The success of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) worldwide has led to an accumulation of frozen embryos that are surplus to the reproductive needs of those for whom they were created. In these situations, couples must decide whether to discard them or donate them for scientific research or for use by other infertile couples. While legislation and regulation may limit the decisions that couples make, their decisions are often shaped by their religious beliefs. Unfortunately, health professionals, scientists and policy-makers are often (...) unaware of the way in which faith traditions view ART and decisions concerning the ‘fate’ of surplus embryos. In this paper scholars representing six major religious traditions provide a commentary on a hypothetical case concerning the donation or destruction of excess ART embryos. These commentaries provide a rich account of religious perspectives on the status of the human embryo and an insight into the relevance of faith to health and policy decisions, particularly in reproductive medicine, ART and embryo research. (shrink)

In His Learned Book, Development Of Nyaya Philosophy And Its Social Context Professor Sibajiban Bhattacharyya Has Traced The History Of Nyaya Philosophy With Reference To Its Social Contexts. That This System Of Philosophy, Darsana, Is Not Unnecessarily Abstract But Has Taken Congizance Of Its Theoretical Ancestry As Well As Practical Circumstances Will Be Evident To The Perceptive Reader. As A Branch Of Knowledge, Vidya, Philosophy As Darsana Was Known In India For A Long Time. In Kautilya'S Arthasastra The Recognized (...) Branches Of Knowledge Are Four: (I) The Three Vedas (Trayi), (Ii) Trade And Commerce (Varta); (Iii) Law And Order (Dandaniti) And (Iv) Anvisiki, Which According To Kautilya Means Sankhya, Yoga And Lokayata. However, Later On Anvisiki Stood For Logic And Metaphysic. In The History Of Indian Philosophy The First Use Of The Term Darsana Has Been Attributed To Haribhadrasuri, The Jaina Philosopher And Author Of The Sad Darsana Samuccaya. Nearly 400 Years After Haribhadrasuri The Term Darsana In The Current Sense Was Used By Sankaracarya In His Commentary On The Brahmasutra. In This Comprehensive Book Professor Bhattacharyya Has Dealt With The Works Of Mostof The Famous Nyaya Thinkers Like Gautama, Vatsyayana, Jayanta Bhatta, Bhasarvajna, Udayana, Vardhamana And Various Other Writers Down The Centuries. This Scholarly Book From The Pen Of Bhattacharyya Is Highly Readable And Informative. It Is Hoped That The Book Will Be Profitably Used By Researchers, Scholars And The General Reading Public. (shrink)

Contributed research papers presented at International Conference on "Importance of Commentaries for Understanding Sanskrit Text", organized by Department of Sanskrit, University of Gour Banga, Malda on 5th-6th April 2017.

Recently a gender-selective harvesting strategy has been proposed for possible control of aquatic invasive species, wherein females of the invasive species are harvested, whilst stocking the males (abbreviated as FHMS strategy) (Lyu et al. in Nat Resour Model 33(2):e12252, 2020). We consider the FHMS strategy with a weak Allee effect, and show that its extinction boundary need not be hyperbolic. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first example of a non-hyperbolic extinction boundary in two-compartment mating models structured (...) by sex. The model possesses a rich dynamical structure, with several local co-dimension one bifurcations occurring. We also show the occurrence of a global homoclinic bifurcation, which has applicability for large scale strategic bio-control. (shrink)

The classical theory of rational choice is built on several important internal consistency conditions. In recent years, the reasonableness of those internal consistency conditions has been questioned and criticized, and several responses to accommodate such criticisms have been proposed in the literature. This paper develops a general framework to accommodate the issues raised by the criticisms of classical rational choice theory, and examines the broad impact of these criticisms from both normative and positive points of view.

A defining characteristic of modern science is its ability to make immensely successful predictions of natural phenomena without invoking a putative god or a supernatural being. Here, we argue that this intellectual discipline would not acquire such an ability without the mathematical zero. We insist that zero and its basic operations were likely conceived in India based on a philosophy of nothing, and classify nothing into four categories—balance, absence, emptiness and nonexistence. We argue that zero is a tangible representation of (...) nonexistence and constitutes all nonzero numbers, which together represent existence. It appears that zero’s journey out of India somewhat separated its mathematical and philosophical aspects, with the former being more valued by some cultures and the latter by others. The European culture, in which modern science grew, largely ignores a philosophy of nothing due to a deep-rooted Greek philosophical base, although this science relies on the notion of nonexistence through zero. Consequently, zero is a mere number of convenience without its foundational philosophy in science, and techniques to circumvent zero are developed. We insist that, while such techniques contribute to the progress of science and mathematics within the current framework, a tendency to avoid zero and its philosophy leads to approximations and may hinder a deeper understanding. Finally, we argue that nonexistence may notionally constitute existence, and hence may be the fundamental. This implies that, if a supernatural being exists, it is not the fundamental. The independence of modern science from a supernatural being is consistent with this. (shrink)

The decimation of the Sundarbans has resulted from attempts to satisfy short-term demands by exhausting the chances of satisfying future demands. The forest cannot be preserved by a policy that under-valorizes the urgency of the short-term needs or by a policy that is imposed from above, but it may be by social forestry. Social forestry augments the supply of forest products from non-forest lands, and, most significantly, includes the users in developing appropriate forest policies.

Unification of natural science and social science is a centuries-old, unmitigated debate. Natural science has a chronological advantage over social science because the latter took time to include many social phenomena in its fold. History of science witnessed quite a number of efforts by social scientists to fit this discipline in a rational if not mathematical framework. On the other hand a tendency among some physicists has been observed especially since the last century to recast a number of social phenomena (...) in the mould of events taking place in physical world and governed by well-known systems and equations of physics. It necessitated the introduction of social physics as a new inter-disciplinary subject. Obviously this attempt is aimed at explaining hitherto unsolved or highly debated issues of social science. Physicists are showing special interest on problems on economics, ranging from some topics of normative economics to the movement of prices of derivatives. Statistics has been widely used in these attempts and at least two sub-disciplines of the subject, namely, stochastic process and time series analysis deserve special mention. All these research activities gave birth to another inter-disciplinary subject named as econophysics. Interestingly, global financial crisis of 2007–08 has revived the need of determination of prices of derivatives in a more accurate manner. This article adumbrates a sketch of the theoretical synthesis between physics and economics and the role played by statistics in this process. (shrink)

