A group blog of scholars exploring Indian philosophy
After the IABS, I realised that there were several authors of this blog there, and perhaps even more readers, and that we could have decided to have at least a coffee together. Thus, I thought that we could start sharing Continue reading Which conferences are on the horizon?
The 167th edition of the Philosophers’ Carnival can be found here! It includes also a post by Eric Schwitzgebel on the unavoidability of studying Chinese philosophy and a the post by Amod Lele (on this blog) on the “double standard” Continue reading Philosophers’ Carnival No. 167
On his American Buddhist Perspective blog, my friend Justin Whitaker recently posted an interesting interview on the experience of trans* people in American Buddhism. Justin uses “trans*” as a shorthand for “transgender”, “transsexual”, “transvestite” and similar terms – to denote Continue reading Trans* inclusiveness as an innovation to Buddhism
The Coffee Break Conference began as an attempt to encourage the kind of critical and open-ended discussions that have unfortunately been confined to short coffee breaks at most academic conferences. Coffee Break Conferences give scholars the opportunity to critically discuss Continue reading CfP: Comparison and Comparative Method—The sixth Coffee Break Conference
In a recent exchange with Graham Priest, Massimo Pigliucci (who works mainly in philosophy of science, and Stoicism) takes aim at this notion that most Western philosophers’ disdain for Buddhism has to do with an aversion to contradictions, easily understood if one’s Continue reading Logic, mysticism, both or neither
The title of this post is a reference to a “common-sense” principle that might be called skhalīya-nyāya, since it is attributed to an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (and because it tends to trip people up…) But the Continue reading “Words mean what they mean”
I have recently welcomed the corrective force of books like Andrew Nicholson’s Unifying Hinduism, which remind us that modern appropriations of Indian tradition have their own continuity with the evolving past tradition. I now find myself regularly reminded just how Continue reading The double standard of misinterpretation
The datation of Dharmakīrti is a topic I am not competent enough to speak about, but I will nonetheless try to summarise other people’s arguments. The departing point is the traditionally accepted date of Dharmakīrti, namely 600–660, settled by Erich Continue reading (Third day at the IABS:) Franco on the datation of Dharmakīrti and some further thoughts on Dharmakīrti, Dignāga, Kumārila
We all know that for Dignāga the meaning of a word is apoha ‘exclusion’. But how does one seize it and avoid the infinite regress of excluding non-cows because one has understood what “cow” means? Kataoka at the last IABS Continue reading How exactly does one seize the meaning of a word? K. Yoshimizu 2011 (and Kataoka forthc.) on Dignāga and Kumārila
[Note that this talk was delivered in the presence of the Dalai Lama and a large non-specialist audience, on the specific issue of ‘contemplative studies’ and neuroscience; hence the particular angle of approach. The issues in the main do pertain Continue reading On the possibility and nature of neurophilosophical study of Indic traditions. A Guest Post by Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad