In contemporary Cognitive Science and Philosophy of Mind, "attention" is a burgeoning field, with ever-increasing amounts of empirical research and philosophical analysis being directed toward it.1 In this essay I make a first attempt to contrast how Nyāya-Vaiśeṣikas2 and Buddhists would address some aspects of attention that are discussed in that literature. The sources of what I attribute to "Nyāya-Vaiśeṣikas" are the sections dealing with the manas in the Nyāyabhāṣya, Nyāyamañjarī, and Praśastapādabhāṣya. The words "Buddhist" and "Buddhism" in this essay (...) refer specifically to the Sautrāntika Buddhism of Vasubandhu's Abhidharmako-śabhāṣya.3 A comparison... (shrink)

Samavaya, the sixth category in the Kanada-sutra, the corner stone of the Nyaya-Vaisesika system of philosophy, on which the grand edifice of the said school has been assiduously built by the followers, from Prasastapada to Sridhara, Uddyotakara to Udayana and Gangesa, has been dealt with in this work, in its entirety and established that the theory of causality depends on Samavaya.The criticism against the concept of Samavaya by the other schools of philosophy, more particularly the attack mounted on it by (...) Buddhist logicians Dharmakirti, Asoka Pandita, Santaraksita, et al. and the Jain scholars such as Akalanka, Manikyanandin and Prabhacandra have been presented in their full vigour. The arguments in defence of Samavaya marshalled by scholars of the Navya-Nyaya school are also put forward, maintaining their flavour, strength and sharpness. By presenting the strength and weakness of all arguments for and against the concept of Samavaya, the present work establishes the concept of Samavaya in its true perspective. This comprehensive work on Samavaya, published for the first time, helps to understand the basic theory of creation and the emergence of the world order as propounded and upheld by the Nyaya-Vaisesika school of philosophy. This is a significant contribution to the modern review of Indian philosophy. (shrink)

This paper elaborates upon various responses to the Problem of the One over the Many, in the service of two central goals. The first is to situate Huayan's mereology within the context of Buddhism's historical development, showing its continuity with a broader tradition of philosophizing about part-whole relations. The second goal is to highlight the way in which Huayan's mereology combines the virtues of the Nyāya-Vaisheshika and Indian Buddhist solutions to the Problem of the One over the Many while avoiding (...) their vices. (shrink)

In this article an attempt is made to detect what could have been the dialectical reasons that impelled the Cār-vāka thinker Udbhatabhatta to revise and reformulate the classical materialistic concept of cognition. If indeed according to ancient Cārvākas cognition is an attribute entirely dependent on the physical body, for Udbhatabhatta cognition is an independent principle that, of course, needs the presence of a human body to manifest itself and for this very reason it is said to be a peculiarity of (...) the body. Therefore, Udbhatabhatta seems to de-scribe the cognizing faculty according to a double ontology: it is both a principle and a characteristic, both inde-pendent and dependent. Two philosophical contexts—Vaisesika and Nyāya schools—are here taken into account as possible anti-Cārvāka fault-finding points of view that spured Udbhatabhatta to reconsider the Cārvāka per-spective. Although we do not have so much textual material on this particular aspect of the ancient and medieval philosophical debate in India, it nonetheless can be supposed that Udbhatabhatta’s reformulation of the concept of cognition was a tentative response to the Vaisesika idea that cognition is not an attribute of the body, rather of the mind (which is here supposed to be eternal), and to the Naiyāyika perspective according to which cognition would be an attribute of an everlasting self. In the case of the Nyāya school, fortunately we have at our disposal the criticism put forward by Vātsyāyana against the materialistic conception of cognition during this time. By examining some Vātsyāyana’s objections, it will emerge that Udbhatabhatta’s idea of cognition really seems to have the aspect of a consistent answer to them, from a renewed materialistic point of view. (shrink)

Halbfass (Indian philosophy, U. of Pennsylvania) combines specialized philological and conceptual investigations with general philosophical and comparative reflections to present a history of the ontology of the Vaisesika system, which is commonly considered the lowest of the Vaisesika school, he focuses on the older period up to Udayana, whose work paves the way for Navyanyaya. Paper edition (unseen), $19.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

