Anand Vaidya

Many authors show how useful logic can be as a tool for building theories that can account for problems in the philosophy of religion, such as paradoxical assertions. As a consequence, one's philosophy of logic is crucial as well, since it determines which logics, from the set of available and constructible logics, one can use to build a theory. In this paper, we present the relatively recent debate between logical pluralism and monism because the positions in this debate determine which logic(s) can, with justification, be applied to build a theory that addresses problems in the philosophy of religion. We begin by presenting the problem of paradoxical assertions and the debate over logical pluralism that bears on the addressing paradoxical assertions. We then canvass strategies for arguing in favor of logical monism, and pluralism; ultimately, we conclude that the Western tradition has reached a stalemate on this issue. We then turn our attention to the potential for Indian religious traditions to contribute to the debate. We present the five-step-syllogism from Nyāya-Hindu philosophy, the four corners of reasoning from Buddhist philosophy, and the seven-fold theory of predication from Jaina philosophy. The upshot of our presentation is to lay the groundwork for cross-traditional logical debate by identifying the ways in which Indian discussions of debate and dialogue relate to modern approaches to logic and the philosophy of logic.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Considering CertificationAnand Jayprakash Vaidya (bio)Jewel of Reflection on the Truth about Epistemology: A Complete and Annotated Translation of the Tattva-cintā-maṇi. Volume 1, Perception. Volume 2, Inference. Translated by Stephen Phillips. London: Bloomsbury.I. IntroductionStephen Phillips' Jewel of Reflection on the Truth about Epistemology is a masterful translation and commentary on the books originally written by Gaṅgeśa, the fourteenth-century father of the Navya-Nyāya tradition of Indian philosophy. Jewel is one of the most highly regarded works in Indian epistemology, one that rivals the work of Immanuel Kant in terms of its depth and significance. While J. N. Mohanty (1966) and B. K. Matilal (1968) translated portions of Gaṅgeśa's Jewel, only Phillips (2020) offers a complete translation—one that will serve as the foundation for any future study of Gaṅgeśa. In what follows, I will not be focusing on issues of translation or interpretation pertaining to the text. Rather, I will be engaging Phillips' account of Gaṅgeśa (hereafter Phillips) with the aim of bringing Gaṅgeśa's Jewel into contact with a debate in contemporary epistemology. I believe Gaṅgeśa's distinction between perceptual knowledge and certification has a lot to offer contemporary epistemology.The point of departure for my engagement with Phillips is the debate over internalism and externalism about knowledge.1 One account of the debate is that there is a disagreement over whether the KK principle is true. The KK principle states that when x knows that p, x knows that x knows that p. Internalists hold that knowledge is a wholly internal affair, and thus they accept the KK principle. More specifically, awareness internalists hold that x knows that p only when x is also aware of x's knowledge basis for p. By contrast, access internalists hold a weaker claim: x knows that p only when x can become aware, by reflection, of x's knowledge basis for p. Externalists typically deny some version of the KK principle. On one version of externalism, knowledge is justified true belief + some anti luck condition, and to have a justified true belief is for the belief to be formed on the basis of a reliable belief-forming process whether or not the subject knows anything about the workings of the belief-forming process. Externalists hold [End Page 486] that x can know that p, without having any reflective access to the knowledge basis for p.2 However, some analytic philosophers object to the internalismexternalism debate. In a now classic set of essays, Tyler Burge (1993, 2003) moves around the internalism-externalism debate by drawing a distinction between two types of warrant: entitlement and justification—where entitlement plays an externalist role, and justification plays an internalist role.The internalism-externalism distinction does not exist in Indian epistemology. In Indian epistemology, there is a distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic validity. This distinction only superficially resembles the internalism-externalism contrast found in the analytic tradition.3 Just as Indian epistemologists did not draw the distinction between a priori and a posteriori knowledge, they also did not draw the distinction between justification being a wholly internal affair versus justification being a wholly external affair.Can the absence of the internalism-externalism debate in classical Indian epistemology be used to draw an alternative map of epistemic relations, one that competes with Burge's distinction between entitlement and justification? Stephen Phillips' (2012) work on Nyāya epistemology in combination with his translation and commentary on Jewel allows for an opportunity to explore this question. In section II, I present Burge's account of the dual warrants of entitlement and justification. In section III, I present Phillips' account of perceptual knowledge and certified knowledge. In section IV, I use both theories to analyze a case of perceptual knowledge. In section V, I turn to a comparative analysis of Burge's and Phillips' views, to open up the issue for further debate and discussion.II. Tyler Burge on Entitlement and JustificationIn his 1993 and 2003 articles Burge offers an alternative way of seeing the internalism-externalism debate about justification. In his 1993 work he distinguishes between justification...

