University of Queensland
School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry
PhD, 2000
Canberra, ACT, Australia
  •  28
    The Many Faces of Impossibility
    Cambridge University Press. 2024.
    Possible worlds have revolutionised philosophy and some related fields. But, in recent years, tools based on possible worlds have been found to be limited in many respects. Impossible worlds have been introduced to overcome these limitations. This Element aims to raise and answer the neglected question of what is characteristically impossible about impossible worlds. The Element sheds new light on the nature of impossible worlds. It also aims to analyse the main features and utility of impossibl…Read more
  •  5
    Buddhist Philosophy of Logic1
    In Steven M. Emmanuel (ed.), A Companion to Buddhist Philosophy, Wiley. 2013.
    Logic in Buddhist philosophy concerns the systematic study of anumāna (often translated as inference) as developed by Dignāga and Dharmakīrti. The focus of this chapter is on the tradition of Buddhist philosophy called pramānavada, which is concerned mainly with epistemology and logic. The chapter contains a discussion of the philosophy of logic that is attributable to Buddhist logicians. It examines what “inference” or “logic” might mean for Buddhist logicians and then sketches the Buddhist con…Read more
  •  283
    Dharmakīrtian Inference
    Journal of Indian Philosophy 51 591-609. 2023.
    Dharmakīrti argues that there is no pramāṇa (valid means of cognition or source of knowledge) for a thesis that is a self-contradiction (svavacanavirodha). That is, self-contradictions such as ‘everything said is false’ and ‘my mother is barren’ cannot be known to be true or false. The contemporary scholar Tillemans challenges Dharmakīrti by arguing that we can know that self-contradictions are false by means of a formal logical inference. The aims of the paper are to answer Tillemans’ challenge…Read more
  •  223
    Buddhist Shipping Containers
    In Christian Coseru (ed.), Reasons and Empty Persons, Springer. pp. 295-305. 2023.
    In his book review of Graham Priest's The Fifth Corner of Four, Mark Siderits, while criticising Priest's philology, suggests that Priest's work is 'of considerable interest' for two reasons. First, 'when two independent traditions use similar methods to work on similar issues, it is always possible that one may have hit on approaches that the other missed'. Second, 'the decentering that can be induced by looking at another tradition may trigger fresh insights, even if those insights are not one…Read more
  •  495
    Against Classical Paraconsistent Metatheory
    Analysis 83 (2): 285-294. 2023.
    There was a time when 'logic' just meant classical logic. The climate is slowly changing and non-classical logic cannot be dismissed off-hand. However, a metatheory used to study the properties of non-classical logic is often classical. In this paper, we will argue that this practice of relying on classical metatheories is problematic. In particular, we will show that it is a bad practice because the metatheory that is used to study a non-classical logic often rules out the very logic it is desi…Read more
  •  1125
    Buddhist Logic
    Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. forthcoming.
    Buddhist philosophers have investigated the techniques and methodologies of debate and argumentation which are important aspects of Buddhist intellectual life. This was particularly the case in India, where Buddhism and Buddhist philosophy originated. But these investigations have also engaged philosophers in China, Japan, Korea and Tibet, and many other parts of the world that have been influenced by Buddhism and Buddhist philosophy. Several elements of the Buddhist tradition of philosophy are …Read more
  •  710
    How Can Buddhists Prove That Non-Existent Things Do Not Exist?
    In Sara Bernstein & Tyron Goldschmidt (eds.), Non-Being: New Essay on the Metaphysics of Non-Existence, Oxford University Press. pp. 82-96. 2021.
    How can Buddhists prove that non-existent things do not exist? With great difficulty. For the Buddhist, this is not a laughing matter as they are largely global error theorists and, thus, many things are non-existent. The difficulty gets compounded as the Buddhist and their opponent, the non-Buddhist of various kinds, both agree that one cannot prove a thesis whose subject is non-existent. In this paper, I will first present a difficulty that Buddhist philosophers have faced in proving that what…Read more
  •  545
    Buddhist Logic from a Global Perspective
    In Inkeri Koskinen, David Ludwig, Zinhle Mncube, Luana Poliseli & Luis Reyes-Galindo (eds.), Global Epistemologies and Philosophies of Science, Routledge. pp. 274-285. 2021.
    Buddhist philosophers have developed a rich tradition of logic. Buddhist material on logic that forms the Buddhist tradition of logic, however, is hardly discussed or even known. This article presents some of that material in a manner that is accessible to contemporary logicians and philosophers of logic and sets agendas for global philosophy of logic.
  •  1408
    Two Kinds of Logical Impossibility
    Noûs 54 (4): 795-806. 2020.
    In this paper, we argue that a distinction ought to be drawn between two ways in which a given world might be logically impossible. First, a world w might be impossible because the laws that hold at w are different from those that hold at some other world (say the actual world). Second, a world w might be impossible because the laws of logic that hold in some world (say the actual world) are violated at w. We develop a novel way of modelling logical possibility that makes room for both kinds of …Read more
  •  1099
    Logically Impossible Worlds
    Australasian Journal of Logic 15 (2): 489. 2018.
    What does it mean for the laws of logic to fail? My task in this paper is to answer this question. I use the resources that Routley/Sylvan developed with his collaborators for the semantics of relevant logics to explain a world where the laws of logic fail. I claim that the non-normal worlds that Routley/Sylvan introduced are exactly such worlds. To disambiguate different kinds of impossible worlds, I call such worlds logically impossible worlds. At a logically impossible world, the laws of logi…Read more
  •  743
    Priest’s Anti-Exceptionalism, Candrakīrti and Paraconsistency
    In Can Başkent & Thomas Macaulay Ferguson (eds.), Graham Priest on Dialetheism and Paraconsistency, Springer Verlag. pp. 127-138. 2019.
