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323Personal identity, minimalism, and madhyamakaPhilosophy East and West 52 (3): 373-385. 2002.The publication of Derek Parfit's Reasons and Persons in 1984 revived and reshaped the debate on personal identity in Western philosophy. Not only does Parfit argue forcefully and ingeniously for a revisionary Reductionist theory of persons and their diachronic identity, but he also draws radical normative inferences from such a theory. Along the way he also mentions Indian Buddhist parallels to his own Reductionist theory. Some of these parallels are explored here, while particular attention is…Read more
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188Ineffability, signification and the meaning of lifePhilosophical Papers 39 (2): 239-255. 2010.There is an apparent tension between two familiar platitudes about the meaning of life: (i) that 'meaning' in this context means 'value', and (ii) that such meaning might be ineffable. I suggest a way of trying to bring these two claims together by focusing on an ideal of a meaningful life that fuses both the axiological and semantic senses of 'significant'. This in turn allows for the possibility that the full significance of a life might be ineffable not because its axiological significance is…Read more
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167Buddhism, abortion and the middle wayAsian Philosophy 10 (2). 2000.What have modern Buddhist ethicists to say about abortion and is there anything to be learned from it? A number of writers have suggested that Buddhism (particularly Japanese Buddhism) does indeed have something important to offer here: a response to the dilemma of abortion that is a 'middle way' between the pro-choice and pro-life extremes that have polarised the western debate. I discuss what this suggestion might amount to and present a defence of its plausibility.
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156Indigenous rights and environmental justiceEnvironmental Ethics 20 (4): 377-391. 1998.The modern environmental movement has a tradition of respect for indigenous cultures and many environmentalists believe that there are important ecological lessons to be learned from studying the traditional life styles of indigenous peoples. More recently, however, some environmentalists have become more sceptical. This scepticism has been sharpened by current concerns with the cause of indigenous rights. Indigenous peoples have repeatedly insisted on their rights to pursue traditional practice…Read more
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154Personal Identity, Reductionism and the Necessity of OriginsErkenntnis 51 (2-3): 277-294. 1999.A thought that we all entertain at some time or other is that the course of our lives might have been very different from the way they in fact have been, with the consequence that we might have been rather different sorts of persons than we actually are. A less common, but prima facie intelligible thought is that we might never have existed at all, though someone rather like us did. Arguably, any plausible theory of personal identity should be able to accommodate both possibilities. Certain curr…Read more
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114Tolstoy, Death and the Meaning of LifePhilosophy 60 (232): 231-245. 1985.Questions about the meaning of life have traditionally been regarded as being of particular concern to philosophers. It is sometimes complained that contemporary analytic philosophy fails to address such questions, but there do exist illuminating recent discussions of these questions by analytic philosophers.1Perhaps what lurks behind the complaint is a feeling that these discussions are insufficiently close to actual living situations and hence often seem rather thin and bland compared with the…Read more
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107The Analogical Argument for Animal PainJournal of Applied Philosophy 14 (1): 49-58. 1997.Philosophical defenders of animal liberation believe that we have direct duties to animals. Typically a presumption of that belief is that animals have the capacity to experience pain and suffering. Notoriously, however, a strand of Western scientific and philosophical thought has held animals to be incapable of experiencing pain, and even today one frequently encounters in discussions of animal liberation expressions of scepticism about whether animals really experience pain. The Analogical Arg…Read more
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102Buddhism, euthanasia and the sanctity of lifeJournal of Medical Ethics 22 (5): 309-13. 1996.Damien and John Keown claim that there is important common ground between Buddhism and Christianity on the issue of euthanasia and that both traditions oppose it for similar reasons in order to espouse a "sanctity of life" position. I argue that the appearance of consensus is partly created by their failure to specify clearly enough certain key notions in the argument: particularly Buddhism, euthanasia and the sanctity of life. Once this is done, the Keowns' central claims can be seen to be eith…Read more
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101The momentariness of simplesPhilosophy 79 (3): 435-445. 2004.Many philosophers have supposed that while most of the objects in our immediate experience are composed of parts, at some point we must come down to those fundamental impartite objects out of which all partite things are composed: the metaphysical simples (usually conceived of as enduring, even eternal, entities). I consider what reason we have to believe that there really are simples, then we also have good reason to believe in their momentariness.
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98Death and immortalityDistributors for the U.S. and Canada, Kluwer Academic Publishers. 1987.INTRODUCTION In The World as Will and Representation Schopenhauer writes: Death is the real inspiring genius or Musagetes of philosophy, and for this reason ...
