Anand Vaidya

In this paper I argue that there are elements of Tim Williamson’s knowledge-first epistemology that can be found in the work of the fourteenth-century philosopher, Gaṅgeśa. He is the father of the new school of Nyāya. I delineate his view about perception and knowledge by comparing it to his predecessor, Gautama Akṣapāda, the father of Nyāya. On Gaṅgeśa’s knowledge is not composed of parts. And a perceptual event, understood as a veridical awareness, is a transient occurrence of perceptual knowledge. I cash out his view of perception as a special form of disjunctivism that focuses on positive and negative causal factors. I apply it to several cases to show how the theory works. I then go on to discuss Gaṅgeśa’s two-tiered theory of knowledge where there is a distinction between perceptual knowledge and certified knowledge and how it relates to the KK-principle, that when one knows they know that they know.

How can human thinkers come to know whether something is possible or necessary? Conceivability-based theories try to answer the question by appeal to our ability to conceive of alternative scenarios in our imagination, deductive approaches by appeal to our ability to draw deductive inferences. One version of the deductive approach is essentialist-k theory: we can come to have knowledge of possibility and necessity through our knowledge of conditionals that link essences to necessity and possibility and additional information. The chapter offers a critical examination of both Hale’s and Lowe’s explorations of essentialist-k theory. It argues that deductive theories, in general, have some advantages over conceivability-based theories; and that Hale’s version of essentialist-k theory has some advantages over Lowe’s. The chapter closes by articulating a general problem for essentialist-k theories, and calling for more work on the essentialist branch, what is also called the _Hale-Branch_, of research in the epistemology of modality through investigation of the metaphysics of essence.

In this paper, I examine Kenneth Silver’s (Journal of Business Ethics, 159, 253-265, 2019) defense of the claim that it is possible to attribute moral standing to corporations because they are sentient. I argue that corporations have moral standing, but not in virtue of being sentient. Following others in the philosophy of mind and the theory of wellbeing, I argue that consciousness is not normatively significant in the way that sentience theorists claim; sentience is not necessary for moral standing. Instead, I argue that computational intelligence tied to preferences is the ground of moral standing. Corporations are intelligent systems with preferences, and therefore, corporations deserve moral standing.

In a series of papers, Miri Albahari (2019; 2020; 2022; 2024) has articulated and defended perennial idealism (PI), a view she associates with Śakara’s Advaita Vedānta. She argues that PI offers a solution to the hard problem of consciousness (HPC). In this work, I distinguish the HPC, which occupies contemporary analytic philosophy of mind, from the hard problem of the self (HPS), which occupied classical Indian philosophy. I then critically evaluate Albahari’s use of non-dual universal consciousness to solve the HPC. I focus on her response to a set of objections to the view that non-dual universal consciousness is fit for grounding subject‐level phenomenal‐intentional consciousness – the target of the HPC. I argue that because Śakara’s metaphysics of non-dual universal consciousness as the ground of all being is not fit to ground, it cannot solve the HPC.

Recent decades have seen a renewal of interest in panpsychism as a solution to the hard problem of consciousness. This has, in part, also driven an increase in interest in classical Indian philosophical traditions among analytic philosophers of mind. Many of these cross-cultural studies pertaining to panpsychism (and cosmopsychism) have focused on one particularly influential school of Indian philosophy, Advaita (non-dual) Veda nta, the most famous proponent of which is sankara. In this work, we would like to consider the view of another influential philosopher and the school that developed based on his view - Rama nuja (eleventh century CE) and Viśiá1-Avaita (qualified non-dualism) Vedta. We argue that a cosmopsychist-panentheistic metaphysics that is motivated by Rauja's views offers a solution to the hard problem that is preferable to other comparable views and could form the basis for a panentheistic conception of God that is compatible with the reality of the freedom of human selves.

In this paper, I examine two connected strands of the 4th Set of Objections and Replies to Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy. On the one hand, I look at Arnauld's defence of the view that real distinction proofs require adequate knowledge and Descartes' view that they only require complete understanding. On the other hand, I engage Arnauld's famous right‐angled triangle, T, and Pythagorean property, P, counterexample to Descartes that vivid and clear thought of separability entails knowledge of separability by God. Following a comment in Almog, I extend out the exchange over the counterexample by considering non‐Euclidean geometries. I argue that while at first it seems that Descartes has a plausible response to Arnauld's counterexample by considering T in a non‐Euclidean space where P does not hold. However, Arnauld actually has a powerful response when we consider what is the essence of T across geometries, Euclidean or otherwise.

