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11The hindu syllogism: Nineteenth-century perceptions of indian logical thoughtPhilosophy East and West 46 (1): 1-16. 1996.Following H. T. Colebrooke's 1824 'discovery' of the Hindu syllogism, his term for the five-step inference schema in the "Nyāya-sūtra," European logicians and historians of philosophy demonstrated considerable interest in Indian logical thought. This is in marked contrast with later historians of philosophy, and also with Indian nationalist and neo-Hindu thinkers like Vivekananda and Radhakrishnan, who downgraded Indian rationalist traditions in favor of 'spiritualist' or 'speculative' texts. Th…Read more
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735Philosophy in classical India: proper work of reasonRoutledge. 2001.Original in content and approach, Philosophy in Classical India focuses on the rational principles of Indian philosophical theory, rather than the mysticism usually associated with it. Ganeri explores the philosophical projects of a number of major Indian philosophers and looks into the methods of rational inquiry deployed within these projects. In so doing, he illuminates a network of mutual reference and criticism, influence and response, in which reason is simultaneously used constructively a…Read more
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2Ganeri: Indian Philosophy, 4-Vol. Set (edited book)Routledge. 2016.The learned editor of this new four-volume collection from Routledge argues that its subject matter is ‘a vast—and vastly undersurveyed—body of inquiry into the most fundamental problems of philosophy. As the broader discipline of philosophy continues to evolve into a genuinely international field, "Indian Philosophy" stands for an unquantifiably precious part of the human intellectual biosphere. For those who are interested in the way in which culture influences structures of thought, for those…Read more
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12A Return to the Self: Indians and Greeks on Life as Art and Philosophical TherapyRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 66 119-135. 2010.Of the many interrelated themes in Pierre Hadot's Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, two strike me as having a particular centrality. First, there is the theme of attention to the present instant. Hadot describes this as the ‘key to spiritual exercises’, and he finds the idea encapsulated in a quotation from Goethe's Second Faust: ‘Only the present is our happiness’. The second theme is that of viewing the world from above: ‘philosophy signified the attem…Read more
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12The self: naturalism, consciousness, and the first-person stanceOxford University Press. 2012.Jonardon Ganeri presents a ground-breaking study of selfhood, drawing on Indian theories of consciousness and mind.
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11Sanskrit philosophical commentaryJournal of the Indian Council of Philosophical Research 27 187-207. 2010.
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6Contextually Incomplete Descriptions: A New Counterexample to Russell?Analysis 55 (4): 287. 1995.
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422Jaina Logic and the Philosophical Basis of PluralismHistory and Philosophy of Logic 23 (4): 267-281. 2002.What is the rational response when confronted with a set of propositions each of which we have some reason to accept, and yet which taken together form an inconsistent class? This was, in a nutshell, the problem addressed by the Jaina logicians of classical India, and the solution they gave is, I think, of great interest, both for what it tells us about the relationship between rationality and consistency, and for what we can learn about the logical basis of philosophical pluralism. The Jainas c…Read more
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2Ancient Indian Logic as a Theory of Case-Based ReasoningJournal of Indian Philosophy 31 (1/3): 33-45. 2003.
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9The lost age of reason: philosophy in early modern India, 1450-1700Oxford University Press. 2011.The ancient texts are now not thought of as authorities to which one must defer, but regarded as the source of insight in the company of which one pursues the ...
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103Philosophical Modernities: Polycentricity and Early Modernity in IndiaRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 74 75-94. 2014.The much-welcomed recent acknowledgement that there is a plurality of philosophical traditions has an important consequence: that we must acknowledge too that there are many philosophical modernities. Modernity, I will claim, is a polycentric notion, and I will substantiate my claim by examining in some detail one particular non-western philosophical modernity, a remarkable period in 16th to 17th century India where a diversity of philosophical projects fully deserve the label.
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5Drawing on Indian discussions of public and practical reason, the book argues that individual, moral, and political identity is a formation of reason.