This essay explores the history of the silty sediments that make up the littorals of the Bengal Delta to see how they emerged as an object of scientific inquiry and as part of a hydrosocial and political history. By using the conceptual framing of hydrosociality, the piece investigates the political and legal possibilities of amphibious landscapes to document the colonial legal engagement with and scientific puzzlement over these silty sediments and their postcolonial afterlives. As temporary landscapes, silts and sediments pose (...) a unique problem for historians, for they leave scanty archival traces. When they emerge in the state archive it is as sites of conflict, rather than sites of life. They also emerge as a problem for science to map and solve. This essay gathers some snippets of the fragmentary journey of shoals as they emerge and disappear in the scientific and legal archive. Focusing on three moments of interruption in the colonial and postcolonial encounters with the littorals of the Bengal Delta, it argues that the inability of scientific discourse to come up with a conceptual grammar was conducive to new legal articulations about these spaces. Unfortunately, the consequences of this are playing out in the contemporary moment as a humanitarian crisis. (shrink)

Most universities solicit feedback from students at the end of a course in order to assess student perceptions of the course. This feedback is used for various objectives, including for evaluating teaching by academic administrators. One would therefore expect faculty to rationally take this into account while formulating their teaching strategy. In certain cases, such strategic considerations can give rise to moral hazard. I have modelled the situation using the well-known Prisoners Dilemma game and found that in equilibrium, the teaching (...) style will be examination-centric, while considerations of societal good would demand that the teaching style be knowledge-centric. I also discuss the policy implications for this finding. (shrink)

Background The world is urbanizing rapidly; more than half the world’s population now lives in urban areas, leading to significant transition in lifestyles and social behaviours globally. While offering many advantages, urban environments also concentrate health risks and introduce health hazards for the poor. In Bangladesh, although many public policies are directed towards equity and protecting people’s rights, these are not comprehensively and inclusively applied in ways that prioritize the health rights of citizens. The country is thus facing many issues (...) that raise moral and ethical concerns. Methods A narrative literature review was conducted between October 2016 and November 2017 on issues related to social justice, health, and human rights in urban Bangladesh. The key questions discussed here are: i) ethical dilemmas and inclusion of the urban poor to pursue social justice; and ii) the ethical obligations and moral responsibilities of the state and non-state sectors in serving Bangladesh’s urban poor. Using a Rawlsian theory of equality of opportunity to ensure social justice, we identified key health-related ethical issues in the country’s rapidly changing urban landscape, especially among the poor. Results We examined ethical dilemmas in Bangladesh’s health system through the rural–urban divide and the lack of coordination among implementing agencies. The unregulated profusion of the private sector and immoral practices of service providers result in high out-of-pocket expenditures for urban poor, leading to debt and further impoverishment. We also highlight policy and programmatic gaps, as well as entry points for safeguarding the right to health for Bangladeshi citizens. Conclusions The urban health system in Bangladesh needs a reform in which state and non-state actors should work together, understanding and acknowledging their moral responsibilities for improving the health of the urban poor by engaging multiple sectors. The social determinants of health should be taken into account when formulating policies and programs to achieve universal health coverage and ensure social justice for the urban poor in Bangladesh. (shrink)

Indonesia is a multicultural country with hundreds of local languages used by Indonesians with Bahasa Indonesia as a national language and used by the mass media, in formal conversation, at all levels of education, and in written language. This study aimed to investigate whether speaking Bahasa Indonesia in public and at home or not, and whether speaking only Bahasa or besides Bahasa (another language) affects the performance of seven cognitive tests when the assessment was done in Bahasa Indonesia. In case (...) large effects will be obtained, this may demand different norm referenced scores. Data of 840 subjects, in age ranging from 16–80 with various levels of education from six regions were included. The results showed that there was a small disadvantage in the Digit Span for people who do not speak Bahasa Indonesia in public and a small advantage of speaking besides Bahasa (another language) in public on Rey’s Auditory Verbal Learning Test and on time to complete the Figure Reproduction tests. Other tests, such as the TMT, Stroop, 5PT, and Bourdon were without any effect. It can be concluded that corrections for the normative data, as is commonly done for education, age and sometimes sex, for people who do not speak Bahasa daily and for speaking besides Bahasa (another language) considering that the differences were only small, is not indicated. (shrink)

Businesses often attempt to demonstrate their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) by showcasing women in their leadership ranks, most of whom are white. Yet research has shown that organizations confer status and power to women who engage in sexist behavior, which undermines DEI efforts. We sought to examine whether women who engage in racist behavior are also conferred relative status at work. Drawing on theory and research on organizational culture and intersectionality, we predicted that a white woman who (...) expresses anti-Black racism is conferred more status in the workplace than a white woman who does not. A pilot study (N = 30) confirmed that making an anti-Black racist comment at work was judged to be more offensive than making no comment, but only for a white man, not a white woman. Study 1 (N = 330) found that a white woman who made an anti-Black racist comment at work was conferred higher status than a white woman who did not, whereas the opposite held true for a white man, with perceived offensiveness mediating these effects. Study 2 (N = 235) revealed that a white woman who made an anti-racist/pro-Black Lives Matter comment was conferred lower status than a white woman who did not, whereas the opposite held true for a white man. Finally, Study 3 (N = 295) showed that people who endorse racist and sexist beliefs confer more status to a white man than to a white woman regardless of speech, but that people low in racism and sexism confer the highest status to a white woman who engages in anti-Black racist speech. These studies suggest that white women are rewarded for expressing support for beliefs that mirror systemic inequality in the corporate world. We discuss implications for business ethics and directions for future research. (shrink)

Treatises on Indian philosophy have multiplied in the last thirty years, in the “West as well as in India itself. And in spite of the demanding nature of this subject—it exacts, so to speak, a uniform presentation; it entails a whole succession of systems, each one of which is elaborated in a more or less independent manner—this abundance is nonetheless profitable. Each author makes his contribution in the detailed account of new views and strives to rejuvenate a somewhat refractory material, (...) even if this involves the taking up of old views, discarded or neglected by the new generation of scholars. (shrink)

Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya, one of the preeminent Indian philosophers of the 20th century, proposed that the absolute appears in three alternative forms - truth, freedom and value. Each of these forms are for Bhattacharyya absolute, ultimate, not penultimate. Each is different from the other, yet they cannot be said to be one or many. He contends that these absolutes are incompatible with each other and that an articulation of the relation between the three absolutes is not feasible. This paper (...) will review Bhattacharyya 's presentation of the absolute in its alternative forms and will place these abstractions within the context of three specific religious traditions that he sees illustrating his point. Then, using a model based upon holography, I will illuminate with 'concrete images' that which Bhattacharyya could deductively formulate but could not logically integrate. Holography, the process by which three-dimensional images are produced from an imageless film - a film in which each part can reproduce the whole - will be used as a heuristic device to illuminate the simultaneous and mutually interpenetrating existence of the absolute in three forms. This model will illumine how these three forms can be conceived of as not the same yet not other and how these forms can be incompatible as absolutes, but metaphysically inseparable. (shrink)

In the 1930s, the Bengali philosopher K. C. Bhattacharyya proposed a new theory of rasa, or aesthetic emotion, according to which aesthetic emotions are feelings that have other feelings as their intentional objects. This paper articulates how Bhattacharyya’s theory offers a novel solution to the puzzle of how it is both possible and rational to enjoy the kind of negative emotions that are inspired by tragic and sorrowful tales. The new solution is distinct from the conversion and compensation (...) views that dominate the existing literature, and it derives its significance from how it ties aesthetic experience to self-awareness. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Making of Contemporary Indian Philosophy: Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya ed. by Daniel Raveh and Elise Coquereau-SaoumaMuzaffar Ali (bio)The Making of Contemporary Indian Philosophy: Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya. Edited by Daniel Raveh and Elise Coquereau-Saouma. London: Routledge, 2023. Pp. xiii+ 263. Hardcover £120, isbn 978-0-367-70981-5. Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya (KCB) is more than the seminal essay, "Svaraj in Ideas," through which academicians, politicians, postcolonial/decolonial thinkers and too often philosophers usually identify (...) and fossilize him. That, in my opinion, is the characteristic message of this volume. The message attains significance when calls for decolonization result in the sacrifice of actual philosophical legacy and resources to 'mere polity talk'. KCB, and with him other philosophers, need to be rescued from this 'mere polity talk', and the current volume rightly navigates in that direction. Setting the tone, The Making of Contemporary Indian Philosophy: Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya states that KCB is a significant yet unsung piece in the "jigsaw puzzle" of contemporary Indian philosophy (CIP). It rightly acknowledges KCB as the father of CIP, a distinct-yet-neglected genre of Indian philosophy "that draws on both classical Indian philosophical sources and Western materials, old and new" (p. 3). With a focus on KCB, the volume attempts to get back to and deliberate on the spectrum of his philosophy with two aims: a) To rediscover the philosophical significance and novelty of his philosophy where the classics of Indian philosophy and the modern avatars of European philosophy are made to speak to each other, and, b) To re-turn the attention of a global philosophical landscape that remains dominated by classical Indian philosophy and modern Western philosophy towards the present, "the now," of Indian philosophy in CIP, which was set in motion by KCB at the beginning of the twentieth century. The volume is divided into five sections. The first section, "Entrée" includes Daniel Raveh's "Introduction" and Daya Krishna's essay on KCB. Raveh's introduction classifies KCB's philosophy under three rubrics of decolonization (Svaraj), philosophical reflections (KCB's series of studies), and independent essays (conceptualizations). It also offers a synoptic reading of available literature on KCB, so that the reader can situate his philosophy within the multifaceted discourses that need to be recognized, reconfigured and revisited. Daya Krishna's essay is based on his two separate books so that a joint overview of KCB's notion of subject-object and the three Absolutes can be offered to the reader. The second section, "Lexicography" has three essays where the contributors [End Page 1] investigate, analyse or study a particular concept from KCB's philosophy. Elise Coquereau-Souma's essay focuses on the absence of a specific definition of "demand" in KCB's entire project. To unravel the implications of the concept of demand in KCB, she argues that it, "instigates the movement of KCB's method" (p. 49) to study, understand, and realise the domain of the experiential. Nir Feinberg's contribution underlines given-ness as felt-fact (p. 72) in KCB's contemporary commentary on Śaṅkara's theory of māyā. Feinberg argues that KCB innovatively explores the possibility of understanding the reality of the world (otherwise illusory) through the category of feeling, and that knowledge and facts have a limited application to eliminate this feeling of reality. Dor Miller's essay focuses on the concept of rasa in KCB's philosophy. Miller argues that KCB considers rasa as a "feeling par excellence" that needs to be understood, examined and studied in consonance with other human feelings. KCB thus classifies feelings into "'direct,' 'sympathetic,' and 'contemplative'" (p. 80). The aesthetic experience of reality, Miller tells us, becomes possible through the contemplative feeling whose subject is "impersonal, or universal" (p. 89). Miller claims that KCB's interpretation of rasa via the realm of contemplative feelings transcends the traditional commentarial paradigms of rasa and may offer a remedy to some contemporary anxieties of rasa theorists, especially those raised by Mukund Lath. The third section, "Philosophical Junctions," includes four contributions and starts with Stephen Kaplan's chapter on KCB's three Absolutes and four aspects of negation. Kaplan is interested in understanding whether a mapping between KCB's fourfold theory... (shrink)

Aesthetic hedonists agree that an aesthetic value is a property of an item that stands in some constitutive relation to pleasure. Surprisingly, however, aesthetic hedonists need not reduce aesthetic normativity to hedonic normativity. They might demarcate aesthetic value as a species of hedonic value, but deny that the reason we have to appreciate an item is simply that it pleases. Such is the approach taken by an important strand of South Asian rasa theory that is represented with great clarity and (...) ingenuity in the work of K. C. Bhattacharyya. Bhattacharyya is an aesthetic hedonist who grounds aesthetic normativity in freedom. (shrink)

This review brings to the fore the Indian philosopher Kalidas Bhattacharyya. It makes a case for Indian and Asian Studies' scholars to take up the study of Bhattacharya so that his corpus can be used to construct a clear hermeneutic for assessing and accessing Indian texts, say in English and also other English literary texts. Bhattacharyya has been neglected too long by the world.

