David Nowakowski

The Nyāya philosopher Udayana devotes the first chapter of his Ātmatattvaviveka to refuting the Buddhist thesis of universal momentariness—the view that nothing which exists can persist through time—and to establishing the contrary view that things can and do persist. In the course of his critique of the Buddhists' "inference from existence" which purports to establish the momentariness thesis, Udayana is forced to consider the problem of how, if at all, it is possible to meaningfully and reliably think and talk about things which do not exist.In this paper, I offer a close reading of this section of the ĀTV, taking seriously both the philosophical context and commitments of Udayana's work in general, and the...

Eviatar Shulman’s Rethinking the Buddha: Early Buddhist Philosophy as Meditative Perception offers an important reminder to take early Buddhist texts seriously as meaning what they say, with regard to the four noble truths, dependent origination, and selflessness. Shulman’s book ably makes this interpretive point, but is frustratingly unclear in its more general discussion of the relationship between philosophy and meditation. Shulman’s main thesis is that the four noble truths, as they are customarily taught today, are a...

In the course of his critique of the Buddhist doctrine of universal momentariness, Udayana argues for an isomorphism between our understandings of space and time, which is meant to undercut the Buddhists’ well-known “inference from existence.” The present paper examines these arguments from Udayana’s Ātmatattvaviveka, together with Ratnakīrti’s treatment of them in his Kṣaṇabhaṅgasiddhi Anvayātmikā. As an historical study, the paper aims to elucidate the connections between Udayana and Ratnakīrti, and the implications of those connections for the dependence of the inference from existence upon various arguments which appear elsewhere in Ratnakīrti’s corpus. As a work of philosophical interpretation, the paper will clarify what is at stake in the local debate over the space–time isomorphism. Ratnakīrti’s position will best be understood as an account on which different simple causal properties are ascribed, or indexed, to an allegedly persisting entity at different times, while Udayana will prefer an account on which complex properties indexed to the place and/or time of the effect—for instance, “generating a sprout in this particular place” or “producing a visual awareness at a certain time”—will belong to a persisting thing throughout its entire existence. Furthermore, the acceptance or rejection of space and time as substantial entities in their own right, as distinct from the entities which are conventionally said to exist in space and time, will have important implications for the accounts of causality that each thinker can accept.

This paper examines the role of doubt in the classification of inferential reasons in Dharmottara’s Nyāyabinduṭīkā, and in the works of his Nyāya rivals Keśavamiśra and Jayantabhaṭṭa. As deeply systematic thinkers, larger themes in these philosophers’ metaphysics directly determine the more local issues in epistemology and inferential theory, helping to explain, and show the significance of, the differences in their accounts of inferential reasons. For Keśava, an ontology which includes real universals allows for an externalist, reliabilist epistemology, on which the conditions for a genuine inferential reason can be stated in an absolute manner. For Dharmottara, on the other hand, an ontology in which mentally constructed universals are imposed upon real particulars leads to greater dependency on the cognising agent, such that the triple conditions for the inferential reason are formulated in a cogniser-relative way. These differences lead to a more restrictive list of acceptable reasons on Dharmottara’s part, which excludes cases involving doubt.