The first half of the paper consists of a philosophical reflection upon a historical exchange. I discuss Buber’s famous letter, and another letter by J. L. Magnes, to Mahatma Gandhi, both challenging the universality of the principle of ahiṃsā. I also touch on Buber’s interest and acquaintance with Indian philosophy, as an instance of dialogue de-facto across cultures. Gandhi never answered these letters, but his grandson and philosopher extraordinaire Ramchandra Gandhi ›answers‹ Buber, not on the letter but about the ideal (...) of dialogue at large, and the interconnection of dialogue and ahiṃsā. The second half of the paper focuses on the work of Daya Krishna, another ›philosopher of dialogue.‹ from within Daya Krishna’s vast philosophical corpus, I underscore one of his last projects, in which he sketches the outlines of what he refers to as »knowledge without certainty,« contrary to common and traditional ways of perceiving the concept of knowledge. I argue that the pramāṇa, means and measure of knowledge, in the intriguing case of »knowledge without certainty,« depicted by Daya Krishna as open-ended, dynamic, constantly evolving, is inevitably dialogue, and I aim to disclose the meaning and salience of dialogue in Daya Krishna’s oeuvre. However, not just the content, but also the form, or the ›how,‹ matters in my paper. I use different materials across genres and disciplines to rethink, in dialogue with Buber and Daya Krishna, the possibilities and impossibilities of dialogue. These ›materials‹ include Milan Kundera and Richard Rorty, Krishna and Arjuna, Vrinda Dalmiya who works with the notion of care as bridging between epistemology and ethics, Wes Anderson on seeing through the eyes of the other, and Ben Okri on hospitality in the realm of ideas. As author of the present paper I am moderating an imagined a multi-vocal dialogue between these ›participants‹ on dialogue as concept, as craft and especially, as a great necessity in the world in which we live. (shrink)

This book presents a close reading of four Indian narratives from different time periods : Ekalavya's story from the MahÄ bhÄ rata, the story of PrajÄ pati, Indra and Virochana from the ChÄ ndogya Upanisad, the story of Åsankara in the King's body from the Åsankaradigvijaya, and A.R. Murugadoss's Hindi film Ghajini, respectively. These stories are thematically juxtaposed with PÄ tañjala-yoga, namely Patañjali's YogasÅ«traand its vast commentarial body. The sÅ«tras reveal hidden philosophical layers. The stories, on the other hand, contribute (...) to the clarification of "philosophical junctions" in the YogasÅ«tra. Through sÅ«tras and stories, the author explores the question of self-identity, with emphasis on the role of memory and the place of body in identity-formation. Each of the stories diagnoses the connection between self-identity and freedom. Employing cutting-edge methodology, crossing the boundaries of literary theory, story-telling, and philosophical reflection, this book presents fresh interpretations of Indian thought. It is useful to specialists in Asian philosophy and culture. (shrink)

Philosophical exploration of the Yogasutra, looking at themes of freedom, self-identity, time and transcendence, and translation - between languages, cultures and eras.

In this paper, I offer a close comparative reading of a creation myth from chapter 1 of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka-Upaniṣad, which opens with the startling statement “ātmaivedam agra āsīt”, “in the beginning there was the self (ātman)”. I read this classical text with Śaṅkara, its foremost commentator, in dialogue with an ensemble of Indologists (Wilhelm Halbfass, Greg Bailey and Frederick Smith) and theorists (Walter Benjamin, Ramchandra Gandhi and Hélène Cixous), and vis-à-vis, the creation myth narrated in chapter 1 of the Book (...) of Genesis. My aim is to decipher the intrinsic relation between identity, difference and diversity underlying the Upaniṣadic myth, and the ambivalent relationship (fear and desire) between self and other depicted here. The Upaniṣad presents a narrative of “the self first”, and implied is the aspiration to retrieve and rediscover this first self, the ātman, which precedes and encompasses everything else. I challenge this narrative drawing on Mukund Lath’s paper (J World Philos 4:6–23, 2003/2018). According to Lath, being is becoming, and change is a precondition of identity-formation. Identity, he argues, does not only accommodate but also invites change and plurality. Identity for Lath is a matter of creation, not restoration. It is pregnant with the future, not obsessed with premordiality. Lath’s unique case study for his counter-Upaniṣadic discussion of identity and self is classical Indian music, rāga music. (shrink)

