Epistemology, Śrīvaiṣṇavism and Comparative Philosophy at my new blog

Epistemology
This post deals with the epistemology of public shaming.
This post deals with arthāpatti and inference.
These two posts discuss expert knowledge (as in the case of gemmologists who recognise gems perceptually) in Sanskrit sources (especially Vedānta Deśika and Kumārila and Dharmakīrti).

This post discusses whether one can understand a sentence without believing its content to be the case.
This post discusses language as an instrument of knowledge.
This post discusses sentences and sentence-meaning according to Śabara.
This post discusses words as instruments of knowledge according to Śabara.


Śrīvaiṣṇavism and Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta
A tentative hypothesis about its reconstruction is discussed here.
This post focuses on the three different narratives about the reconstruction of the history of Śrīvaiṣṇavism.
This post discusses the Teṅkalai position about one's absolute love for God.
This post discusses Vedānta Deśika's relation to Nyāya.
This post is dedicated to the ways to know about God.


Comparative Philosophy
Graham Priest explains here why one should study Asian philosophy.
This post discusses whether there are infinite philosophies (African, Australian…) or whether there are just a few philosophical traditions (Greek, German, Indian…).
This post focuses on the issue of narrative as a way to overcome the crudity of pure philosophy (with references to the Islamic world).
This post discusses humans (as) animal beings.

Methodology of translations from Sanskrit
This post focuses on the translation from Sanskrit.
This post discusses the differences between jñā- and vid-.
This post discusses the history of the expression padavākyapramāṇa-.


Long sellers: Quotations and Daya Krishna
This post is dedicated to reuse in the history of art.
This post discusses my reasons for engaging with Daya Krishna's thought.

You can find further short posts, Call for papers, quotes, etc., at my new blog.

In the last few months I wrote mainly about comparative philosophy, arthāpatti, deontic logic and methodology…

Comparative and Western Philosophy
Why should one engage in non-Western philosophical ideas? The topic is discussed at my new blog, here. On a related line, this post discusses "common sense" and asks whether it is not just "English common sense", this one discusses common prejudices about Indian philosophy, and this post discusses Ankur Barua's discussion on whether there is Philosophy in India. The 172nd Philosophers' Carnival has been, by the way, also hosted on my new blog, here.
This post discusses the McGurk philosophy as an evidence of savikalpa pratyakṣa.

Methodology
As for methodology, this post discusses edited books, for both editors and contributors and this one discusses the methodology of group translations. By the way, in case you are looking for an Indological job, don't miss this post.

Arthāpatti
I recently started a new project on an instrument of knowledge called by Mīmāṃsā authors arthāpatti 'cogent evidence'. You can read about it here, here and here (discussing Kumārila's point of view)

Deontic Logic
As for the deontic logic project, you can read about it here, here (on necessity in Mīmāṃsā) and here (on dyadic conditions).

Great authors
This semester, I am teaching Kumārila's Ślokavārttika. Thus, I get inspired to write this post.
This post discusses a line by Veṅkaṭanātha.
This one discusses Daya Krishna's view of the Nyāyasūtra.

You can find further shorter posts, book announcements, CfP and the like at my new blog.

IABS, IDhC conferences and other posts (including various CfP)

You can find a summary of my posts on the IABS (International Association of Buddhist Studies) Conference on my new blog, here.
You can find a summary of my posts on the IDhC (International Dharmakīrti Conference) on my new blog, here.
Further, you can find a post on bhakti and Daya Krishna here.
A post on common misunderstandings of Mīmāṃsā can be read here.
Are you interested in philosophy and epistemology of language and in testimony? Read this CfP.
The Call for Papers for the next CBC can be read here.

Be sure to check my new blog's archives for August and September for further short posts.

How to justify Testimony? Indian and Western views

Concerning the Epistemology of Testimony, one can first distinguish between reductionists (claiming that Testimony is just a subset of Inference) and anti-reductionists (claiming that Testimony is a distinct instrument of knowledge). In India and in the West, we have reductionists (David Hume, Elisabeth Fricker, Buddhist Pramāṇavāda, Vaiśeṣika) and anti-reductionists (Thomas Reid, Jennifer Lackey, Arindam Chakrabarti, Nyāya, Mīmāṃsā).

Interestingly, however, in the West reductionists insist on the need for testimony to be grounded on something else (e.g., on the reliability of the speaker), whereas anti-reductionists claim that  we have a "presumptive right" to accept testimony, so that it "is a source of justification in its own right" (Gelfert 2010).

Goldberg and the problem of Anonymous Assertions

If one studies Indian accounts of Linguistic Communication as instrument of knowledge (śābda) one is immediately confronted with two different paradigms:

• the Nyāya paradigm, according to which an act of linguistic communication conveys knowledge if it is uttered by a reliable speaker.
• the Mīmāṃsā paradigm, according to which an act of linguistic communciation conveys knowledge, until and unless a flaw in the speaker interrupts this ability.

