A rational interpretation is proposed for two ancient Indian logics: the Jaina saptabhaṅgī, and the Mādhyamika catuṣkoṭi. It is argued that the irrationality currently imputed to these logics relies upon some philosophical preconceptions inherited from Aristotelian metaphysics. This misunderstanding can be corrected in two steps: by recalling their assumptions about truth; by reconstructing their ensuing theory of judgment within a common conceptual framework.

Forty-two years ago, Capra published “The Tao of Physics” (Capra, 1975). In this book (page 17) he writes: “The exploration of the atomic and subatomic world in the twentieth century has …. necessitated a radical revision of many of our basic concepts” and that, unlike ‘classical’ physics, the sub-atomic and quantum “modern physics” shows resonances with Eastern thoughts and “leads us to a view of the world which is very similar to the views held by mystics of all ages and (...) traditions.“ This article stresses an analogous situation in biology with respect to a new theoretical approach for studying living systems, Integral Biomathics (IB), which also exhibits some resonances with Eastern thought. Stepping on earlier research in cybernetics1 and theoretical biology,2 IB has been developed since 2011 by over 100 scientists from a number of disciplines who have been exploring a substantial set of theoretical frameworks. From that effort, the need for a robust core model utilizing advanced mathematics and computation adequate for understanding the behavior of organisms as dynamic wholes was identified. At this end, the authors of this article have proposed WLIMES (Ehresmann and Simeonov, 2012), a formal theory for modeling living systems integrating both the Memory Evolutive Systems (Ehresmann and Vanbremeersch, 2007) and the Wandering Logic Intelligence (Simeonov, 2002b). Its principles will be recalled here with respect to their resonances to Eastern thought. (shrink)

This paper proposes a view of time that takes passage to be the most basic temporal notion, instead of the usual A-theoretic and B-theoretic notions, and explores how we should think of a world that exhibits such a genuine temporal passage. It will be argued that an objective passage of time can only be made sense of from an atemporal point of view and only when it is able to constitute a genuine change of objects across time. This requires that (...) passage can flip one fact into a contrary fact, even though neither side of the temporal passage is privileged over the other. We can make sense of this if the world is inherently perspectival. Such an inherently perspectival world is characterized by fragmentalism, a view that has been introduced by Fine in his ‘Tense and Reality’ (2005). Unlike Fine's tense-theoretic fragmentalism though, the proposed view will be a fragmentalist view based in a primitive notion of passage. (shrink)

Fragmentalism is the view that reality is not a metaphysically unified place, but fragmented in a certain sense, and constituted by incompatible facts across such fragments. It was introduced by Kit Fine in a discussion of tense realist theories of time. Here I discuss the conceptual foundations of fragmentalism, identify several open questions in Fine’s characterization of the view, and propose an understanding of fragmentalism that addresses these open questions.

In 1948 Jaśkowski introduced the first discussive logic. The main technical idea was to take what holds to be what is true at some possible world. Some 2,000 years earlier, Jain philosophers had advocated a similar idea, in their doctrine of _syādvāda_. Of course, these philosophers had no knowledge of contemporary logical notions; but the techniques pioneered by Jaśkowski can be deployed to make the Jain ideas mathematically precise. Moreover, Jain ideas suggest a new family of many-valued discussive logics. In (...) this paper, I will explain all these matters. (shrink)

Objects often manifest themselves in incompatible ways across perspectives that are epistemically on a par. The standard response to such cases is to deny that the properties that things appear to have from different perspectives are properties that things really have out there. This type of response seems worrying: too many properties admit of perspectival variance and there are good theoretical reasons to think that such properties are genuinely instantiated. So, we have reason to explore views on which things can (...) have the incompatible properties they appear to have across perspectives. This paper explores the view that things can have incompatible properties if the world is not a metaphysically unified place but is instead fragmented. There is a sensible notion of co-obtainment, on which two facts can each obtain without co-obtaining. Using this notion, we can step back from our embedded perspectives on the world without deeming the contents of those perspectives to be mere appearances. This renders th.. (shrink)

In classical India, Jain philosophers developed a theory of viewpoints ( naya-vāda ) according to which any statement is always performed within and dependent upon a given epistemic perspective or viewpoint. The Jainas furnished this epistemology with an (epistemic) theory of disputation that takes into account the viewpoint in which the main thesis has been stated. The main aim of our paper is to delve into the Jain notion of viewpoint-contextualisation and to develop the elements of a suitable logical system (...) that should offer a reconstruction of the Jainas’ epistemic theory of disputation. A crucial step of our project is to approach the Jain theory of disputation with the help of a theory of meaning for logical constants based on argumentative practices called dialogical logic . Since in the dialogical framework the meaning of the logical constants is given by the norms or rules for their use in a debate, it provides a meaning theory closer to the Jain context-sensitive disputation theory than the main-stream formal model-theoretic semantics. (shrink)

In a paper on the logical work of the Jains, Graham Priest considers a consequence relation, semantically characterized, which has a natural analogue in modal logic. Here we give a syntactic/axiomatic description of the modal formulas which are consequences of the empty set by this relation, which is to say: those formulas which are, for every model, true at some point in that model.

One theme that unites many, if not all, pragmatists is the theme of community, whether in the form of communal matters of truth production and verification in shared experience or in the search for the ideal sociopolitical public. Thus Richard Bernstein closes his study of community, a concern “so fundamental in the pragmatic tradition,” by connecting it to the communicative interests of all the pragmatist thinkers he examines: “Fallibility, openness, criticism, mutual respect, and recognition are essential dimensions of their understanding (...) of communities” (1998, 154). Bernstein reminds us that individuality and community are inseparably linked: individuals are the “matter” that gives existence to a community .. (shrink)

The central goal of the _cross-cultural critical thinking movement_ is to change the dominant model of critical thinking pedagogy that is used in the US, UK, and those countries that follow this model. At present the model is centered on an Anglo-American and Euro-Centric model of critical thinking that actively and blatantly ignores contributions to logic and critical thinking education from non-Western sources; more importantly, the model implicitly sends the message to students of critical thinking that _critical thinking_ is a (...) valuable set of skills that derives from what is taken to be Western culture. Cross-cultural critical thinking, by contrast, is centered on a globally inclusive model of critical thinking that presents contributions to critical thinking from a variety of different cultures and traditions. This alternative model aims in part to convey the message that critical thinking is part of the human condition and that understanding it within the human condition is essential to the proper deployment of it in a pluralistic society where there is disagreement over matters of ultimate value. In this paper I offer a presentation and defense of a set of contributions deriving from the Jaina tradition of philosophy that could be presented in a globally sensitive critical thinking course. The central concepts I present and interpret are: non-one-sidedness, the theory of epistemic standpoints, intellectual non-violence, and the theory of seven-fold predication. In each case I focus on the relevance that the concept has for critical thinking education at the introductory level. (shrink)