_In his book_ The Yogasūtra of Patañjali: A New Introduction to the Buddhist Roots of the Yoga System_, Pradeep Gokhale reveals a new picture of the Yogasūtra. He shows us, verse after verse, Buddhist influences on this classical text, which is usually seen as rooted in the Sā__ṃ__khya tradition. Gokhale does not merely argue that Patañjali borrows from Buddhist sources; he substantiates his argument with numerous detailed examples, traveling back and forth between Patañjali and Buddhist thinkers such as Asa__ṅ__ga and (...) Vasubandhu. Gokhale further argues that Vyāsa, Patañjali’s most authoritative commentator, makes a __political move in his commentary by distancing Patañjali from the Buddhists and situating him on the “right side” of the philosophical map, namely the __ā__stika side, the side of the loyalists of the Veda. __The implications are __far-reaching. First, __Patañjali and Vyāsa cannot be one and the same person, as claimed by solid Yogasūtra scholars such as Philipp Maas. __Second, the Patañjali of the Yogasūtra cannot be identified with his namesake, the __author of the Mahābhā__ṣ__ya, “The Great Commentary” on some of the themes discussed by Pā__ṇ__ini, the forefather of Indian linguistics. Patañjali, the linguist, is dated to the 2nd or 3rd century BCE; Patañjali of the Yogasūtra would now have to be pushed forward to the 5th century CE as Gokhale implies. Like Daya Krishna before him, Gokhale highlights the contribution of Buddhist texts and thinkers, often undermined or marginalized in the narrative of the history of Indian philosophy, at least as __it is __sketched in India. In this respect, I briefly visit Daya Krishna’s essay “Was Ācārya Śa__ṅ__kara responsible for the disappearance of Buddhist Philosophy from India?” (1999). Finally, I mention Karen O’Brien-Kop’s research. Like Gokhale, she makes an attempt to join the dots between Pātañjala-yoga and the Buddhist Yogācāra._. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to make sense of the notion and ideal of nonviolence in these ultra-violent days. The paper is a dialogue with three “specialists” of violence, who nevertheless aspire to a different, brighter horizon: Ramchandra Gandhi, Saadat Hasan Manto and Mahasweta Devi. R. Gandhi is one of the most intriguing voices of twentieth-century Indian philosophy. Manto and Mahasweta are writers, the former known for his short partition stories in Urdu; the latter for her gut-wrenching literature in Bengali. (...) All three dare to look violence in the eye, implying that nonviolence can only emerge from deep reflection on violence as an inherent human tendency. Violence is part of me as much as of anyone else. R. Gandhi argues that partition, the cradle of violence, is in the eye, and suggests that we can train the human gaze, our gaze, to prioritize the common denominator between you and I, which hides under the obvious differences between us. For Manto, the remedy is to be found in language. He implies that an ethical dimension is concealed within language, waiting to be excavated. Mahasweta gives voice to those unheard. Acknowledging the unacknowledged, she and Manto show us, is an act of nonviolence. (shrink)

This paper aims to think or rethink the concept of home as the contemporary avatar of the age-old question of self-identity. In dialogue with Shlomo Biderman, a comparative philosopher without borders who feels at home both in Jewish and Indian sources, the author assembles a philosophical jigsaw-puzzle made of different materials from different thinking traditions in attempt to reveal a new picture of home (and self) compatible with the changing world of immigration, relocation, dislocation and displacement, a world of emigrants, (...) refugees and exiles, in which we live. The puzzle pieces include Plato’s cave, Isaiah Berlin’s “inner citadel”, Shmuel Yosef Agnon’s “Ad Hena”, Herman Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener”, Salman Rushdie’s “Imaginary Homelands”, Midrash Bereshit Rabbah, the Bhagavadgītā and Śaṅkara, Paul de Man on translation and Zarina Hashmi’s artwork “Home is a Foreign Place”. The discussion culminates in reflection on translation and the foreignness embedded even in one’s own mother tongue which only the translator (or Rushdie’s “translated man”) can see and feel. If foreignness and alienation are recognized as the common human denominator, and one can sober up from the fantasy of restoring an Edenic past (and language), primordial and complete, then perhaps from within the shards of language, of humanity, a different type of home can be envisioned, based on solidarity and compassion. (shrink)

Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya’s improvisations, or rather his interpretation as improvisation, inspires my own improvisation on Milan Kundera’s 1996 novel Slowness. Not only do I attempt to improvise, or to “interfere creatively” in Kundera’s work, but moreover, I argue that this is exactly how he himself works in Slowness with Vivant Denon’s 1777 novella No Tomorrow. Reading Kundera, as I do here, with and through Indian theory, from the 7th or 8th century poet Rājaśekhara to contemporary thinkers such as Bhattacharyya, Daya Krishna, (...) Mukund Lath and others, is not a standard move. However, it enables me to contemplate “in action” about the possibilities and impossibilities of a cross-cultural dialogue, as a potent tool of interpretation. (shrink)