The first account presupposes a parataḥ prāmāṇya 'extrinsic validity' theory, that is, on the idea that an instrument of cognition becomes able to bestow knowledge only if connected with some external factors "enhancing" it, e.g., in the case of Linguistic Communication, a reliable speaker. The second account relies on a svataḥ prāmāṇya 'intrinsic validity' theory, that is, on the idea that an instrument of cognition is valid unless and until it is falsified.

This also entails that the Mīmāṃsā account can admit as valid the Veda (the Sacred Texts believed by Mīmāṃsā authors to be authorless and beginningless). In fact, since the Veda has no author, no author's flaw can ever invalidate it. By contrast, the claim that, e.g., the Buddhist Sacred Texts are reliable is easily invalidated, given that the very idea that their author, the Buddha, had access to unknowable realities such as dharma and karman can be easily falsified through an appeal to our common experience (where no one ever has access to unknowable realities) and to the inferential evidences about the fact that what is by itself unknowable cannot ever be intellectually grasped, even by enhanced sense- and intellectual faculties.

By contrast, the Nyāya school can only accept the Veda insofar as it regards it as authored by a reliable speaker (namely God).

Thus, it seems that if one wants to accept authorless assertions as valid, one needs to agree with the Mīmāṃsā authors and disagree with the Nyāya ones.

Similarly, a leading and thought-provoking scholar of epistemology, Sanford Goldberg, deals with Anonymous Assertions (forthcoming on Episteme, available here) relying on a theory which is quite close to the parataḥ prāmāṇya one, namely, on the idea that the validity of an assertion depends on an "epistemic norm", entailing the reliability of the speaker and the awareness of it by hearer and speaker at the same time ("in asserting something, the speaker performs an act regarding which it is common knowledge that her act was proper (warranted) only if she had the relevant epistemic authority", p. 6).

Now, what happens in the case of anonymous assertions?
1) That the speaker is not bound by any epistemic-norm-enforcing policy, since no one will be able to trace her back and hold her responsible for what she said or wrote.
2) That the audience is aware of that and has, consequently, grounds for scepticism.
Thus, "the hearer is unwarranted in thinking that the speaker satisfied the norm of assertion" (p. 27) and, consequently, anonymous assertions are (unless in particular cases), even if true, unable to convey justified beliefs.

Are there exceptions? Yes, and Goldberg (p. 29) mentions two:

• "the 'security wall' model": one where a security wall warrants for the reliability of anonymous assertions. Goldberg does not mention any example of it, but one might think of moderated blogs admitting only those anonymous assertions whose reliability has been checked.
• "the 'Wikipedia' model": one where the cost of correction is low and one can therefore hope that mistakes would have been detected.

Is this enough to make sense of all the reliable anonymous assertions we regularly encounter? I am not sure.
Let me start by listing them: Apart from the ones mentioned by Goldberg, one encounters anonymous assertions also in the case of editorials on newspapers (at least in continental Europe, the most influential articles are not signed), of encyclopaedic entries, of laws (where a pool of people is involved, many of which are not mentioned in the final text). (I will not deal with this last case, since Goldberg focuses only on assertions (and not on exhortations).)
An author would be more cautious while writing an anonymous editorial or an anonymous encyclopaedic entry than while writing a signed article, since much more is at stake. Signing an article means anchoring it (only) to its author, whereas letting it unsigned means entailing that the whole authority of the newspaper is at stake with it. Thus, the case of editorials and of encyclopaedias can be dealt with with the security wall model (i.e., it is the general reliability of a certain newspaper or encyclopaedia which vouches for the reliablity of each editorial or entry). However, they also hint at a further point, i.e., that in (Western) culture anonymity has long been a sign of authority (!), insofar as no limit to the authority is put.
This is even more evident in the case of Sacred Texts. Let us assume, as most historians do, that Sacred Texts (as, e.g., the Pāñcarātra Sāṃhitās) are authored by human authors. Let us also assume that these people were not only or not always driven by egoistic purposes, such as the desire to fool other people and/or gain money or influence in this way. Why would they nonetheless efface themselves in the works they write? Because, if they spoke as themselves, they would limit the authority of the final text to themselves. If this were the case, a certain text would be reliable insofar as its author is reliable, but not of the highest authority. Thus, it is easy to imagine that a certain person X would be careful while writing or teaching in his own name, but MUCH MORE SO while writing a Sacred Text deemed to depict an absolute Truth.

Can a justified true belief be based on an anonymous assertion? 

For another post on Western epistemology of testimony, see here (on J. Lackey). Similarly on testimony and justification, see this post. On the validity of Sacred Texts, see this post. To Linguistic Communication as instrument of knowledge is dedicated my first blog (in Italian), plus many posts on this blog labelled with "śabda".

The context principle and some Indian controversies over Meaning —B.K. Matilal and P.K. Sen

The context principle and some Indian controversies over Meaning is a milestone in Indian studies, and in the history of their interaction with mainstream (i.e. Western) philosophy. Since it was published in 1988 on Mind (one of the top-5 journals in Philosophy, inaccessible for most authors), virtually everyone (in Indian philosophy) has read it.

