In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Perceiving Particulars Blindly:Remarks on a Nyāya-Buddhist ControversyStephen H. PhillipsIntroductionThe discussion by Mark Siderits in this issue—"Perceiving Particulars"—and two pieces by Monima Chadha—the first her article "Perceptual Cognition: A Nyāya-Kantian Approach" (Chadha 2001) and the second her reply to Siderits in this issue—have taught me much.1 I have little to add beyond agreeing on the whole with Siderits and making a few tweaks concerning Nyāya. Chadha astutely captures the insight (...) of Gaṅgeśa, the fourteenth-century Naiyāyika cited by her (and by Siderits): indeterminate perception does not have a "particular as such" as its object (viṣaya), but only, as she says, a non-particular individual such as a universal or another qualifier that is in principle recurrent (recurrent out in the world), perceivable [End Page 389] again, and thus expressible by a (repeatable) word. Nevertheless, the holism of Wilfred Sellars and Kant and the attack on the "given" are not in the spirit of the Nyāya approach to epistemology, which is thoroughly externalist, as Siderits suggests. In several places (one presented below), Gaṅgeśa shows us controversy within Nyāya about indeterminate perception, including a rival Naiyāyika opinion that bare particulars are indeterminately grasped. This is not his own view, which is that positing indeterminate perception of qualifiers and not also of qualificanda is all that we need. But all in all the issue is not such a big deal, since perception does generate determinate knowledge of particulars, although these are always at least barely clothed.The notion of a "bare particular"—that is, the qualificandum thought about as distinct from all of its qualifiers—is an abstraction from what we directly perceive. We know it only by inference (specifically, by an inference of the sāmānyato dṘṣṭa type). Indeterminate perception is also known only by inference. Even in Navya Nyāya, the big deal is what is known determinately in perception, which is the principal way we know anything (the jyeṣṭa pramāṇa). And, clearly, determinate perceptual awareness is often of a particular—"The pot is blue" and "That's a pot," for instance. The particular known—indeed, the bare particular—is an intrinsic part of the viṣayatā, "intentionality," which is the relation between the knowing cognition and the world known.2Contrary to what Chadha says in her first article, "seeing as" does not require mental construction, according to Nyāya. The property bearer (dharmin = viśeṣya, "qualificandum") is grasped by the sense organ and is known directly in determinate perception as well as the qualifier and the qualificative relation. In two subtypes of perceptual awareness, (a) recurrent experience and (b) the recognition of something perceived previously, Chadha is right: the mind is operative, responsive to the firing of saṃskāra, "memory impressions," and fusing previous perceptual data into a current perceiving: (a) "A cow," "Another," "Another," and (b) "This is that Devadatta (I saw yesterday)." But hardly all cases of determinate perception require the mind (in Chadha's sense). The object known is minimally a complex of a property bearer (the particular as such), property, and an ontological relation tying them up, a-inherence-pothood (where "a" designates the pot as bare particular, "the subject of qualification"); the determinate perception, "That's a pot," makes that particular as qualified known.So, you say, I am agreeing with Chadha, whose argument is directed against the particular as such being known (either determinately or indeterminately) in perception. Yes, but the point is that the particular is known in perception; the particular-as-such is known in perception, although it would be fantasy to think it even possible that we could ever see her, this property bearer, well, not so much bare as disembodied. A rough analogy is seeing a door. We say we "see the door" when we see only one side of it, not the back. We see the thing as a door without grasping everything about the door that its being a door entails.Indeterminate perception of qualifiers is a controversial posit that does various work for Gaṅgeśa and other... (shrink)

