The article concerns a mediaeval Indian debate over whether, and if so how, we can know that a self exists, understood here as a subject of cognition that outlives individual cognitions, being their common substrate. A passage that has not yet been translated from Sanskrit into a European language, from Jayanta Bhaṭṭa’s Nyāyamañjarī, ‘Blossoms of Reasoning’, is examined. This rich passage reveals something not yet noted in secondary literature, namely that Mīmāṃsakas advanced four different models of what happens when the (...) self perceives itself. The article clarifies the differences between the four, and the historical and logical relationships between them. It also hypothesizes pressures that constituted the need for the creation of the newer views, i.e. perceived problems with the earlier views, which the proponents of the newer views saw themselves as overcoming. (shrink)

The Mīmāṃsā mission of disambiguating Vedic texts led the thinkers of the tradition to confront several instances of apparently conflicting Vedic commands. Consider the two cases: ‘give alms daily’ vs ‘do not give alms during ritual X’, and ‘never harm another’ vs ‘sacrifice an animal during ritual Y’. Each command in these two cases is derived from the Vedas and Mīmāṃsā authors thus attempted to resolve such cases of deontic conflict by putting forth hermeneutic solutions, without taking recourse to any (...) other epistemic source. In this paper, I present several instances of conflicting Vedic commands and indicate three distinct types of deontic conflicts as well as their corresponding solutions as identified by Mīmāṃsā thinkers. This study is based on discussions put forth in four important Mīmāṃsā texts: the Pūrvamīmāṃsāsūtra, the Śābarabhāṣya, Kumārila’s Ṭupṭīkā and Āpadeva’s Mīmāṃsānyāyaprakāśa. I explain the foundational difference between prescriptions and prohibitions for Mīmāṃsā thinkers, and thereby also discuss several technical conceptions such as paryudāsa, vikalpa, prāpti and bādha among others. In doing so, I attempt to highlight certain fundamental tenets of the vast and intricate hermeneutic framework developed within the Mīmāṃsā tradition. (shrink)

Bhāvanā, “bringing into being,” is one of Mīmāṃsā’s hallmark concepts. It connects text and action in a single structure of meaning. This conjunction was crucially important to Mīmāṃsā’s own interpretive enterprise, and functioned— controversially but influentially—in a broader theory of language. The goal of this paper is to outline bhāvanā’s major contours as it is developed by Kumārilabhaṭṭa and some his followers (Maṇḍanamiśra, Pārthasārathimiśra, Someśvarabhaṭṭa, Khaṇḍadeva, and Āpadeva) and to examine some of the arguments they marshaled in support of it. (...) Bhāvanā is shown to open up, for these Mīmāṃsakas, an understanding of the “deep structure” of Vedic injunctions and the vocabulary for systematically representing it; it accounts for both what people do when they perform an action that is enjoined (ārthī bhāvanā) and what the injunction itself does when it motivates people to performance (śābdī bhāvanā). Bhāvanā has resonances with, and relevance to, contemporary discussions of the nexus of language, understanding, and action, and its value as a carefully-elaborated concept of hermeneutical significance should not be overlooked. (shrink)

This paper examines three commentaries on the Śabdapariccheda in Kumārila Bhaṭṭa’s Ślokavārttika, along with the the seventeenth century Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā work, the Mānameyodaya. The focus is the Mīmāṃsā principle that only sentences communicate qualified meanings and Kumārila’s discussion of a potential counter-example to this claim–single words which appear to communicate such content. I argue that there is some conflict among commentators over precisely what Kumārila describes with the phrase sāmarthyād anumeyetvād, although he is most likely describing ellipsis completion through arthāpatti. (...) The paper attempts both a cogent exegesis and philosophical evaluation of the Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā view of ellipsis completion, arguing that there remain internal tensions in the account of ellipsis preferred by the Bhāṭṭa, tensions which are not entirely resolved even by the late date of the Mānameyodaya. (shrink)

This essay defends a principle that promises to help illuminate the nature of reflective knowledge. The principle in question belongs to a broader category called knows-knows principles, or KK principles for short. Such principles say that if you know some proposition, then you're in a position to know that you know it.KK principles were prominent among various historical philosophers and can be fruitfully integrated with many views in contemporary epistemology and beyond—and yet almost every contemporary analytic epistemologist thinks that they (...) are false.Regarding their historical pedigree: they've been endorsed by Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Averroes, Aquinas, Spinoza, and Schopenhauer, among others.1Regarding... (shrink)