This essay highlights Ben-Ami Scharfstein’s major philosophical projects: first, philosophizing that includes nonwestern philosophies, especially Chinese and Indian, and that creates a dialogue between philosophers and philosophical traditions without prioritizing any of them, and without taking western philosophy as the point of departure. Second, a similar, inclusive move in the field of art, art without borders if you wish. Here the inclusivity applies not just to east and west, north and south, but even to animal-made art. Just as he wrote (...) about philosophy in China and India, attempting to say something broader about humanity and humanism, so too does Scharfstein’s argument about animals and art have far-reaching implications, above and beyond the question of the demarcation of art. He aims to tell us something about the human-animal relationship, about lack of solidarity between fellow inhabitants of planet earth, not just humans, and about cruelty and exploitation and blindness to the other, whichever other. And finally, I touch on Scharfstein’s work The Philosophers, beautifully translated into Hebrew as Philosophers as Human Beings, where “he dares to imply that philosophizing is in fact a sublimated expression of the unconscious,” as Yoav Ariel—sinologist and much more—puts it. Such a move, Ariel continues to argue, “dethrones philosophy of its unique position of honor and supremacy, and disperses the atmosphere of conceptual terror that philosophy created generation after generation.”. (shrink)

Descartes’s Cogito, “I am thinking, therefore I exist,” is perhaps the most famous assertion in the history of philosophy. Thirteen hundred years earlier, St. Augustine formulated a similar claim, arguing “if I am mistaken, I am.” Did St. Augustine anticipate Descartes? We show that Descartes’s dictum is a novel insight and less vulnerable to criticism than the claim of St. Augustine. Whereas Descartes searched for one true proposition on which he could base scientificknowledge, St. Augustine sought to refute the skeptics (...) who had denied the possibility of knowledge. By a twist of irony, the skeptics and St. Augustine reached contradictory (ethical) conclusions based, however, on similar reasoning. (shrink)

Daya Krishna and Twentieth-Century Indian Philosophy introduces contemporary Indian philosophy as a unique philosophical genre through the writings of one its most significant exponents, Daya Krishna (1924-2007). It surveys Daya Krishna's main intellectual projects: rereading classical Indian sources anew, his famous Samvad Project, and his ardent attempt to formulate a social and political theory that can better fit India's needs and challenges. Conceived as a dialogue with Daya Krishna and contemporaries, including his interlocutors, Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya, Badrinath Shukla, Ramchandra Gandhi and (...) Mukund Lath, this book is an engaging introduction to anyone interested in contemporary Indian philosophy and in the thought-provoking writings of Daya Krishna. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to (re)introduce D. P. Chattopadhyaya (1931–2022, henceforth DPC), one of the key-players in the field of contemporary Indian philosophy, his main books, his community-building activities, and his unique life-story. A modern Rājar ṣ i, DPC was both a philosopher and a statesman who served both as a minister in the Indian government in the 1970s and as the governor of Rajasthan in the early 1990s. The Śvetāśvatara Upani ṣ ad narrates the famous story of (...) two birds sitting on a single branch, one eating a fig, the other watching-witnessing. DPC’s life-story and writings show that the two birds could be one and the same, namely that action and reflection, or engagement and the detachment needed for reflection, do not necessarily exclude one another but can in fact complement and contribute to one another. Relying primarily on DPC’s chapter “A Short Intellectual Autobiography of D. P. Chattopadhyaya,” written by him in 1999, but not forgetting the next decade of his writing-life, this essay focuses on DPC’s contribution in the fields of phenomenology, philosophy of science and mind, and socio-political philosophy, and on his pivotal role in the ongoing attempt to decolonize knowledge towards the fulfillment of the ideal of Svaraj in Ideas, “independent thinking.” DPC is further depicted in the present essay as a comparative philosopher without borders, drawing on materials from different traditions of thinking, and committed to interdisciplinarity, traveling freely between disciplines, languages, eras, and life-experiences. (shrink)

Daya Krishna, one of the most original voices of contemporary Indian philosophy, writes that “Gandhi is as rare as…a Shakespeare or a Michelangelo” (1999). Mohandas K. Gandhi himself writes that “Jesus was, to my mind, a supreme artist” (1924). And Tridip Suhrud, Gandhian and Gandhi scholar, speaks of “Gandhi’s striving to lead the life of a ‘supreme artist’ ” (2018). The question raised in this article is this: If Gandhi was an artist, then what is his artwork? In reply, the (...) author suggests that Gandhi himself is the artwork of Gandhi the artist. To substantiate this contention, Gandhi is depicted first as a “hunger artist,” in dialogue with Franz Kafka’s 1924 story of the same name, and second as a “death artist” crafting (determining, choosing) his death. Here the author draws on Ramchandra Gandhi, the Mahatma’s grandson and an intriguing philosophical voice, and examines Judah L. Magnes’s 1939 letter to Gandhi. (shrink)

This paper is a tribute to Rajendra Swaroop Bhatnagar. Bhatnagar Saab was a philosopher of the here and now, of the worldly, of the social, who did not hesitate to look into violence, poverty, pain, and suffering. He was an activist through his writings, and worked to establish social awareness. Metaphysics and the spiritual, considered by many as a central leitmotif of Indian philosophy, he saw as secondary or even marginal. The first part of the paper surveys and contextualizes Bhatnagar (...) Saab’s work as a philosopher and translator of Plato into Hindi. The second part of the paper is a multilingual manifesto, which calls attention to philosophy in Hindi and other modern Indian languages and challenges the over-dominance of English. The third part of the paper is a jugalbandi, a philosophical duet. It includes one of Bhatnagar’s last essays, “No Suffering if Human Beings Were Not Sensitive”, published here for the first time, interwoven with my “commentary,” in which I aim to amplify different points raised by him and to expand the boundaries of the discussion. The main theme to be addressed is suffering. What could be more relevant during the present Covid-19 days? (shrink)