The great Advaita Vedāntin Śaṅkara puts forth a mystic parallelism thesis that is identified and examined here: mystical and sensory experiences are epistemically parallel. Among the conclusions drawn are that the Advaita metaphysics precludes successful defense of a Brahman-centered philosophy on the basis of such a thesis because Advaita precludes a story about how the experience of its Brahman could arise. Thus Śaṅkara needs "scripture" (śruti) to secure important parts of his view. A truly mystical Vedānta, in contrast, would not.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:There's Nothing Wrong with Raw Perception:A Response to Chakrabarti's Attack on Nyāya's Nirvikalpaka PratyakṣaStephen H. PhillipsIn the lead article of the fiftieth anniversary issue of Philosophy East and West (January 2000), Arindam Chakrabarti elaborates seven reasons why Nyāya should jettison "indeterminate perception" and view all perception as determinate, that is to say, as having an entity (a) as qualified by a qualifier (F) as object (Fa). In his (...) notes, Chakrabarti invites a reply "so that," as he says, "I may know why immaculate perception is needed by Nyāya after all." The following is a response that shows not so much why indeterminate perception is needed by Nyāya but why it is identified as a causal factor necessary to the arising of some (not all) determinate perception defined as "perception of an entity as qualified." Here I follow Gaṅgeśa Upādhyāya, the fourteenth-century founder (with the help of a few less well known predecessors and contemporaries) of "New Logic," Navya Nyāya. Gaṅgeśa devotes an entire section (about one eighteenth) of the perception chapter of his monumental Tattvacintāmaṇi (Jewel of Reflection about Epistemology) to nirvikalpaka pratyaksṣa,1 and he is a chief target of Chakrabarti's chastisement.2Now, first of all, I want to follow Gaṅgeśa's ground rules. The Naiyāyika is not concerned with strategies about how to look good in debates (with Buddhists or anyone else). His attitude is truth-seeking, not eristic, and thus no reply will be given to Chakrabarti's agonizing about how best to show ourselves in controversies with (in particular, Buddhist) adversaries (and Wilfrid Sellars). Gaṅgeśa's reflections are vāda—and the section is rightly titled nirvikalpaka-vāda, vāda being "inquiries among friends"—directed to uncovering real causal factors, not to winning a debate or countering sophisms. Deception, or counter-deception, is sometimes appropriate—for instance, to protect a student or other judge from fallacies advanced by people of bad character. But not here. So I will lay out Gaṅgeśa's argument for identifying nirvikalpaka pratyaksṣa, and then run through Chakrabarti's list of reasons for rejecting it with an eye to the objection's salience to Gaṅgeśa's project. In other words, Chakrabarti's objections will be taken up with an eye to the truth as it appears to a Naiyāyika, not with an eye to how our team should best present itself to outsiders. I have little to say about Chakrabarti's complaints about appearances—in fact, I find them delightful. Don't let him fool you. There's no greater Naiyāyika enthusiast than Chakrabarti himself, and he knows how to distill a controversy to show the wisdom [End Page 104] of Nyāya in contrast to revealing a deficiency, as he appears to be doing here. He does this to make us think broadly about Nyāya in a contemporary context. And at the end I join him in making some very general comments about Nyāya's realism. First, Gaṅgeśa's argument and a rebuttal of Chakrabarti's seven reasons from Gaṅgeśa's point of view.There is no direct, apperceptive evidence for nirvikalpaka pratyaksṣa; rather, it is posited by force of the following inference as the first step of a two-step argument. "The perceptual cognition, 'A cow' (for example), is generated by a cognition of the qualifier, since it is a cognition of an entity as qualified (by that qualifier appearing), like an inference." The second step takes a person's first perception of an individual (Bessie, let us say) as a cow (i.e., as having some such property) as the perceptual cognition figuring as the inference's subject (or pakṣa) such that the cognizer's memory not informed by previous cow experience could not possibly provide the qualifier, cowhood. The qualifier has to be available, and the best candidate seems to be its perception in the raw, a qualifier (cowhood), that is to say, not (as some are wont to misinterpret the point... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:There's Nothing Wrong with Raw Perception:A Response to Chakrabarti's Attack on Nyāya's Nirvikalpaka PratyakṣaStephen H. PhillipsIn the lead article of the fiftieth anniversary issue of Philosophy East and West (January 2000), Arindam Chakrabarti elaborates seven reasons why Nyāya should jettison "indeterminate perception" and view all perception as determinate, that is to say, as having an entity (a) as qualified by a qualifier (F) as object (Fa). In his (...) notes, Chakrabarti invites a reply "so that," as he says, "I may know why immaculate perception is needed by Nyāya after all." The following is a response that shows not so much why indeterminate perception is needed by Nyāya but why it is identified as a causal factor necessary to the arising of some (not all) determinate perception defined as "perception of an entity as qualified." Here I follow Gaṅgeśa Upādhyāya, the fourteenth-century founder (with the help of a few less well known predecessors and contemporaries) of "New Logic," Navya Nyāya. Gaṅgeśa devotes an entire section (about one eighteenth) of the perception chapter of his monumental Tattvacintāmaṇi (Jewel of Reflection about Epistemology) to nirvikalpaka pratyaksṣa,1 and he is a chief target of Chakrabarti's chastisement.2Now, first of all, I want to follow Gaṅgeśa's ground rules. The Naiyāyika is not concerned with strategies about how to look good in debates (with Buddhists or anyone else). His attitude is truth-seeking, not eristic, and thus no reply will be given to Chakrabarti's agonizing about how best to show ourselves in controversies with (in particular, Buddhist) adversaries (and Wilfrid Sellars). Gaṅgeśa's reflections are vāda—and the section is rightly titled nirvikalpaka-vāda, vāda being "inquiries among friends"—directed to uncovering real causal factors, not to winning a debate or countering sophisms. Deception, or counter-deception, is sometimes appropriate—for instance, to protect a student or other judge from fallacies advanced by people of bad character. But not here. So I will lay out Gaṅgeśa's argument for identifying nirvikalpaka pratyaksṣa, and then run through Chakrabarti's list of reasons for rejecting it with an eye to the objection's salience to Gaṅgeśa's project. In other words, Chakrabarti's objections will be taken up with an eye to the truth as it appears to a Naiyāyika, not with an eye to how our team should best present itself to outsiders. I have little to say about Chakrabarti's complaints about appearances—in fact, I find them delightful. Don't let him fool you. There's no greater Naiyāyika enthusiast than Chakrabarti himself, and he knows how to distill a controversy to show the wisdom [End Page 104] of Nyāya in contrast to revealing a deficiency, as he appears to be doing here. He does this to make us think broadly about Nyāya in a contemporary context. And at the end I join him in making some very general comments about Nyāya's realism. First, Gaṅgeśa's argument and a rebuttal of Chakrabarti's seven reasons from Gaṅgeśa's point of view.There is no direct, apperceptive evidence for nirvikalpaka pratyaksṣa; rather, it is posited by force of the following inference as the first step of a two-step argument. "The perceptual cognition, 'A cow' (for example), is generated by a cognition of the qualifier, since it is a cognition of an entity as qualified (by that qualifier appearing), like an inference." The second step takes a person's first perception of an individual (Bessie, let us say) as a cow (i.e., as having some such property) as the perceptual cognition figuring as the inference's subject (or pakṣa) such that the cognizer's memory not informed by previous cow experience could not possibly provide the qualifier, cowhood. The qualifier has to be available, and the best candidate seems to be its perception in the raw, a qualifier (cowhood), that is to say, not (as some are wont to misinterpret the point... (shrink)

