Wednesday 29 July 2020

Mantras and Sabda in the Nyaya Manjari of Jayanta Bhatta


Eliot Deutsch who died last month at the age of 89 provides a corrective note to the very common attitude of embarrassment some prominent Western scholars of Indian philosophy feel because of its religious aspect. Somehow they think that this is, as it were, déclassé, and not quite respectable. This perhaps accounts for the popularity of the Nyaya system which is strongly logical.

Advaita Vedanta is the non-dualistic system of Vedanta expounded primarily by Sankara (ca. 788-820). It has been, and continues to be, the most widely accepted system of thought among philosophers in India, and it is, we believe, one of the greatest philosophical achievements to be found in the East or the West.(from Adavita Vedanta; A Philosophical Reconstruction)

Below:
Advaita Vedanta is a religion as much as it is a technical philosophy; it is a way of spiritual realization as well as a system of thought. This intimacy between religion and philosophy in Advaita Vedanta, as in much of the Indian tradition, has been pointed out frequently. It bears constant repetition, however, for there are still a few philosophers who, in their desire to find a dominant naturalistic tradition in India, are determined to neglect (or even to deny) this relationship.

As I wrote
credence
even in Nyaya the Vedas are regarded as authoritative and effective.

Similarly the truth of mantras is cognized by us. In cases of scorpion-bites or snake-bites or the taking of poison (magic formulas) are recited to heal the persons. The persons affected get themselves immune from poison.........When evil clouds which hurl thunderbolts at random hover over the cornfields the dange of crops is averted by the recital of mantras.




Monday 27 July 2020

Dormitive Explanation of anupalabadhi in the Nyaya Kusumanjali of Udayana


[If you ask “how can abhava (non-existence) be an object of sense perception at all,” we reply] that its sense-perception is possible bacause the relation between the eye and its object, which is necessary in every act of perception, is here fulfilled (in the case of an absent jar,) at second hand by the relation between the spot of ground and the said absence, which we call the distinguishing relation.
(from Nyaya Kusumanjali by Udayana) )

This seems to be another dormitive explanation. Not being seen at a certain locus is due to the special relationship of not being seen at that location which pertains to that object and the locus.

Thursday 23 July 2020

Note on Non-Apprehension of Existence in Nyaya Manjari


A pramana has been defined as a means of valid knowledge. One of the means of valid knowledge that has been accepted by advaita vedanta and rejected by the Nyaya school is that of anupalabadhi. The standard example is – 'There is no jar on the floor'. This is interpreted as non-apprehension of existence by Swami Madhavananda in Vedanta Paribhasa(trans) and as non-perception by Janaki Vallabha Bhattacharyya in Nyaya Manjari(trans). This divergence is the crux of their disagreement. I find the justification of the pramana in V.P. to be sound but incomplete and its rejection in N.M. not convincing but nevertheless raising some interesting points.

The Nyaya position has an intuitive immediacy. Not seeing the jar on the floor is a matter of simple perception. The visual input does not include a jar. Agreed says the Vedantin you are seeing something viz.the floor and at that locus you do not see a jar. This non-apprehension is an instrument of knowledge or a means of knowledge. Here I venture my own interpretation of this point. Clearly a non-apprehension cannot be a means of knowledge of itself or an otiose, pointless self-referential observation. What then is its informational content? Must it not be related to a context of expectation? You were told that there was a jar on the floor in the kitchen. On going there you don't see one and make the canonical report.

Then there was the case of the dog that did not bark in the night-time.

- Look at the ceiling' I said to my wife, what do you not see?
- Puzzled, she replied, what am I looking for?
- Water.
- You mean you fixed the leak in the shower stall upstairs.
(domestic fiction)

Jayanta Bhatta mentions in Nyaya Manjari similar real situations with a context of non-apprehension.

Happiness or sorrow arises in the absence of a foe or of a friend. A man places his feet on the way seeing the absence of a thorn on it. A man is earnest to search for the material of a jar if he finds that no jar has come into being. A man refrains from taking medicine when he realises that he is free from disease. No thoughtful man can deny objective existence to negation having noticed that it actually exists and many worldly transactions are based on it.
(pg.124/160 adobe pdf)






Monday 20 July 2020

Caroline by Richmal Crompton (pub. 1936)


You've met Karen already, now meet her more dignified grand aunt who stays strictly within the private sphere. Caroline due to her supererogation and steely abnegation has created debts of gratitude which cannot be repaid except by utter fealty to her views. Those have the power of edicts and cover choice of spouse in the brother and sisters which she has reared. Full sister Marcia and half brother Robert and half sisters Susan and Fay were reared by her after:
(a) Mother Phillipa abandoned the family when she was eighteen. Divorced by Gordon who retains Caroline and Marcia
(b) Death of Stepmother
(c) Followed by Father Gordon's death two years later when the children were still young.

