Tradition
Indian
-
If perception is free of concepts, as Dignāga says, how do I ever see a cup as a cup?
I've been reading an introduction to Buddhist epistemology on the train, and I'm stuck on Dignāga's definition of perception (pratyakṣa) as "free from conceptual construction". As I understand it, the object of perception is the bare particular, and anything general, like "cup",…
Started by Pieter van Dijkhuizen1 reply -
What does dependent origination actually claim? My daughter asked and I had no answer
My daughter is fourteen. Last week, stuck in traffic near Borella, she asked me what paṭicca samuppāda means. I have heard the word at the temple my whole life. I said "it means everything is connected", and she said that sounds like…
Started by Nuwan Perera4 replies -
I keep reading summaries of philosophers instead of the books. Is that so bad?
Confession: in the year since I burnt out and started reading philosophy, I've read maybe three actual books and hundreds of summaries, threads, videos and ‘ten ideas from Stoicism’ posts. I can tell you what Kant, Nietzsche and the Gita say in…
Started by Rohan DesaiAnswer first (no replies yet) -
If only the transformed can know, how could a mystic ever be shown to be wrong?
Since I campaign against superstition, let me say first that I'm not asking this to sneer. I read Sufi poetry with real pleasure, and I've learned from discussions here that the Sufi claim is subtler than "feelings beat reason". The claim, as…
Started by Arvind PoojaryAnswer first (no replies yet) -
Capabilities or the social model: which better tells a city what it owes disabled residents?
In a moot this term we had to argue about what a municipal corporation owes disabled residents under India's disability-rights legislation. I found myself reaching for two frameworks that don't fit together as neatly as our professors suggest. The social model tells…
Started by Deepa KarthaAnswer first (no replies yet) -
Did Indian epistemologists anticipate the Gettier problem?
In 1963 Edmund Gettier's three-page paper showed that justified true belief isn't sufficient for knowledge. You can have a justified belief that's true by luck. Indian philosophers seem to have discussed cases like this centuries earlier. The Buddhist Dharmottara (eighth century) is…
Started by Meera Kulkarni2 replies -
What are the pramāṇas, and how do the schools disagree about them?
I grew up hearing words like "pramāṇa" in family discussions without really knowing what they meant. I've started reading Indian philosophy properly and keep running into lists of pramāṇas that differ between schools. What are they, and why does the number matter?
Started by Rohan Desai3 replies -
Did Indian mathematicians have a philosophy of zero?
Brahmagupta's Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta (628 CE) gives rules for arithmetic with zero as a number: adding zero to a number leaves it unchanged, multiplying by zero gives zero, and so on. He also tried to define division by zero, not quite successfully. Earlier, the…
Started by Vikram Sethi3 replies -
Are the words of the Veda abstract objects? Mīmāṃsā’s eternal language and Frege’s third realm
I teach Sanskrit in Varanasi and read Pūrva Mīmāṃsā. My tradition holds that the Veda is authorless (apauruṣeya), that words (śabda) are eternal, and that the relation between a word and its meaning is not created by anyone. The Mīmāṃsā Sūtra says…
Started by Govinda Prasad Upadhyaya6 replies -
If a machine might have interests, what do we owe it before we know?
Of course the thing that has eaten my semester is the one I was most sceptical about: whether anything is owed to AI systems that might have interests. Here's my difficulty. On the question of whether there is something it is like…
Started by Ethan Mercer6 replies -
If consent of the governed is the newcomer, what did legitimacy rest on before it?
My students are learning about government this term. I showed them a comparative table of answers to the question "how should we be governed?" across many traditions: Greek, Chinese, Indian, Islamic, European. The thing that surprised them most was that only the…
Started by Aroha Tipene5 replies -
My daughter asked where her mind is kept. Is Ryle’s ‘category mistake’ the answer?
My daughter is seven. Last week, while I was plaiting her hair, she asked me where her mind is kept. "Is it in my head, like my brain? Or is it behind my eyes?" I said it was in her brain, and…
Started by Thamarai Raman4 replies -
Epictetus says some things are up to us. What did that depend on for him?
Epictetus is still my favourite. The Handbook begins by saying some things are up to us and some are not: our opinions, desires and aversions are up to us; our body, property, reputation and office are not. In traffic this is very…
Started by Serkan Aydoğdu5 replies -
Can someone explain what the Nyāya logicians meant by vyāpti (pervasion)?
My training is entirely in Western formal logic, and I've started reading Matilal's The Character of Logic in India. I understand the standard example: there is fire on the hill because there is smoke, and wherever there is smoke there is fire,…
Started by Tomasz Szewczak4 replies -
Can someone explain Ramanuja’s Vishishtadvaita fairly, from an Advaitin’s point of view?