    Priest holds anti-exceptionalism about logic. That is, he holds that logic, as a theory, does not have any exceptional status in relation to the theories of empirical sciences. Crucial to Priest’s anti-exceptionalism is the existence of ‘data’ that can force the revision of logical theory. He claims that classical logic is inadequate to the available data and, thus, needs to be revised. But what kind of data can overturn classical logic? Priest claims that the data is our intuitions about the va…Read more
  •  175
    On An Error In Grove's Proof
    with Graham Priest
    Logique Et Analyse 158 215-217. 1997.
    Nearly a decade has past since Grove gave a semantics for the AGM postulates. The semantics, called sphere semantics, provided a new perspective of the area of study, and has been widely used in the context of theory or belief change. However, the soundness proof that Grove gives in his paper contains an error. In this note, we will point this out and give two ways of repairing it.
  •  293
    In one of his influential works ‘One the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme’, Donald Davidson argues against conceptual relativism. According to Davidson, ‘we could not be in a position to judge that others had concepts or beliefs radically different from our own’. Davidson’s thesis seems to have a consequence for comparative philosophy, particularly in a comparative study between Chinese and Western traditions of philosophy which are often considered to differ conceptually. If Davidson is correct…Read more
  •  5077
    Buddhist Philosophy of Logic
    In Emmanuel Steven Michael (ed.), Blackwell Companion to Buddhist Philosophy, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 320-330. 2013.
    Logic in Buddhist Philosophy concerns the systematic study of anumāna (often translated as inference) as developed by Dignāga (480-540 c.e.) and Dharmakīti (600-660 c.e.). Buddhist logicians think of inference as an instrument of knowledge (pramāṇa) and, thus, logic is considered to constitute part of epistemology in the Buddhist tradition. According to the prevalent 20th and early 21st century ‘Western’ conception of logic, however, logical study is the formal study of arguments. If we understa…Read more
  •  349
    On Self-Awareness and the Self
    In Graham Priest & Damon Young (eds.), Philosophy and Martial Arts, Routledge. pp. 127-138. 2014.
    Some philosophers of mind, cognitive scientists, phenomenologists as well as Buddhist philosophers have claimed that an awareness of an object is not just an experience of that object but also involves self-awareness. It is sometimes argued that being aware of an object without being aware of oneself is pathological. As anyone who has been involved in martial arts, as well as any sports requiring quick responses such as cricket and tennis, can testify, however, awareness of the self at the time …Read more
  •  68
    Moonpaths: Ethics and Emptiness
    Oxford University Press USA. 2016.
    The Mahayana tradition in Buddhist philosophy is defined by its ethical orientation--the adoption of bodhicitta, the aspiration to attain awakening for the benefit of all sentient beings. And indeed, this tradition is known for its literature on ethics, which reflect the Madhyamaka tradition of philosophy, and emphasizes both the imperative to cultivate an attitude of universal care (karuna) grounded in the realization of emptiness, impermanence, independence, and the absence of any self in pers…Read more
  •  109
    The limit of language in daoism
    Asian Philosophy 14 (2). 2004.
    The paper is concerned with the development of the paradoxical theme of Daoism. Based on Chad Hansen's interpretation of Daoism and Chinese philosophy in general, it traces the history of Daoism by following their treatment of the limit of language. The Daoists seem to have noticed that there is a limit to what language can do and that the limit of language is paradoxical. The 'theoretical' treatment of the paradox of the limit of language matures as Daoism develops. Yet the Daoists seem to have…Read more
  •  1
    Ethics for Mādhyamikas
    In Georges Dreyfus, Bronwyn Finnigan, Jay Garfield, Guy Newland, Graham Priest, Mark Siderits, Koji Tanaka, Sonam Thakchoe, Tom Tillemans & Jan Westerhoff (eds.), Moonshadows. Conventional Truth in Buddhist Philosophy, Oxford University Press. pp. 221--31. 2011.
  •  334
    Inference in the mengzi 1a: 7
    Journal of Chinese Philosophy 38 (3): 444-454. 2011.
    In 1A:7 of the Mengzi, Mengzi tries to convince King Xuan of Qi that he is a “true” king. As a reading of Mengzi’s reasoning involved in his attempt at persuasion, David Nivison advances an inferential view, according to which Mengzi’s persuasion involves inferences. In this paper, I consider the assumptions underlying the objections raised against Nivison’s inferential view. I argue that these objections assume a contemporary Western view about the nature of logic and inferences. I propose an a…Read more
  •  125
    A natural deduction system for first degree entailment
    with Allard M. Tamminga
    Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 40 (2): 258-272. 1999.
    This paper is concerned with a natural deduction system for First Degree Entailment (FDE). First, we exhibit a brief history of FDE and of combined systems whose underlying idea is used in developing the natural deduction system. Then, after presenting the language and a semantics of FDE, we develop a natural deduction system for FDE. We then prove soundness and completeness of the system with respect to the semantics. The system neatly represents the four-valued semantics for FDE.
  •  1965
    A logic is called 'paraconsistent' if it rejects the rule called 'ex contradictione quodlibet', according to which any conclusion follows from inconsistent premises. While logicians have proposed many technically developed paraconsistent logical systems and contemporary philosophers like Graham Priest have advanced the view that some contradictions can be true, and advocated a paraconsistent logic to deal with them, until recent times these systems have been little understood by philosophers. Th…Read more