This paper is a study of debate practices as seen in the Nyāyasūtra and a number of commentaries. It concentrates on the ‘Points of Defeat ’, i.e., those occasions that if met in debate would entail defeat. The conditions under which a debater would meet with defeat were discussed widely in India and have also attracted considerable attention from modern scholars. In order to better understand this subject, use is made of some of the intuitions about language and conversation that (...) we owe to the philosopher H. P. Grice as well as of some recent theoretical advances in argumentation theory and informal logic, particularly of those most influenced by Grice’s thought. The Points of Defeat are studied both individually and as a group and it is shown that they point towards the practice of debating as being a rational, cooperative and goal-directed activity. (shrink)

This paper examines the role of a proper opponent (phyi rgol yang dag) in debate from the standpoint of the Tibetan Buddhist theory of argumentation. A proper opponent is a person who is engaged in the process of truth-seeking. He is not a debater who undertakes to refute the tenets of a proponent. But rather, he is the model debater to whom a proponent can teach truth by using a probative argument in the most effective way. A proper opponent is (...) thus the model thinker conceived by Tibetan Buddhist scholars, especially by the dGe lugs pa exegetes, to explain the idea of “inference for others.” The term phyi rgol yang dag figures in many text books of the dGe lugs pa school. And the germ of the dGe lugs pa's idea of ``proper opponent'' is found in early Tibetan tshad ma literature, too. The present paper shows that the dGe lugs pa scholars are largely concerned with the process by which one obtains an inferential knowledge about the unknown object, and also that they, when talking about a proper opponent, emphasize the pedagogical role of dialectic conversation rather than the competitive feature of debates. (shrink)

My focus in this essay is Shoshone and Paiute arguments against the Yucca Mountain site that claim that because Yucca Mountain is a culturally significant sacred place it should not be used to store nuclear waste. Within this set of arguments for the cultural value of Yucca Mountain, I focus on arguments that claim that the proposed nuclear waste site will damage Yucca Mountain and its ecosystem—the mountain, plants, and animals themselves. These arguments assume that Yucca Mountain and its ecosystem (...) are animate and will suffer. An understanding of Western Shoshone and Southern Paiute perspectives on the human relationship to nature, particularly adherence to the concept of animist intersubjectivity, is crucial towards interpreting these arguments. As such, my purpose in this essay is an in-depth analysis of the relationship between the cultural presumption of animist intersubjectivity and Shoshone and Paiute arguments against the Yucca Mountain site. In order to explore this relationship, I begin the paper by discussing concept of animist intersubjectivity as a cultural presumption and its relationship to arguments. Then, I analyze Shoshone and Paiute arguments against the Yucca Mountain site to reveal how animist intersubjectivity influences these arguments. I conclude the essay by explaining the implications of this analysis. (shrink)