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74Is whatever exists knowable and nameable?Philosophy East and West 49 (4): 401-414. 1999.Naiyāyikas are fond of a slogan, which often appears as a kind of motto in their texts: "Whatever exists is knowable and nameable." What does this mean? Is it true? The first part of this essay offers a brief explication of this important Nyāya thesis; the second part argues that, given certain plausible assumptions, the thesis is demonstrably false
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15History, Time, and Knowledge in Ancient IndiaHistory and Theory 38 (3): 307-321. 1999.The lack of interest in history in ancient India has often been noted and contrasted with the situation in China and the West. Notwithstanding the vast body of Indian literature in other fields, there is a remarkable dearth of historical writing in the period before the Muslim conquest and an associated indifference to historiography. Various explanations have been offered for this curious phenomenon, some of which appeal to the supposed currency of certain Indian philosophical theories. This es…Read more
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98Death and immortalityDistributors for the U.S. and Canada, Kluwer Academic Publishers. 1987.INTRODUCTION In The World as Will and Representation Schopenhauer writes: Death is the real inspiring genius or Musagetes of philosophy, and for this reason ...
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115Tolstoy, Death and the Meaning of LifePhilosophy 60 (232): 231-245. 1985.Questions about the meaning of life have traditionally been regarded as being of particular concern to philosophers. It is sometimes complained that contemporary analytic philosophy fails to address such questions, but there do exist illuminating recent discussions of these questions by analytic philosophers.1Perhaps what lurks behind the complaint is a feeling that these discussions are insufficiently close to actual living situations and hence often seem rather thin and bland compared with the…Read more
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Epistemology: Indian Philosophy (edited book)Routledge. 2001.First Published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company
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31Regarding Immortality: ROY W. PERRETTReligious Studies 22 (2): 219-233. 1986.Would personal immortality have any value for one so endowed? An affirmative answer would seem so obvious to some that they might be tempted to go so far as to claim that immortality is a condition of life's having any value at all. The claim that immortality is a necessary condition for the meaningfulness of life seems untenable. What, however, of the claim that immortality is a sufficient condition for the meaningfulness of life? Though some might hold this to be the characteristic religious v…Read more
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24Personal Identity, Reductionism and the Necessity of OriginsErkenntnis 51 (2-3): 277-294. 1999.A thought that we all entertain at some time or other is that the course of our lives might have been very different from the way they in fact have been, with the consequence that we might have been rather different sorts of persons than we actually are. A less common, but prima facie intelligible thought is that we might never have existed at all, though someone rather like us did. Arguably, any plausible theory of personal identity should be able to accommodate both possibilities. Certain curr…Read more
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21The Philosopher as Writer: The Eighteenth Century (review)Philosophy and Literature 13 (2): 378-379. 1989.
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60John Hick on Faith: A Critique (review)International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 15 (1/2). 1984.