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So, you think that Western thought is more diverse and interesting than “non-Western thought”?

So, you think that Western thought is more diverse and interesting than “non-Western thought”?

I have a non-polemical question: What did you read within what you call “non-Western thought”? If the list is extremely short compared to what you know of Euro-American philosophy (say, less than 100 titles), or if it focuses on a special field (say, Confucian ethics) then it’s easy to have a less diverse impression. The problem is that scholars or students who speak of “non-Western thought” as being “less diverse” have at most taken a single class on anything other than Euro-American philosophy.
Do you think you would have an idea of Euro-American philosophy as very diverse and interesting if you had studied, say, Sanskrit philosophy for decades, and had taken a single class on French existentialism and German phenomenology?

More in general, many Philosophy departments think that diversifying means adding a single class on anything that is not Euro-American mainstream philosophy (it can be Maori political thought, ubuntu ethics, Confucianism, Sanskrit epistemology…).
The result is often implicitly suggesting that there is a single world of “non-Western” thought and that everyone can teach it, because it does not go very deep.
For instance, I am routinely asked to answer questions about, e.g., the Zhaungzi, as if my expertise should extent to the whole of “non-Western thought”, because it is implicitly assumed to be very limited.

I ask students on the first class on Sanskrit philosophy how many texts do they think were composed in Sanskrit philosophy if compared to Greek philosophy and they are ridiculously wrong, guessing anything between 30 and 300 texts.

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A word of caution on philosophical methodology

Sanskrit philosophy is extremely sophisticated and I am convinced that we don’t need to borrow categories from Euro-American philosophy to better understand it.
Parallels to Euro-American theories are welcome because they can help us focus on overlooked aspects, but they are not more important than parallels that go in the opposite directions, namely looking at Euro-American philosophy from the lens of Sanskrit philosophy.
In other words, it is good to ask, for instance, whether Mīmāṃsā epistemology is a form of internalism or of externalism, but one should

  • a) never forget that the binary opposition between internalism and externalism is not a fact about the world, but rather a philosophical choice and that the epistemological landscape could be described otherwise;
  • b) be also ready to wonder whether, e.g., Timothy Williamson embraces intrinsic validity (svataḥ prāmāṇya).

Point a) enables one to see that a the conceptual space is not constrained by any given binary etc. and that one of the main contributions of Global philosophy is to question one’s frame of reference for the questions one asks, not just for the answers one receives. Point b) helps one in highlighting possibly overlooked aspects within, e.g., T.Williamson’s theory.
In summary, I am convinced that we should not force Sanskrit theories into the straitjacket of extant Euro-American terminology. By doing so, we would be missing the main benefits of starting a broad conversation.

UPDATE: Don’t miss the interesting conversation on the same post here: https://indianphilosophyblog.org/2025/12/08/a-word-of-caution-on-philosophical-methodology/#comment-393184

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Kumārila graduate students workshop at UofT

I started last year to organise small workshops at the end of each graduate class, for graduate students to present their work. This year’s topic is Kumārila (you probably guessed it). 

It will take place on Dec 3 morning and Dec 4 morning, 9-12 Toronto time.

The idea is a low-stake workshop where students get feedback so that they can improve their final papers (or embed ideas in future articles).

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Kumārila on deities

Did Kumārila believe in the language-independent existence of deities? In their efficacy within sacrifices? I believe he did not. Sacrifices work independently of deities who at most might be Epicurean-like entities, with no function in human lives. For this purpose, I am going to examine a passage in Kumārila’s Ṭupṭīkā ad 9.1, adhikaraṇa 4, p. 1652ff (Śubbāśāstrī 1929 edition).

The whole passage starts because Śabara is discussing the role of the deity in sacrifice. He explains that the deity does not promote the sacrifice (na devatā prayojikā and na devatāprayuktāḥ pravartiṣyāmahe). An opponent mentions the fact that the deity is mentioned as the target (sampradāna) of the action (given that it is in the dative case). Śabara quickly dismisses the point as related to the fact that the sacrifice is the real instrument to realise the result and moves on. Kumārila elaborates on it and comes to the conclusion that the deity has a primary role because of its grammatical function, which makes it needed for the performance of the sacrifice.

“[Obj:] But the deity is mentioned as the target (sampradāna) [and hence needs to be the one that prompts one to sacrifice, like the teacher to whom one gives a gift prompts one to give it].

[R:] The sacrifice, which is enjoined with regard to a result. requires a performance. And this performance is not possible without a deity and a sacrificial substance (to be offered). And the substance and the deity which are required (by the performance) are required only on the side of the complement, not as the thing to be realised [by the sacrifice] (which is the real motivator). Among the two, the substance becomes a complement through the third-case ending. The deity through a suffix or through the fourth-case ending.”