There are three main questions one can ask about *intuition*. The analytical—phenomenological question is: what is the correct conceptual analysis and phenomenological account of intuition? The empirical-cognitive question is: what is the correct process-wise robust account of *intuition* phenomenon? In this paper we provide an answer to a third question, the cross-cultural question concerning sufficiently similar, yet distinct, uses of *intuition* in classical Indian philosophy. Our aim is to compare these uses of *intuition* to some conceptions of *intuition* in Western philosophy. We conceive of our project here as an attempt to fill a gap in current research on *intuition*, which focuses predominantly on Western conceptions of rational intuition.

In this paper I develop a cross-cultural critique of contemporary critical thinking education in the United States, the United Kingdom, and those educational systems that adopt critical thinking education from the standard model used in the US and UK. The cross-cultural critique rests on the idea that contemporary critical thinking textbooks completely ignore contributions from non-western sources, such as those found in the African, Arabic, Buddhist, Jain, Mohist and Nyāya philosophical traditions. The exclusion of these traditions leads to the conclusion that critical thinking educators, by using standard textbooks are implicitly sending the message to their students that there are no important contributions to the study of logic and argumentation that derive from non-western sources. As a case study I offer a sustained analysis of the so-called Hindu Syllogism that derives from the Nyāya School of classical Indian philosophy. I close with a discussion of why contributions from non-western sources, such as the Hindu Syllogism, belong in a Critical Thinking course as opposed to an area studies course, such as Asian Philosophy.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy by David J. ChalmersAnand Jayprakash Vaidya (bio)Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy. By David J. Chalmers. New York, NY: W.W Norton & Company, 2022. Pp. xi + 520. Hardcover $22.49, isbn 978-0-393635-80-5.It isn't uncommon to think that virtual worlds, the worlds we engage with in video games, for example, are not real or at least less real than the ordinary world. After all, they are worlds that are created by us, and thus are less real than the world we didn't create, mind-independent reality. However, in Reality+, David Chalmers argues for the thesis that virtual reality is genuine reality.Reality+ is the twenty-first century equivalent of Bertrand Russell's twentieth century The Problems of Philosophy, published 110 years prior. Like Russell, Chalmers' goal is to explain the basic problems of philosophy to a wide audience.The book's twenty-four chapters are organized into seven different parts: virtual worlds, knowledge, reality, real virtual reality, mind, value, and foundations. Each section has about three to four chapters. Having taught the book in an upper-division philosophy of mind course, I would say that the first nine chapters should be read together to get a good sense of the whole project, because they give shape and structure to Chalmers' basic arguments and positions. The following fifteen self-explanatory, self-contained, chapters, are independently engaging, and can be taught separately, as standalone works of philosophy.Chalmers engages in what he terms technophilosophy, which is the combination of (1) asking philosophical questions about technology and (2) using technology to help answer traditional questions of philosophy. He claims that he draws inspiration for the project from Patricia Churchland's 1986 Neurophilosophy, where she does the equivalent of (1) and (2) with neuroscience. Reality+ delivers clear arguments, referencing historical and contemporary philosophical work, while frequently drawing from science fiction, including several outstanding Rick and Morty -style illustrations. The use of science fiction helps to connect students to abstract ideas, while the robustly constructed arguments serve to instruct students on how to go about critically examining the ideas. My students found the book accessible and engaging. I imagine the book [End Page 1] will become even more relevant to successive classes, as the issues Chalmers discusses grow more dominant in the future.Chapter 1, "Is this the real life?", begins by discussing Indian and Chinese philosophy in relation to Greek philosophy with respect to theme of illusion/dreams vs. reality. In all three traditions, one finds discussion of the nature of reality and whether we can know it. Chalmers thinks that each of these traditions helps to formulate the basic questions of his book: the knowledge question, the reality question, and the value question.The knowledge question: can we know whether or not we are living in a virtual world? In part 2, Chalmers argues that we cannot know that we are not living in a virtual world. He does so by defending his own version of Nick Bostrom's simulation argument (2003), which very roughly goes as follows: (1) If there is nothing (technological or otherwise) that would serve to block the creation of a perfect simulation of a humanlike being into existence (what he calls a sim blocker), then most humanlike beings are simulations. (2) if most humanlike beings are simulations, we are probably simulations. So, (3) if there are no sim blockers, we are probably sims.The reality question: are virtual worlds real? He argues that virtual worlds are genuinely real by examining a variety of definitions of what makes something real in chapter 6. I will examine this argument in more detail in the following section.The value question: can you lead a good life in a virtual world? He argues that one can, in parts 5 and 6. He says: "In principle, life in virtual reality can have the same sort of value as life in nonvirtual reality. To be sure, life in virtual reality can be good or bad" (p. 311).As successful as Reality+ is, philosophical counterpoints arose in my mind. In the next section, I present...