There are an aunt and an uncle on the Father's side who appear in the novel, Maggie and Charles. They play the parts of wally uncle and scatty aunt in this superb novel by a writer who is chiefly known for the William books. Caroline has the alien eye morphing death ray capacity which quells mutiny in the family and is a fine aid to discipline in the school where she teaches. She also translates, coaches and trains up servants to absolute efficiency. Her standards are very, very, very high and you will not meet them however you try.

Caroline laughed rather shortly.
“Auntie darling, you ask that question every time you come. I keep telling you. I simply hate a room cluttered up with furniture, and when I got that tallboy the obvious thing seemed to be to move the piano out.” Her eyes rested with pleasure on the mellow gleaming surface of the old walnut. “It’s a lovely thing, isn’t it? That corner’s been crying out for it for years. Pianos are such ugly articles of furniture. I love this room without it.”
“Fay played on it so nicely,” said Maggie. “Where is it now?”
“It’s stored,” said Caroline. “There wasn’t room for it in any other room.”
She’s irritated with Maggie for harping on the subject of the piano like that, thought Charles, watching her. It’s silly of Maggie, of course. She can’t remember things. She asked just the same questions the last time we were here. . . . Funny how Caroline’s eyes betrayed her exasperation rather than her voice or manner. They were almost grey when she was pleased, but they turned a clear cold blue when she was annoyed or irritated.
The real reason is that the last sibling left at home, Fay, is, in Caroline's view, being distracted from her studies for a scholarship by her love of music. The relentless and joyless pounding of her books is bringing on a nervous breakdown in the girl.

Robert and Susan are still living locally and both are married unsuitably, in Caroline's view, to Effie and Kenneth. She is working hard at disassembling those relationships and reordering them with tight lipped sweetness and light in a rational manner.

They went out together, Caroline’s arm still round Susan, Susan leaning against her like a disconsolate child. When Caroline returned, her brow was drawn into a frown.
“What’s the matter with Susan?” said Charles. “She’s a bit depressed, isn’t she?”
“I’m afraid that her marriage isn’t turning out very well,” said Caroline, closing the door behind her.
“Why?” said Richard. “He seems a decent chap.
“So nice-looking,” put in Maggie. “I like his curly hair.”
“I suppose he’s been spoilt,” said Caroline. “Only sons so often are, and”—she shrugged—“he’s been brought up in quite a different atmosphere from Susan, of course.”
“Don’t be a snob, Caroline,” said Richard.

Over in the establishment of Robert and Effie, Evelyn selected by Caroline runs the household. She is in charge of the children and the management of the house and servants bringing exemplary order and discipline to the chaos of ineffectual Effie.

Is this Strindberg in the Home Counties? No, there's a lot of humour and when you learn that Caroline has invited her mother that deserted them 18 years previously back to stay in the house one's narrative nous is alerted to the possibility of an agent who will break the emotional logjam. This sort of thing:

She moved her chair to make room for Fay to sit on the hearthrug at her feet, as she loved to do. She ought to tell the child about her mother. She must do it very carefully.
Fay rested her head against Caroline’s knees. She wanted to put off the moment of starting her home-work, but she felt that she couldn’t bear one of Caroline’s “little talks” just now.
“Sybil’s got the sweetest kitten,” she said, in order to start the conversation, at any rate, on a light note. “She’s called it Smoke.”
Caroline’s figure stiffened almost imperceptibly.
“Sybil?”
“Sybil Dickson. I called at her house with her on the way home.”
There was a short silence, then Caroline said:
“But, darling, I thought you’d come straight home from school.”
“I wasn’t there more than five minutes. I had to call anyway, because she’d got the copy of Heine. Fraulein had lent it to her and told her to hand it on to me afterwards.”
“I see. . . .”
A faint resentment stirred beneath the listlessness and depression of Fay’s spirit. Why did Caroline always make her feel that she’d done something wrong whenever she went home with any of the other girls or even waited for them after classes or games?

Ah Caroline, admired, the cynosure of every eye, to become whole you must taste defeat. Failure will be good for you. How is it to be wrought? Now read on.


