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9Review of Boden ed, Dimensions of Creativity (review)Philosophical Psychology 9 (3): 395-397. 1996.
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2Review of V Hardcastle, How to Build a Theory in Cognitive Science (review)Philosophical Psychology 11 (1): 89-91. 1998.
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35The Oxford Handbook of World Philosophy (edited book)Oup Usa. 2011.The Oxford Handbook of World Philosophy provides the advanced student or scholar a set of introductions to each of the world's major non-European philosophical traditions.
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8Review of KC Chakrabarti, Definition and Induction: A Historical and Comparative Study (review)Metascience 6 (1): 134-138. 1997.
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121Moonshadows. Conventional Truth in Buddhist PhilosophyOxford University Press. 2011.The doctrine of the two truths - a conventional truth and an ultimate truth - is central to Buddhist metaphysics and epistemology. The two truths (or two realities), the distinction between them, and the relation between them is understood variously in different Buddhist schools; it is of special importance to the Madhyamaka school. One theory is articulated with particular force by Nagarjuna (2nd ct CE) who famously claims that the two truths are identical to one another and yet distinct. One o…Read more
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529Educating for virtuoso living: Papers from the ninth east-west philosophers' conferencePhilosophy East and West 57 (3): 285-289. 2007.None
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103Turning a madhyamaka trick: Reply to Huntington (review)Journal of Indian Philosophy 36 (4): 507-527. 2008.Huntington ; argues that recent commentators err in attributing to Nāgārjuna and Candrakīrti a commitment to rationality and to the use of argument, and that these commentators do violence to the Madhyamaka project by using rational reconstruction in their interpretation of Nāgārjuna’s and Candrakīrti’s texts. Huntington argues instead that mādhyamikas reject reasoning, distrust logic and do not offer arguments. He also argues that interpreters ought to recuse themselves from argument in order t…Read more
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1Choosing coercion and subordination—a preliminary moral study of academic lifeIn Sirkku Hellsten, Marjaana Kopperi & Olli Loukola (eds.), Taking the Liberal Challenge Seriously: Essays on Contemporary Liberalism at the Turn of the 21st Century, Ashgate. pp. 305. 1997.
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49Pain deproblematizedPhilosophical Psychology 14 (1): 103-7. 2001.In this paper I demonstrate that the "pain problem" Dartnall claims to have discovered is in fact no problem at all. Dartnall's construction of the apparent problem, I argue, relies on an erroneous assumption of the unity of consciousness, an erroneous assumption of the simplicity of pain as a phenomenon ignoring crucial neurophysiological and neuroanatomical information, a mistaken account of introspective knowledge according to which introspection gives us inner episodes veridically and in the…Read more
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60There are two temptations to be resisted when approaching Buddhist moral theory. The first is to assimilate Buddhist ethics to some system of Western ethics, usually either some form of Utilitarianism or some form of virtue ethics. The second is to portray Buddhist ethical thought as constituting some grand system resembling those that populate Western metaethics. The first temptation, of course, can be avoided simply by avoiding the second. In Buddhist philosophical and religious literature we …Read more
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399Nagarjuna and the limits of thoughtPhilosophy East and West 53 (1): 1-21. 2003.: Nagarjuna seems willing to embrace contradictions while at the same time making use of classic reductio arguments. He asserts that he rejects all philosophical views including his own-that he asserts nothing-and appears to mean it. It is argued here that he, like many philosophers in the West and, indeed, like many of his Buddhist colleagues, discovers and explores true contradictions arising at the limits of thought. For those who share a dialetheist's comfort with the possibility of true con…Read more
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15Sweet Reason: A Field Guide to Modern LogicWiley-Blackwell. 1995._Sweet Reason: A Field Guide to Modern Logic, 2nd Edition_ offers an innovative, friendly, and effective introduction to logic. It integrates formal first order, modal, and non-classical logic with natural language reasoning, analytical writing, critical thinking, set theory, and the philosophy of logic and mathematics. An innovative introduction to the field of logic designed to entertain as it informs Integrates formal first order, modal, and non-classical logic with natural language reasoning…Read more
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29Evidentiality and NarrativeJournal of Consciousness Studies 16 (6-8): 6-8. 2009.In this paper we argue that the phenomenon of evidentiality, the grammatical marking in some languages of the source of one's knowledge, gives us a revealing window into the developmental processes in middle childhood that subserve the achievement of narrative competence. First, we argue that the mastery of evidentiality is connected to the development of an understanding of inference, and of the ability to mobilize this understanding in the construction of human narratives. Second, we examine t…Read more
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56Mindfulness is regarded by all scholars and practitioners of all Buddhist traditions as essential not only for the development of insight, but also for the cultivation and maintenance of ethical discipline. The English term denotes the joint operation of what are regarded in Buddhist philosophy of mind as two cognitive functions: sati/smṛti/dran pa, which we might translate as attention in this context (although the semantic range of these terms also encompasses memory or recollection) and sampa…Read more
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322The Way of the Dialetheist: Contradictions in BuddhismPhilosophy East and West 58 (3). 2008.Anyone who is accustomed to the view that contradictions cannot be true, and cannot be accepted, and who reads texts in the Buddhists traditions will be struck by the fact that they frequently contain contradictions. Just consider, for example.