Have you also re-read it?
I re-read it after some years this Summer and I have to admit that it was again a surprise. The article starts with a discussion of the Context principle in Frege and Quine (does the principle mean that words HAVE no meaning outside a sentence, or that their meaning can only be UNDERSTOOD within a sentence?). In this connection, M & S discuss a strong and a weak interpretation of the Context principle (according to whether it should answer the first or the second question). They end up saying that the strong interpretation clashes with Frege's later work (see below), whereas the weak interpretation (the context is only needed to understand the meaning of words) is trivial. Thus, an intermediate interpretation needs to be adopted, namely that "the meaning of a subsentential expression is nothing but its contribution to the meaning of the sentence in which it occurs" (p. 80).

Next, Matilal and Sen discuss also Russell's On Denoting (another milestone of contemporary Philosophy of Language). I have to admit that I could not understand Matilal and Sen's treatment of it until I actually read Russell (but the fact of making a reader undertake further studies might be conceived as a further result of Matilal and Sen). Until M & S, in fact, I had always thought of Russell's philosophy of language as correspondentist, whereas M & S interpret Russell's strategy of reduction (through his "contextual definitions") as also (implicitly) presupposing some sort of Context principle.

A further step is the analysis of Frege. In fact, the Context principle seems to clash with the sense-reference distinction, outlined by Frege in his later work. M & S use Michael Dummett's Frege: Philosophy of Language to claim that both theses can co-exist: words' meanings are outer referents, but "we cannot say anything, in the strict sense of the word 'say', without the use of whole sentences" (p. 80). After a short excursus on Kant's unity of thought, Michael Dummett's book is also quoted to discuss the distinction between the Context principle and the Composition principle. According to the latter, the meaning of a sentence is the result of the composition of the words forming it.

Does this sound familiar? If not, it means that you have not been working on the Kumārila-Prabhākara-Bhartṛhari-Nyāya controversy on word- and sentence-meaning. In fact, as shown by M & S in the second part of their work (pp. 84--97), the Indian scenario also revolves on similar issues. Bhartṛhari is clearly an holist: for him the meaning of a sentence is a whole and word-meanings are only secondary abstractions. Kumārila and Prabhākara represent two different positions, possibly identifiable, respectively, with the weak and the intermediate interpretation of the Context principle.

This leads to a further problem, i.e., the link between linguistics and ontology. The topic is only hinted at at the end of M & S's article, but it is, in my opinion, the most thought-provoking contribution of the article (together with the very idea of joining Frege and Kumārila side by side in a philosophical debate).

In fact, if words express their meanings only once already related in the context of a sentence, as upheld by the Prābhākaras, what consequences does this have for the Prābhākara ontology? If, for instance, "cow" in "Bring the cow!" does not mean  a separate cow, but a cow insofar as it is related to the injunction of being brought, does this entail that a "cow-connected-with-the-injunction-of bringing" exists out there? What sort of cow would this be? Surely an incomplete cow, one which is completed by the injunction of bringing. Should one admit —for the sake of maintaining the correspondentism between meanings and outer world— that there are "unsaturated entities" out there?

My personal answer is that ontology is less relevant than linguistics for the Prābhākaras (unlike for most Western philosophers and common folks) and that, as a matter of fact, this sort of correspondentism is already ruled out by the Prābhākara stress on exhortations as the paradigm of all sentences.

What do you think? Can there be linguistics without ontology?
Moreover, methodologically speaking, I wonder why M & S has not been enough for further studies of this sort to be the rule on Mind (and other philosophical journals). Does this failure depend on their style? (Or should we just start working as a task-force and submit many articles of this kind?)

On ontology and Mīmāṃsā, see this post. On ontology in Indian philosophy in general, see this one.
As hinted at in the Introduction, this was not the first time I read M & S's article. You can read a further post about it (focusing on the Prābhākara linguistic theory) here. On Frege's and the Prābhākara philosophy of language, check this post.

Testimony and Credit

If one accepts testimony among the instruments of knowledge, then one is forced to reconsider one's idea of the role of credit within knowledge. In fact, in the virtue-epistemology understanding of knowledge, this can be "credited" to the knower. However, in the case of testimony, the credit seems to be little in the case of the listener and to rather regard the speaker ---who is not the "knower" of a testimonial belief.

Is there any possible way out?

This debate lies at the center of Jennifer Lackey's Knowledge and Credit (2009, available through Jstor at this link), and of a broader discussion possibly initiated by Lackey 2007. Lackey 2009 discusses the case of a tourist (called Morris) coming in Chicago and asking for directions. He happens to ask a Chiacago resident who gives him exact directions. Morris now knows where the Sears Towers are, although he deserves no credit for that!

—If one says that Morris does not know where the Sears Towers are, then one has to leave out of "knowledge" most cases of testimony.

