Purushottama Bilimoria

The _History of Indian Philosophy_ is a comprehensive and authoritative examination of the movements and thinkers that have shaped Indian philosophy over the last three thousand years. An outstanding team of international contributors provide over sixty accessible entries, organised into three clear parts: Knowledge, Context, Concepts Philosophical Traditions Engaging and Encounters: Modern and Postmodern. This outstanding collection is essential reading for students of Indian philosophy, and will also be of interest to those seeking to explore the lasting significance this rich and complex philosophical tradition.

Hindu philosophy, like other philosophical traditions, recognized the power and destabilizing impact of contradictions in discourse about the ultimate and human existence. The question is how Hindu philosophers addressed these contradictions—whether they accepted them as true or ignored them. This chapter takes a logico-epistemological approach, divided into three parts. The first examines contradictions in early scriptural texts, particularly the Vedas, on cosmogony and cosmology. The second explores how classical philosophers like Gauḍapāda and Śańkara responded to contradictions between the polymorphic heterogeneity of the Vedas and the Absolutism in the Upaniṣads. The third considers critiques from the Nyāya (Onto-Logic) school against Vedānta. The conclusion argues that the Nyāya did not make recourse to paraconsistent logic or dialetheism, while clearly the Vedānta approach did, and thus was able to present a more coherent solution to the contradictory tensions between the binaries pointed to, especially between transcendence and the immanent other.

In 1998, Clark and Chalmers articulated and defended the extended mind hypothesis. They argued, against the backdrop of functionalism about the mind, and for the specific case of the mental state type belief, that it is possible for a person's mind to extend out-side the boundary of their body. Departing from the framework of Indo-analytic comparative philosophy, we show that the Advaita Vedanta School of classical Indian philosophy, against the backdrop of a specific form of panpsychism, defended an account on which a person's conscious experience, during an act of perceptual knowledge, is located outside the boundary of their body. Using the work of Adams and Maher on how to respond to Adams and Aizawa's coupling-constitution fallacy, we argue that the Advaita Vedanta account of mind can be taken to generate what we call the mind extension hypothesis -- the view that consciousness can extend outside of the body in perception. Recognizing the problematic nature of panpsychism as a metaphysical view about consciousness, we close by following work by Itay Shani on the real combination problem. We argue that the Advaita Vedanta account of panpsychism, as a kind of cosmopsychism, allows for a response to the so-called real combination problem proposed by Coleman.

This book is a unique collaboration of philosophers from across the world bringing together contemporary concepts of consciousness, the Māori conception of self, as well as Indian and Buddhist concepts of self and mental states. Contemporary concepts of consciousness include higher-order consciousness and phenomenological approaches. The idea behind this volume came from an international conference on ‘Mind, Body and Self’ held at Victoria University of Wellington; organised by the Society for Philosophy and Culture. The authors herein contribute to the relationship between concepts of self, mind and body. The wide variety of contributors from across cultural backgrounds add to a diverse and valuable conversation on the nature of human existence and thoughts of self. This book appeals to students and researchers working in philosophy and religious studies.

This paper examines the intersection of Western and Indian hermeneutical traditions, focusing on Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics and its application to the Upaniṣads. Engaging with the broader hermeneutical debates between Gadamer, Habermas, and Ricoeur, the study highlights the tensions between tradition and critical reflection. Ricoeur’s “hermeneutics of suspicion” is employed to interrogate dominant interpretations shaped by the Brahmasūtra, particularly those that prioritize mokṣa (liberation) as the central goal of the Upaniṣads. Drawing from the Mīmāṃsā tradition and Nirukta exegesis, the study introduces a “decolonial hermeneutics of trust,” which reframes these texts in terms of embodied experience rather than transcendence. Through an analysis of Upaniṣadic doctrines and myths, particularly the struggles between deva-s and asura-s, the paper explores the concept of pāpmā/pāpman (‘evil’) as an amoral force of privation that affects perception and disrupts the unity of the self. By bridging Western philosophical discourse, focusing on Ricoeur’s work, with Indian hermeneutical methods, this study reveals the cross-cultural dimensions of meaning-making while also challenging essentialist readings of Indian thought. The philosophical investigation contibutes to a broader rethinking of hermeneutical frameworks, emphasizing the dynamic interplay between critique and tradition in interpreting classical texts.