Here Pārthasārathi’s Tantraratna adds an intermediate objection explaining that this makes the deity seemingly into the principal element. The response is that this is not a problem.

“And if this deity-complement did not reach the condition of being primary with regard to the sacrifice (as required by the dative ending expressing the target), the sacrifice would not be performed at all. And without the performance of the sacrifice, there would not be the complement either. And if the sacrifice did not reach the condition of being its (complement’s) secondary element (guṇa), it would not come into being.

Therefore the sacrifice needs to reach the condition of being secondary as something/through an activity which is unavoidably concomitant (to the grammatical form used). And also the deity-complement [needs to reach] the condition of being primary as something unavoidably concomitant (to the grammatical form used).”

The addition of “unavoidably concomitant” (nāntarīiyaka) may seem puzzling, since neither Kumārila nor Pārthasārathi explain it. Clooney 1997 makes the bold move to interpret it as na antarīyaka (not… intermediary). I can see his motivation, but antarīyaka is not a Sanskrit word I am aware of. (NB: The L manuscript and the Tantraratna read tasmād yāgena nāntarīyakeṇa vyāpāreṇa guṇabhāvaḥ pratipattavyaḥ (instead of tasmād yāgena nāntarīyako guṇabhāvaḥ pratipattavyaḥ)).

At this point, Pārthasārathi’s Tantraratna adds that this does not mean that the sacrifice has become because of that for the sake of the deity. The following explains why.

“Nor is it the case that the unavoidable functioning is the cause for being primary or secondary, since it is not what is enjoined (and only the injunction determines real primary status). For, [one thinks:] “Since I have been enjoined towards the result, I realise the result through the sacrifice, not otherwise” (and this shows how the injunction puts the result as the primary thing and the sacrifice as its instrument).”

The Tantraratna has an interesting variant here, namely yāgo hi phale coditaḥ. This fits the beginning of the passage, which also read yāgaḥ phale codito…. The translation, in this case, would be as follows: “The sacrifice, being enjoined with regard to the result, does not realise the result otherwise [but through the deity as target]”.

“In this way, the unavoidable functioning needs to be the secondary element with respect to the deity.”

PSM adds: “in order to realise the sacrifice’s being an instrument towards the result”. It also specifies: “the secondary status is not enjoined”.

“Hence, in all cases there are two parts (a principal one, and a secondary one). Among them, we need to understand which one is what is wished to be expressed and which one is not. Among these two possibilities, in worldly experience what is wished to be expressed is determined by the force of things. In the Veda, by contrast, by language. And through language the sacrifice is the primary element, because it realises the result, given that it is proximate [to the result], The deity, by contrast, is understood to be the secondary element. Nor is it the case that the subordination (śeṣatva) is characterised as being an auxiliary (upakāra). Rather, it is established that it is characterised by the Vedic injunction.”

PSM explains that the “Nor…” sentence is the cause of the previous one.

“[UP:] What is the purpose of this investigation?

[R:] If the sacrifice had the purpose of gladdening the deity, then the deity were the one to be worshipped and the sacrifice would be a worship. And the worship is a thing known in worldly experience. Within a worship, what would be the confidence [one could have] in the claim that Sūrya is worshipped in the same way as Agni? The very opposite might be the case (namely that Sūrya dislikes what Agni likes). (Hence, the ectype for Sūrya should not be performed as the archetype sacrifice for Agni!)”

Thus, Kumārila concludes, the fact that the material trumps the deity when it comes to determining the procedure to be followed shows that the sacrifice is not a worship aimed at the deity and that the deity’s seeming predominant role is due to grammar only. I don’t see any important difference between Kumārila’s and Śabara’s conclusions here.

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On LLMs, publishing houses and our volunteer work for them

I will not be able to take part in any new project hosted by publishing houses that are ready to send my work to LLMs (I have a few ongoing and will conclude them). Allow me to explain why.

I am deeply concerned by the LLMs being a big risk for the environment, our students’ mental health and deskilling as well as their being based on intellectual theft. Thus, I will not volunteer my time and energy to help publishers that will then give my work to feed LLMs.

I asked various publishing houses about their politics with regard to LLMs and received (disappointing) answers on how “LLMs are the future”, “LLMs are inevitable” etc., all leading to the same conclusion, namely that I cannot opt out from my work being used to feed them. Such being the case, I am sorry to say that I prefer to pass.