—By contrast, one might try to say that Morris does deserve some credit (for instance, insofar as he asked a sober adult, instead of a child, an intoxicated person, etc.). However, Lackey explains, if this is the case, then credit should be granted also to "knowers" in Gettier-cases,
e.g., to Jack who has reasons to believe that his colleague John has 10 coins in his pocket and will get an advancement and as a consequence truly believes that someone in the room has 10 coins in his pocket and will get an advancement, although the one who has 10 coins and will get an advancement is Jack himself and not his colleague (you can find enough literature on Edmund Gettier, but since his article is only 3 pages long, the best way is just to read it, here),
although the Credit View of Knowledge should exactly aim at distinguishing knowledge (justified true belief) from beliefs which are only accidentally true (i.e., Gettier-cases).
Lackey shows how all attempts to reconfigure the role of Credit to meet the Chicago Visitor case are deemed to fail (or to include Gettier-like cases). Among these attempts are the idea (see E. Sosa 2007) that Credit can be shared (for instance, by speaker and hearer).

Unfortunately, Lackey does not spell out in her 2009 article the consequences of the dismissal of the Credit view of knowledge. Will this lead to a new paradigm (where true beliefs are knowledge, no matter whether they are justified or not)? Or will it just force epistemologists to find a new way to distinguish between knowledge and accidentally true beliefs?

The discussion has some special impact for scholars focusing chiefly on Indian philosophy and for readers of this blog in particular. One notices 1) the role of the listener within testimony, already highlighted on this blog (see below), 2) the conundrum implied in the case of testimony: Either one accepts only "safe" cases of testimony (notably the Veda, in the case of Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā), or the acceptance of testimony risks to lead to the acceptance of Gettier-like cases as well, 3) the similarity between virtue-epistemology and parataḥ prāmāṇya in placing the additional element of knowledge over true belief on the knower (and not on the piece of knowledge itself). Last, you might remember the articles by Sibajiban Bhattacharya arguing that in India (which meant, for him, Navya Nyāya) there is no need for a true belief to be also justified to count as knowledge. Gettier-like cases are also discussed and accepted as knowledge.

Does the Indian approach just deny the importance of the listener's competence? Does the burden only rely on the source of Linguistic Communication? And, more in general, do we need credit?

Further discussions on similar contacts between testimony and Gettier cases can be found in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, here. On the role of the listener, see here and here.

अाप्तवचनविषये कन्तमहोदयस्य मतम्

कन्तमहोदयस्य न्याय-(Logik)विषये प्रकरणेषु कन्तमहोदयेनाप्तवचनं प्रमाणेषु स्वीकृतमिति भाति ।
कुतः?
१ । इन्द्रियानुभवो न सर्वदा संभवति । बहुत्र, अाप्तवचनमेकैव प्रमाणम् ।
२ । अाप्तवचनं सर्वेषामुपयोगपूर्णम्, स्वज्ञानानां सम्यक्करणार्थम् । यदा यदा देवदत्तः "अात्मनः ब्रह्मणश्चाद्वैतम्" इति वदन् यज्ञदत्तेन "अात्मनः ब्रह्मणश्च विशिष्टाद्वैतम्" इति वदता सह मिलति, तदा तदा उभयोः स्वज्ञानानां विषये पर्येषणा कार्या । "देवदत्तो न भवेयं किमहं 'अात्मनः ब्रह्मणश्चाद्वैतम्' इति चिन्तयेयम्?" इति । तथा च यज्ञदत्तेन कार्यम् । इत्थम्, स्वज्ञानां सम्यक्करणार्थं संभाषणं कार्यम् । न तु, प्रलपनमात्रार्थम् ।
३ । पुरुषाः स्वभवतः संभाषणप्रियाः । यो "ममान्येषामाप्तवचनं न किंचिदेव" इति चिन्तति, सः स्वाय्यन्येषु चापराध्नोति ।



प्रलपनं तु न करणीयम्, यथा "देवदत्तेनैतत् कृतम्" ।
कुतः?
१ । यद्यपि "देवदत्तेनैतत् कृतम्" इति सत्यम्, तथापि न वदनीयम्, एकस्य दुष्कृतानि श्रुत्वा "सर्वे दुष्कृतानि कुर्वन्ति । मम पुरुषानां न को ऽपि विश्वासो ऽतिवर्तते" इति मतिर्न भूत् ।
२ । यदि  "देवदत्तेनैतत् कृतम्" इति प्रलपनम् असत्यं, तर्हि न वदनीयम् । असत्यं वदन् पुरुषः स्वमेव माहात्म्यमतिचरति । सो ऽसत्यं वदन् न पुरुषः, किन्तु लपनकुशलं यन्त्रमिव भवति ।
३ । ये तु कल्पितकथाः वदन्ति, यथा "एतानि पुष्पानि खदित्वा पुनः स्वस्थो भविष्यसि" इति, ते अाप्तानामपराध्नन्ति । तेषां कथाः श्रुत्वा, पुरुषाणाम् "अद्यापि स्वस्थो नास्मि, अाप्ता अप्यनप्ताः!" इति मतस्योद्भावनात् ।

एतस्मिन् विषये, एतत् गेल्‌फेर्त्महोदयेन (Axel Gelfert) विरचितं प्रकरणं पठनीयम् ।
कन्तमहोदयेन प्रथमविचारस्य प्रथमभाग इहानुवादितः ।
 