Recently, Jonardan Ganeri reviewed the collaborative translation of the first chapter of Gaṅgeśa's Tattvacintāmaṇi by Stephen H. Phillips and N. S. Ramanuja Tatacharya (Ganeri 2007). The review is quite favorable, and we have no desire to dispute his kind words. Ganeri does, however, put forth an argument in opposition to a fundamental line of interpretation given by Phillips and Ramanuja Tatacharya about the nature of pramāṇa, knowledge sources, as understood by Gaṅgeśa and, for that matter, Nyāya tradition. This response (...) is meant to answer the argument and reassert an understanding of pramāṇa as factive, that is, as knowledge sources that are inerrant. We argue that this is the best reading of Gaṅgeśa himself .. (shrink)

Battles, Betrayals, and Brotherhood: Early Chinese Plays on the Three Kingdoms. Edited and trans lated, with an introduction by Wilt L. Idema and Stephen H. West. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2012. Pp. xxx + 469. $78, $28, $23.95.

Stephen H. Daniel’s monograph offers a novel interpretation of Berkeley’s philosophy of mind while situating Berkeley’s thought within the context of early eighteenth-century epistemology and metaphysics. The text is commendable for its attempt to shed light on Berkeley’s engagement with thinkers and traditions that tend to fall outside the canon of early modern philosophy and its attempt to place Berkeley’s lesser-known works, such as De Motu and Siris, on a par with his best-known texts. Daniel’s approach to historical interpretation (...) is strongly contextualist and fits well with recent attempts to read... (shrink)

I would like to thank the editors of Philosophy East and West for courteously asking me if I would like to respond to Matthew Dasti and Stephen Phillips' very thoughtful remarks about the review I wrote of Phillips' translation and commentary on the pratyakṣa chapter of Gaṅgeśa's Tattvacintāmaṇi, prepared in collaboration with N. S. Ramanuja Tatacharya (Phillips and Tatacharya 2004). Let me begin by reaffirming what I said at the beginning of my review, that the book is "a (...) monumental and momentous achievement, one whose importance cannot be understated." I have indeed enormous admiration for the magnitude of their achievement and respect for the contribution they have made through this translation to the field of .. (shrink)