I confess I have never given Rāmānuja the attention he deserves. My Vaishnava friends tell me I misrepresent him whenever I speak about him. So I ask, in good faith: what exactly is Vishishtadvaita, "qualified non-dualism"? How does it differ from Advaita…
Started by Arjun Iyer3 replies -
Can Kant’s rule against treating others merely as means be stretched to cover animals?
I work on wetlands, and in a project meeting last month we argued about whether the birds of a lake have any claim against being drained out of their habitat, or whether only the people who enjoy them do. A colleague, a…
Started by Anand Kurup5 replies -
Where do I start if I want philosophy beyond the European canon, not just Plato?
My students find it obvious that a river can be a person, and I'm trying to understand why so much of Western philosophy finds it strange, and what tikanga might say to philosophy in return. But when I look for a place…
Started by Aroha Tipene5 replies -
I know I shouldn’t shout at drivers who cut me off, and I still do. How is that possible?
When someone cuts in front of my bus at a stop, I shout. I know it does nothing. I know it is bad for my heart, bad for the passengers, and that the other driver cannot hear me. I have decided, many…
Started by Serkan Aydoğdu4 replies -
How does rasa theory compare with Aristotle’s catharsis?
I studied rasa theory in my literature classes and Aristotle's Poetics in a single comparative class. My professor said they're answering the same question: why do we enjoy art that shows painful emotions? But I'm not sure. Can someone explain what rasa…
Started by Kavya Menon4 replies -
“Not necessarily” versus “necessarily not”: can someone explain the difference with an everyday example?
My older child, who is nine, has started catching me out on words. Yesterday I said "it won't necessarily rain at the picnic". She said, "So it necessarily won't rain?" I said no, that's different. She said, "How?" and I realised I…
Started by Thamarai Raman4 replies -
Why does Cora Diamond say we don’t eat our dead, and what does that have to do with animals?
My son, who is eight, asked me last week whether the cat knows it is a cat, and then whether it is wrong to eat chicken if the chicken does not know it is a chicken. I did not have a good…
Started by Thamarai Raman4 replies -
Can a baby or an animal have a right if it cannot claim it? Interest theory versus will theory
I think about the ethics of drug trials on animals more than most of our customers would like. Someone at a talk recently said there are two main theories of what a right is: the "will" theory and the "interest" theory, and…
Started by Hetal Shah3 replies -
If many traditions claim revelation and they disagree, can revelation be a reliable way of knowing?
I do tax returns during the week and seva at our gurdwara at weekends, and something from a philosophy reading has been bothering me while I wash dishes after langar. The reading set out an objection to revelation as a source of…
Started by Harpreet Kaur Grewal5 replies -
If striving can never be satisfied, can any life be meaningful? A cellist reads Schopenhauer
I came to philosophy through Schopenhauer on music, and stayed out of a kind of dread. His picture is that we are expressions of a blind will that strives without end. Every satisfied desire gives way to a new one, and in…
Started by Moon Ha-eun5 replies -
Wine shows hand out medals. Can someone be wrong about what tastes good?
This question pays my bills. Twice a year I sit at a regional wine show with three other judges and we give medals. Every year someone at the cellar door tells me taste is subjective and my medals are just my opinion…
Started by Bec Doyle6 replies -
Is the ban on riba about bad outcomes, or about the form a transaction may take?
Many of my clients in Surrey are Muslim. Several of them won't take a conventional loan. One explained that it's not because the interest rate is too high; it's that a guaranteed return on money lent is wrong in itself, whatever the…
Started by Harpreet Kaur Grewal4 replies -
Why do scholars keep saying “duty” is a bad translation of dharma?
I am translating some Malayalam devotional poems into English, and I've hit a word I can't carry across. The word dharma comes up constantly, and every English version I look at uses “duty” or “righteousness”. Then a lecturer in a comparative philosophy…
Started by Kavya Menon5 replies -
Is Aristotle’s “final cause” an explanation, or just a story about purpose?
When I first read Aristotle's four causes I recognised my trade immediately. The material cause of a door is the cedar. The formal cause is the pattern, the geometry my father taught me. The efficient cause is my hands and my tools.…
Started by Hicham Ouazzani4 replies -
When Nāgārjuna says he has no thesis, isn’t that a thesis?
One idea in Nāgārjuna keeps catching on me like a boot on a root. Nāgārjuna says (I think in a work called the Vigrahavyāvartanī) that if he had a thesis, the fault the opponent points out would apply to him, but since…
Started by Nima Tsering Gurung4 replies -
If a life has a place rather than a meaning, what happens when the place is unjust?
I've been reading discussions of how different traditions answer "does life have meaning?", and one idea keeps coming up: most traditions say a life has a place rather than a meaning. Your meaning comes from your role in a family, a lineage,…
Started by Keisha Monroe6 replies