credited to De Morgan) is: all horses are animals, therefore every head of a horse is the head of an…
Started by Derek Hollis6 replies