Saturday 18 July 2020

Upamana Pramana and Universals


 If we are not thinking of universals as abstract entities in Platonic heaven or in the mind, but as individuals out there in the world, it is easier to grasp the idea that they can be perceived. The Nyāya equation of universals and properties might tempt one to think that Nyāya conceives of universals as natural properties in David Lewis’ sense of the term (Lewis, 1983), but such is not the case. Nyāya universals are as robust as Armstrong’s universals: they capture facts of resemblance and the causal powers of things.

(from Perceptual Experience and Concepts in Classical Indian Philosophy by Monima Chada (S.E.P. entry))

I am beset by the feeling that the Nyaya account of universals is a dormitive one. (as in 'Opium makes you sleepy because of its dormitive effect) It dissolves the problem by holding that we just know this individual Bos Taurus has 'cowness'. Yet at the same time Chada , after Armstrong, mentions that universals capture facts of resemblance. For me, I'm noodling here, this goes close to the pramana upamana translated as comparison/analogy. The 'cowness' of the gavaya (Bos Gaurus) allows us access to that universal. Upamana as an underived means of valid knowledge supervenes on those many instances of awareness that allow us access to general terms.

Let's suppose that there is a city dweller who has never seen a cow. This individual is brought to a zoo and shown a beast there and told 'that's a cow'. Later in an excursion to the countryside he sees in a farmer's field many such beasts. 'Oh, cows'.

What is the difference between this imagined instruction propaeduetic to the acquiring of 'the denotation of a word and its meaning' (Jayanta Bhatta) and the well known encounter with a gavaya that is like a cow. Why should we emphasize the previously unencountered aspect of the gavaya. Is this not a special instance of the general procedure of the acquirement of the use of general terms, genus and species, universals etc. What I am questioning here is the notion that universals are grasped using the power of extraordinary perception. I don't doubt that once those general terms/concepts are acquired then the power to use them is absorbed into perception giving rise to the extraordinary perception idea.

Jayanta Bhatta seems at times to veer towards a similar (!) view

If it is held that the relation of denotation obtains between a word and a universal (a class) then it is also a fact that a universal is not definitely known unless an individual is perceived.
(fromNyaya Manjari on Upamana)

Thursday 16 July 2020

Professor Les Green's All Seeing Eye (in 2020)


In a mealy mouthed manner Professor Les Green (Law, Oxford) is is again on the case of John Finnis.
good faith goes bad

He doesn't mention him by name because naturally that would make him part of cancel culture which is so 'studenty'. That sort of enthusiasm he understands. Really their hearts are in the right place. A re-post from last year before cancelling became tainted:
||||||||||||||||||||

You always thought that de-platforming was the disruption of college student society meetings by antifa mobs and the like and or the pre-emptive cancelling of a meeting to avoid riot and uproar. There may also have been the residual suspicion that the meeting was first proposed with the purpose of tumultuation and ‘lulz’ in mind. Professor Les Green of Oxford has a different interpretation, one with a Mrs. Micawber air. ‘This college will never consider as a Fellow the likes of Dr. Nutz whatever his credentials may be’. Nobody thought you would Prof but there is the question of the appeasement of leftist ‘wokeness’. He writes:

But until recently, no one ever thought a function of universities is to provide a platform for open debate, however ill-informed, or however inimical to teaching and research. Nor did they think one could circumvent the main purpose of a university by an invitation from a student group.

Would that circumvention apply to this meeting?
pro-life meeting

The college authorities did commendably try to protect the meeting which was eventually moved to a different location. It only needed a small room. Quite!

Green claims that the dismal mummery of Masonry is a force for Enlightenment. What the All Seeing Eye won’t wink at if you are a member, the which he is. Certainly they wouldn’t want Professor John Finnis among them.

My distinguished former colleague, brilliant jurist, reactionary Catholic ideologue, and career homophobe, John Finnis, is once again attracting the attention of Oxford’s law students.
from:
Finnis and Academic Freedon

The students that got up the petition against Finnis had their hearts in the right place even if their proposals were partly unlawful. Leave it to me says Green. When Finnis finally retires we’ll get an enlightened person in. All things being equal, give it to the Mason.

Wednesday 8 July 2020

pointing, mapping, and other mysteries


If every rose was an individual rose there would be no rose and each of them would have another name. But then there would be no naming of anything. The finger points at the moon but can we point at pointing. As in the childrens' card game of snap, images flow over each other and await congruence.Well, you may say, pointing, mapping, comparing are meta 'activities' supervenient on the data. True but can they be taught?