Requisites of the listener

Matthew Dasti, in a comment to a post, kindly informed me of his article on Testimony, Belief Transfer, and Causal Irrelevance: Reflections from India's Nyāya School (can be found here on Jstor and also read online without charge, even for people who are not part of a research institution). The article is quite interesting from several points of view, among which I would like to stress the following ones:

1. 1. highlighting the disagreement between Mīmāṃsakas and Naiyāyikas on the interpretation of āptopadeśaḥ (the Nyāya definition of testimony as found in the Nyāyasūtra). It means "statement of a reliable [person]" according to Naiyāyikas, who want to stress the importance of the source and "reliable statement" for the Mīmāṃsakas, who want to stress the independence of language as an instrument of knowledge.
2. 2. the shift between ancient Nyāya and Navya Nyāya, since Gaṅgeśa acknowledges the possibility of testimony being successful even in the case of an unreliable speaker, if only she is transmitting a true belief (a typical example might be a liar who believes that B is the case and, thus, says A, but does not know that in fact A is the case) and the listener understands it (see Sudipta Munsi's article here (scroll to the button of the page) for further notes on the competence of the listener).
3. 3. the similarity between this position and J. Lackey's one.
4. 4. Dasti further includes among the possible witnesses also clocks, thermometers, and similar instruments which are not in themselves reliable (since they do not want to be sincere, nor do they know what they convey). 

I wonder, however, whether a Sanskrit philosopher would not answer that one infers the hour from a clock because of the position of the hour hand and the minute one. Thus, this would be a case of inference (as in the case of gestures), not of Linguistic Communication. What do you think?

For further posts on Linguistic Communication, see here. For further comments on the listener, see this post.

Testimony: Does the listener also need to be competent?

A colleague and friend of mine, Sudipta Munsi, has sent me an article through which we would like to participate to our CBC discussion on testimony (although he will not be able to join us in Turin). You can find it on the Asiatica wiki, here.
Comments would be welcome. And I would be especially pleased if you could comment on Sudipta's point about the listener's competence (on the last page).

Do you agree that a listener also needs to fulfil special requirements in order for an act of testimony to be successful?

For further posts on testimony, check the labels "śabda" and "epistemology". My Italian blog on Linguistic Communication in Indian and Western philosophy can be read here. On the panel of testimony at the next CBC, see this post.

Linguistic communication epistemologically precedes perception

Do we first see an oak and then come to know its name from an expert friend or is it the case that

Vicky Asp, Oak hillside

only because our expert friend has made us aware of oaks we can recognise them within the undistinct mass of trees? I uphold the (radical, I know) theory that the latter is the case and that our perception is informed by what we know through linguistic communication.

I have recently received an amusing piece of evidence for my theory: an Italian trio has started taking true portions out of well-known English songs (e.g., Bob Marley's Keep on Jamming at 11.40' of this audio file) and read them giving them an Italian meaning. This can be done because some English words, if differently grouped, do in fact (by chance) resemble Italian ones (don't you remember having thought that "Let it be" was a love song dedicated to "Lady B."?). Now, the funny part of the experiment is that, once you have heard the "Italian" song, you are just no longer able to distinguish the English words in it. Your auditory content is the same as before, while you were able to distinguish the English text, but if you focus on the Italian text, you can no longer recognise the English one, as in the rabbit/duck experiment (where you can only perceive the one or the other animal, but not the two together).

Is not it a further evidence of the fact that our so-called perceptions are theory-loaden and that Linguistic Communication is an unavoidable instrument of knowledge?

My Italian blog on Linguistic Communication in Indian and Western philosophy can be read here. For further posts on Linguistic Communication as an instrument of knowledge, see here (where I call it "Testimony").

Testimony and the requisites of the witness

What counts in testimony? The witness' beliefs or her statements? If the latter, how do we have to rethink the criteria for a valid cognition derived from testimony?

I just came across this book discussion and can't wait to have the book in my hands. If you have the time to run through it, please pause for a second on the problem of the involvement of the witness' beliefs. The author of the book (J. Lackey) concludes that in the act of testimony they are less important than her/his statements, since even an insincere speaker can communicate knowledge. This reminds me of the Navya Nyāya example of the lier who is himself unaware of the fact that he is telling the truth (i.e., he says that X because he believes that Y is the case and wants to lie, but in fact —unknown to him— X is really the case). Can his hearer claim to know that X?

I tend to think that those claiming that testimony is a kind of inference, with the witness' beliefs playing a major role as inferential probans (as, in India, with Buddhist Pramāṇavāda accounts of testimony) should answer that the hearer does not know that X (although he happens to believe that X on the basis of the lier's testimony and although X is true). However, one might suggest that it is possible to substitute "belief" with "statement" and still have a valid inference…?

Or should we just agree with the contemporary Navya Nyāya-influenced philosopher Sibajiban Bhattacharya and think that all true cognition is knowledge, even if it is not justified (i.e., if it is acquired in a way which does not stand a closer scrutiny, like in the case of the hearer's belief that X, obtained through the lier's testimony)?