Conversation, dialogue, debate, and discussion are everywhere, not just in knowledge but in all that man does or seeks, as in these man finds and feels and discovers what being human is.Questions give birth only to other questions.I would like to open with short pieces from two letters written by Daya Krishna (henceforth DK) to his friend, writer-poet-thinker Rameshchandra Shah,3 sometime in 2006. They reveal the entwinement of the personal and the philosophical in DK’s thought and illuminate his modes of (...) thinking at the time. They also work as an overture to my dialogue with DK in the essay that follows.Dear R. C. Shah,Ancestral Voices4 reached me a few days ago just as I, along with many others, was trying to .. (shrink)

This paper offers a close reading of Patañjali’s Yogasūtra through the concepts of abhyāsa and vairāgya, “repetitive practice” and “dispassion,” drawing on Patañjali’s classical commentators and on Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya’s “Studies in Yoga Philosophy,” an forgotten chapter of his corpus. I open with a critical examination of Patañjali’s citta-vṛtti scheme, his attempt of “mapping” the contents of consciousness. Thereafter, I discuss the “procedure of yoga,” based on the mutual operation of abhyāsa and vairāgya for the sake of nirodha, cessation of the (...) vṛttis, or “movements” of consciousness. A close analysis of Patañjali and his commentators indicates that both abhyāsa and vairāgya are depicted as consisting of a strong reflective dimension. This is to say that the radical meditative act of “emptying” the consciousness of its objective content is in fact a rational conclusion of the mind, as it reflects upon itself. This reflection is both sensitive to the “limitedness” of the objective world and “receptive” to the silent presence of the “unlimited” selfhood beyond, which Patañjali, following the Sāṃkhya tradition, refers to as puruṣa. It is implied here that the yogic act of disengagement from the worldly and objective is as much an act of will, as it is an act of self-sacrifice. Finally, the analysis offered here reveals substantial “philosophical threads” in the Yogasūtra, a text which is usually considered as too “practical,” or “therapeutic,” or “spiritual,” to be “really” philosophical. (shrink)

The presence of women in the philosophical scene of classical India is sporadic. The present paper focuses on an Upaniṣadic story highlighting the contribution of such a rare woman, namely the debate between Gārgī and Yājñavalkya at King Janaka’s court in chapter 3 of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka-Upaniṣad. I offer a close reading of the debate, drawing on Śaṅkara’s commentary, with the intention of spotlighting Gārgī’s voice, a single female voice in an all-male arena. My analysis is supplemented with a quick visit (...) to Mahasweta Devi’s gut-wrenching story Draupadi. My silence-silencing argument is this: Silence holds a central place in classical Indian philosophy, as the story under discussion illustrates. It is an expression of a dramatic transformation in which the human person “recovers” his/her innermost essence, the ātman, no longer identifying with worldly aspects of her/his being. But according to Mahasweta Devi and Daya Krishna, each in her and his distinct context, this beatific silence can turn into an act of brutal silencing. This is to say that in the name of spiritual quest, the here and now, the social dimension, is often “forgotten”. The twist is that what is seen from one perspective as a benevolent silence is from another perspective, a symptom of blindness to the world one lives in. For Mahasweta and Daya Krishna one’s visit, or recurrent visits to “realms beyond” are empty unless they have ethical impact upon one’s return to the now and here. (shrink)

This essay considers a potential linkage between skepsis and the engendering of creativity. It explores and contests the possibility of a dialogical evolution of an intercultural scepticism, in particular a mode of skepsis conceived as a viable, productive way of life. It reflects on the conditions that encourage the development of a sceptical sensibility with reference to Sextus Empiricus, and then depicts an intercultural unfolding of the “sceptic ego” via reference to encounters with traditions such as Daoism and Romanticism. The (...) result is a scepticism culminating in a disposition toward creativity and empathetic, interdisciplinary enquiry. Intercultural skepsis emerges as the possibility of manifesting as a “philosophy of creativity” that must demonstrate its usefulness, and justify itself, by producing concrete, communicable, worthwhile results. (shrink)