The representation of a rose varies considerably across philosophical, religious, and scientific schools of thought. While many would suggest that a rose exists objectively, as a physical object in geometric space reducible to fundamental particles such as atoms or quarks, others propose that a rose is an emergent whole that exists meaningfully when experienced subjectively for its sweet fragrance and red hue, its soft petals and thorny stem. Some might even maintain that a rose is “consciousness-only,” having no existence apart (...) from conscious perception. Thus, we find a spectrum of realist to idealist perspectives. Even in Dharma studies, with a common basis in Indian thought, the Vaiśeṣikas, Vaibhāṣikas, and the vijñaptimātra doctrine of the Yogācārin-Vijñānavādins entertain diverging perspectives. On one hand, the Vaiśeṣikas, a school of Vedic philosophy, propounded a theory of reality in the form of indivisible, eternal atoms, a metaphysical approach counter to the doctrine of not-self (anātman) in Buddhism. The Vaibhāṣikas, a school of early Buddhist atomism, on the other hand, denied the existence of a true self or eternal soul (ātman) as substratum for reality but maintained their own theory of atomism. For the Vaibhāṣikas, the flow of consciousness may be segmented into discrete moments, yet unlike many of their Buddhist contemporaries from other schools, they asserted that all cognizable phenomena are truly existent insofar as they consist of physically irreducible atoms. Among their objectors were the Yogācārin-Vijñānavādins who proposed the theory of consciousness-only (vijñaptimātra), rejecting the independent existence of indivisible atoms and discrete moments of time. This paper introduces the dialectic that formed between these schools through Vasubandhu’s fourth century C.E. text Twenty Verses on Consciousness-Only (Viṃśikāvijñaptimātratāsiddhi). While the gulf between the realist and idealist positions may seem, at times, irreconcilable, we integrate findings from the field of physics, particularly quantum mechanics (and several philosophical interpretations thereof) within the realm of modern science as a possible bridge between these otherwise seemingly disparate systems of Dharma. (shrink)

This book offers a comprehensive description of the 'doctrine of salvation' and Vaiśeṣika, one of the oldest philosophical systems of Indian philosophy and provides an overview of theories in other related Indian philosophical systems and classical doctrines of salvation. The book examines liberation, the fourth goal of life and arguably one of the most important topics in Indian philosophy, from a comparative philosophical perspective. Contextualising classical Greek Philosophy which contains the three goals of life, and explains salvation as first understood (...) in the theology of the Hellenistic and Patristics periods, the author analyses six classical philosophical schools of Indian philosophy in which there is a marked emphasis on the ultimate ontological elements of the world and 'self'. Analysing Vaiśeṣika and the manner in which this lesser known system has put forward its own theory of salvation, the author demonstrates its significance and originality as an old and influential philosophical system. He argues that it is essential for the study of other Indian sciences and for the study of all comparative philosophy. An extensive introduction to Indian soteriology, this book will be an important reference work for academics interested in comparative religion and philosophy, Indian philosophy, Asian religion and South Asian Studies. (shrink)

The complementary systems of Nyaya and Vaisesika constitute one of the oldest and most important traditions within Indian philosophy. This volume offers a systematic and detailed exposition of the two schools from their beginning to the time of Gangesa. An extensive interpretive essay introduces summaries of most of the known works written within the tradition. The result is both an excellent introduction for students and an indispensable guide to the thought and literature of early Nyaya-Vaisesika. Originally published in 1978. The (...) Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

The Vaiśeṣika school is an important ancient system of Indian philosophy. According to the Vaiśeṣika philosophers, cognition or jñāna is of two types—vidyā and avidyā (vidyā ca avidyā ca), and avidyā is of four types—saṃśaya (doubt), viparyaya (illusion), anadhyavasāya (non-ascertainment) and svapna (dream). Among these four kinds of avidyā, the third kind of non-veridical cognition (avidyā), named ‘anadhyavasāya’ (non-ascertainment/non-assertory cognition), is acknowledged alone by the Vaiśeṣika school. Apart from the Vaiśeṣika school, no other school of Indian philosophy admits such a (...) type of non-veridical cognition. Such a sort of non-veridical cognition is not mentioned even in the Vaiśeṣikasūtra of Kaṇāda. However, Praśastapāda discusses it in his Padārthadharmasaṃgraha, after mentioning it as a variety of non-veridical cognition. He has been followed in this respect by the commentators of Padārthadharmasaṃgraha in their respective commentaries. Following them, in this paper I am going to establish anadhyavasāya as a distinct type of non-veridical cognition. (shrink)

Vaiśeşikas are realist philosophers of classical India. They admit time (kāla) as a ubiquitous real substance. In this paper, our aim is to discuss such a determination of time following sixth century Vaiśeşika scholar Praśastapāda and a few of his interpreters, Vyomaśivācārya and Udayanācārya. This paper is an effort to state realist philosophers’ understanding of time and also to highlight how in classical Indian tradition, interpretations paved the way for proving the reality of time. The application of logical methods by (...) the Vaiśeşika interpreters is also worth studying. These methods show the internal development occurring in the system of Vaiśeşika. Praśastapāda stated different notions like priority etc. (paratvādi) as the linga or hetu of kāla. Vyomaśiva and Udayana have established this statement of Praśastapāda as the lakşaņa of kāla by virtue of different forms of inference. (shrink)

Furthering our project of applying Plantinga’s epistemology to different world religions, we do a comparative study of Mormonism and Vaiśeṣika Hinduism and analyze whether they can utilize Plantinga’s epistemology in order to claim that their beliefs about God if true are probably warranted. Specifically, we argue that they cannot, as ultimately they are unable to account for the preconditions needed to make for an intelligible cognitive design plan, due to either affirming an infinite regress when it comes to the designers (...) of our cognitive faculties or affirming an infinite number of cosmological cycles in which our faculties are formed. (shrink)