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40Finnigan, in the course of a careful and astute discussion of the difficulties facing a Buddhist account of the moral agency of a buddha, develops a challenging critique of a proposal I made in Garfield. Much of what she says is dead on target, and I have learned much from her paper. But I have serious reservations about the central thrust both of her critique of my own thought and about her proposal for a positive account of a buddha’s enlightened action. Curiously, in another fine paper, Finni…Read more
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16The dog: relevance and rationalityIn J. Dunn & A. Gupta (eds.), Truth or Consequences: Essays in Honor of Nuel Belnap, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 97--109. 1990.
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203Social cognition, language acquisition and the development of the theory of mindMind and Language 16 (5). 2001.Theory of Mind (ToM) is the cognitive achievement that enables us to report our propositional attitudes, to attribute such attitudes to others, and to use such postulated or observed mental states in the prediction and explanation of behavior. Most normally developing children acquire ToM between the ages of 3 and 5 years, but serious delays beyond this chronological and mental age have been observed in children with autism, as well as in those with severe sensory impairments. We examine data fr…Read more
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18Public TrustIn Cynthia Townley & P. Maleka (eds.), Trust: Analytic and Applied Perspectives., Rodopi. 2013.We often think of trust as an interpersonal relation, and of the distinction between trust and reliance as a distinction between kinds of interpersonal relations. Indeed this is often the case. I may trust one colleague but not find her reliable; rely on another but find him untrustworthy; both trust and rely on my best friend; neither trust nor rely on my dean. One of us has discussed the nature of such relations and distinctions at length. But trust is not only an interpersonal matter. Human s…Read more
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162Buddhist Philosophy: Essential Readings (edited book)Oup Usa. 2009.The Buddhist philosophical tradition is vast, internally diverse, and comprises texts written in a variety of canonical languages. It is hence often difficult for those with training in Western philosophy who wish to approach this tradition for the first time to know where to start, and difficult for those who wish to introduce and teach courses in Buddhist philosophy to find suitable textbooks that adequately represent the diversity of the tradition, expose students to important primary texts i…Read more
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6Propositional AttitudesIn Lynn Nadel (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, Macmillan. 2002.
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938Acquiring the Notion of a Dependent Designation: A Response to Douglas L. BergerPhilosophy East and West 61 (2): 365-367. 2011.In a recent issue of Philosophy East and West Douglas Berger defends a new reading of Mūlamadhyamakakārikā XXIV : 18, arguing that most contemporary translators mistranslate the important term prajñaptir upādāya, misreading it as a compound indicating "dependent designation" or something of the sort, instead of taking it simply to mean "this notion, once acquired." He attributes this alleged error, pervasive in modern scholarship, to Candrakīrti, who, Berger correctly notes, argues for the inter…Read more
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22Modularity in Knowledge Representation and Natural-Language Understanding (edited book)MIT Press. 1987.The notion of modularity, introduced by Noam Chomsky and developed with special emphasis on perceptual and linguistic processes by Jerry Fodor in his important book The Modularity of Mind, has provided a significant stimulus to research in cognitive science. This book presents essays in which a diverse group of philosophers, linguists, psycholinguists, and neuroscientists - including both proponents and critics of the modularity hypothesis - address general questions and specific problems relate…Read more
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154Bodhicaryåvatåra was composed by the Buddhist monk scholar Íåntideva at Nalandå University in India sometime during the 8th Century CE. It stands as one the great classics of world philosophy and of Buddhist literature, and is enormously influential in Tibet, where it is regarded as the principal source for the ethical thought of Mahåyåna Buddhism. The title is variously translated, most often as A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life or Engaging in the Bodhisattva Deeds, translations that fol…Read more
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73Just What Is Cognitive Science Anyway?Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 59 (4): 1075-1082. 1999.
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Smith CollegeDepartment of Philosophy
Buddhist Studies
Harvard Divinity SchoolDistinguished Professor
Northampton, Massachusetts, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Asian Philosophy |
History of Western Philosophy |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |
History of Western Philosophy |