A group blog of scholars exploring Indian philosophy
Call for Applications Postdoctoral Fellowship in Jain Studies About the Fellowship The Department of Asian Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem invites applications for a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Jain Studies. The fellowship is designed to support an outstanding early-career Continue reading Postdoctoral Fellowship in Jain Studies
Karin Meyers’s work on the “damned topics” of Buddhist philosophy is most powerful on the topic of rebirth. Because that’s the place where there’s actually some reasonably powerful evidence for the “damned topic”. Where I think she goes too far Continue reading You still have to naturalize karma
My 2010 article (“Bhaṭṭa Rāmakaṇṭha’s Elaboration of Self-Awareness (svasaṃvedana), and How it Differs from Dharmakīrti’s Exposition of the Concept”) listed eight differences between self-awareness (svasaṃvedana) and I-cognition (ahampratyaya). (Pre-modern Indian philosophers could be divided into three groups, depending on whether Continue reading Is I-cognition ‘the same for everyone’?
American University philosopher Karin Meyers made an important contribution to Buddhist philosophical studies with her 2016 essay “The damned topics of Buddhist philosophy“. The essay (available free online) has never been formally published, though it clearly deserves to be: when Continue reading On the damned topics of Buddhist philosophy
My father’s memorial service was last weekend. The event was wonderful, bringing together friends and family I hadn’t seen in decades. It was heartwarming to see colleagues, neighbours, Canadian family, Indian family, American family share their fond recollections of him. Continue reading Passages of death and hope
We recently received the following information from Scott Stroud (University of Texas at Austin) on behalf of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy (SAAP). This prize is an exciting way to recognize the some of the many philosophical Continue reading Ambedkar Prize Established by the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy (SAAP)
My previous post looked at Elisa’s discussion of a seeming contradiction in Kumārila. In this post I attempt to give my own answer to the question that Elisa saw as prompted by that seeming contradiction: Does Kumārila accept that the Continue reading Is I-cognition for Kumārila a kind of perception?
Unlike “progressive” Americans who embrace race, the caste reformer B.R. Ambedkar envisioned a world where race/caste distinctions were annihilated – and specifically by mixing, by intermarriage. The view of racial purity shared by the mainstream American left and right – Continue reading “The future will belong to the mestiza”
Suguru Ishimura and I are currently preparing a heavily annotated English translation of Ślokavārttika ātmavāda, verses 107–139, the section concerned with I-cognition (ahampratyaya). The translation is to appear in a Kumārila Reader, edited by Elisa Freschi and Nilanjan Das. After Continue reading Is there a seeming contradiction in Kumārila’s account of I-cognition?
According to Kumārila, much can be sense-perceived. It goes without saying that sensible qualities can be sense-perceived, but Kumārila thinks that we can also sense-perceive the substance behind the sense-qualities (that is, the substrate of the sense-qualities). He also thinks Continue reading Kumārila and the limits of perception