I apologise for not being able to help the various editors who asked me to contribute or peer review for their volumes, but time is limited and I prefer to volunteer my time to help publishers who have higher standards. If a publisher wants to just focus only on profit, they should start paying their contributors, editors, peer reviewers… I know that my decision will not change anything (alternative peer-reviewers or contributors will be found etc.), but perhaps if enough people were to refuse working for free for publishers that comply to LLMs’ demands, then some change could be achieved.

UPDATE:
—Journals and publishing houses that have answered that LLMs are unavoidable etc.: CUP (author can opt out, but not in the case of open-access publications), OUP (basically, LLMs are the future, like google search is the present), Springer Nature (“peer review reports and unpublished manuscripts are not used for training LLMs, while accepted articles are”), Taylor and Francis (“In terms of licensing we do permit some trusted partners to use specific content for the purposes of training AI. We feel this is important as Publishers need to engage with these companies and control the use of content – for instance making sure it is used appropriately, within licence terms, with authors being fully attributed for their work, and to be paid for this use where contracts specify royalties. If we do not do this there is a real risk that these firms will simply access our content without permission and try to establish this as a form of fair use. In fact this has already happened with one major firm doing precisely this.”).
—Journals and publishing houses that have answered that they offer authors the option to opt out of LLMs, but cannot guarantee that it will be respected: Brill
—Journal and publishing houses that have answered that they don’t feed our work to LLMs: University of Hawai’i press (Philosophy East and West)

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Cognition of the self

How does one know about the self, according to the three main schools discussed in my last post?

Buddhist Epistemological School (Dharmakīrti): the self does not exist. The only thing that exists is a stream (santāna) of causally linked momentary cognitions. Cognitions are self-aware of themselves qua cognitions (svasaṃvedana). This is not contradictory, because each cognition has a perceiver and a perceived aspect (grāhaka and grāhya-ākāra respectively).
Nyāya: the self is known only through inference (Vātsyāyana, Jayanta); it is known also through perception (Uddyotakara, Udayana)*
Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā (Kumārila): we have direct access to our self through ahampratyaya `cognition of the I’. No need to infer it, since perception trumps inference and Mīmāṃsā authors require novelty as a criterion for knowledge, so that repeating what is already known through ahampratyaya would not count as knowledge.

The first Nyāya position might lead to problems if connected with the acceptance of yogic perception. Yogins can indeed perceive the self, according to all Naiyāyikas. Why not all other beings, given that perception requires a conjunction of self+manas+sense faculties, that the self is pervasive (vibhu) and that spatial limits are not needed for perception, as shown by the case of absence? Jayanta explains that the self is partless and that a partless thing cannot simultaneously be perceiver and perceived (cf. Kumārila’s argument against the Buddhist idea of cognitions’ having a perceiver and a perceived aspect and Kumārila’s claiming that this does not apply to the self, which is complex and not partless).

The Mīmāṃsā position requires the joint work of intrinsic validity and falsification: some I-cognitions are not about the ātman, since they are indeed falsified (e.g., “I am thin”, which only refers to the body).
Other I-cognitions are not, e.g., cognising ourselves qua knowers and recognising ourselves as the same knower who knew something in the past.

*I am grateful to Alex Watson for discussing the topic with me per email, on top of his decades of work on the topic!

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Intro to Sanskrit philosophy

Background: This year I taught again a class on Sanskrit philosophy (for the first time since 2021). I only had 12 meetings, of three hours each, hence I had do made drastic choices. The following is the result of these choices (alternative choices could have been possible, e.g., focusing on the Upaniṣads and their commentaries). Comments, as usual welcome!

There is a time within Sanskrit philosophy, approximately around 500 to 1000 CE, without which all later discussions do not make sense (whereas one can understand later discussions without referring to, e.g., the Brāhmaṇas, the Pāli canon etc.).
I am thinking of this core of Sanskrit philosophy as the period of time in which philosophers interacted with each other in a dialectical way, learning from each other and being compelled by each other’s points. In other words, as the time in which philosophy was constrained by the need to give reasons for each claim. In this sense, I am not focusing on the Pāli Canon or on the Upaniṣads.

At the core of this period lies the interaction between three schools, namely Mīmāṃsā, Nyāya and Buddhist epistemological school. No matter the topic, the interaction among these three is always at the center and always needs to be taken into account. According to the various topics, further schools might need to be taken into account. For instance, discussions about atomism will need to take into account the Vaiśeṣika school, discussions about language need to take into account the Vyākaraṇa school.

At the center of this core moment are discussions about epistemology and philosophy of language. It is interesting to note that ontology does not necessarily logically precede epistemology and that the opposite can be the case, especially in the case of Mīmāṃsā. This is particularly evident in the case of discussions about prāmāṇya `validity’.