This philosophical meditation, which deals with death as question, presence, and even teacher, begins with Ramchandra Gandhi’s penetrating essay ‘On Meriting Death.’ What does it mean ‘to merit’ death? To provide an answer, I travel through RCG’s corpus, in dialog with contemporary theorists such as Sri Aurobindo, Daya Krishna, and Mukund Lath. RCG implies that the question about ‘meriting’ death, and life, is not and cannot be ‘personal’ or ‘isolated’. For X to die, is for his close and distant samāj (...) a matter of losing him and living without him. Hence meriting death, as also life, is a joint venture which involves deep understanding regarding non-isolation as the heart of the human situation. RCG’s creative thinking, or svarāj in ideas, reaches its peak when he dares to offer an answer of his own to the piercing question kim āścaryam, ‘what is amazing?’ raised in the Yakṣa-praśna episode of the Mahābhārata. For RCG, the heart of the matter is not the ‘ungraspability’ of one’s unavoidable death, or the perennial search for ‘permanence’ in vain, but our failure to perceive ‘that in the martyā which is amṛta,’ i.e., a sense of solidarity in the face of death, connecting ‘I and Thou,’ which he derives from the icchā mṛtyu of his grandfather, the famous Mahatma. (shrink)

This book engages in a dialogue with Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya (K.C. Bhattacharyya, KCB 1875-1949) and presents a vista of contemporary Indian philosophy. KCB is one of the founding fathers of contemporary Indian philosophy; a distinct genre of philosophy that draws both on classical Indian philosophical sources and on Western materials, old and new. His work offers both a new and different reading of classical Indian texts, and at the same time he is a unique commentator of Kant and Hegel. The book (...) (re)introduces KCB's philosophy, identifies the novelty of his thinking, and highlights different dimensions of his oeuvre, with special emphasis on freedom as a concept and striving, extending from the metaphysical to the political (or the postcolonial). The contributors to this book decipher KCB's distinct vocabulary (demand, feeling, alternation) and revisit his discussion of Rasa aesthetics. The chapters offer a bird's eye view of his corpus to ascertain if and how its different compartments converge and illuminate the place of the body in his phenomenological inquiry toward "the subject as freedom". The book situates him between classics (Abhinavagupta) and thinkers inspired by his thought (Daya Krishna) and discuss his lectures on Samkhya and Yoga rather than projecting him solely under the rubric of Vedanta. Finally, the book analyzes if and how KCB's philosophical work is relevant to the discourse today, from the problem of other minds to freedoms in the social and political spheres. This book will be of interest to academics studying Indian and comparative philosophy, philosophy of language and mind, phenomenology without borders, and political and postcolonial philosophy. (shrink)

The article offers a close reading of the famous upanişadic story of Indra, Virocana and Prajāpati from the eighth chapter of the Chāndogya-Upanişad versus Śankara’s bhāşya, with special reference to the notions of suşupti and turīya. That Śankara is not always loyal to the Upanişadic texts is a well-known fact. That the Upanişads are (too) often read through Śan-kara’s Advaitic eyes is also known. The following lines will not merely illustrate the gap between text and commentary but will also reveal (...) an unexpected Upanişadic depiction of ‘dreamless sleep’ and ‘transcendental consciousness’. Suşupti is described here as ‘one step too far’, as a ‘break’ or discontinuity in one’s consciousness; whereas turīya is depicted positively, and surprisingly even in wordly terms. Unlike the third state of consciousness in which there is no ‘world’ nor ‘me’, and which is described through Indra’s character as ‘total destruction’ (vināśa); in turīya, the world ‘comes back’, or rather the ‘renouncer’ returns to the world. Sankara’s position, as far as the story under discussion is concerned, is radically different. For him, the Upanişadic story illustrates the continuity of consciousness in all its states. For him, the identification with merely one of the consciousness-states is an error (adhyāsa) which causes suffering. Consciousness prevails even in suşupti, and turīya has nothing to do with ‘coming back to the world’, since there is nowhere to come back from or to. Turīya, as seen by the Advaitin, consists of all the other states of consciousness together, or as K. C. Bhattacharyya puts it, ‘It is not only a stage among stages; it is the truth of the other stages’. (shrink)

This study uses a relational work design perspective to explore substitutes for leadership behaviors that promote team meaningfulness and performance. We propose that team task interdependence, a structural feature facilitating interaction among team members, can be a substitute for the contributions of empowering leadership. Data were collected from 47 R&D and technology implementation teams across three organizations in a cross-sectional field study. The results revealed that high task interdependence attenuated the contributions of empowering leadership concerning team meaningfulness and, indirectly, to (...) team performance. These findings highlight that the importance of leaders as generators of team meaningfulness is contingent on team relational work design. (shrink)

The ability to interact in a natural language profoundly changes devices’ interfaces and potential applications of speaking technologies. Concurrently, this phenomenon challenges our mainstream theories of knowledge, such as how to analyze linguistic outputs of devices under existing anthropocentric theoretical assumptions. In section 1, I present the topic of machines that speak, connecting between Descartes and Generative AI. In section 2, I argue that accepted testimonial theories of knowledge and justification commonly reject the possibility that a speaking technological artifact can (...) give testimony. In section 3, I identify three assumptions underlying the view that rejects conversational AIs – AI-based technologies that converse, as testifiers: conversational AIs (1) lack intentions, (2) cannot be normatively assessed, and (3) cannot constitute an object in trust relations, while humans can. In section 4, I propose the concept ‘AI-testimony’ for analyzing outputs of conversational AIs, suggesting three conditions for technologies to deliver AI-testimony: (1) content is propositional, (2) generated and delivered with no other human directly involved, (3) the output is perceived as phenomenologically similar to that of a human. I conclude that this concept overcomes the limitations of the anthropocentric concept of testimony, opening future directions of research without associating conversational AIs with human-like agency. (shrink)

