In reading Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, one is struck by Nāgārjuna’s separation of conventional truth and ultimate truth. At the most basic level, these two truths deal with emptiness and the appearance of fundamental existence, but the meaning of “conventional” lends itself to two key senses: concealing and socially agreed-upon norms and practices. The tension between these two senses and how they relate to truth leads Nāgārjuna’s Tibetan commentators in different directions in their exegesis on conventional truth. Based on the debate between (...) Tsongkhapa and Gorampa, I propose a Madhyamaka account of truth as trust. In so doing, I provide a novel account of truth, in which propositions and phenomena are truth-bearers, and one’s ability to trust in them establishes their truth-value. (shrink)

This article derives from the Buddhist Nikāya Suttas the idea that fear has an intentional object that is best analysed in anticipatory terms. Something is feared, I argue, if construed as dangerous, where to construe something as dangerous is to anticipate it will cause certain unwanted effects. To help explain what this means, I appeal to the concept of formal objects in the philosophy of emotions and to predictive processing accounts of perception. I demonstrate how this analysis of fear can (...) do exegetical work in the context of the Nikāya Suttas, and respond to philosophical issues concerning the relation between the intentional and anticipatory dimensions of fear; the relevant anticipated effects of feared objects; and whether fearing subjects necessarily know they anticipate unwanted effects. I also draw an analogy to allostatic sensations to engage issues concering how the anticipatory dimension of fear relates to the motivational. (shrink)

This article offers an argument against solipsism, the view that there is only one mind that exists, my own, and that the world is a projection of my mind.1 We begin by offering a reductio ad absur...

This thesis is the attempt to find a logical model for, and trace the history of, the catuṣkoṭi as it developed in the Indo-Tibetan milieu and spread, via China, to Japan. After an introduction to the history and key-concepts of Buddhist philosophy, I will finish the first chapter with some methodological considerations about the general viability of comparative philosophy. Chapter §2 is devoted to a logical analysis of the catuṣkoṭi. Several attempts to model this fascinating piece of Buddhist philosophy with (...) the tools of classical logic shall be debunked. A paraconsistent alternative will be discussed but eventually dismissed. As a rejoinder, I shall propose a model for the catuṣkoṭi with the help of speech-acts. The remainder of this chapter will look at Chinese and Japanese forms of the catuṣkoṭi which I shall model in a quasi-recursive system. The third and final chapter will look at the Kyoto School's soku-hi dialectics which ties together the different threads of this essay. I will criticise an established, classical model of the soku-hi dialectics and offer an alternative with a second-order paraconsistent semantics. (shrink)

The paper focuses on Nāgārjuna, the founder of the middle way school of Mahāyāna Buddhism. It argues that while Nāgārjuna’s rejection of the notion of ontological independence is justified and corr...

The logical analysis of Nāgārjuna’s catuṣkoṭi has remained a heated topic for logicians in Western academia for nearly a century. At the heart of the catuṣkoṭi, the four corners’ formalization typically appears as: A, Not A, Both, and Neither. The pulse of the controversy is the repetition of negations in the catuṣkoṭi. Westerhoff argues that Nāgārjuna in the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā uses two different negations: paryudāsa and prasajya-pratiṣedha. This paper builds off Westerhoff’s account and presents some subtleties of Nāgārjuna’s use of these (...) negations regarding their scope. This is achieved through an analysis of the Sanskrit and Tibetan Madhyamaka commentarial tradition and through a grammatical analysis of Nāgārjuna’s use of na and a- within a diverse variety of the catuṣkoṭi within the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. (shrink)

This paper examines four central issues prompted by Thompson's recent critique of the Buddhist modernism phenomenon: (i) the suitability of evolutionary psychology as a framework of analysis for Buddhist moral psychological ideas; (ii) the issue of what counts as the core and main trajectory of the Buddhist intellectual tradition; (iii) the scope of naturalism in the relation between science and metaphysics, and (iv) whether a Madhyamaka-inspired anti-foundationalism stance can serve as an effective platform for debating the issue of progress in (...) science. The main argument of this paper is that while the mind sciences may corroborate some aspects of the Buddhist model of mind, they also call into question some core Buddhist ideas. Hence, if Buddhism is to enter into a fruitful dialogue with the mind sciences, it must be shown to complement the empirical claims to knowledge for which scientific naturalism so far provides the most viable basis. (shrink)

The term āśraya is used in manifold ways in the Abhidharmakośa and its bhāṣya. This comes from the fact that its basic meaning, indicating anything on which something else depends or rests, is quite generic. Despite the plasticity of its usage, we can find some recurring and distinct technical applications of the term in the AK, which I explore in my paper. First, I look at its usage of characterising a member of various asymmetric dependence relationships on which the arising (...) and sometimes also the persistence of the other relatum depends. Through examining the nature of various āśraya-āśrita dependence relations the AK discusses, I show that āśraya stands for an entity that determines the fundamental nature of the thing it supports. In the second half of the paper, I move on to those occurrences of the term where āśraya has a specific referent. While āśraya can refer to the six sense faculties individually, it can also stand for them collectively pointing towards its widespread meaning as ‘psychophysical basis’. In this context, the focus often shifts either to the material or the mental elements that make up a sentient being. I will dedicate special attention to the discussion of the transformation of the basis, where, on my reading, it is more natural to interpret āśraya as referring primarily to the mind, with its bodily connotations being marginal. (shrink)

Seemingly contrary ideas of Nirvana are found in early Buddhist literature. Whereas some texts describe one who attains Nirvana as being conscious of everything, others depict Nirvana as a state in which consciousness has no object but emptiness or Nirvana. In this paper I deal with this paradox of Nirvana consciousness by exploring the correlations between several statements in early Buddhist texts. A number of sutta passages are cited to show that they contain doctrinal elements which, when considered collectively, may (...) cast valuable light on how to reconcile this paradox. Two pivotal notions are ‘non-abiding consciousness’ and ‘consciousness that is infinite, pervasive all around’. These two notions are connected to each other and seem to subsume or bridge the two strikingly distinct forms of Nirvana consciousness mentioned above. Nirvana consciousness said to be ‘non-abiding’, which is analogous to ‘without object’, does ‘not abide’ in any objects in the sense that it does not cling to them or rest on them. The ‘infinite, all-pervasive’ consciousness, based on stopping normal consciousness, does not depend on any sense objects, and hence it is unconditioned by them and operates unhindered. Nirvana consciousness thus constitutes the infinite realization free from all conditioning and hindrance. This resonates with the idea that one who attains Nirvana is conscious of everything. (shrink)

This article examines the translator, Rongzom’s, scholastic philosophical defense of early Dzokchen or “Great Perfection.” As our earliest instance of religious apologia in Tibet, this examination contributes to a growing body of knowledge about the Tibetan assimilation of post-tenth century of Vajrayāna Buddhism and the indigenous response to the forces of cultural transformation shaping the late eleventh/early twelfth century Tibet. Traditional authorities and academics have identified Dzokchen as a Tibetan tradition of Buddhism that drew intense criticism at the time from (...) renaissance agents. This paper explores the primary Tibetan response by describing Rongzom’s philosophical defense of Great Perfection. As such, it illuminates the intellectual and ideological context of the milieu as it evinces Rongzom’s innovation and mastery of Indian systems of logic, language, and epistemology in the Dzokchen approach to the Buddhist path. (shrink)

Review of Westerhoff, J.. The Golden Age of Indian Buddhist Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.