Should we, thus, just focus on the witness' expertise as expressed in his/her statements, without taking into account his/her beliefs and his/her honesty?  

For further posts on testimony, check the labels "śabda" and "epistemology". My first Italian blog is completely devouted to an analysis of the philosophy of testimony in Indian and Western philosophy (until Michael Dummett).

Round-table on the philosophy of testimony: UPDATED

Within the 2013 Coffee Break Conference, I will host a panel on the Philosophy of Testimony. Besides the usual scheme (short presentations+long discussions about each of them), I am thinking of having a final round-table, open also to people working with testimony (e.g., anthropologists, scholars working with statistics…). In order to avoid to have nothing but a final chat (which is always nice, and will anyway take place throughout the conference), I and the other participants agreed on some of the questions we would like to discuss. We will next send them to the participants of the other panels of the CBC conference.

Here are our proposals (1--4 are my ideas, whereas I owe to Massimo Cuono, Marco Lauri, Sudipta Munsi and Roy Tzohar the other suggestions):

1. 1. Is it legitimate to pay one's witness (as is frequently the case in anthropology and/or whenever one works with statistics)? How much does economical interest alter the testimony?
2. 2. Is perception reliable enough to become the object of testimony (can we, e.g., trust someone when she refers about what she has seen, although we know that it was dark and that she probably believes to have seen more than she has actually seen)?
3. 3. Is second-grade testimony (e.g., I refer that S told me that p) reliable?
4. 4. How can the reliability of a witness be tested? Can, e.g., the fact that she is honest be a criterion? Or that she has proved to be reliable in a certain (different) case?
5. Is the medium of testimony neutral? In other words, what role does the form of testimony play? This is especially relevant in the case of written testimonies from authors of the past.
6. How much does testimony depend on memory? Can we trust the former and mistrust the latter?
7. Is testimony publicly available? Or are only some interpreters allowed to interpret it? 
8. Connected with the above is: What distinguishes the judge's and the historian's (etc.) use of testimony?

What would you add/change? Which aspects of the philosophy of testimony need to be debated?

For further information on the CBC in general and on Philosophy of Testimony in particular, see this  (CBC) and  this (Testimony) wiki page. Within this blog, see this post. For the original post on the philosophy of testimony, see here.

Round Table on the Philosophy of Testimony

Within the 2013 Coffee Break Conference, I will host a panel on the Philosophy of Testimony. Besides the usual scheme (short presentations+long discussions about each of them), I am thinking of having a final round-table, open also to people working with testimony (e.g., anthropologists, scholars working with statistics…). In order to avoid to have nothing but a final chat (which is always nice, and will anyway take place throughout the conference), I am considering to send the participants some of the questions we would like to discuss.

The following ones are my proposals, for the time being:

1. 1. Is it legitimate to pay one's witness (as is frequently the case in anthropology and/or whenever one works with statistics)? How much does economical interest alter the testimony?
2. 2. Is perception reliable enough to become the object of testimony (can we, e.g., trust someone when she refers about what she has seen, although we know that it was dark and that she probably believes to have seen more than she has actually seen)?
3. 3. Is second-grade testimony (e.g., I refer that S told me that p) reliable?
4. 4. How can the reliability of a witness be tested? Can, e.g., the fact that she is honest be a criterion? Or that she has proved to be reliable in a certain (different) case?

What would you add/change? Which aspects of the philosophy of testimony need to be debated?

For further information on the CBC in general and on Philosophy of Testimony in particular, see this  (CBC) and  this (Testimony) wiki page. Within this blog, see this post.

Final Balance on my 2012 projects: Veṅkaṭanātha

The following is the final balance I had to write about my first months (September 2012--end of the year) in the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

Sacred Texts’ Epistemology in Veṅkaṭanātha’s Seśvaramīmāṃsā

Participants: E. Freschi

The purpose of the project is the study of the dialectics of the conflicting epistemologies and world-views of Pūrva Mīmāṃsā and Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta as represented in Veṅkaṭanātha's Seśvaramīmāṃsā (SM). How can its author, for instance, be at the same time faithful to the Mīmāṃsā atheism and the Viśiṣṭādvaita devotion for Viṣṇu? How can he harmonise the Mīmāṃsā claim that the Sacred Texts are reliable insofar as they have no author with the Viśiṣṭādvaita one that the Sacred Texts have been authored by Viṣṇu? How can he make sense of the conflict between the Mīmāṃsā idea of permanence of the world and the theistic account of its creation? The project will explore the way in which Veṅkaṭanātha produced a new synthesis of these conflicting claims, by reinterpreting some of them and by organizing hierarchically the others.

For this purpose the text of SM 1 (i.e., the epistemological part of the SM, corresponding to approximately 2/3 of the whole SM) will be translated and its edition improved through an unedited manuscript found at Adyar Library.