The question of connection between the physical body, the invisible mind and the non-material soul has haunted human civilization since its beginnings. Most cultures, including the Indian ones, took it for granted that there is an imperishable essence bestowed on human beings by some transcendental force that outlasts the body and is rewarded or punished by heavenly powers. However, there have always been sceptics and atheists who expressed doubts about such beliefs. In India the most conspicuous are the Cārvākas who believed in a completely materialistic world, devoid of any supernatural powers, transcendental beings or supranatural entities thereto. They refused to accept the existence of a state of being, soul or jīvātma that cannot be empirically perceived. Consequently, they argued that consciousness is a property of the body alone. Their argument that various elements in the body blending together in a specific configuration produce consciousness which does not survive the death of the body is congruent with findings of modern science about neural activities.

There has been much said about consciousness, but very often the right questions are not asked, or the harder ones. In this epilogue, I set out to press certain “limit questions” that raise both matters of epistemological constraints in the inquiry and issues in metaphysical speculations about this thing called consciousness (and whether it names anything real at all?). Various candidates for a partial or (doubtfully) complete description of consciousness are entertained, before moving on to propose certain basic characteristics that would appear to be basic and in need of further explication. Drawing from critical phenomenology and Indian philosophy as well as the work of J.L. Shaw on cognition and consciousness, these are identified as the surprising traits of intentionality, subjectivity (or deep self-awareing, or attention), and the historicity of consciousness. On the metaphysical side, the chapter concludes by arguing against faith in both the dualism of mind/spirit over matter, and reductionist materialism, leaving open a phenomenalist qualia-based model of decentralized conscious states, which I am calling panenpsychism, distinguished from panpsychism (of the modern kind) due to its intractable combination problem.

A Mahābhārata kind of textual war has been raging between science (the sciences) and religion (theology and traditional ortho-doxastic systems), for some time now, let us say since the Renaissance period, through Europe’s Enlightenment, to the present era. This war has many protagonists and antagonists on both sides. Both sides of the camp engage in quasi-philosophical and other intellectual disputations to either drive the wedge of disagreement toward, as it were, the death of one side, or attempt a rapprochement between the seemingly incommensurable claimants to the truth. The fangs and reverberations of this war have been spilling over onto the Indian subcontinent as well, since about the late nineteenth century, albeit with significant differences. In this latter fray enters Meera Nanda, a strident apologist for the eventual triumph of science or ‘objectivity’ over the ruse of religions. That in itself is not an ignoble cause. But she further champions a thesis of the wayward contemporary "collusion" of Indian science and religion, i.e., of what she calls ‘the emerging state-temple-corporate complex’. The paper offers a critique of Nanda’s claim, on the one hand, for want of convincing evidence for the overarching claim, and, on the other hand, the utter disregard on the part of the sectarian-right for the methods and intersubjective epistemé of science. The Nobel Laureate C V Raman arguably had chauvinist strains in the way he treated his female research fellows, as Abha Sur points out in a separate study which I discuss. But here too there is no direct complicitous relation between science and religion; rather the problematic relation lies with genderized caste proclivity in modern Indian science practices as in the culture broadly. The present paper is a sequel to ‘War and peace between science and religion: the divine arch after the four horsemen’, published in the Journal of the Indian Council for Philosophical Research 28/2, 2011: 3‐30).

This companion volume focuses on the application and practical ramifications of Indian ethics. Here Indian dharma ethics is moved from its preeminent religious origins and classical metaethical proclivity to, what Kant would call, practical reason–or in Aristotle’s poignant terms, ēhikos and phronēis–and in more modern parlance normative ethics. Our study examines a wide range of social and normative challenges facing people in such diverse areas as women’s rights, infant ethics, politics, law, justice, bioethics and ecology. As a contemporary volume, it builds linkages between existing theories and emerging moral issues, problems and questions in today’s India in the global arena. The volume brings together contributions from some 40 philosophers and contemporary thinkers on practical ethics, exploring both the scope and boundaries or limits of ethics as applied to everyday and real-life concerns and socio-economic challenges facing India in the context of a troubled globalizing world. As such, this collection draws on multiple forms of writing and research, including narrative ethics, interviews, critical case studies and textual analyses. The book will be of interest to scholars, researchers and students of Indian philosophy, Indian ethics, women and infant issues, social justice, environmental ethics, bioethics, animal ethics and cross-cultural responses to dominant Western moral thought. It will also be useful to researchers working on the intersection of Gandhi, sustainability, ecology, theology, feminism, comparative philosophy and dharma studies.