Perceptions are externally-directed—they present us with a mind-independent reality, and thus contribute to our abilities to think about this reality, and to know what is objectively the case. But perceptions are also internally-dependent—their phenomenologies depend on the neuro-computational properties of the subject. A good theory of perception must account for both these facts. But naive realism has been criticized for failing to accommodate internal-dependence. This paper evaluates and responds to this criticism. It first argues that a certain version of naive (...) realism, often called “selectionism”, does indeed struggle with internal-dependence. It then develops an alternate version of naive realism which does not. This alternate version, inspired by an idea of Martin’s, accommodates the internal-dependence of perceptions by recognizing the role that the subject’s neuro-computational properties play in shaping perceptual phenomenology. At the same time, it retains the distinctive naive realist account of the external-directedness of perceptions. (shrink)

Standing is a peculiar norm, allowing for deflecting that is rejecting offhand and without deliberation interventions such as directives. Directives are speech acts that aim to give directive-reasons, which are reason to do as the directive directs because of the directive. Standing norms, therefore, provide for deflecting directives regardless of validity or the normative weight of the rejected directive. The logic of the normativity of standing is, therefore, not the logic of invalidating directives or of competing with directive-reasons but of (...) ‘exclusionary permission’. That is, standing norms provide for permission to exclude from practical deliberation directive-reasons if given without the requisite standing, regardless of their normative weight. As such, standing is a type of second-order norm. Numerous everyday practices involve the deflection of directives, such as pervasive practices of deflecting hypocritical and officious directives. Of various possible models, the one that best captures the normative structure of these practices of deflection is the standing model. Accordingly, the normativity of standing is pervasive in our everyday practices. Establishing that standing, although a neglected philosophical idea, is a significant and independent normative concept. (shrink)

Speaking with conversational AIs, technologies whose interfaces enable human-like interaction based on natural language, has become a common phenomenon. During these interactions, people form their beliefs due to the say-so of conversational AIs. In this paper, I consider, and then reject, the concepts of testimony-based beliefs and instrument-based beliefs as suitable for analysis of beliefs acquired from these technologies. I argue that the concept of instrument-based beliefs acknowledges the non-human agency of the source of the belief. However, the analysis focuses (...) on perceiving signs and indicators rather than content expressed in natural language. At the same time, the concept of testimony-based beliefs does refer to natural language propositions, but there is an underlying assumption that the agency of the testifier is human. To fill the lacuna of analyzing belief acquisition from conversational AIs, I suggest a third concept: technology-based beliefs. It acknowledges the non-human agency-status of the originator of the belief. Concurrently, the focus of analysis is on the propositional content that forms the belief. Filling the lacuna enables analysis that considers epistemic, ethical, and social issues of conversational AIs without excluding propositional content or compromising accepted assumptions about the agency of technologies. (shrink)

There is an existing debate regarding the view that technological instruments, devices, or machines can assert ‎or testify. A standard view in epistemology is that only humans can testify. However, the notion of quasi-‎testimony acknowledges that technological devices can assert or testify under some conditions, without ‎denying that humans and machines are not the same. Indeed, there are four relevant differences between ‎humans and instruments. First, unlike humans, machine assertion is not imaginative or playful. Second, ‎machine assertion is prescripted and (...) context restricted. As such, computers currently cannot easily switch ‎contexts or make meaningful relevant assertions in contexts for which they were not programmed. Third, ‎while both humans and computers make errors, they do so in different ways. Computers are very sensitive to ‎small errors in input, which may cause them to make big errors in output. Moreover, automatic error control ‎is based on finding irregularities in data without trying to establish whether they make sense. Fourth, ‎testimony is produced by a human with moral worth, while quasi-testimony is not. Ultimately, the notion of ‎quasi-testimony can serve as a bridge between different philosophical fields that deal with instruments and ‎testimony as sources of knowledge, allowing them to converse and agree on a shared description of reality, ‎while maintaining their distinct conceptions and ontological commitments about knowledge, humans, and ‎nonhumans.‎. (shrink)

What justifies practices of “standing”? Numerous everyday practices exhibit the normativity of standing: forbidding certain interventions and permitting ignoring them. The normativity of standing is grounded in facts about the person intervening and not on the validity of her intervention. When valid, directives are reasons to do as directed. When interventions take the form of directives, standing practices may permit excluding those directives from one’s practical deliberations, regardless of their validity or normative weight. Standing practices are, therefore, puzzling – forbidding (...) giving reasons and, if given, permitting disregarding such reasons. What justifies standing practices are the values that they protect, including privacy, autonomy, independence, valuable relationships, and equal respect. These values count in favor of standing’s duty against certain interventions and, when these duties of non-intervention are breached, the values underpinning those duties count in favor of standing’s permission to discount or exclude those interventions from one’s practical deliberations – the normative weight of those interventions notwithstanding. (shrink)