Krishnachandra's re-articulation of Kant's transcendental system challenges Kant's conceptualization of 'apperceptive self' conceived as a logical function which is as well the precondition of all our knowledge claims. In Kant's framework, though this "unity of consciousness" is projected as a principle, which undertakes a foundational role as 'apperceptive I', it is capacitated with merely a logical function. Krishnachandra disagrees with Kant's reduction of function of the "self" to a logical process. This reduction would render knowledge of the "self" to be (...) an inferential knowledge, thus making this derivation analogous to the proofs of the transcendental conditions of understanding and sensibility through the logical process of deductions. Krishnachandra's question is: whether this equation established between logical function of 'apperception' and the "self" will suffice to establish the "certitude" of knowledge claims. This is the first task Krishnachandra addresses in his work, Studies in Kant which is elucidated in the following section of this paper. Further, we will see how Krishnachandra’s exploration into the dynamics of this problem leads him to alternatively foreground the "unity", which is much sought by Kantian scholars, between the theoretical and the practical domains of Reason. (shrink)

This book engages in a dialogue with Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya (K.C. Bhattacharyya, KCB 1875-1949) and presents a vista of contemporary Indian philosophy. KCB is one of the founding fathers of contemporary Indian philosophy; a distinct genre of philosophy that draws both on classical Indian philosophical sources and on Western materials, old and new. His work offers both a new and different reading of classical Indian texts, and at the same time he is a unique commentator of Kant and Hegel. (...) The book (re)introduces KCB's philosophy, identifies the novelty of his thinking, and highlights different dimensions of his oeuvre, with special emphasis on freedom as a concept and striving, extending from the metaphysical to the political (or the postcolonial). The contributors to this book decipher KCB's distinct vocabulary (demand, feeling, alternation) and revisit his discussion of Rasa aesthetics. The chapters offer a bird's eye view of his corpus to ascertain if and how its different compartments converge and illuminate the place of the body in his phenomenological inquiry toward "the subject as freedom". The book situates him between classics (Abhinavagupta) and thinkers inspired by his thought (Daya Krishna) and discuss his lectures on Samkhya and Yoga rather than projecting him solely under the rubric of Vedanta. Finally, the book analyzes if and how KCB's philosophical work is relevant to the discourse today, from the problem of other minds to freedoms in the social and political spheres. This book will be of interest to academics studying Indian and comparative philosophy, philosophy of language and mind, phenomenology without borders, and political and postcolonial philosophy. (shrink)

I shall examine in this paper the distinctive way in which the prominent Indian philosopher Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya engaged with Advaita Vedānta during the terminal phase of the colonial period. I propose to do this by looking, first, at ways in which Krishnachandra understood the role of his own philosophizing within the colonial predicament. I will call this his agenda in ‘confrontative’ philosophy. I shall proceed, then, by sketching out the unique manner in which this agenda was successfully enacted through (...) his engagement with the Advaitic notion of self-knowledge. Finally, I will suggest that putting K. C. Bhattacharyya’s thought into the historical perspective of cross-cultural philosophy will reveal a number of shortcomings that need to be revised in a postcolonial setup. (shrink)

: Classical Sāmkhya, as represented by Īśvarakrsna's Sāmkhya-kārikā, is well known for its attempt to prove not only the reality but the plurality of selves (purusa-bahutva). The Sāmkhya argument, since it proceeds from the reality of the manyness of the bodies as its basic premise, approximates, even if not in every detail, the 'argument from analogy' in its traditional form (which the essay tries to explicate). One distinguished modern interpreter, K. C. Bhattacharyya, however, not satisfied with this account, attempts (...) to interpret and expound Sāmkhya pluralism in terms of a radically different strategy consisting of showing that the self is known in buddhi in its pure asmita function as an infinite I and so as necessarily involving all Is or selves. This solution, which in the process offers reflections on such issues as infinity, universals, the role of 'I', the individuality (of self ), et cetera, is examined and criticized at length with respect to some of its basic assumptions, with a brief focus on the idea of 'self-consciousness', which according to some (Western) philosophers presupposes 'other'-consciousness and which in certain respects seems to inform Bhattacharyya's thoughts on the main issue. (shrink)

Daniel Raveh's book consists of four chapters, each dedicated to a certain narrative, retold and analyzed vis-à-vis Pātañjala-Yoga, and through the writings of contemporary philosophers such as Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya, Pandit Badrinath Shukla, Daya Krishna and Mukund Lath. The narratives discussed are from the Upaniṣadic lore, the Mahābhārata, the pre-modern Śaṅkara-digvijaya, and finally the script of a recent Bollywood movie, Ghajini.There are several layers to the book, all interesting in and of themselves, but their interconnection is the heart of this (...) unusual work. The thread that binds these layers and connects a myriad of themes and texts--classical and... (shrink)

Shun Kwong-loi argues that the distinction between first- and third-person points of view does not play as explanatory a role in our moral psychology as has been supposed by contemporary philosophical discussions. He draws insightfully from the Confucian tradition to better elucidate our everyday experiences of moral emotions, arguing that it offers an alternative and more faithful perspective on our experiences of anger and compassion. However, unlike the distinction between first- and third-person points of view, Shun’s descriptions of anger and (...) compassion leave unarticulated what would be necessary to differentiate these responses from non-moral responses. Here, I make a friendly suggestion on how this explanatory gap might be filled, providing complementary grounding for Shun’s observations by way of K. C. Bhattacharyya’s phenomenological analysis of feeling. It fills the gap by means of a gradation in the possible depth of emotional responses found in the a priori structure of a feeling experience for any subject. The payoff of such a comparison between Shun’s explication of Confucian moral psychology and Bhattacharyya’s explication of rasa theory is not only a possible phenomenological grounding for the former but also a potential way to articulate a missing ethics in Bhattacharyya’s thought. (shrink)

This paper explains some of the uses of the word ‘freedom’ in Western as well as in Indian philosophy. Regarding the psychological concept of freedom or free will, this paper focuses on the distinction between fatalism, determinism, types of compatibilism, and libertarianism. Indian philosophers, by and large, are compatibilists, although some minor systems, such as Śākta Āgama, favor a type of libertarianism. From the Indian perspective the form of life of human beings has also been mentioned in the discussion of (...) free will. Regarding metaphysical freedom, I discuss the views of the Bhagavad Gītā and Swami Vivekananda in Sect. III. K.C. Bhattacharyya, a neo-Advaita Vedāntin, has discussed degrees of freedom of the subject at several levels. According to him, spiritual progress lies in the progressive realization of the freedom of the subject. I compare his view with the classical Advaita concept of freedom. I have also addressed the question of whether freedom from suffering can be realized at social and global levels. In this context I have mentioned some of the interpretations of the great saying ‘I am Brahman,’ and how freedom can be realized at the global level by using the Advaita concept of ‘oneness.’. (shrink)

