Indian theories of sentence and its meaning with special reference to grammar (Vyākaraṇa), logic (Nyāya), and ritualism (Mīmāṃsā).

Study of Bhāvanaviveka of Maṇḍanamiśra, work on the Purva-mīmāṃsā doctrine of causation.

Portion of Sanskrit treatise on Hindu logic and epistemology of the Navya-Nyāya school in Hindu philosophy.

According to the seventh-century C.E. philosopher Kumārila Bhat.t.a, epistemic agents are warranted in taking their world-presenting experiences as veridical, if they lack defeaters. For him, these experiences are defeasibly sources of knowledge without the agent reflecting on their content or investigating their causal origins. This position is known as svatah prāmāṇya in Sanskrit (henceforth the SP principle). -/- As explicated by the eleventh-century commentator, Pārthasārathi Misŕa, this position entails that epistemic agents know things without simultaneously knowing that they know them, (...) or being in a position to know that they know. In contrast, some contemporary Anglo-analytic philosophers argue for the “knows-knows principle” (KK principle), in which if someone knows that p, then that person also knows that they know that p, or that person is in a position to know that they know p. Despite some apparent similarities, the SP principle is not a version of the KK principle, nor would Pārthasārathi’s Kumārila have held the KK principle. -/- Recently, Daniel Immerman (2018) has argued that the SP principle is a position-to-know version of the “knows-knows principle” (KK-pos principle). By examining Kumārila’s response to his Buddhist opponent, who challenges the veracity of Vedic testimony, we will see that Kumārila understands higher-order knowing as involving an independent check on one’s epistemic processes, through an epistemic instrument known as postulation (arthāpatti). This precludes him from holding the KK-pos principle. (shrink)

Tattvopaplavada, an ancient Indian school of scepticism, and Pyrrhonism, an ancient Greek school of scepticism, are the objects of examination of this paper because while, on the one hand, both attack the senses and reason as means of valid knowledge, on the other hand, both can serve as a basis for questioning Faith as the fount of human action. The aim of the paper is to examine how can these two schools of scepticism, which assert the impossibility of valid knowledge, (...) question faith without running into the risk of self-contradiction? Equally important is the question whether do they, in the process, commit the cardinal error of falling into the trap of self-reference? The aim of the paper is to examine the accusation of the critics of Scepticism that in the absence of certain basis of knowledge, human action is impossible. p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; direction: ltr; line-height: 115%; text-align: left; orphans: 2; widows: 2}a:link { so-language: zxx}. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Some Ideas Concerning Stephen Phillips' Jewel of Reflection on the Truth about Epistemology:A Complete and Annotated Translation of the Tattva-cintā-maṇiEberhard Guhe (bio)Stephen Phillips' Jewel of Reflection on the Truth about Epistemology (see Phillips 2020) is surely a landmark achievement in the realm of research on Navya-Nyāya. It is a work of reference not only for specialists but also for a broader audience of philosophically interested readers. Phillips has demonstrated (...) his expertise on Nyāya in general in many previous publications. At present, there is probably hardly anybody else who would have been better qualified to accomplish the mammoth task of translating and elucidating such a complex and voluminous Sanskrit work as the Tattvacintāmaṇi. It should however be noted that there is another edition and annotated translation of the Tattvacintāmaṇi (excluding the Upamānakhaṇḍa) by V.P. Bhatta (see Bhatta 2005, 2012, 2021), which is rather addressed to specialists, who are proficient in Sanskrit. The two volumes on the Anumānakhaṇḍa were published in 2021 (one year after the publication of Phillips' three volumes). Considering the enormous size of such a book project, the result cannot be expected to be completely flawless. The present review focuses on the introduction in volume 1 and on volume 2. I will address some minor issues, primarily methodological ones, but I will also address a few more serious (albeit surely accidental) translation errors (especially in the Siddhāntalakṣaṇa-section of the Vyāptivāda), which can lead to a misunderstanding of Gaṅgeśa's stance on a pivotal topic of the Navya-Naiyāyikas, namely the correct definition of the concept of pervasion (vyāpti).IThe introduction is very insightful. However, logicians will probably stumble over Phillips' methods of formalization. Some examples are given below. [End Page 498](1) The language of Phillips' formalizations looks a bit like a first-order language. Thus, for example, he uses "Ha" as a formal equivalent of the sentence "The mountain is smoky" (see vol. 1, p. 18). An obvious deviation from first-order conventions consists in the fact that Phillips uses at least two types of negation. Propositional negation is expressed by means of the symbol "~" (see vol. 2, p. 668; unfortunately, this symbol is not mentioned in vol. 1, pp. 18–19, where Phillips introduces his formalization techniques). Moreover, Phillips uses the negation symbol "¬," which he applies to capital Roman letters, in order to express a kind of term negation. Thus, for example, "¬H" may serve as a term referring to "the absence of the probans" (vol. 2, p. 623). To be precise, the type of absence which "¬H" refers to is a so-called "relational absence" (saṃsargâbhāva). Phillips formalizes the so-called "mutual absences" (anyonyâbhāva) differently (see below).Although "¬Hc" (see vol. 1, p. 18) looks like an ordinary first-order wff, it should more accurately be read as "The absence of H is located at c." Properly speaking, we should then also read atomic wffs like "Hc" as "H is located at c," where "H" should not be regarded as an expression of a predicate like "… is smoky," but rather as a general term, that is, as a formal counterpart of expressions like, for example, "smoke."Unfortunately, Phillips renders the meaning of wffs of the form "¬ϕx" not as "the absence of H is located at x," but in a somewhat simplified manner, which obscures the fact that he treats the negation symbol "¬" as a means to express a term negation: "And negation is term negation, not propositional negation [author's note: as we have just seen, this is not true of all kinds of negation which Phillips refers to in his formalizations, since he uses the "~" in a different sense]; thus, the negative sign '¬' in '¬ϕx' is defined as 'ϕ is absent at x'" (vol. 1, p. 19).Moreover, the use of different kinds of letters for the variables in "¬ϕx" (Greek and Roman) seems to suggest that the absentee should always be the referent of a general term. However, expressions of the form "the absence of a is... (shrink)