We report a series of experiments examining whether people ascribe knowledge for true beliefs based on probabilistic evidence. Participants were less likely to ascribe knowledge for beliefs based on probabilistic evidence than for beliefs based on perceptual evidence or testimony providing causal information. Denial of knowledge for beliefs based on probabilistic evidence did not arise because participants viewed such beliefs as unjustified, nor because such beliefs leave open the possibility of error. These findings rule out traditional philosophical accounts for why (...) probabilistic evidence does not produce knowledge. The experiments instead suggest that people deny knowledge because they distrust drawing conclusions about an individual based on reasoning about the population to which it belongs, a tendency previously identified by “judgment and decision making” researchers. Consistent with this, participants were more willing to ascribe knowledge for beliefs based on probabilistic evidence that is specific to a particular case. 2016 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

The phenomenal particularity thesis says that if a mind-independent particular is consciously perceived in a given perception, that particular is among the constituents of the perception’s phenomenology. Martin, Campbell, Gomes and French and others defend this thesis. Against them are Mehta, Montague, Schellenberg and others, who have produced strong arguments that the phenomenal particularity thesis is false. Unfortunately, neither side has persuaded the other, and it seems that the debate between them is now at an impasse. This paper aims to (...) break through this impasse. It argues that we have reached the impasse because two distinct conceptions of phenomenology—a “narrow” conception and a “broad” conception—are compatible with our what-it-is-like characterizations of phenomenology. It also suggests that each of these two conceptions has its own theoretical value and use. Therefore, the paper recommends a pluralistic position, on which we acknowledge that there are two kinds of phenomenology: narrow phenomenology and broad phenomenology. The phenomenal particularity thesis is true only with respect to the latter. (shrink)

Metasemantics is the metaphysics of semantic endowment: it asks how expressions become endowed with their semantic significance. Assuming that semantics is of the usual truth-conditional sort, metasemantics asks after the determinants of expressions’ distinctive contributions to truth-conditions. There are two widely divergent general approaches to the metasemantic project. Some theories – “productivist” ones such as causal theories or intention-based theories – emphasize conditions of production or employment of the items semantically endowed. Other metasemantic theories – “interpretationist” ones – emphasize conditions (...) of interpretive consumption or reception of such items. The book aims to articulate a set of considerations that favour metasemantic productivism over metasemantic interpretationism, to reconcile a general productivist metasemantic approach with contemporary truth-conditional semantics, and to apply the approach to more specialized case studies in the philosophy of language broadly construed. Finally, a major concern in contemporary philosophy of language after Quine is semantic indeterminacy, the worry that there is no fact of the matter as to the semantic significance of our words. The book articulates a distinctly metasemantic strategy to counter the worry. It is shown how the present approach delivers a more successful response to semantic indeterminacy than extant alternatives, a response that emphasizes the priority of reference over truth, which is both intuitively compelling and theoretically motivated. (shrink)

Unconscious perceptions have recently become a focal point in the debate for and against naive realism. In this paper I defend the naive realist side. More specifically, I use an idea of Martin’s to develop a new version of naive realism—neuro-computational naive realism. I argue that neuro-computational naive realism offers a uniform treatment of both conscious and unconscious perceptions. I also argue that it accommodates the possibility of phenomenally different conscious perceptions of the same items, and that it can answer (...) a further challenge to naive realism raised by Berger and Nanay. (shrink)

The ability to engage in and recognize pretend play begins around 18 months. A major challenge for theories of pretense is explaining how children are able to engage in pretense, and how they are able to recognize pretense in others. According to one major account, the metarepresentational theory, young children possess both production and recognition abilities because they possess the mental state concept, PRETEND. According to a more recent rival account, the Behavioral theory, young children are behaviorists about pretense, and (...) only produce and recognize pretense as a sort of behavior--namely, behaving 'as-if'. We review both the metarepresentational and Behavioral accounts and argue that the Behavioral theory fails to characterize very young children's abilities to produce and to recognize pretense. Among other problems, the Behavioral theory implies that children should frequently mis-recognize regular behavior as pretense, while certain regular forms of pretend play should neither be produced nor recognized. Like other mental states, pretense eludes purely behavioral description. The metarepresentational theory does not suffer these problems and provides a better account of children's pretense. 2016 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