The article offers a close reading of the famous upanişadic story of Indra, Virocana and Prajāpati from the eighth chapter of the Chāndogya-Upanişad versus Śankara’s bhāşya, with special reference to the notions of suşupti and turīya. That Śankara is not always loyal to the Upanişadic texts is a well-known fact. That the Upanişads are (too) often read through Śan-kara’s Advaitic eyes is also known. The following lines will not merely illustrate the gap between text and commentary but will also reveal (...) an unexpected Upanişadic depiction of ‘dreamless sleep’ and ‘transcendental consciousness’. Suşupti is described here as ‘one step too far’, as a ‘break’ or discontinuity in one’s consciousness; whereas turīya is depicted positively, and surprisingly even in wordly terms. Unlike the third state of consciousness in which there is no ‘world’ nor ‘me’, and which is described through Indra’s character as ‘total destruction’ (vināśa); in turīya, the world ‘comes back’, or rather the ‘renouncer’ returns to the world. Sankara’s position, as far as the story under discussion is concerned, is radically different. For him, the Upanişadic story illustrates the continuity of consciousness in all its states. For him, the identification with merely one of the consciousness-states is an error (adhyāsa) which causes suffering. Consciousness prevails even in suşupti, and turīya has nothing to do with ‘coming back to the world’, since there is nowhere to come back from or to. Turīya, as seen by the Advaitin, consists of all the other states of consciousness together, or as K. C. Bhattacharyya puts it, ‘It is not only a stage among stages; it is the truth of the other stages’. (shrink)