Scientific pluralism is an issue at the forefront of philosophy of science. This landmark work addresses the question, Can pluralism be advanced as a general, philosophical interpretation of science? Scientific Pluralism demonstrates the viability of the view that some phenomena require multiple accounts. Pluralists observe that scientists present various—sometimes even incompatible—models of the world and argue that this is due to the complexity of the world and representational limitations. Including investigations in biology, physics, economics, psychology, and mathematics, this work provides (...) an empirical basis for a consistent stance on pluralism and makes the case that it should change the ways that philosophers, historians, and social scientists analyze scientific knowledge. Contributors: John Bell, U of Western Ontario; Michael Dickson, U of South Carolina; Carla Fehr, Iowa State U; Ronald N. Giere, U of Minnesota; Geoffrey Hellman, U of Minnesota; Alan Richardson, U of British Columbia; C. Wade Savage, U of Minnesota; Esther-Mirjam Sent, U of Nijmegen. Stephen H. Kellert is professor of philosophy at Hamline University and a fellow of the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science. Helen E. Longino is professor of philosophy at Stanford University. C. Kenneth Waters is associate professor of philosophy and director of the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science. (shrink)

This book is a study of the philosophy of the early 18th century Irish philosopher George Berkeley in the intellectual context of his times, with a particular focus on how, for Berkeley, mind is related to its ideas. It does not assume that thinkers like Descartes, Malebranche, or Locke define for Berkeley the context in which he develops his own thought. Instead, he indicates how Berkeley draws on a tradition that informed his early training and that challenges much of the (...) early modern thought with which he is often associated. Specifically, the book indicates how Berkeley's distinctive treatment of mind (as the activity whereby objects are differentiated and related to one another) highlights how mind neither precedes the existence of objects nor exists independently of them. This distinctive way of understanding the relation of mind and objects allows Berkeley to appropriate ideas from his contemporaries in a manner that transforms the issues with which he is engaged. The resulting insights--for example, about how God creates the minds that perceive objects--are only now starting to be fully appreciated. (shrink)

In this book, Phillips gives an overview of the contribution of Nyaya--the classical Indian school that defends an externalist position about knowledge as well as an internalist position about justification. Nyaya literature extends almost two thousand years and comprises hundreds of texts, and in this book, Phillips presents a useful overview of the under-studied system of thought. For the philosopher rather than the scholar of Sanskrit, the book makes a whole range of Nyaya positions and arguments accessible to students of (...) epistemology who are unfamiliar with classical Indian systems. (shrink)

This essay introduces the volume Scientific Pluralism (Volume 19 of Minnesota Studies in Philosophy of Science). Varieties of recent pluralisms are surveyed, the difference between monism and pluralism vis a vis the sciences is clarified, and the authors’ notion of scientific pluralism is advanced.

The purpose of this article is to advance a new understanding of gender as a routine accomplishment embedded in everyday interaction. To do so entails a critical assessment of existing perspectives on sex and gender and the introduction of important distinctions among sex, sex category, and gender. We argue that recognition of the analytical independence of these concepts is essential for understanding the interactional work involved in being a gendered person in society. The thrust of our remarks is toward theoretical (...) reconceptualization, but we consider fruitful directions for empirical research that are indicated by our formulation. (shrink)

For Berkeley, minds are not Cartesian spiritual substances because they cannot be said to exist (even if only conceptually) abstracted from their activities. Similarly, Berkeley's notion of mind differs from Locke's in that, for Berkeley, minds are not abstract substrata in which ideas inhere. Instead, Berkeley redefines what it means for the mind to be a substance in a way consistent with the Stoic logic of 17th century Ramists on which Leibniz and Jonathan Edwards draw. This view of mind, I (...) conclude, is definitely not the bundle theory that some critics have portrayed it as being. (shrink)