In this critical discussion, I evaluate David Chalmers’ position on the moral grounding question from his (2022) Reality +. The moral grounding question asks: in virtue of what does an entity x have moral standing? Chalmers argues for the claim that phenomenal consciousness is a necessary condition for moral standing. After a brief introduction to his book, I evaluate his position on the moral grounding question from the perspective of access consciousness as opposed to phenomenal consciousness, as well as the Jain doctrine of non-violence, and the differentiation of creatures in terms of their sense capacities.

In this paper I examine compatibilism and incompatibilism about whether the self can be both a subject and an object in the same awareness at the same time. While this is an old debate that many traditions of philosophy have contributed to, my point of departure is the work of A.C. Mukerji who worked on the possibility of self-awareness by articulating, what he called, the paradox of ego-centricity. I also consider Patañjali, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Arindam Chakrabarti on the debate over compatibilism. First, I present Mukerji’s paradox, then I critically examine Patañjali and Merleau-Ponty’s arguments against incompatibilism. I move on to bring Mukerji’s paradox into contact with Chakrabarti’s arguments in favor of compatibilism. I critically examine Chakrabarti’s arguments in favor of compatibilism and against incompatibilism. While insightful and powerful, I argue that they can be resisted; and should be considered alongside Mukerji’s paradox. I close by offering an argument for compatibilism based on an analogy with particle-wave duality in quantum physics and the relation between conceivability and metaphysical modality.

Analytic Panpsychism has been brought into contact with Indian philosophy primarily through an examination of the Advaita Vedānta tradition and the Yogācāra tradition. In this work I explore the relation between Rāmānuja, the 12th century father of the Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta tradition, and analytic panpsychism. I argue that Rāmānuja’s philosophy inspires a more world affirming form of cosmopsychism where there are different kinds of reality, rather than one fundamental reality of pure consciousness and an ordinary wrold that is illusory from the perspective of fundamental reality.

