Concept tag
#pramana
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Testimony is an independent source of knowledge, not reducible to perception or inference
The Nyāya school counts testimony (śabda) as a distinct means of valid knowledge (pramāṇa), alongside perception, inference and comparison. The Vaiśeṣikas and Buddhist epistemologists like Dignāga disagreed, reducing testimony to a form of inference: I infer the truth of what you say…
Started by Meera Kulkarni6 replies254 views -
Sellars was right that raw experience can cause a belief but never justify one
I work on visual perception, and the longer I do it the more I think Wilfrid Sellars got something exactly right in "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" (1956). The foundationalist wants a floor: beliefs justified without leaning on other beliefs. The…
Started by Priya Raghavan5 replies181 views -
Dharmottara’s mirage is not really a Gettier case, and calling it one flattens both traditions
Every year someone on a comparative course says "the Buddhists found the Gettier problem a thousand years early", and every year I nod and feel uneasy. Let me try to say why, and you can tell me where it breaks. The case:…
Started by Meera Kulkarni5 replies247 views -
Memory preserves knowledge but never produces it: the Indian schools were right to exclude it
For forty years of reading Śaṅkara I have accepted, almost without noticing, a rule that most of the classical Indian schools share: memory is not a pramāṇa, not a means of valid knowledge in its own right. The Nyāya divide cognition into…
Started by Arjun Iyer5 replies221 views -
The self-defeat charge against the Cārvākas attacks a position they probably did not hold
I teach physics and spend my weekends with a rationalist association, so I have a soft spot for the Cārvākas, India's materialists, who accepted perception as the only independent means of knowledge (pramāṇa) and rejected rebirth, the soul and the authority of…
Started by Arvind Poojary6 replies219 views