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74Cross-modality and the selfPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 61 (3): 639-658. 2000.The thesis of this paper is that the capacity to think of one’s perceptions as cross-modally integrated is incompatible with a reductionist account of the self. In §2 I distinguish three versions of the argument from cross-modality. According to the ‘unification’ version of the argument, what needs to be explained is one’s capacity to identify an object touched as the same as an object simultaneously seen. According to the ‘recognition’ version, what needs to be explained is one’s capacity, havi…Read more
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87The Self restatedPhilosophical Studies 174 (7): 1713-1719. 2017.This is a short summary of the book The Self: Naturalism, Consciousness and the First-Person Stance. It introduced an “author meets critics” panel at the American Philosophical Association Pacific Division meeting in San Francisco 2016. I try to relate the discussion in the book to recent work that has appeared since its publication.
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6The concealed art of the soul: theories of self and practices of truth in Indian ethics and epistemologyOxford University Press. 2007.Hidden in the cave : the Upaniṣadic self -- Dangerous truths : the Buddha on silence, secrecy and snakes -- A cloak of clever words : the deconstruction of deceit in the Mahābhārata -- Words that burn : why did the Buddha say what he did? -- Words that break : can an Upaniṣad state the truth? -- The imperfect reality of persons -- Self as performance.
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8Semantic powers: meaning and the means of knowing in classical Indian philosophyOxford University Press. 1999.Jonardon Ganeri gives an account of language as essentially a means for the reception of knowledge. The semantic power of a word and its ability to stand for a thing derives from the capacity of understanders to acquire knowledge simply by understanding what is said. Ganeri finds this account in the work of certain Indian philosophers of language, and shows how their analysis can inform and be informed by contemporary philosophical theory.
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4Mind, language, and world: the collected essays of Bimal Krishna MatilalOxford University Press. 2002.On different aspects of Indian philosophy; chiefly on Nayāya and Buddhist philosophies.
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7Contextualism in the Study of Indian Intellectual CulturesJournal of Indian Philosophy 36 (5-6): 551-562. 2008.When J. L. Austin introduced two “shining new tools to crack the crib of reality”—the theory of performative utterances and the doctrine of infelicities—he could not have imagined that he was also about to inaugurate a shining new industry in the philosophy of the social sciences. But with its evident concern for the features to which “all acts are heir which have the general character of ritual or ceremonial,” Austin’s theory soon became indispensable in the analysis of ritual, linguistic and e…Read more
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8The Character of Logic in IndiaSUNY Press. 1998.The last work of the eminent philosopher Bimal Krishna Matilal, this book traces the origins of logical theory in India.
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117An Irrealist Theory of SelfThe Harvard Review of Philosophy 12 (1): 60-79. 2004.It has become a common-place to read the ‘no-self’ theory of the Buddhist philosophers as a reductionist account of persons. In Reasons and Persons, Derek Parfit himself seemed to endorse the association, having learned of the Buddhist theory from his colleague at All Souls College, Bimal Krishna Matilal. The Buddha’s denial that there are real selves metaphysically distinct from continuous streams of psycho-physical constituents lends itself, to be sure, to a reductionist interpretation. I beli…Read more
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1Traditions of truth – changing beliefs and the nature of inquiryJournal of Indian Philosophy 33 (1): 43-54. 2005.
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4Epistemology in PracÄ«na and Navya Nyāya (review) (review)Philosophy East and West 57 (1): 120-123. 2007.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Epistemology in Pracīna and Navya NyāyaJonardon GaneriEpistemology in Pracīna and Navya Nyāya. By Sukharanjan Saha. Kolkata: Jadavpur University, 2003. Pp. 166.Epistemology in Pracīna and Navya Nyāya, by Sukharanjan Saha, usefully collates ten previously published essays on Indian epistemology: two longer essays first published in 1986 and a series of more recent shorter pieces. The leading thesis of the book is that the …Read more
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Areas of Specialization
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Epistemology |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mind |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Asian Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Mind |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
Asian Philosophy |