In this paper I present the distinction between perceptual, reflective, and speculative doubt by engaging with the work of early naiyāyikas. I argue that the definition of the causes of doubt offered by Gautama Akṣapāda in the Nyāya-Sūtra, and commented upon by later naiyāyikas leads to a distinction between perceptual and reflective doubt, but not to a notion of speculative doubt. I then move on to critically assess J.N. Mohanty’s comparison of Descartes’s method of doubt with the Nyāya theory of doubt through the lens of Janet Broughton’s work on Descartes’s Method of Doubt.

Recently, Kit Fine's (1994) view that modal truths aretrue in virtue of,grounded in, orexplained byessentialist truths has been under attack. In what follows we offer two responses to the wave of criticism against his view. While the first response is pretty straightforward, the second is based on the distinction between, what we call,Reductive Finean EssentialismandNon-Reductive Finean Essentialism. Engaging the work of Bob Hale onNon-Reductive Finean Essentialism, we aim to show that the arguments against Fine's view are unconvincing, while we acknowledge the presence of a deep standoff between the two views.

There are three theories in the epistemology of modality that have received sustained attention over the past 20 years: conceivability-theory, counterfactual-theory, and deduction-theory. In this paper we argue that all three face what we call the problem of modal epistemic friction. One consequence of the problem is that for any of the three accounts to yield modal knowledge, the account must provide an epistemology of essence. We discuss an attempt to fend off the problem within the context of the internalism versus externalism debate about epistemic justification. We then investigate the effects that the PMEF has on reductive and non-reductive theories of the relation between essence and modality.

This book collects original essays on the epistemology of modality and related issues in modal metaphysics and philosophical methodology. The contributors utilize both the newer metaphysics-first and the more traditional epistemology-first approaches to these issues. The chapters on modal epistemology mostly focus on the problem of how we can gain knowledge of possibilities, which have never been actualized, or necessities which are not provable either by logico-mathematical reasoning or by linguistic competence alone. These issues are closely related to some of the central issues in philosophical methodology, notably: to what extent is the armchair methodology of philosophy a reliable guide for the formation of beliefs about what is possible and necessary. This question also relates to the nature of thought experiments that are extensively used in science and philosophy. Epistemology of Modality and Philosophical Methodology will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working on the epistemology and metaphysics of modality, as well as those whose work is concerned with philosophical methodology more generally.

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.

_Business Cases in Ethical Focus_ is a new collection of in-depth case studies from around the world, covering all major areas of business ethics. Thirty-six cases are included, with a broad range of topics such as the ethics of entrepreneurship and finance, the challenges that diversity raises for business, and the moral issues involved in selling cannabis. The cases are provocative yet sufficiently complex to convey the difficulty of moral dilemmas and the potential for reasonable disagreement. This book can be used on its own or as a supplemental text for group discussions and assignments.

Business Ethics is a three-volume collection which provides students and researchers with the historically most important of the classic articles in business ethics, as well as the best of the contemporary and trendsetting work in this burgeoning area. The collection will serve as a sourcebook for academics and researchers entering or already established in the area of business ethics. The editors bring together a breadth of articles across business ethics, with an orientation that is diverse as well as international. The three volumes are well organized to focus on the main topics in business ethics and are divided into corporate social responsibility , the employee-employer relationship, and distributive justice & dilemmas. Courses and research programmes in business ethics have multiplied in recent years alongside a growing concern with the ethical practices of business. This multi-volumed work provides a focused and well-balanced reference for academics and their students to acquire a thorough understanding of this now central topic. The SAGE Library in Business and Management is a first-class series of major works that brings together the most influential and field-defining articles, both classical and contemporary, in a number of key areas of research and inquiry in business and management. Each multi-volume set represents a collection of the essential published works collated from the foremost publications in the field by an Editor or Editorial Team of renowned international stature. They also include a full introduction, presenting a rationale for the selection and mapping out the discipline’s past, present and likely future. This series is designed to be a ‘gold standard’ for university libraries throughout the world with a programme or interest in business and management studies