Berkeley argues that claims about divine predication (e.g., God is wise or exists) should be understood literally rather than analogically, because like all spirits (i.e., causes), God is intelligible only in terms of the extent of his effects. By focusing on the harmony and order of nature, Berkeley thus unites his view of God with his doctrines of mind, force, grace, and power, and avoids challenges to religious claims that are raised by appeals to analogy. The essay concludes by showing (...) how a letter, supposedly by Berkeley, to Peter Browne ("discovered" in 1969 by Berman and Pittion) is, in fact, by John Jackson (1686-1763), controversial theologian and friend of Samuel Clarke. (shrink)

Berkeley’s appeal to a posteriori arguments for God’s existence supports belief only in a God who is finite. But by appealing to an a priori argument for God’s existence, Berkeley emphasizes God’s infinity. In this latter argument, God is not the efficient cause of particular finite things in the world, for such an explanation does not provide a justification or rationale for why the totality of finite things would exist in the first place. Instead, God is understood as the creator (...) of the total unity of all there is, the whole of creation. In this a priori argument, we should not focus on the specific objects that God creates, for that requires that we think that God knows each finite thing as distinct from every other. Rather, we should recognize how God creates all things in creating the complex, infinite totality of finite perceivings, each of which exists in virtue of the distinctions and relations it expresses. (shrink)

Scientific pluralism is an issue at the forefront of philosophy of science. This landmark work addresses the question, Can pluralism be advanced as a general, philosophical interpretation of science?

Tradition II Hermeneutics, Ethics, and the Dispensation of the Good Stephen H. Watson Examines concepts of tradition in 20th-century Continental philosophy. In Tradition II, Stephen H. Watson engages post-Kantian Continental philosophy in his continuing investigation into the concept of tradition which he began in his work, Tradition. According to Watson, the problem of tradition became explicit in 20th-century philosophy, and is especially apparent in the work of Heidegger, Gadamer, Husserl, Benjamin, Adorno, Levinas, Kristeva, and Derrida, among others. By (...) formulating a series of dialogues between these philosophers and their predecessors, Watson articulates the issues and concerns surrounding tradition and traditionality. Taking on topics such as the hermeneutics of the self, the rationality of tradition, the pluralistic nature of historical interpretation, and the question of the "other," Watson emphasizes the importance of classical accounts of ethical and political discourse for contemporary philosophy and today’s multicultural world. Watson extends his analysis of tradition to include the problems of meaning and narrative and the nature of the self. He also considers the meaning of the Good and how Good is dispensed in the world. By questioning past philosophical narratives and their influence on modern and postmodern philosophy, Watson brings fresh perspective to the complex meanings of tradition for a pluralistic world. Stephen H. Watson is Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Philosophy Department at the University of Notre Dame. He is author of Extensions: Essays on Interpretation, Rationality, and the Closure of Modernism and Tradition: Refiguring Community, Remembrance, and Virtue in Classical German Thought. Studies in Continental Thought—John Sallis, general editor June 2001 320 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4, index cloth 0-253-33900-6 $35.00 s / £26.50. (shrink)

What happens to scientific knowledge when researchers outside the natural sciences bring elements of the latest trend across disciplinary boundaries for their own purposes? Researchers in fields from anthropology to family therapy and traffic planning employ the concepts, methods, and results of chaos theory to harness the disciplinary prestige of the natural sciences, to motivate methodological change or conceptual reorganization within their home discipline, and to justify public policies and aesthetic judgments. Using the recent explosion in the use of chaos (...) theory, _Borrowed Knowledge and the Challenge of Learning across Disciplines _examines the relationship between science and other disciplines as well as the place of scientific knowledge within our broader culture. Stephen H. Kellert’s detailed investigation of the myriad uses of chaos theory reveals serious problems that can arise in the interchange between science and other knowledge-making pursuits, as well as opportunities for constructive interchange. By engaging with recent debates about interdisciplinary research, Kellert contributes a theoretical vocabulary and a set of critical frameworks for the rigorous examination of borrowing. (shrink)

Classical Indian views of the self and person range from maximal to minimal conceptions, from a view of everyone's true self as the supreme being, infinite, immortal, self‐existent, self‐aware, and intrinsically blissful, to a view of the person as nothing more than the living human body that ceases to be at death. (“Consciousness is an adventitious attribute of the body, like the intoxicating power of fermented grain.”) Every major school and subschool takes a stance on what a self is and (...) how it is known; a rich diversity of opinion and argument marks this area of classical Indian thought. (shrink)

Study of Upādhiprakaraṇa of Gaṅgeśa, 13th cent., treatise on Navya Nyāya philosophy; includes text and translataion.