This chapter is about a classical Indian debate about the Independent Check Thesis, the thesis that, if an agent is to rationally believe (or judge) that she knows that p, she must rely on some source of information that provides her independent evidence about the truth or reliability of her belief (or judgement) that p. While some Buddhists and Nyāya philosophers defended this thesis, the Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsakas rejected it. Here, I reconstruct the Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsakas’ arguments against the Independent Check Thesis. (...) I show that these arguments reveal a tension between this thesis and a plausible principle that connects knowledge and action. (shrink)

In recent years, many philosophers of modern physics came to the conclusion that the problem of how objectivity is constituted (rather than merely given) can no longer be avoided, and therefore that a transcendental approach in the spirit of Kant is now philosophically relevant. The usual excuse for skipping this task is that the historical form given by Kant to transcendental epistemology has been challenged by Relativity and Quantum Physics. However, the true challenge is not to force modern physics into (...) a rigidly construed static version of Kant's philosophy, but to provide Kant's method with flexibility and generality. In this book, the top specialists of the field pin down the methodological core of transcendental epistemology that must be used in order to throw light on the foundations of modern physics. First, the basic tools Kant used for his transcendental reading of Newtonian Mechanics are examined, and then early transcendental approaches of Relativistic and Quantum Physics are revisited. Transcendental procedures are also applied to contemporary physics, and this renewed transcendental interpretation is finally compared with structural realism and constructive empiricism. The book will be of interest to scientists, historians and philosophers who are involved in the foundational problems of modern physics. (shrink)

P. Kyle Stanford - The Manifest Connection: Causation, Meaning, and David Hume - Journal of the History of Philosophy 40:3 Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.3 339-360 The Manifest Connection: Causation, Meaning, and David Hume P. Kyle Stanford 1. Introduction exciting recent hume scholarship has challenged the traditional view that Hume's theory of meaning leads him to deny the very intelligibility or coherence of supposing that there are objective causal powers or intrinsic necessary connections between causally related entities. Influential (...) recent interpretations have variously held that Hume himself accepted the existence of such powers and connections, that he was genuinely agnostic about them, or that he denied their existence while nonetheless holding it to be a perfectly coherent possibility, indeed one that we routinely think actual. In this paper I will argue against all three of these lines of interpretation and in favor of what I consider a neglected alternative: that Hume rejects the existence of objective necessary connections or causal powers as literally incoherent or meaningless, but on subtle and sophisticated semantic grounds, rather than simplistic ones. I find support for this semantic reading and against the alternatives not only in passages whose significance to the debate is widely appreciated, but also in Hume's discussions "Of Liberty and Necessity" and "Of the Immateriality of the Soul." The.. (shrink)