The Sense of I: Conceptualizing Subjectivity: In Indian Philosophy (Sāṃkhya-Yoga) This book discusses the sense of I as it is captured in the Sāṃkhya-Yoga tradition – one of the oldest currents of Indian philosophy, dating back to as early as the 7th c. BCE. The author offers her reinterpretation of the Yogasūtra and Sāṃkhyakārikā complemented with several commentaries, including the writings of Hariharānanda Ᾱraṇya – a charismatic scholar-monk believed to have re-established the Sāṃkhya-Yoga lineage in the early 20th century. The (...) textual analysis of the classical Sanskrit sources and their constructive interpretation is enhanced by some crucial questions and points of dispute commonly picked up in the contemporary philosophy of mind, such as the challenge of ontological and categorical reductionism, the criteria of personal identity, the limits of agency and free will, the ineluctability of self-deception, etc. However, defining the sense of ego (ahaṃkāra) and ‘I-am-ness’ (asmitā) is the main focus of this research. Four chapters composing the study are subsequently devoted to: (1) the methodological assumptions of the present author and the basic historical distinctions relevant to the subject matter, (2) linguistic preconditioning of I-consciousness as well as metaphysical coherency and ambiguity of the concept of subjectivity presented by Sāṃkhya-Yoga philosophers, (3) cognitive and ontological issues concerning the embodied ego being opposed to inactive and contentless consciousness, or the pure self (puruṣa), (4) axiological evaluation of self-discipline and significance of liberation from ego. 1. The method, scope, and problem. In the first chapter, the method of comparative philosophy adopted in this book is introduced by a phenomenological analysis of ‘otherness’ and ‘alienness’ inspired by the considerations of Bernhard Waldenfels and his understanding of xenology. This section is followed by a critical reflection on the incommensurability of the alternative conceptual frameworks, supported by some arguments provided by Ludwik Fleck and Richard E. Nisbett. When explaining the term ‘comparative philosophy’, the author pays special attention to those proponents of the aforementioned current who contributed to the rapprochement of Western and Indian philosophical traditions by tracing both their similarities and divergences. The author makes references to numerous prominent researchers, such as Paul Masson-Oursel, Paul Deussen, Stanisław Schayer, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Bimal K. Matilal, Raimundo Panikkar, Daya Krishna, Wilhelm Halbfass, and many others representing a younger generation. The historical introduction presents a concise survey of the evolution of the Sāṃkhya-Yoga textual tradition, and distinguishes five phases of its development: proto-Sāṃkhya (7th c. BCA – 1st c. CE), pre-classical phase (1st – 5th c. CE), classical Sāṃkhya (3rd – 9th c. CE), post-classical phase (till 14th c.), and neo-classical phase (since 1927). Here, the author also evaluates the primary sources, including Sanskrit commentaries, and the secondary sources in the light of their relevance and usefulness to the constructive interpretation of Yogasūtra and Sāṃkhyakārikā. Then, she makes some methodological remarks concerning the specificity of their reading. This section is concluded with highlighting three main strategies usually applied when interpreting Patañjali’s sūtras: (1) anti-philosophical approach – treating the text as a merely mystical report or the yogic vademecum, (2) anti-mystical perspective – which reads the text as a highly speculative divagation of no much use to a practitioner, (3) mystic-and- philosophical approach – emphasizing the fact that the theory of consciousness presented in Yogasūtra is both philosophically coherent and empirically (or mystically) verified. The author argues for the third, heuristic, perspective mentioned above. The last section of the first chapter aims to problematize the I-concept (aham) and the paradoxical situation of the ego searching for self-knowledge. This part starts with the acknowledgement of the deliberation on non-self (anātman) by Śāntideva, a Buddhist philosopher claiming that one’s own ego ought to be identified with the ego of any other. Then, the author unfolds the fundamental assumptions and scope of the constructive interpretation she wants to develop following K.C. Bhattacharyya’s clues. When explaining her reasons, she stresses both the need to reveal the philosophical meaning of the source materials and, at the same time, the need to make them meaningful on the ground of our contemporary philosophical enquiry. Thus, among the main purposes there is a reliable, scrupulous and careful reconstruction of the historical conception of the self as elaborated on in the classical period of Sāṃkhya-Yoga tradition, as well as reinterpretation of the sense of I as it was grasped by the Sāṃkhya-Yoga thinkers in terms of modern comparative and ‘polylogical’ discourse. 2. Naming I. In the second chapter, a variety of linguistic categories capturing different aspects of subjectivity is discussed in detail. A textual examination is preceded by clarification of the semantic distinctions made by Patañjali, such as a verbal convention (saṃketa) which stands for uniting or overlapping a word (śabda), its meaning (artha) and a mental state of comprehension (pratyaya) that ascribes the word to a particular object. Among the key concepts there is also explained a spontaneous mental activity referring to pseudo-objects posited only by words (vikalpa), which is unwittingly involved in every process of conceptualizing, designating, and naming objects. Such mental states can neither be ‘valid’ nor ‘invalid’, and are believed to unavoidably accompany one’s use of language. These presuppositions testify to Patañjali’s severe criticism towards all verbal conventions that not only affect the way we formulate and construct our views, but also determine the very process of perception. A major section of the chapter contains the analysis of the ambiguous sense of subjectivity and its basic aspects distinguished by the author in the result of a contextual and comparative study of the Sanskrit terms used in Yogasūtra and Sāṃkhyakārikā for naming I-consciousness. The six basic aspects of the self comprise: essentializing oneself, perceiving (something), getting conscious (of something), mastering or owning (something), and being capable of self-identifying as well as disidentifying oneself. A majority of the enumerated predicates ascribed to the self refer to different functions and activities of the empirical ego and the embodied mind. Yet, apart from this intentional, active, reactive, sensing, and objectifiable self Sāṃkhya-Yoga philosophers distinguish a sense of subjectivity going beyond all these psycho-physical characteristics: the self that remains unmanifest, non-active, free from experiencing any joy or pain, said to be the principle of consciousness. The plausibility of its existence as the final cause of the world is to be determined by the embodied ego by virtue of abductive reasoning based on the analysis of all material and psycho-physical phenomena preconditioned by three guṇas that compose the domain of nature (prakṛti). In the subsequent section, three Sanskrit notions – ahaṃkāra, asmitā, and puruṣa, most significant for the Sāṃkhya and Yoga understanding of subjectivity, are discussed closely one after another to expose their semantic, epistemic and metaphysical connotations. The chapter is completed by some pivotal remarks bringing out the problem of discrepancy between the metaphysical position implied by Patañjali and Īśvarakṛṣṇa, and the grammatical instruments applied by them to express it. 3. Cognizing I. The third chapter addresses two important issues in the phenomenology of self-perception, namely the question of psycho-physical dualism explained on the grounds of the considered darśanas, and the spiritual quest for the ideal embodiment of consciousness. While emphasizing the unity of human psycho-physical nature the author refers to several contemporary Western thinkers, such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Thomas Nagel, John R. Searle, David Chalmers and others, by making some comparative remarks on the idea of the embodied mind. Furthermore, three arguments for the plurality of selves (puruṣa-bahutva) are reconstructed and critically considered. The arguments given by Īśvarakṛṣṇa (SK 18) include the diversity of ways in which one experiences one’s life and death, the spatio-temporal distinctness of particular embodied egos, and the variations of features manifested by individual selves. The second section of this chapter presents a thorough inquiry into a non-theistic devotion and spiritual pragmatism defended by the adherents of Sāṃkhya- Yoga. God (īśvara) is defined here primarily as an object of meditative practice and a special tool convenient for yogic pedagogy. In the concluding part of this section four functions of devotional practice (īśvara-pranidhāna) are recognized and explained; they embrace: (1) prevention from mental scattering and dispersion, (2) therapy allowing to form some positive perceptual habits and the right cognitive approach, (3) enhancement of morally and spiritually required qualities, and (4) reinforcement of the sense of subjective identity being a complementary method of self-development. 4. Liberating oneself from I. The final chapter consists of three sections. The first one introduces the concept of liberation through action (pravṛtti-dharma), commonly opposed in Indian tradition to the path of renunciation (nivṛtti- dharma). According to Hariharānanda Ᾱraṇya’s interpretation, both Sāṃkhya- Yoga and Buddhism follow the latter one, which in terms of spiritual practice dynamics makes them much closer to each other than it is usually believed. In the subsequent section the idea of liberating oneself from one’s attachment to ego is explained in detail, along with the significance of gradual self-negation. Then the author raises the interpretation of the Sāṃkhya-Yoga perspective on liberation as self-distinction-through-renunciation. The main focus in this section is placed on the sense of agency (kartṛ), the problem of free will, and the criteria of moral and soteriological evaluation of one’s deeds. Some crucial questions on karmic conditioning of self-knowledge in the form of kleśas are also the subject of careful analysis. The next section undertakes the issue of ownership (mamakāra) of one’s activity and self-esteem (abhimāna) involved in spiritual growth. Again, some comparative remarks are made by referring to the Buddhist philosophers’ positions, such as Nāgārjuna, Āryadeva and Candrakīrti. Among others, the Buddhist refutation of the Sāṃkhya-Yoga concept of eternal, inactive, indifferent, irresponsible, and exclusively conscious self (puruṣa) is quoted and partly rejected in favour of the classical Hindu darśanas. In summary, the author emphasized the significance-generating or sense-creating function of I, its engagement in the search for its own raison d’être, its role in self-identification as well as subverting it, and the expediency of liberation from ego. The philosophers of classical Sāṃkhya and Yoga indicate a twofold sense of the self; on the one hand, the only appropriate designation: ‘I’ is true self (puruṣa), a passive and unknowable principle of consciousness whose existence makes the empirical phenomena meaningful. On the other hand, the ‘I’ clearly designates the current sense of the self, expressed as “I think”, “I doubt”, “I suffer”, etc. This second meaning of ‘I’, the specific sense of ‘mineness’, is recognized as a secondary and relative one – thus illusive and troublesome. However, its delusiveness does not mean that the empirical ego is an unreal or non-existent entity. What it implies is that the empirical self-identity is fundamentally inadequate and – according to the Indian thinkers – ought to be unveiled and, ultimately, given up. (shrink)

In our recent article ‘The Ethics of the Algorithmic Prediction of Goal of Care Preferences: From Theory to Practice’1, we aimed to ignite a critical discussion on why and how to design artificial intelligence (AI) systems assisting clinicians and next-of-kin by predicting goal of care preferences for incapacitated patients. Here, we would like to thank the commentators for their valuable responses to our work. We identified three core themes in their commentaries: (1) the risks of AI paternalism, (2) worries about (...) attacks to our humanity stemming from the use of AI and (3) the possibility of designing AI systems for more relevant use cases than the one we consider in our work. We shall focus on these themes, leaving aside some other interesting suggestions, given the limited space available for our response. Diaz Milian and Bhattacharyya discuss the risks of AI paternalism highlighting how the use of an AI to predict goal of care preferences may incentivise clinicians and surrogates to shift the burden of decision making to the machine.2 In particular, ‘[i]f the AI-generated response is given priority above the other agents’2 and the AI makes decisions autonomously, then ‘AI paternalism’ would emerge.2 Against this possibility, the authors suggest four safeguards to be implemented in the AI life-cycle.2 These are procedures that may improve the trustworthiness of the AI and human control over it.3 We agree that it is important …. (shrink)