Retrospect of 2012 (September-December): During the first four months of the project, the first folia of the Adyar Library manuscript of the SM have been collated and the first third of SM 1 has been translated and analysed on the basis especially of its principal model, a discussion on the unity of the Sacred Texts and their analysis in Rāmānuja's Śrī Bhāṣya. Interestingly, Veṅkaṭanātha follows closely the structure of Rāmānuja's argumentation, but brings to completely new results, i.e., to the inclusion of Pūrva Mīmāṃsā within the Canon of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta.

Preview of 2013: The SM 1 will be completely translated. The comparison with Rāmānuja's text and with other texts by Veṅkaṭanātha, especially the Mīmāṃsāpādukā, will be continued. The collation of the Adyar Library manuscript of the SM will be continued. An article will be written on the topic of the innovations to Rāmānuja's position brought forth by Veṅkaṭanātha and a contribution on this topic will be presented at the DOT in Münster, September 2013. Prof. Lawrence McCrea will be in Vienna for one week in June 2013 for a reading session of the SM together with E. Freschi, M. Rastelli, M. Schmücker. A panel on epistemology will be hosted by E. Freschi (together with M. Cuono and P. Mindus) at the Symposium ''There is no Orient: 4th Coffee Break Conference", Turin, 5--7 September 2013.

Any suggestion concerning the Preview of 2013 are welcome!

On Veṅkaṭanātha, see, e.g., this post.

New Year's Indological Projects

What do you plan to achieve in 2013?

I have already described my goals in this post, but here are my plans concerning the next twelve months.
My 2013 project: finish the translation of the first book of the Seśvaramīmāṃsā by Veṅkaṭanātha, study of it and of its manuscripts. To this are added, month by month, the following smaller projects:

January: Finishing my volume on tantra and prasaṅga. Paper on paribhāṣās in Mīmāṃsā (for a volume on paribhāṣās edited by Gianni Pellegrini). Working on my volume on Quotations (proceedings of this conference).
February: Paper on paribhāṣās in Mīmāṃsā. Volume on Quotations. Finishing the paper on meaning and reference in Jayanta's Nyāyamañjarī, book 5 (with Artemij Keidan).
March: Paper on nature in Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā (for a conference in Rome organized by Raffaele Torella). Volume on Quotations. Paper on meaning and reference in Jayanta's Nyāyamañjarī, book 5.
April: Finishing my book on Testimony in Indian philosophy. Launching the new version of this blog.
May: Finishing my book on Testimony in Indian philosophy.
June: Paper on Veṅkaṭanātha and Rāmānujācārya on the study of Pūrva and Uttara Mīmāṃsā.
July: (holiday +) Paper on Veṅkaṭanātha and Rāmānujācārya on the study of Pūrva and Uttara Mīmāṃsā.
August: CBC conference on Testimony in Philosophy (see here).
September: CBC conference on Testimony in Philosophy. Correcting the first drafts of the volume on Quotations.
October: Paper on Veṅkaṭanātha and Śrī Rāmānuja on the study of Pūrva and Uttara Mīmāṃsā.
November: (no further projects yet)
December: (no further projects yet)

In case you want to feel accountable for your scholar commitments, please add a comment below.

For my more general goals, see this post.

Next Sanskrit-Philosophical projects

Do you have just goals you can achieve by yourself? If not, here are my current projects, to which you are welcome to contribute. I will regularly update this post and add your names, if you desire to join and to be mentioned. Please consider that only the first six have been already undertaken:

• 1. Quotations and re-use of texts in Sanskrit śāstra. I have been working on this topic for several years and am about to chair a Coffee Break Conference about it (see here). The contributions will appear, if approved by the reviewers, in a special issue of the Journal of Indian Philosophy. I am now considering broadening the field to quotations and re-use of texts in Indian literature, including Veda, Belles Lettres and manuscript usages.
• 2. Coffee Break Conferences, i.e., conferences which are only meant for discussing and without read papers. We organize CBC once or twice a year, on several topics. You can read about the next projects on this website.
• 3. A panel on Testimony: I and the other two organisers welcome contributions on śabdapramāṇa in several fields, i.e., seen from the legal and philosophical point of view, in India and outside India. Further details can be read here.
• 4. Editions and translations: Jayanta's Nyāyamañjarī, book 5; Veṅkaṭanātha's Seśvaramīmāṃsā, Prabhākara's Bṛhatī, Rāmānujācārya's Tantrarahasya.
• 5. Finishing my study on vidhi, apūrva, niyama, in Grammar, Dharmaśāstra and Mīmāṃsā.

• 6. A reader on śabdapramāṇa in Indian and Western philosophy. NB: I have already written a book about it in Italian and it would be great if one could add translations of key texts in favour or against Linguistic Communication as an Instrument of Knowledge.
• 7. A textbook about how to translate śāstric Sanskrit (along the lines of Tubb and Boose's Scholastic Sanskrit), which should ideally include chapters on Reading śāstric Sanskrit (with textual examples and tutorials) and on the specific issues related to translation. For a blurb, see this post.
• 8. A collective volume on Mīmāṃsā as a sāmānyaśāstra (i.e., on Mīmāṃsā rules and ideas as found outside Mīmāṃsā).
• 9. A collective volume on Scholastic texts, i.e., on post-classical śāstric texts, e.g., on the struggle of doing philosophy after Kumārila, Dharmakīrti, Śaṅkara, etc., trying to balance innovation and strategies for preserving what is already there.

