Philosopher’s Holiday Lecture: Jamie Nisse Greenberg Memorial Lecture with Malcolm Keating
Rockefeller Hall 200
That there are no propositions at all in classical Indian philosophy is nearly a dogma since Mohanty's 1980 treatment. But the question of whether there are propositions in Indian philosophy should not be answered in relation to a millennia's worth of texts, nor should it be answered by searching for a narrow Fregean version of propositions, which is what Mohanty (and those after him, like Siderits) assume. The fundamental requirements for something to be a proposition are simply that it be what is thought, what is said, and what bears alethic properties. We claim that the philosopher Kumārila Bhaṭṭa may be committed to propositions in this minimal sense. Our argument examines textual evidence in Kumārila's corpus, centrally his claim that the important term jñāna (cognition, thought, experience) can be used to refer to an act of cognizing or the object of that cognition.
This event is free and open to the public.