A basic problem of daily life is determining who owns what. One way that people may solve this problem is by relying on a ‘first possession’ heuristic, according to which the first person who possesses an object is its owner, even if others subsequently possess the object. We investigated preschoolers’ use of this heuristic in five experiments. In Experiments 1 and 2, 3- and 4-year-olds inferred that an object was owned by the character who possessed it first, even though another (...) character subsequently possessed it. Two-year-olds also showed this bias, but only when the object was placed between the characters when children were asked about ownership. Experiment 3 ruled out the possibility that children’s bias to select the first possessor results from a tendency to select the character first associated with the object. Experiment 4 showed that 3- and 4-year-olds have difficulty disregarding the first possession heuristic, even when provided with evidence that the character who first possessed an object is not its owner. But Experiment 5 found that children can disregard the heuristic in at least some situations. These five experiments suggest that the first possession heuristic guides children’s ownership inferences. The findings provide the first evidence that preschoolers can infer who owns what, when not explicitly told, and when not reasoning about objects with which they are personally acquainted. (shrink)

Are there moral rights to do moral wrong? A right to do wrong is a right that others not interfere with the right-holder’s wrongdoing. It is a right against enforcement of duty, that is a right that others not interfere with one’s violation of one’s own obligations. The strongest reason for moral rights to do moral wrong is grounded in the value of personal autonomy. Having a measure of protected choice (that is a right) to do wrong is a condition (...) for an autonomous life and for autonomous moral self-constitution. This view has its critics. Responding to these objections reveals that none refute the coherence of the concept of a ‘moral right to do moral wrong’. At most, some objections successfully challenge the weight and frequency of the personal autonomy reasons for such rights. Autonomy-based moral rights to do moral wrong are therefore conceptually possible as well as, at least on occasion, actual. (shrink)

Theories deploy various theoretical representations of their explananda and one question we can ask about those representations is whether to regard them under a realist attitude, i.e. as revealing the nature of what they represent, or whether to regard them under an instrumentalist attitude instead, i.e. as serving particular explanatory ends without the further revelatory aspect. I consider structured propositions as theoretical representations within a particular explanatory setting -- the metaphysics of what is said -- and argue that a realist (...) attitude towards them is unwarranted. I offer various considerations against the widespread tendency to regard structured propositions as revealing the nature of what is said and conclude that they should be regarded under an instrumentalist attitude instead. (shrink)

This paper examines the trust relations involved in Israel’s COVID-19 vaccination campaign, focusing on vaccine hesitancy and the concept of ‘trust’. The first section offers a conceptual analysis of ‘trust’. Instead of analyzing trust in the vaccination campaign as a whole, a few objects of trust are identified and examined. In section two, the Israeli vaccination campaign is presented, and the focus is placed on vaccine hesitancy. In section three, different trust relations are examined: public trust in the Israeli government (...) and health institutions, interpersonal trust in healthcare professionals and experts, trust in the pharmaceutical companies that make the COVID-19 vaccine, the US FDA, and trust in the new vaccine and the new technology. Through this complexity of trust relations, I argue that it is impossible to completely separate the trust that the vaccine is safe and effective from social aspects of mistrust. Additionally, practices of silencing and censoring the concerns of vaccine hesitaters – both experts and among the public, are pointed out. I contend that these cases further minimize vaccine hesitaters' trust in vaccine-related entities. In contrast, in section four, I suggest the ‘trust-based approach’: since vaccine hesitancy is not solely the result of knowledge deficiency but also a lack of trust relations, any campaign that addresses vaccine hesitancy should also focus on trust. The advantages of this approach are spelled out. For governments, a discussion based on trust is, ultimately, the best democratic way to encourage hesitaters to take the plunge and get vaccinated. (shrink)

This book argues that words and thoughts are typically about whatever they are about necessarily rather than contingently. The argument proceeds by articulating a requisite modal background and then bringing this background to bear on cognitive matters, notably the intentionality of cognitive episodes and states. The modal picture that emerges from the first two chapters is a strongly particularist one whereby possibilities reduce to possibilities for particular things (or pluralities thereof) where the latter are determined by the natures of the (...) particular things (or pluralities) involved. The next three chapters are devoted to the aboutness of referring terms in language and thought. The approach espoused is, again, strongly particularist in allotting explanatory priority to cognitive episodes and states regarding particular things (aka de re attitudes). (shrink)

Replies to commentaries on "Can experiences be rational?", forthcoming in Analytic Philosophy.

Prominent thinkers such as Jurgen Habermas and Michael Sandel are warning that biomedical enhancements will undermine fundamental political values. Yet whether biomedical enhancements will undermine such values depends on how biomedical enhancements will function, how they will be administered and to whom. Since only few enhancements are obtainable, it is difficult to tell whether these predictions are sound. Nevertheless, such warnings are extremely valuable. As a society we must, at the very least, be aware of developments that could have harmful (...) consequences. Indeed, if important values were to be jeopardized, we should take appropriate measures to protect them. This paper focuses on four central values: solidarity, personal responsibility, equality and autonomy. It delineates the conditions under which biomedical enhancements would undermine these values. It also details the circumstances under which these values would be unaffected by enhancements as well as those under which they would be promoted. Specifying these conditions is valuable; it would enable society to prepare appropriate ethical guidelines and policy responses in advance. (shrink)