What are your projects? Do you have collective projects in mind?

Personal favourites from the last Coffee Break Conference

The third Coffee Break Conference has been, according to many participants, the best one. Because the organisers' group is getting closer and working together is now smoother, more enjoyable and fruitful.

The following extracts are some of the passages that stroke me more. Interestingly enough, several of them come from panels dealing with development studies or with issues far away from my own ones.

M.D. quoting the following statement about Jainism: "Jainism is not 'atheist' but 'transtheist', the jinas are beyond the gods whom one prays".

A.M. noting that "Acculturative processes are multidirectional" (e.g., when a king reaches a remote tribe, it is not just the tribe that gets "sanskritized", but also the official kingship which is "contaminated" by tribal elements).

B.B. and B.D.I. noting that "Information is constructed and not collected", even while using "objective" measurements such as quantitative measurements.

What is then the solution? The same authors suggest:  "Thus, show the entire process in the research work!"

What impressed you more in the last conferences you attended? Don't go through your notes, just say what comes first to your mind.

Linguistic Communication as instrument of knowledge and the Bias in favour of Evolutionism

One of the reasons why the numerous philosophical schools and thoughts elaborated in South Asia over an impressive number of centuries can be (still) neglected in philosophical department is that they do not confirm to a couple of the presuppositions of such philosophical departments:

1. 1. obvious as it is, they do not share the history of Western philosophy (i.e., they do not fit easily in a class on Schleiermacher's sources and fortunes),
2. 2. they do not share the same methodology of contemporary "analytic" philosophy (although excellent authors have shown how dialogue is possible, analytic philosophers may ask themselves why should they bother discussing with someone which is just "almost as good ad" her own colleagues),
3. 3. they do not share the "evolutionary explanation" which is now very much in fashion in Natural sciences and, consequenlty, also in philosophy.

Several scholars, especially of Buddhism, have tried to show how Buddhism is compatible with Varela's or Damasio's theories, but in many cases the result is similar to that achieved by Matilal, Ganeri, etc. in the case of analytic philosophers (described above, point 2).
Now, I am not an expert of evolutionary theories and have no direct access to neuropsychological experiments. Most of the books I read on this subject, however, seem to me flawed by a source of petitio principii: they claim that we like sweet foods, because they are full of calories, and this is good for our preservation, we like sexy girls (or boys, but most authors are men), so that we can reproduce, and so on. But by the same token one might ask why do not we like many other things which are favourable to our species' preservation (such as healthy food and unattractive but fertile women) and we like instead many others which are detrimental for it (such as self-destructive habits of any sort).
More in general, picking up one or the othe character and looking for neurological or evolutionary reasons for it seems to me very much dependent on the whims of a certain group of scientists. Perhaps Indian philosophy should be recommended exactly insofar as it contains the more elaborate debates on the validity of testimony and of human statements as instruments of knowledge? Perhaps we just miss the importance of this problem while reading books based on statistical data (biased by the kind of questions asked) or on psychiatric data (biased by the sort of answers suggested), etc., because we are just not trained to see it?


On Linguistic Communication as an instrument of knowledge, see this post (or, if you can read Italian, my entire Italian blog on this topic).

artha, meaning and reference in Jayanta

artha is a very common term in śāstric Sanskrit and it is at times difficult to see what is Jayanta's distinctive usage of it.
He, in fact, inherits from the Nyāya and Mīmāṃsā systems an epistemological usage of artha in the context of the definition of perceptual knowledge, as meaning 'the real object of a valid piece of cognition'. In the context of linguistic usage, in the śāstric usage preceding Jayanta, artha tends to define the meaning of a word, often considered to be identical with its referent. This does not mean, however, that this artha is a concrete individual.
For instance, in a passage (NM 5, section 3.2.4 in Kataoka 2010), Jayanta states that although the universal is present only within an individual, the two have distinct arthas, thus showing that artha cannot refer to a concrete individual (since there would not be two distinct concrete individuals for vyakti and jāti):

This vṛtti (the presence of the universal in the individual) is the same that [holds] between parts and part-bearer, and between qualities and quality-bearer. Later it will be shown that these two (part and part-bearer and quality and quality-bearer) have different meanings.

 Jayanta rather inquires on what makes something into the content of an epistemic or of a linguistic act. What is the feature which makes an object fit to be grasped? Jayanta's explicit answer (again, in NM 5) will be that the object of a linguistic expression is the vyakti tadvān, i.e., the individual insofar as it is endowed with the characters which make it part of a universal. This is, consequently, the meaning of artha for Jayanta (whether this interpretation holds true for his predecessors and successors is still to be verified).

Do you have different views about the usage of artha in this or other authors? 


On Jayanta, see this post and this one. On artha in Indian thought, see this post and a remark in this one.