Equipoise is advocated as a means of achieving high scientific and ethical standards in randomised trials. As used in the context of research the word describes a state of uncertainty characterised by the belief that in a trial no arm is known to offer greater harm or benefit than any other arm. Clinicians who lack personal equipoise are advised to accept clinical or communal equipoise, based on current unresolved disagreement among the medical profession. Equipoise is mainly discussed in the literature (...) as an issue for senior doctors and research directors. Limitations of professional equipoise are reviewed, and data on the neglected topic of patients' equipoise are reported using the example of breast cancer trials. In theory, a patient who gives informed and voluntary consent to enter a randomised trial has achieved the equilibrium of equipoise. In practice, equipoise among patients ranges from personal to proxy acceptance. (shrink)

The author clarifies the existential philosophy that is implicit in Kurt Goldstein's philosophy of organism (Goldstein, 1963; 1995). Situated in response to the growing trend that psychological phenomena are reducible to the nervous system, the author argues for the reverse: that the significance of nervous system activity can only be understood by viewing it as background to foreground performances. Like the organization of perception into meaningful figure-- ground Gestalts, the existential modes of embodiment, sociality, temporality, spatiality, and attunement are organized (...) together to accomplish foreground performances. It is only within this context that the activity of the nervous system may be understood as significant or insignificant. Speech is given as an example. The article concludes with a commentary on how the trend of reducing psychological phenomena to neurological phenomena has impaired our understanding of brain disorders and psychological disorders. (shrink)

In the axiomatic development of the logic of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics it is not difficult to set down certain plausible axioms which ensure that the quantum logic of propositions has the structure of an orthomodular poset. This can be done in a number of ways, for example, as in Gunson [2], Mackey [4], Piron [5], Varadarajan [7] and Zierler [8], and we summarise one of these ways in §2 below.

I contrast our own evidence for the hypothesis of organic fossil origins with that available in previous centuries, suggesting that the most powerful contemporary evidence consists in a form of projective support whose distinctive features are not well captured by familiar hypothetico-deductive, abductive, or even more recent and more technically sophisticated accounts of scientific confirmation. I suggest that such accounts either misrepresent or ignore something important about the heterogeneous ways in which scientific hypotheses can be supported by evidence, and I (...) go on to suggest that the search for any single such account may be misguided in any case. (shrink)

Say a reason to ø is legal just in case at least a part of the reason is the fact that ø-ing is legally required. This paper is about the widely accepted claim that legal reasons have a certain distinctive formal property—content-independence. I argue that, on two important interpretations, this claim is false. It is false either because legal reasons contingently lack the relevant property or because no reason lacks it. I also argue that, given these two interpretations, content-independence could (...) not be a property of singular legal reasons. (shrink)

It is the purpose of this note to comment on some important problems which have been already vividly discussed by several authors. Besides the well known former discussions of Schrödinger and J. v. Neumann I should like to mention here especially H. Margenau's article, “Critical Points in Modern Physical Theory,” which strongly influenced my present discussion.

This article explores the influence of Stoicism and religion on Adam Smith. While other commentators have argued either that the main influence on Smith was Stoicism or that it was religion, the two influences have not been explicitly linked. In this article I attempt to make such a link, arguing that Smith can be seen as belonging to the strand of Christian Stoicism chiefly associated with his teacher, Francis Hutcheson. Finally, some comments are made about the implications of this interpretation (...) for current understanding of the work of Adam Smith. (shrink)

Several cases which have been considered by the courts in recent years have highlighted the legal dilemmas facing doctors whose decisions result in the ending of a patient's life. This paper considers the case of Dr Cox, who was convicted of attempting to murder one of his patients, and explores the roles of motive, diminished responsibility and consent in cases of "mercy killing". The Cox decision is compared to that of Tony Bland and Janet Johnstone, in which the patients were (...) in a persistent vegetative state. In all three cases, the doctors believed that their patients' quality of life was so poor that their continued existence was of no benefit to them, and decided that their lives should not be unduly prolonged, yet the doctor who was prosecuted was the one whose dying patient had requested that her death be hastened. The paper examines the law's seemingly contradictory approaches to such cases. (shrink)