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76What Is Philosophy?The Harvard Review of Philosophy 24 1-8. 2017.Three rival conceptions of philosophy overlap, we may imagine, in the Sassinid court of Chosroes (r. 531–579). One is due to Priscian, a refugee from Athens after Justinian’s closing of the philosophical schools. A second and third are from India: the Buddhist conception of Vasubandhu and the Nyāya view of Vātsyāyana. I will argue that the rivalry between these three understandings of philosophy ultimately rests in three different conceptions of what makes an inner life one’s own.
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72Selfless Receptivity: Attention as an Epistemic VirtueIn Tamar Szabó Gendler, John Hawthorne & Julianne Chung (eds.), Oxford Studies in Epistemology 7, Oxford University Press. pp. 1-14. 2022.A natural way to think of epistemic virtue is by analogy with an archer. Just as a skilled archer is able to take aim and hit a target, a skilled epistemic agent will aim at truth and, if things go well, get things right. Here we highlight aspects of epistemic virtue that do not fit this model, particularly ways in which epistemic virtues can be non-voluntary and not goal-directed. In doing so, we draw on two important figures in the history of philosophy: the 6th-century Indian Buddhist Buddhag…Read more
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65Semantic Powers: Meaning and the Means of Knowing in Classical Indian PhilosophyMind 110 (439): 749-753. 2001.
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59Mental Time Travel and AttentionAustralasian Philosophical Review 1 (4): 353-373. 2017.ABSTRACTEpisodic memory is the ability to revisit events in one's personal past, to relive them as if one travelled back in mental time. It has widely been assumed that such an ability imposes a metaphysical requirement on selves. Buddhist philosophers, however, deny the requirement and therefore seek to provide accounts of episodic memory that are metaphysically parsimonious. The idea that the memory perspective is a centred field of experience whose phenomenal constituents are simulacra of an …Read more
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57Semantic 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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56Epistemic Pluralism: From Systems to StancesJournal of the American Philosophical Association 5 (1): 1-21. 2019.Drawing on insights from the epistemological work of the Jaina philosophers of classical India, I argue in defense of epistemic pluralism, the view that there are different but equally valid ways of knowing the world. The version of epistemic pluralism I defend is stance pluralism, a pluralism about epistemic stances or perspectives, understood to be policies or stratagems of knowing. I reject the view that the correct way to characterize epistemic pluralism is as consisting in a pluralism about…Read more
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50Ancient Indian Logic as a Theory of Case-Based ReasoningJournal of Indian Philosophy 31 (1/3): 33-45. 2003.
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41Traditions of truth – changing beliefs and the nature of inquiryJournal of Indian Philosophy 33 (1): 43-54. 2005.
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40Response to Monima Chadha and Sean M. Smith Reviews of Attention, Not SelfPhilosophy East and West 69 (4): 1151-1156. 2019.I thank Sean Smith and Monima Chadha for their reviews of Attention, Not Self and for their commentary. It has been rewarding to think through the issues they have raised, and I am grateful to both.Let me begin with the methodological principle that Sean Smith endorses at the beginning of his review. Smith says this: "My main argument is that Ganeri attributes views to Buddhaghosa that the latter does not hold. Embedded in this complaint is the assumption that we should try to get a thinker righ…Read more
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32Fernando Pessoa: The Poet as PhilosopherRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 93 193-208. 2023.Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) lived what was in many ways an astonishingly modern, transcultural, and translingual life. He was born in Lisbon, the point of departure for Vasco da Gama's voyage to India as commemorated by Pessoa's forebear, the poet Luís de Camões. Pessoa grew up in Anglophone Durban, acquiring a lifelong love for English poetry and language. Returning to Lisbon, from where he would never again leave, he set himself the goal of travelling throughout an infinitude of inner landscap…Read more
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30Cosmic ConsciousnessThe Monist 105 (1): 43-57. 2022.The phrase “cosmic consciousness” has a surprising and fascinating history. I will show how it first enters into circulation in the writings of the remarkable Englishman Edward Carpenter, a socialist, philosopher, and prescient activist for gay rights and prison reform. Carpenter made a trip to India and Sri Lanka in 1890, where he spent two months sitting at the feet of Ramaswami, an Indian sage and disciple of Tilleinathan Swami. Carpenter invents the phrase in order to paraphrase Ramaswami’s …Read more
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26Vyā $$\underset{\raise0.3em\hbox{$\smash{\scriptscriptstyle\cdot}$}}{D} $$ i and the realist theory of meaningi and the realist theory of meaning (review)Journal of Indian Philosophy 23 (4): 403-428. 1995.
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26An Irrealist Theory of RaceCritical Philosophy of Race 12 (1): 106-125. 2024.ABSTRACT In this article I draw upon an analogy between a debate in the critical philosophy of race over the metaphysics of race and a debate in Buddhist philosophy of mind over the metaphysics of selves. I argue that there is a defensible irrealist theory of race, corresponding to the performativist theory of self found in certain Buddhist thinkers.
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25Virtual Subjects, Fugitive Selves: Fernando Pessoa and His PhilosophyOxford University Press. 2020.This book explores philosophical themes to do with self and subjectivity from the work of the Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa, best known for the uncategorizable collection of fragmentary writings, published as The Book of Disquiet in 1982, forty-seven years after the author's death.
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24Well-Ordered Science and Indian Epistemic Cultures: Toward a Polycentered History of ScienceIsis 104 (2): 348-359. 2013.This essay defends the view that “modern science,” as with modernity in general, is a polycentered phenomenon, something that appears in different forms at different times and places. It begins with two ideas about the nature of rational scientific inquiry: Karin Knorr Cetina's idea of “epistemic cultures,” and Philip Kitcher's idea of science as “a system of public knowledge,” such knowledge as would be deemed worthwhile by an ideal conversation among the whole public under conditions of mutual…Read more
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24Drawing 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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22Cross-Modality and the SelfPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 61 (3): 639-657. 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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20Contextually Incomplete Descriptions: A New Counterexample to Russell?Analysis 55 (4): 287. 1995.
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18Artha: MeaningOxford University Press India. 2011.This book examines the theories of meaning or artha in different schools of philosophical thought highlighting the significant relationship between 'word' and 'meaning'. It demonstrates that classical Indian theory of language can inform and be informed by contemporary philosophy.
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167 Attending to Absence, and the Role of the ImaginationIn D. Graham Burnett & Justin E. H. Smith (eds.), Scenes of Attention: Essays on Mind, Time, and the Senses, Columbia University Press. pp. 142-159. 2023.
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16The 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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15Ethno-Epistemology: New Directions for Global Epistemology (edited book)Routledge. 2020.This volume features new perspectives on the implications of cross-linguistic and cultural diversity for epistemology. It brings together philosophers, linguists, and scholars working on knowledge traditions to advance work in epistemology that moves beyond the Anglophone sphere. The first group of chapters provide evidence of cross-linguistic or cultural diversity relevant to epistemology and discuss its possible implications. These essays defend epistemic pluralism based on Sanskrit data as a …Read more
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14Semantic Powers: Meaning and the Means of Knowing in Classical Indian PhilosophyOxford University Press. 1999.The author defends a conception of language as essentially a means for the reception of knowledge through testimony. He finds this account in the work of classical Indian philosophers of language, and presents a detailed analysis of their theories.
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14Mental Time Travel and Attention: Replies to CommentatorsAustralasian Philosophical Review 1 (4): 450-455. 2017.
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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 |