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94Evil and Human NatureThe Monist 85 (2): 304-19. 2002.One familiar philosophical use of the term ‘evil’ just contrasts it with ‘good’, i.e., something is an evil if it is a bad thing, one of life’s “minuses.” This is the sense of ‘evil’ that is used in posing the traditional theological problem of evil, though it is customary there to distinguish between moral evils and natural evils. Moral evils are those bad things that are caused by moral agents; natural evils are those bad things that are not caused by moral agents. Since the existence of evils…Read more
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82Intentionality and self-awarenessRatio 16 (3): 222-235. 2003.In this essay I defend both the individual plausibility and conjoint consistency of two theses. One is the Intentionality Thesis: that all mental states are intentional . The other is the Self-Awareness Thesis: that if a subject is aware of an object, then the subject is also aware of being aware of that object. I begin by arguing for the individual prima facie plausibility of both theses. I then go on to consider a regress argument to the effect that the two theses are incompatible. I discuss t…Read more
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77Buddhist idealism and the problem of other mindsAsian Philosophy 27 (1): 59-68. 2017.This essay is concerned with Indian Yogācāra philosophers’ treatment of the problem of other minds in the face of a threatened collapse into solipsism suggested by Vasubandhu’s epistemological argument for idealism. I discuss the attempts of Dharmakīrti and Ratnakīrti to address this issue, concluding that Dharmakīrti is best seen as addressing the epistemological problem of other minds and Ratnakīrti as addressing the conceptual problem of other minds.
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72Is whatever exists knowable and nameable?Philosophy East and West 49 (4): 401-414. 1999.Naiyāyikas are fond of a slogan, which often appears as a kind of motto in their texts: "Whatever exists is knowable and nameable." What does this mean? Is it true? The first part of this essay offers a brief explication of this important Nyāya thesis; the second part argues that, given certain plausible assumptions, the thesis is demonstrably false
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71Truth, relativism and western conceptions of indian philosophyAsian Philosophy 8 (1). 1998.We (relatively few) Western analytic philosophers who also work on classical Indian philosophy commonly encounter puzzlement or suspicion from our colleagues in Western philosophy because of our Indian interests. The ubiquity of these attitudes is itself revealing of Western conceptions of Indian philosophy, though their origins lie in cultural history often unknown to those who hold them. In the first part of this paper I relate a small but significant slice of that history before going on to d…Read more
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70Computationality, mind and value: The case of sāmkhya-yogaAsian Philosophy 11 (1). 2001.Associated with the successful development of computer technology has been an increasing acceptance of computational theories of the mind. But such theories also seem to close the gap between ourselves and machines, threatening traditional notions of our special value as non-physical conscious minds. Prima facie, Sāmkhya-Yoga - the oldest school of classical Indian philosophy, with its dualism between purusa ('self', 'consciousness') and prakrti ('nature', 'matter') - seems a case in point. Howe…Read more
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65Studies in Buddhist Philosophy by Mark SideritsPhilosophy East and West 68 (1): 1-5. 2017.Over the last few decades Mark Siderits has established himself as a leading philosophical interpreter of Indian Buddhist philosophy. He has published widely in this field, but three of his books are particularly well known: his Personal Identity and Buddhist Philosophy, a self-styled "essay in fusion philosophy"; his introductory textbook Buddhism as Philosophy ; and–with Shōryū Katsura–his translation and commentary, Nāgārjuna's Middle Way: Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. Taken together, these three boo…Read more
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61Future generations and the metaphysics of the self: Western and indian philosophical perspectivesAsian Philosophy 13 (1). 2003.Our present actions can have effects on future generations - affecting not only the environment they will inherit, but even perhaps their very existence. This raises a number of important moral issues, many of which have only recently received serious philosophical attention. I begin by discussing some contemporary Western philosophical perspectives on the problem of our obligations to future generations, and then go on to consider how these approaches might relate to the classical Indian philos…Read more
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60John Hick on Faith: A Critique (review)International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 15 (1/2). 1984.
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57Tolstoy, Death and the Meaning of LifePhilosophy 60 (232): 231-245. 1985.Questions about the meaning of life have traditionally been regarded as being of particular concern to philosophers. It is sometimes complained that contemporary analytic philosophy fails to address such questions, but there do exist illuminating recent discussions of these questions by analytic philosophers.1Perhaps what lurks behind the complaint is a feeling that these discussions are insufficiently close to actual living situations and hence often seem rather thin and bland compared with the…Read more
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53Evil and Human NatureThe Monist 85 (2): 304-319. 2002.One familiar philosophical use of the term ‘evil’ just contrasts it with ‘good’, i.e., something is an evil if it is a bad thing, one of life’s “minuses.” This is the sense of ‘evil’ that is used in posing the traditional theological problem of evil, though it is customary there to distinguish between moral evils and natural evils. Moral evils are those bad things that are caused by moral agents; natural evils are those bad things that are not caused by moral agents. Since the existence of evils…Read more