How can we come to know, be justified in believing, or understand, that something is necessary, possible, contingent, essential, or accidental? This is the central question in the epistemology of modality. After some short remarks on the importance of this question for philosophy and for our everyday life, this chapter briefly summarizes Kripke’s seminal contribution to the field, discusses two different skeptical challenges in the epistemology of modality and briefly surveys some of the most discussed contemporary accounts and answers to the central question.

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.

The terms ‘modal’ and ‘modality’ admit of two kinds of qualification. On the one hand, the terms can be qualified by being restricted to the alethic range or to the non-alethic range, such as in the cases of deontic modality and epistemic modality. On the other hand, within the range of alethic uses, the terms can be restricted to the logical, metaphysical, or physical domains. Where the restriction is on alethic metaphysical modality, the two central questions in the epistemology of modality are:The first question admits of four potential answers. It might be the case that we can and do possess knowledge of: (a) the possible, which is also actual; (b) the possible, which is non-actual; (c) the necessary and the impossible; and (d) the essential. A global skeptic argues that we don’t have modal knowledge of any of (a)–(d). A local skeptic only argues that we don’t have knowledge in some of (a)–(d). The second question, both historically and in the contemporary literature, admits of many different responses.

In this paper, I examine two connected strands of the 4th Set of Objections and Replies to Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy. On the one hand, I look at Arnauld's defence of the view that real distinction proofs require adequate knowledge and Descartes' view that they only require complete understanding. On the other hand, I engage Arnauld's famous right‐angled triangle, T, and Pythagorean property, P, counterexample to Descartes that vivid and clear thought of separability entails knowledge of separability by God. Following a comment in Almog, I extend out the exchange over the counterexample by considering non‐Euclidean geometries. I argue that while at first it seems that Descartes has a plausible response to Arnauld's counterexample by considering T in a non‐Euclidean space where P does not hold. However, Arnauld actually has a powerful response when we consider what is the essence of T across geometries, Euclidean or otherwise.

Following J. N. Mohanty’s (1992) “Reason and Tradition in Indian Thought: An Essay on the Nature of Indian Philosophical Thinking”, John Taber offers an account of why the _a priori_ is absent in Indian epistemology. His account is comprehensive, well-argued, and plausible. However, in this essay, I argue for three points. First, that Taber’s argument conflates the _faculty_ view of the _a priori_ with the _status_ view of the _a priori_. Second, that there is one place where a case for the presence of the _a priori_ can be made in Indian philosophy. It is in the _pramāṇa_ debates concerning knowledge of absences, especially with respect to the Bhātta-Mīmāṃsā school. Third, in contrast to Mohanty and Taber, that it is incorrect to see Indian epistemology as a kind of epistemology that eschews the _a priori_ in favor of the _a posteriori_; or one that favors empiricism over rationalism. Rather, it is better to see the general outlines of Indian epistemology as one where there is an insensitivity to the distinction between _a priori_ vs. _a posteriori_ knowledge, because there is an insensitivity to the enabling vs. evidential role of sense experience used to draw the distinction. Following contemporary work by Timothy Williamson (2020) “Reason and Tradition in Indian Thought: An Essay on the Nature of Indian PhilosophicalThinking” on how the _a priori—a posteriori_ distinction is not epistemically joint carving, I defend the view that Indian epistemology is best cast as neither _a posteriori_ nor _a priori_ centered because the distinction is not joint carving. Indian epistemology was ultimately on the right track in not drawing this distinction. It is a mistake to think that the kind of epistemology they produced was impoverished compared to the West because they didn’t acknowledge the _a priori_.

In this paper I articulate the question of whether machines can have emotions. I then reject a common argument against why they cannot have emotions based on the lack of a capacity for feelings. The goal of this paper is not to decisively show that machines can have emotions, but to decisively show that the naïve argument for the conclusion that they cannot needs to be critically examined. I argue that machines that have artificial general intelligence can have emotions based on having the capacity to make judgments that are essential and constitutive of certain emotions, such as anger. I argue against the view that phenomenological or physiological profiles are essential to anger on the basis of emotion regulation. I consider a long list of objections to the position that machines can have emotions.

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.