This volume focuses on the gradual emergence of modern Indian philosophy through the cross-cultural encounter between indigenous Indian and Western traditions of philosophy, during the colonial period in India, specifically in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This volume acknowledges that what we take 'Indian philosophy' or 'modern Indian philosophy' to mean today is the sub-text of a much wider, complex and varied Indian reception of the West during the colonial period. Consisting of -twelve chapters and a thematic introduction, the (...) volume addresses the role of academic philosophy in the cultural and social ferment of the colonial period in India and its impact on the development of cross-cultural philosophy, the emergence of a cosmopolitan consciousness in colonial India; as also the philosophical contribution of India to cultural globalization. The issue of colonialism and emergence of new identities in India has engaged the critical attention of scholars from diverse fields of inquiry such as history, sociology, politics, and subaltern studies. However, till today the emergence of modern Indian philosophy remains an unexplored area of inquiry. Much of the academic philosophical work of this period, despite its manifest philosophical originality and depth, stands largely ignored, not only abroad, but even in India. This neglect needs to be overcome by a re-reading of philosophical writings in English produced by scholars located in the universities of colonial India. This edited volume will facilitate further explorations into the presence of colonial tensions as they are visible in the writings of modern Indian academic philosophers like B. N. Seal, Hiralal Haldar, Rasvihary Das,, G. R. Malkani, K. C. Bhattacharyya,. G. N. Mathrani and others. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Cit: ConsciousnessAlan PretiCit: Consciousness. By Bina Gupta. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xi + 203.In his 1988 essay "Consciousness in Vedānta,"1 J. N. Mohanty pointed out that, Heidegger notwithstanding, a metaphysics of consciousness has been the destiny of Indian thought. Indeed, from the earliest Upaniṣadic speculations to the growth of the systems, the centrality of the concept of consciousness to the development of Indian philosophy can (...) hardly be denied. It is even arguable that the nature and function of consciousness was perhaps the greatest bone of contention among the darśanas, with some of the more critical disputes turning on the details of a particular theory of consciousness. The importance of the concept lies in the almost universal agreement among classical Indian philosophers that consciousness enjoys a fundamental epistemic priority regarding the guarantee of any ontological claim; any claim with respect to the existence of such and such, to the way the world is, ultimately depends on evidence that is (or was) in some way present to consciousness. Consciousness is thus the fons et origo of all knowledge; in its absence nothing can be claimed about the world.One of the most recent additions to a growing body of literature concerned with examining the concept of consciousness in Indian thought is Bina Gupta's Cit: Consciousness, the inaugural release of Oxford's Foundations of Philosophy in India series, initiated by the Centre for Philosophy and Foundations of Science in New Delhi. The editors intend for the series "to make available a critical reassessment of the philosophical achievement of the classical Indian tradition in such a way that it contributes to the dialogue between civilizations of the new century"—a prospect most welcome by those engaged in Indian and comparative philosophy. [End Page 619]Cit: Consciousness is a natural extension of Gupta's work in The Disinterested Witness: A Fragment of Advaita Vedānta Phenomenology (1998). While concerned there primarily with the notion of the witness consciousness (sākṣin) in the Vivarana tradition of Advaita Vedānta, in Cit Gupta seeks to provide a more general account of consciousness in Indian thought. Her stated goals are "(1) to demonstrate the profound contribution of Indian thought to the theme of consciousness, and (2) to make Indian thought accessible to my readers, irrespective of whether they belong to the Indian or Western tradition" (p. 11). Consistent with the aims of the series, Gupta's approach is conceptual, rather than historical; her focus is specifically on various theories of the nature of consciousness and on the arguments advanced on their behalf. Concerns regarding the losses incurred by abstracting the theories from their historical context are balanced by the recognition that the historical development of a particular school yields one type of understanding, its conceptual structure another (p. 12). In this connection, one may note that Gupta's emphasis on the arguments and conceptual frameworks could make for greater accessibility to those unfamiliar with the territory; certainly the prominence of philological and historical concerns found in many accounts of the development of the schools can prove distracting to the reader seeking the specific philosophical issues.Cit unfolds dialectically, beginning with an analysis of consciousness distilled from the Upaniṣads, continuing through the Nyāya-Vaiśesika and Yogācāra Buddhist views, and culminating with an examination of Advaita Vedānta, both in its classical form and in its "transformations" effected by the contemporary philosophers Sri Aurobindo, K. C. Bhattacharyya, and J. N Mohanty. The order in which the views are discussed is not arbitrary; Gupta's arrangement of the themes purposefully leads to an analysis of Advaita not only because it is, to her mind, "an amazing case of a sublime metaphysical system, subtle logical discursivity, and detailed phenomenological description" (p. x), but also in order to "show that the conceptual nature of the Advaitic theory of consciousness undergoes transformations in the hands of many contemporary thinkers, which makes the Advaitic theory of consciousness stronger and more responsive to modern philosophic challenges" (p. 13). The book, thus, in effect, seeks to vindicate an Advaitic view of consciousness. The final chapter includes a comparative assessment... (shrink)

The subject of this article is the concept of natural liberation in classical Sāṃkhya. On the basis of the Sāṃkhyakārikā by Īśvarakṛṣṇa and its traditional commentaries, I will attempt to demonstrate that liberation from suffering in Sāṃkhya is not the result of rational inquiry—the prevailing view among contemporary scholars. The Sāṃkhya does not necessarily prescribe yogic practice as argued by other scholars. Instead, I will defend a position expressed by K.C. Bhattacharyya and Frank R. Podgorski, according to which liberation (...) in classical Sāṃkhya is a natural and spontaneous process of suffering transforming into its own cure. I will argue that although traditional authorities may disagree over the form the liberating process takes on the phenomenal level, there is a general agreement that the natural forces are the primary drives and agents of liberation. (shrink)