The search for definitions is ubiquitous in Sanskrit philosophy. In many texts across traditions, we find philosophers presenting their theories by laying down definitions of key theoretical categories, by testing those definitions, and by refuting competing definitions of the same theoretical categories. Call this the method of definitions. The aim of this essay is to explore a challenge that arises for this method: the paradox of definitions. It arises from the claim that the method of definitions is either (i) redundant (...) because it does not provide us any knowledge that we did not already possess, or (ii) impossible to successfully pursue because it leads to an infinite regress. Neither of these alternatives should be acceptable to the defender of this method. To focus our discussion, I will show how this challenge arose for—and was arguably resolved by—early Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika thinkers active in the first millennium CE and at the very beginning of the second millennium. In response to the paradox of definitions, these Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika thinkers claimed that the purpose of a definition is to remove either metaphysical ignorance about the distinction between theoretically significant kinds or kind-membership, or metalinguistic ignorance about the meaning or the application-conditions of theoretically significant terms. I will show how this discussion helps us to ward off certain misconceptions about the method of definitions in Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika. (shrink)

In Indian philosophy, Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsakas and Advaita Vedāntins recognize abhāva or anupalabdhi (non-apprehension) as an independent source of knowledge; but no other school of Indian philosophy agrees with them on this issue, and for that reason, arguments have been given by the latter schools for rejecting anupalabdhi as an independent means of knowledge. In this paper, I am going to evaluate only those arguments which have been given by the Vaiśeṣika thinkers, who admit only two pramāṇa-s, viz. pratyakṣa and anumāna, (...) and reject anupalabdhi as an independent pramāṇa. There have been many scholarly studies dealing with the arguments against the reduction of non-apprehension to some other source of knowledge that have been offered by the Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā and Advaita Vedānta, but there is hardly any full-length work that deals with the Vaiśeṣika’s reduction of non-apprehension to some other source of knowledge. In the present paper, an attempt has been made at providing a clear and specific account of the same. (shrink)

As a guide to source material, the book will be useful to readers already somewhat familiar with Vaiśeṣika, and as a reference guide, the book’s lists of categories (padārthas) and other related concepts will also be handy for the same. However, the book is less satisfactory for readers wishing for a general introduction to the study of Vaiśeṣika, given its organization, coupled with its heavy use of untranslated Sanskrit and assumption that readers are already familiar with Indian philosophy. Philosophically speaking, (...) the book is useful in sketching out the commitments of Vaiśeṣikas and their interlocutors, more on which below, but is sparse when it comes to developing the nuances of the sustained arguments and objections throughout the lengthy history of Vaiśeṣika influence on Indian thought. (shrink)

다르마키르티는 『프라마나바르티카』, 「직접지각」장 중에서 ‘樂 등’의 자기인식에 관한 논의를 전개하면서 니야야·바이셰시카 학파의 樂에 대한 견해를 검증하고 있다. 니야야·바이셰시카의 樂은 아트만의 속성인 동시에 아트만의 존재를 추리할 수 있는 證相의 하나로서 樂을 거론한다. 또한 이 樂에 대한 인식은 지식에 의해서 인식되므로, 이 경우 인식대상인 樂과 그것을 파악하는 지식은 비록 둘 다 아트만의 속성이지만 서로 다른 것이라고 주장한다. 이에 대한 다르마키르티는 樂, 苦, 욕망, 분노 등의 감수작용은 직접지각으로서의 ‘푸른색 그 자체’에 대한 인식작용과 동일한 것이라는 입장을 취한다. 즉 지식이 대상, 감각기관, 作意의 접촉에 의해서 (...) 일어나듯이, ‘낙 등’의 심리현상 또한 대상, 감각기관, 作意의 접촉이라는 동일한 원인에 의해서 발생하므로 지식과 다를 바가 없다고 한다. 나아가 다르마키르티는 니야야·바이셰시카의 ‘낙 등’과 지식이 다를 경우 생기는 모순을 차례차례 검증한다. 우선 다르마키르티는 ‘낙 등’의 심리현상을 감관지와 인식대상, 그리고 낙과 그것을 인식하는 지식이라는 네 가지 요소들로 분석한다. 그는 이 4요소들을 기준으로, ‘인식 시점의 문제’, ‘인식대상과 인식주체와의 대응관계의 문제’, ‘‘낙 등’을 일으키는 원인의 종류의 문제‘라는 관점에서 ‘낙 등’이 지식과 다를 경우를 면밀하게 검증한다. 끝으로 다르마키르티는 ‘낙 등’과 지식이 별개일 경우, 다른 사람이 느끼는 고통과 동일한 고통을 요가행자도 感受해야하는 논리적 오류를 지적하여, 자신의 주장의 타당성을 경험적 예증으로 마무리한다. (shrink)