If you have read post-Classical śāstra, you will have certainly encountered the formulation above, describing the three foundational disciplines as focusing on
words (pada), i.e., grammatical analysis in Vyākaraṇa
sentences (vākya), i.e., textual linguistics in Mīmāṃsā
means of knowledge (pramāṇa), i.e., epistemology in Nyāya
Gonda scholarships for Indology
Call for Proposals: The Gonda Fund for Indology
The Gonda Fund supports the scholarly study of Sanskrit, other Indian languages and literatures, and Indian cultural history. The Gonda Fund awards:
1. Fellowships to promising young Indologists at post-doctorate level, that enable them to spend one to six months at the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) in Leiden, the Netherlands.
2. Funding to scientists, scholars and scientific publishers for publications and research projects.
3. Gonda-grants to PhD students in the Netherlands for scientific projects or working visits.
The deadlines for applications are 1 April and 1 October of every year.
The Gonda Fund is a foundation of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
More information is available at www.knaw.nl/gonda-fund.
Jaina Studies Scholarship for MPhil or PhD
Deadline: 15 July 2015
Thanks to the generosity of the B.C. Mehta Trust, SOAS is pleased to offer one Jaina Studies Scholarship. The scholarship is for a first year MPhil/PhD in the Study of Religions with a research proposal on Jaina Studies. The candidate must be a new admission (starting in September 2015).
The candidate must be eligible to pay the full time overseas tuition fee for 2015/16.
The total value of the scholarship for 2015/16 is £14,100 to be used for the first year tuition fee only.The Jaina Studies Scholarship is for one year only and cannot be renewed.
Further information is available here: http://www.soas.ac.uk/registry/scholarships/elap-scholarship.html
176th Philosophy Carnival
The 176th Philosophy Carnival is here, with interesting links to posts on logic, personal identity, Hume’s criticism of miracles and ethics. There is also a link to a blog I had never encountered on the Carnival, namely Go Gruel.
And, yes, I am not completely happy with the Carnival for the reasons I have already discussed (basically: lack of inclusiveness). But still I think that it is an excellent service, and that one should not criticise it unless one is ready to invest time and energy in a new project.
Linguistic Communication as an Instrument of Knowledge: A panel
I came back last week from Athens, were I had organised together with Malcolm Keating a panel on Linguistic Communication as an instrument of knowledge. I ended up framing the problem according to four basic questions, namely 1) What do we know? , 2) How (through which instrument of knowledge) do we know it?, 3) What is the role of language as a medium?, 4) What is the role of the social context? Śabara on sentences (PMS 1.1.24–26)
The discussion on the epistemological validity of sentences starts in Jaimini’s Pūrva Mīmāṃsā Sūtra (PMS) and in Śabara’s commentary thereon when the opponent notes that, even if —as established in PMS 1.1.5— there were really an originary connection between words and meanings, this would still not mean that the authorless Vedas are a reliable instrument of knowledge, since they are made of sentences, not just of words. And clusters of words are either made by human authors or are just causally put together by chance and are thus meaningless.
Are words an instrument of knowledge?
Kumārila's Śabdapariccheda
Are words an instrument of knowledge? And, if so, what sort of? Are they an instance of inference insofar as one infers the meaning on the basis of the words used? Or are they are an independent instrument of knowledge, since the connection between words and meanings is not of inferential nature?
Two (or three) different narratives on Yoga, Mīmāṃsā, Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta etc.
Some authors tend to think that once upon a time there was one Yoga and that later this has been “altered” or has at least “evolved” into many forms. According to their own stand, they might look at this developments as meaningful adaptations or as soulless metamorphoseis.
Graham Priest on why study Asian philosophy
Graham Priest explains in a blog post why one should study “Eastern” philosophy (his label, probably because standard philosophy is in fact “Western” philosophy).
His post points to two reasons:
- One better understands one’s own culture if one is confronted with another one
- There is progress in philosophy and new ideas can contribute to it, since progress does not arise ex nihilo.
It is difficult not to agree. I had discussed Priest’s first point here and his second point here, while referring to an interview with Jay Garfield, and the posts have raised interesting discussions in the comments.
Since, however, the first post is dated to 2010 and the second one to 2013, it may be time to ask you, dear readers, again: What should be the reasons for engaging with Asian philosophies?
Philosophy’s crudity and Narrative’s epistemological value
A recent post by Elisabeth Barnes raised a discussion in several blogs about philosophy’s “casual cruelty”. Philosophers, it is said, argue about basic human rights in an abstract way, with thought experiments daring to ask whether it would be ethical to let die disabled children/abort disabled foetuses/prohibit disabled people to have children/… . Philosophers do not even stop speculating about the suppression of disabled people, Barnes continues, when they have a real disabled person in front of them.