This paper examines the realist interpretation of Vedānta that Rasvihari Das explicated in two of his celebrated treatises, namely, “The Theory of Ignorance in Advaitism” and “The Falsity of the World.” Rasvihari Das, unlike many of his contemporary thinkers of India, took a contrary position against the uninformed generalization about Indian thought that the philosophical tradition of India was one of an unbroken idealism and spiritualism. Though Rasviahari Das was influenced by his senior peer-thinkers of India like Hiralal Haldar, B. (...) N. Seal, and K. C. Bhattacharyya, Rasvihari Das had his own independent view on and interpretation of Vedānta. The paper argues that in the Vedāntic realism of Rasvihari Das there is no rejection of the world or the individuals. In the first part of the paper, I suggests the possible influence of Indian realism on Rasvihari Das. In the second part, I make an attempt to unearth and examine the interpretation of Rasvihari Das that unravels his Vedāntic realism. The third part is the concluding appraisal of Rasvihari Das who could take Vedānta forward from its religious moorings and place it resolutely on a philosophical candour. (shrink)

The first half of the paper consists of a philosophical reflection upon a historical exchange. I discuss Buber’s famous letter, and another letter by J. L. Magnes, to Mahatma Gandhi, both challenging the universality of the principle of ahiṃsā. I also touch on Buber’s interest and acquaintance with Indian philosophy, as an instance of dialogue de-facto across cultures. Gandhi never answered these letters, but his grandson and philosopher extraordinaire Ramchandra Gandhi ›answers‹ Buber, not on the letter but about the ideal (...) of dialogue at large, and the interconnection of dialogue and ahiṃsā. The second half of the paper focuses on the work of Daya Krishna, another ›philosopher of dialogue.‹ from within Daya Krishna’s vast philosophical corpus, I underscore one of his last projects, in which he sketches the outlines of what he refers to as »knowledge without certainty,« contrary to common and traditional ways of perceiving the concept of knowledge. I argue that the pramāṇa, means and measure of knowledge, in the intriguing case of »knowledge without certainty,« depicted by Daya Krishna as open-ended, dynamic, constantly evolving, is inevitably dialogue, and I aim to disclose the meaning and salience of dialogue in Daya Krishna’s oeuvre. However, not just the content, but also the form, or the ›how,‹ matters in my paper. I use different materials across genres and disciplines to rethink, in dialogue with Buber and Daya Krishna, the possibilities and impossibilities of dialogue. These ›materials‹ include Milan Kundera and Richard Rorty, Krishna and Arjuna, Vrinda Dalmiya who works with the notion of care as bridging between epistemology and ethics, Wes Anderson on seeing through the eyes of the other, and Ben Okri on hospitality in the realm of ideas. As author of the present paper I am moderating an imagined a multi-vocal dialogue between these ›participants‹ on dialogue as concept, as craft and especially, as a great necessity in the world in which we live. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Semantic Powers: Meaning and the Means of Knowing in Classical Indian PhilosophyHarold CowardSemantic Powers: Meaning and the Means of Knowing in Classical Indian Philosophy. By Jonardon Ganeri. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. x + 266.In Semantic Powers: Meaning and the Means of Knowing in Classical Indian Philosophy, Jonardon Ganeri adds to our understanding of the Nyāya philosophy of language in the modern English-speaking world. Building on Bimal (...) Matilal's introduction to Nyāya thought in Matilal's foundational Epistemology Logic and Grammar in Indian Philosophical Analysis (1971) and on Karl Potter and Sibajiban Bhattacharyya's Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika from Gangeśa to Raghunatha Siromani (1993), Ganeri's clearly written book valuably extends our knowledge of the Nyāya philosophy of language by its exposition of the seventeenth-century Nyāya philosopher Gadādhara's Saktivāda or "Essay on Semantic Power." Ganeri's exposition is based on having read the first half of the Saktivāda text with Matilal, before the latter's untimely death, and the second half with Bhattacharyya in Calcutta.In the Saktivāda, Gadādhara defends key Nyāya claims as to how language conveys meaning. In the first half of the text, the author deals with such questions as whether languages are convention-based, whether the central function of language is as an instrument of knowing, whether word meaning or sentence meaning is conceptually prior, and whether the notion of meaning is reducible to physical and/or psychological concepts. In the second half, Gadādhara looks at the semantic problems connected with particular constructions: notably proper and theoretical names, anaphors, indexicals, and the quantifiers. The English exposition of Gadādhara's text offered by Ganeri in this book covers the same topics.According to Gadādhara and the Nyāya philosophy, "the language faculty is a sui generis epistemic faculty, reducible to neither perception nor inference nor some combination of these two. The question for the Naiyāyika is: what properties must the language faculty have if it is in this way to be a source of knowledge?" (p. 15). The Nyāya approach also places an emphasis on testimony as a valid source of knowledge (pramāna), which it understands simply as the transmission by language of knowledge from the speaker to the hearer. The "Communication-intention" variable, discussed by recent thinkers such as McDowell, is not dealt with by Nyāya thinkers, who would deny that the acquisition of knowledge by testimony involves anything like the recognition of the speaker's intentions. Rather, the Nyāya thesis is "that understanding typically consists in direct, non-inferential assent, is in sharp contrast to the assumption implicit in McDowell's position: that assenting to another's utterance is never direct, but always depends on the speaker's intentions, or of the speech-act performed by the speaker" (p. 17). In supporting the Nyāya position, Ganeri appeals to Frege's theory of understanding.The basic idea in the Nyāya philosophy of language is that each of us is endowed with a language faculty, analogous to our perceptual faculty, which generates beliefs from perceived utterances. It has a meaning function. As Ganeri puts it: [End Page 419]My testimonial faculty fixes, as it were, a mapping from utterances of a given language to belief contents. The 'meaning' of a statement for me is, by definition, the belief content to which it is mapped by my testimony faculty. If I am able to understand every statement I hear, the language processing mechanism which underpins this faculty must have a certain compositional structure, and that leads to an assignment of belief-content components to subsequential elements in the language, (p. 29)This thought of Gadādhara, dating from about 1700 C.E., resonates with Chomsky's contemporary ideas of "deep structure" and, in classical Indian philosophy, with Bhartṛhari's fifth-century notion of innate-structuring ideas within consciousness (see Coward and Raja, Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies, vol. 5). Like Bhartṛhari, Gadādhara takes the sentence to be the irreducible meaning-bearing unit of language.While Karl Potter and Sibajiban Bhattacharyya's volume 6 of The Encyclopedia... (shrink)

Basic work on Hindu logic and epistemology of the neo-Nyaya school in Hindu philosophy; portion of Tattvacintāmaṇi deals with perception.

Treatise on the concept of relation in Nyaya school in Hindu philosophy.

Articles, most previously published in periodicals, 1955-1975.