A response: It is not necessary to know what we are doing. 'Doing is the mother of doing' said Samuel Johnson. So that is what I was at. Comparison is one of the Pramanas or a valid means of knowledge that is underived. This is a scandal for the Empiricist.

Tuesday 7 July 2020

Professor Ganeri, Nyayasutras, Credence and Adherence


Professor Jonardon Ganeri makes it clear in his 2001 book Philosophy in India: The Proper Work of Reason that a particular focus of his work will be on the Nyayasutras with the commentary of Gotama. His paper on Epistemic Principles still has that approach. The difference is that, he there, in a broad brush way, speaks of the Nyayasutra as Indian Philosophy as though it characterised the whole of that vast subject.
Indian versions of Revelation and Oracle, for instance, were largely dismissed.
Is this the case even in the Nayasutras themselves? Here is a citation from that work that seems to bear him out.
130.The Veda is reliable like the spell and medical science, because of the reliability of their authors.

—69.The spell counteracts poison, etc., and the medical science prescribes correct remedies. The authority which belongs to them is derived from their authors, the sages, who were reliable persons. The sages themselves were reliable because
(1)they had an intuitive perception of truths,
(2) they had great kindness for living beings and
(3) they had the desire of communicating their knowledge of the truths. The authors (lit., the seers and speakers) of the Veda were also the authors of the spell and medical science. Hence like the spell and medical science the Veda must be accepted as authoritative. The view that the Veda is authoritative because eternal, is untenable.

This would appear to reduce the Veda to the same status as spell (mantra, I presume) and medicine and therefore not an eternal or apoureshya (not of human origin) truth. However in the preceding commentary the Veda is regarded as being essentially unfalsifiable and non-empirical.

120: The so called untruth in the Veda comes from some defect in the act, operator or materials of sacrifice-
-59 Defect in the act consists in sacrificing not according to rules, defect in the operator (officiating priest) consisting in his not being a learned man, and defect in the material consisting in the fuel being wet, butter being not fresh, remuneration (to the officiating priest) being small, etc., A son is sure to be produced as a result of performing the sacrifice if these defects are avoided. Therefore there is no untruth in the Veda.

The credence required by the Veda is resistant to contrary indications unlike the deliverances of a doctor which can be discovered to be unfounded and have no empirical basis. Sabda (Testimony) in this area is of a different, essentially religious, order. It requires adherence, not cool rational judgment.
**********************
At the commencement of the Agnihotra (Fire Ceremony) during Dasara the priests were having great trouble getting a fire stated using a bow drill and tinder. The materials were perfect and normally starting a fire this way is a brisk procedure. They were at it for quite a while before they gave up and asked the Guru to intervene. His answer was:
- You are thinking bad thoughts. Please clear your mind of them.
Which they did and there was a fine blaze in no time.

Sunday 5 July 2020

Ganeri on Epistemic Pluralism


Epistemic Pluralism : From Systems to Stances is the title of a paper by Jonardon Ganeri which was wafted my way courtesy of Academia.edu. Its aim is to promote the notion of pramanas i.e. means of valid knowlege, as epistemic systems. The number of pramanas accepted by the classic darshanas (views/philosophical schools) can vary from six down to one. Their names as usually translated are Perception, Inference, Comparison, Verbal Testimony, Presumption, and Non-Apprehension. As is well known these means of valid knowledge are supposed to underived and foundational. Whether the conflicting views can be viewed as stances or different ways of attaining knowledge, epistemic pluralism in other words, is the matter under discussion. That is a question well worth exploring but the problem is that Ganeri’s discussion is self sabotaged from the onset by the co-opting of Paul Boghossians categories of the activities involved in doing basic science. They are as follows:
In particular: (Observation) For any observational proposition p, if it visually seems to S that p and circumstantial conditions D obtain, then S is prima facie justified in believing p.
Deduction) If S is justified in believing p, and p fairly obviously entails q, then S is justified in believing q. (Induction) If S has often enough observed that an event of type A has been followed by an event of type B, then S is justified in believing that all events of type A will be followed by events of type B.
4
(And perhaps also Ganeri)
(Inference to the best explanation) If S justifiably believes that p, and justifiably believes that the best explanation for p is q, then S is justified in believing q.
However the superimposition of these epistemic principles or strategies on the classic pramanas as argued over by the classic darshanas ends up falsifying their nature.

