Ethan Mills

Leto II discusses not just the meaning of life for individuals as for ancient Earth philosophers from the Buddha and Socrates to Albert Camus and Susan Wolf, but the meaning of life for humanity itself. In God Emperor of Dune, Leto II talks with the Duncans, Moneo, and Hwi Noree not just about the meaning of life for individuals, but for humanity as a whole, across vast reaches of time. So for the Buddha, the meaning of life is to end suffering. But for Socrates the meaning of life is to examine life. Frank Herbert was trying – in his own imperfect way – to imagine a multicultural future for humanity, one not dominated by Western cultures To wander back onto the Golden Path, Herbert's imperfect efforts, as well as Leto's example in God Emperor of Dune, show that learning from all of humanity is a key to the meaning of life.

The classical Indian Cārvāka (“Materialist”) tradition contains three branches with regard to the means of knowledge (pramāṇas). First, the standard Cārvākas accept a single means of knowledge, perception, supporting this view with a critique of the reliability and coherence of inference (anumāna). Second, the “more educated” Cārvākas as well as Purandara endorse a form of inference limited to empirical matters. Third, radical skeptical Cārvākas like Jayarāśi attempt to undermine all accounts or technical definitions of the means of knowledge (even perception) in order to enjoy a life free from philosophical and religious speculation. These branches respectively present something akin to David Hume’s problem of induction, endorse a fallibilistic, mitigated skepticism, and embody a thoroughgoing skepticism about philosophy itself. While all three branches are skeptics about religious matters, each branch exemplifies a different variety of epistemological skepticism.

It is hardly a novel claim that the work of Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) contains influences from philosophical Daoism, but I argue that this influence has yet to be fully understood. Several scholars criticize Le Guin for misrepresenting Daoist ideas as they appear in ancient Chinese philosophical texts, particularly the Dao De Jing and the Zhuangzi. While I have sympathy for this charge, especially as it relates to Le Guin’s translation of the Dao De Jing, I argue that it fails to understand the extent to which her fiction contains her own philosophical development of Daoist ideas. Looking at some of her most influential works (e.g., The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, The Lathe of Heaven, A Wizard of Earthsea, etc.), I suggest that Le Guin’s fiction is better seen as a refocusing of Daoist concepts such as complementary contrasts and non-action (wu wei) in the contexts of modern feminism, modern anarchism, science fiction, and fantasy. Le Guin was not trying to represent ancient Daoism as a scholar. Rather, she was trying to reimagine Daoism as a creative artist and philosopher in her own right. This way of viewing Le Guin’s work does not fully exorcise the specter of the possibility of Orientalist cultural appropriation, but it does make the issue more complex in a way that can deepen further conversations. To what extent can an artist be guilty of misrepresentation if representation was not, strictly speaking, her goal? I end with a brief reflection on what is perhaps the deepest philosophical lesson of Le Guin’s work: everything is more complicated than it first appears. On that note, the present article is an attempt not just to do philosophy about Le Guin, but to do philosophy in a Le Guinian fashion, which requires rethinking the metaphor of combat that guides much academic philosophy today.

The greatest strength of Pradeep P. Gokhale's Lokāyata/Cārvāka: A Philosophical Inquiry is its much-needed enrichment of the vocabulary for the study of the Indian Lokāyata/Cārvāka school. For too long this school has been studied in the rather limited terms of its opponents in texts such as Mādhava's Sarvadarśanasaṃgraha, which identify a single Cārvāka position advocating extreme empiricism in epistemology, materialism in metaphysics, and hedonism and irreligiousness in ethics. Gokhale establishes frameworks for understanding the diversity of epistemological, metaphysical, and axiological positions of Cārvāka philosophers that ought to be considered by anyone writing on the school in the future.Chapter 1...

_ Source: _Volume 7, Issue 3, pp 147 - 172 The Indian Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu has seldom been considered in conjunction with the problem of external-world skepticism despite the fact that his text, _Twenty Verses_, presents arguments from ignorance based on dreams. In this article, an epistemological phenomenalist interpretation of Vasubandhu is supported in opposition to a metaphysical idealist interpretation. On either interpretation, Vasubandhu gives an invitation to the problem of external-world skepticism, although his final conclusion is closer to skepticism on the epistemological phenomenalist interpretation. The article ends with reflections on what light Vasubandhu might shed on the issue of whether skepticism is a natural problem in epistemology as well as why, despite Vasubandhu, the skeptical problem was not a central issue in the later Indian tradition.

While the contemporary problem of the criterion raises similar epistemological issues as Agrippa’s Trilemma in ancient Pyrrhonian skepticism, the consideration of such epistemological questions has served two different purposes. On one hand, there is the purely practical purpose of Pyrrhonism, in which such questions are a means to reach suspension of judgment, and on the other hand, there is the theoretical purpose of contemporary epistemologists, in which these issues raise theoretical problems that drive the search for theoretical resolution. In classical India, similar issues arise in Nāgārjuna’s Vigrahavyāvartanī, but it is not entirely clear what Nāgārjuna’s purpose is. Contrary to the theoretical interpretations of several recent scholars such as Jan Westerhoff according to which Nāgārjuna is proffering a contextualist epistemological theory, I argue that Nāgārjuna as well as the later Madhyamaka Candrakīrti, much like Pyrrhonian skeptics, employed concerns about epistemic criteria in service of purely practical purposes. There is no positive epistemological theory to be found in Nāgārjuna’s Vigrahavyāvartanī and Candrakīrti’s Prasannapadā; furthermore a putative thesis of universal emptiness is self-undermining, a conclusion which itself can be seen as part of a therapeutic program. Nonetheless, the historical persistence of these epistemological issues shows that they ought to continue to be areas of theoretical inquiry for epistemologists today. I end with reflections on the wider relevance of my conclusions, particularly with regard to demonstrating the value of philosophy.