A group blog of scholars exploring Indian philosophy
Words (for the Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā authors) get connected into a complex sentence meaning through proximity (sannidhi), semantic fitness (yogyatā) and syntactic expectancy (ākāṅkṣā). These three criteria correspond to the requirement of being uttered one after the other with no intervening Continue reading Proximity, semantic fitness and syntactic expectancy as criteria for the sentence meaning
Buddhist texts frequently stress the liberating power of prajñā or paññā, metaphysical insight. It is one of the three major components of the path in early texts, one of the six perfections in Mahāyāna. To know the truth about existence Continue reading Unconscious illusions
One image I’ve encountered in Sanskrit texts on language is that of the arrow standing in for the capacity of words. I think the first time (in secondary literature) I saw this was in K.K. Raja’s Indian Theories of Meaning, Continue reading Words are arrows
Let me begin with a guessing game, for those readers who consider themselves relatively widely read in philosophy. I am thinking of a text that examines two different views of human beings. It examines on one hand the view that Continue reading Ultimate and conventional truth in Wilfrid Sellars
Roots of Yoga, translated and edited by James Mallinson and Mark Singleton, UK: Penguin Random House, 2017. 540 pp. $12.23 (paperback). Walk into most places dedicated to the teaching of yoga today, and you will likely see quotes from one Continue reading Book Review of Roots of Yoga, Translated and Edited by James Mallinson and Mark Singleton (Reviewed by Neil Sims)
A little while ago I had the pleasure of giving a guest lecture on Buddhism to David Decosimo‘s class at the Boston University School of Theology. The students were a delight to teach – smart, actively engaged, asking many questions. Continue reading Whose religion? Which science?
What is the current thought on the nature, scope, and reach of Indian philosophy? Handbooks and histories of a given area, subfield, or tradition in philosophy are always good places to start when trying to gauge the current state of Continue reading Indian Philosophy in the Global Cosmopolis
My disagreements with Charles Goodman continue with his contribution to Jake Davis’s thought-provoking volume A Mirror Is For Reflection. (I’ve previously written about Jan Westerhoff’s chapter in the same book.) Just like Westerhoff, Charles is exploring the important question of Continue reading Naturalizing Śāntideva’s eudaimonism
On Nov. 14-16, 2017 I attended a workshop called “Buddhism and Scepticism: Historical, Philosophical, and Comparative Approaches” held at the University of Hamburg. It was sponsored by the Numata Center for Buddhist Studies and the Maimonides Center for Advanced Studies Continue reading Reflections on the Hamburg “Buddhism and Scepticism” Workshop
Patrick O’Donnell, who also contributed to this blog, recently published an interesting response to the above argument, as found in this article by Gaston Dorren. Dorren’s main claim is: While all disciplines attract the occasional eccentric, it seems that two Continue reading “Linguistics in the premodern world? Just nonsense!”