Ganeri:
Indian epistemology in general is an analysis of pramanas, methods for interrogating reality, sources of warranted belief. A pramana is, more or less, what Boghossian means by an epistemic principle
Here at this point Ganeri makes what I consider to be the fundamental mistake of mapping the Boghossian system onto the Pramanas in a way which distorts them.

Their names for Observation, Deduction, Inference to the Best Explanation, and Testimony are, respectively, pratyaksa, anumana, arthapatti, and sabda. Yet they might have forgiven him, for they also discussed and disagreed among themselves whether Testimony is a fundamental or a derived epistemic principle, and they were, in general, fully cognizant of the importance of establishing a basic set of underived epistemic principles.

I would hold that he is wrong in principle and wrong in detail. ‘Observation’ is not the same as ‘Perception’/pratyaksa. An observation is a focussed form of perception. What Indian philosophers debated was the validity and nature of perception as such.
Anumana (Inference) is not deduction but more like induction or a judgment based on invariable concomitance.
Arthapatti (Presumption) is not inference to the best explanation/abduction. There is no sheaf of explanations out of which we select one. It is a simple switch. Given that he is alive, Ram is in his house or not.
Finally Sabda or Testimony is the reliance on information from a trustworthy source. Ganeri’s dismissal of Revelation (Vedas) as an accepted valid means of knowledge is not correct.
Indian versions of Revelation and Oracle, for instance, were largely dismissed.

In the closing pages of his paper Ganeri offers an egregious piece of self-stultification:
Dogmatism about the actual practices and modes of production that constituted nineteenth-and early twentieth-century European science combined with a belief in the appropriateness of the use of violence to suppress other stances to constitute the epistemic stance of European colonialism: {European Colonialism} Use the epistemic principles in accordance with the conventions of nineteenth-and twentieth-century European scientific communities, and do so dogmatically, using violence against anyone who disagrees. While it is not the case that dogmatism per se entails the endorsement of violence.
While no violence was used in the writing of this paper clearly the superimposition of Boghossian’s epistemic principles on the Pramanas leads to distortion and erosion of a significant way of grappling with the problem of knowledge.






Thursday 2 July 2020

Monument as Chapel


To state the obvious the original idea behind the erection of a monument was to commemorate someone who was held in high esteem by the committee that raised the funds to do it. That sense of commemoration may no longer apply or may be in contention. Taking away the monument does not make the history behind it not to have happened. For a populace that is largely ignorant of history the monument may be a history lesson in stone. Take Cecil Rhodes away and the fact that he, or the imperialist past of Britain ever existed may simply enter into general amnesia. Now the school children of Oxford will be denied the reminder that there was a man who had a country named after him, Rhodesia.

In Ireland we have a statue in Fairview Park of Sean Russell chief of staff of the I.R.A. who died on board a U boat on his way to Galway from Germany. He was buried at sea with full military honours by the Nazis. Here is a little excerpt from the Wikipedia article about him:
Arriving in Berlin in May 1940, Russell was informed of Operation Mainau, the plan to parachute Hermann Görtz into Ireland. Russell was asked to brief Görtz on Ireland before his departure that night, but missed his takeoff from the Kassel-Fritzlar airfield.
Accorded the privileges of a diplomat and provided with a villa and a chauffeur-driven car, Russell's liaison officer while in Nazi Germany was SS-Standartenfuhrer Edmund Veesenmayer.[7] At this time the IRA was extremely pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic [8] Veesenmayer indicated particular interest that the IRA had no clear idea of what form an Irish government would take in the event of a German victory. [9]
By 20 May 1940, Russell began training with Abwehr in the use of the latest German explosive ordnance at the training area for the Brandenburg Regiment, the 'Quenzgut', where he observed trainees and instructors working with sabotage materials in a field environment. As he received explosives training, his return to Ireland with a definite sabotage objective was planned by German Army Intelligence. His total training time with German Intelligence was over three months.
(Veesenmeyer was responsible for the death of 300,000 Hungarian Jews for which he got 20 years, but was released after 10 thanks to the interventions of the U.S. High Commission)
Now you might say that's all old history - but it isn't. The present leader of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the I.R.A., Mary Lou McDonald in 2003 spoke at a rally (at the statue) to commemorate him. Sinn Fein were in line for being part of the government due to a hung parliament but didn't make it. The statue played its part in reminding us of who they are and what they stand for.