Sanskrit philosophy developed through debates among thinkers commenting and responding to each other. In this way, they showed that ‘novelty’ is overestimated as a criterion to assess philosophical value and its consistent presence among the criteria reviewers of grants and projects are asked to assess is more the result of a fashion than of inner-philosophical reasons.

This does not mean that individual authors did not deliver substantial contribution to philosophy. Philosophy develops through its history and its history is made by individual thinkers. Nonetheless, these individual thinkers contribute under the garb of a school, downplaying their disagreements with their predecessors and often enveloping them within a commentary on a predecessor’s text, which is meant not just to explain it, but also to enfold all its potential meaning. Some scholars did move from one school to the other (e.g., possibly Vasubandhu or Maṇḍana), others just introduced in one school the elements of the other school they more strongly agreed with (e.g., Jayanta).

Key authors to be kept in mind:
• Dignāga (Buddhist epistemological school), introduced the threefold check, later accepted by all thinkers
• Kumārila (Mīmāṃsā), introduced the concept of intrinsic validity, explained that cognitions are not self-aware, challenged the Dignāga framework, systematised the discussions about absence and the other sources of knowledge (found already in his predecessor, Śabara).
• Dharmakīrti (Buddhist epistemological school), younger contemporary of Kumārila, adjusted the apoha theory and several other epistemological points in the light of Kumārila’s cricitism.
• Jayanta (Nyāya), modified the Nyāya epistemology in the light of Kumārila’s criticism, explained that cognitions are intrinsically doubtful, unless proven right, but that this does not lead to a paralysis, because one can act based on doubt.

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dharma and adharma are not “virtue” and “vice” (in Medhātithi)

G. Jhā was an amazing scholar and translator, but he produced so much that he could not revise in detail his translation choices and some infelicities are kept in the published versions of his translations.

One such cases is “sinful” or “vicious” for adharma and “moral” or “virtuous” for dharma in the translation of Medhātithi’s commentary. I am sure that there are cases in which such a translation could make sense, but not in Medhātithi.

Medhātithi follows the Mīmāṃsā approach and defines dharma as what is prescribed by the Veda or is in line with the duties prescribed by the Veda and adharma as its opposite. Translations such as “sinful” or “virtuous” suggest that actions have an intrinsic moral value logically prior to the commands applied to them. By contrast, this is not the case. Violence is not adharma because it is intrinsically “sinful” or “vicious” and in fact Medhātithi explains that the Jyotiṣṭoma violence is not adharma at all.

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Punishing? Yes, but not through violent means (acc. to Medhātithi)

The reasoning by Medhātithi on 8.316 (on punishment and why it does not violate the prohibition to perform any violence) is quite complex and multiple opponents discuss. I will list them below attributing a number to each one of them.

1. A first opinion being discussed is that, since punishment is enjoined (presumably: as part of the duty to protect people) and prohibited (by the prohibition to inflict any violence), it is optional. “Option” (or “free picking”, vikalpa) is in general to be avoided and Mīmāṃsā authors would accept it only for details bearing no great significance. Hence, the opinion is dismissed.

2. Next, a second speaker observes that no vikalpa applies, because violent punishment is clearly forbidden by the prohibition to perform any violence.

3. Rebuttal: It is not forbidden because it is performed as part of fulfilling one’s duty.

2a. Second speaker again: in order for the prohibition to perform violence not to apply, the act of (violent) punishment should be enjoined, as it happens in the case of the Agnīṣomīya (a sacrifice which involves violence, and which is not blocked by the prohibition to inflict violence).

3a. Violent punishment is enjoined through worldly experience, hence no prohibition affects it.

2b.The second speaker then expands on the above point and observes that there is no specific prescription about violent punishment, since punishment is only derived from the duty to protect people, but this duty could be fulfilled also through other means (e.g., reprimanding people). Hence, inflicting violent punishment is not enjoined as a duty and it is just a worldly act (and, as such, liable to be blocked by the prohibition). Similarly, if one were to perform a sacrifice leading to a violent result because one desires it, as it happens in the case of the Śyena, that sacrifice would be blocked by the prohibition to perform violence.

2c. The second speaker also belabours on the difference between instrumental and resultative violence, saying that in the case of the śyena violence is prompted by desire, whereas in the case of the Agnīṣomīya, it is merely subsidiary.

2d. If violent punishment were specifically prescribed, then we would have to resort to vikalpa (as discussed above).

Thus, the conclusion appears to be that violent punishment should not be resorted to as a consequence of the duty to protect, although (as discussed in my article on corporal punishment) it can be resorted to in order to purify the culprit.