This volume engages in conversation with the thinking and work of Max Charlesworth as well as the many questions, tasks and challenges in academic and public life that he posed. It addresses philosophical, religious and cultural issues, ranging from bioethics to Australian Songlines, and from consultation in a liberal society to intentionality. The volume honours Max Charlesworth, a renowned and celebrated Australian public intellectual, who founded the journal Sophia, and trained a number of the present heirs to both Sophia and academic disciplines as they were further developed and enhanced in Australia: Indigenous Australian studies, philosophy of religion, the study of the tension between tradition and modernity, phenomenology and existentialism, hermeneutics, feminist philosophy, and philosophy of science that is responsive to environmental issues.

There are various permutations of theism: henotheism, pantheism, panentheism, a/theism, and nontheistic divinity. There is debate whether the idea of OmniGod was ever achieved in India. R. C. Zaehner argued that an evolutionary transition from pratenaturalism of the Vedas to Upaniṣad’s monism, culminated in monotheism with Purāṇas and the _Bhagavad Gītā._ I argue differently, beginning with ancient ritualistic polytheism, followed by unifying One Brahman, toward monistic panentheism and later non-dualism of _advaita_ Vedānta. Under the influence of Asaṅga, Buddhism elevated the Buddha as the Great Divine Replacement. As a response or reaction, Brāhmaṇism forged Īśvara as God with the World as his Body. By 13th century, theistic dualism separated Īśvara from his _creatio._ Even Nyāya rational philosophy was persuaded by monotheism as demonstrated in their teleo-cosmological argument for the existence of Īśvara. I attribute all this to sectarian and doctrinal shifts rather than to any evolutionary teleology and/or predestined historicist movement.

Two of the most important contributions that Bimal Krishna Matilal made to comparative philosophy are his doctoral dissertation The Navya-Nyāya Doctrine of Negation: The Semantics and Ontology of Negative Statements in Navya-Nyāya Philosophy and his classic: Perception: An Essay on Classical Indian Theories of Knowing. In this essay, we aim to carry forward the work of Bimal K. Matilal by showing how ideas in classical Indian philosophy concerning absence and perception are relevant to recent debates in Anglo-analytic philosophy. In particular, we focus on the recent debate in the philosophy of perception centering on the perception of absence. In her Seeing Absence, Anya Farennikova argues for the thesis that we literally see absences. Her thesis is quite novel within the contexts of the traditions that she engages: analytical philosophy of perception, phenomenology, and cognitive neuroscience. In those traditions there is hardly any exploration of the epistemology of absence. By contrast, this is not the case in classical Indian philosophy where the debate over the ontological and epistemological status of absence is longstanding and quite engaging. In what follows, we engage Farennikova’s arguments, and those of John-Rémy Martin and Jérome Dokic in their response to her work. Using the work of Matilal, Bilimoria and Shaw we show that there are several engaging ideas that can be taken from Indian philosophy into the terrain explored by Farennikova, and Martin & Dokic. Our aim is to provide an updated comparative engagement on absence and its perception for the purposes of enhancing future discussions within global philosophy. However, we do not aim to do this merely by focusing on the history of primary texts or on twentieth century commentary on primary texts. Instead, we hope to show that the living tradition of Indian philosophy that Matilal embodied carries forward in his students and colleagues as they revive, revise, and extend Indian philosophy.

Ever since some traditional protagonists made the intriguing claim that the Vedas (canonical Brahmāṇical texts) are an inviolable resource of authority on significant matters, extensive debate has raged in Indian thought as to whether word can rightfully be accepted as pramāṇa or autonomous mode of knowing; in western epistemological terms, as testimony? At the mundane level the doctrine underscores the capacity of language, i.e., words and sentences (sabda), to disseminate knowledge from speaker/author to hearer/audience; at a transcendental level it adverts to wisdom-texts delivering knowledge about supramundane matters. Unlike the former, the words of the latter may be literally authorless: truth is begot from what the sages of yore simply ‘heard’, somehow, and came to know. But J. N. Mohanty has rejected this doctrine, arguing that sentences can certainly generate linguistic meaning or intentionality – understanding that p. But since this does not come stamped with evidential warrant (‘fact’), it may not amount to knowledge that p; at best it may generate belief about injunctions and imperatives (‘ought’ but not indicatively ‘is’, nor objective moral knowledge). The chapter is a response to what I call the Mohanty-Gettier Paradox, and a case is argued for the viability of śabda-based testimony, drawing on phenomenology of language and hermeneutics.