Columbia Society for Comparative Philosophy

Friday, March 30--Buddhist Theories of Truth--KIN CHEUNG

THE COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY

Welcomes:

Kin Cheung (Moravian College)

With a response from:

Mark Siderits (Emeritus, Illinois State University)

Please join on us at Columbia University's Religion Department on FRIDAY, March 30^th  at 6:30 PM for his lecture entitled:

Buddhist Theories of Truth, Truth-Telling, and Lies

Contrary to Damien Keown (2001), who worries that metaphysical and epistemological inquiry may distract from ethical investigation, Bronwyn Finnigan and Koji Tanaka (2008) argue such questions may provide grounding for practical application of a Buddhist ethical path. I follow this line of inquiry into Buddhist theories of truth in order to better understand right speech as conceived in the Early Buddhist Suttas. I focus on what the Abhaya Sutta explicitly instructs and what it leaves out regarding the types of words the Tathagata does not say or has a sense of the proper time for saying them. K. N. Jayatilleke (1963) and Mark Siderits (1979) provide convincing evidence that contrary to popular characterizations of the Buddhist theory of truth as pragmatic, Early Buddhist Suttas rest on some form of correspondence theory of truth. Siderits shows that at the very least, there is an uneasy tension between correspondence and pragmatic theories. I contrast their position with Francisca Cho and Richard K. Squier’s (2016) argument describing the Buddhist theory of truth as pragmatic based on the use of language and lies. I supplement Cho and Squier with Jonathan Silk’s (2008) work on truth and lies in Buddhist texts in order to argue that there may be an impasse on adjudicating Buddhist theories of truth.

Friday, March 30^th

6:30-8:30 PM

Rm. 101, 80 Claremont Ave., Columbia University

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Friday, February 9--The Beginningless Reality of Conceptual Differentiation--CATHERINE PRUEITT

THE COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY

Welcomes:

Catherine Prueitt (George Mason University)

With a response from:

Andrew Nicholson (Stony Brook University, SUNY)

Please join on us at Columbia University's Religion Department on FRIDAY, February 9th at 5:30 PM for her lecture entitled:

Beyond Time, Not Before Time: Affirming the Beginningless Reality of Conceptual Differentiation in Indian Philosophy

The Pratyabhijñā Śaiva tradition, as first systematized by Utpaladeva (10th century) and elaborated by Abhinavagupta (10th-11th century), follows a number of other classical Indian philosophical traditions in 1) fully acknowledging that Buddhist Vijñānavādins claim to account for the diversity manifest in the conventional world through an appeal to beginningless karmic imprints; and 2) utterly rejecting that this solution avoids circularity. To sum up the Śaiva critique: a Vijñānavādin cannot avoid the question of what causes the diversity of experiences in the conventional world by appealing to beginningless causal processes because these processes themselves require the existence of some kind of real stuff that has the capacity to manifest in diverse forms. These Śaivas hone their argument in relation to a Dharmakīrtian view of ultimate consciousness as utterly beyond causal relations—a view that Dharmakīrti (7th century) uses to brush aside any questions about the real relationship between conventional and ultimate reality as incoherent. These Śaivas argue that the question of how the variegation of a specific moment of awareness arises if no part of this variegation­—including the variegation of the causes that produce it—is inherent to what is ultimately real is philosophically salient. Moreover, this question cannot be addressed simply by an appeal to beginningless ignorance. While an appeal to beginningless karmic imprints is perfectly sufficient to account for the differences between various karmic streams within the conventional world, it is not sufficient to account for the mere fact that there is differentiated stuff capable of entering into causal relations. The Pratyabhijñā Śaivas offer a complex and distinctive solution to this problem: while they affirm that ultimate reality is beginningless in the sense that it is beyond time, they also claim that time itself has a “beginning” in the expression of the nondual differentiation inherent to the ultimate itself. They further link the expression of time with the creation of the subject/object pairs that define conventional worlds—and use Dharmakīrti’s own apoha (exclusion) theory of concept formation to explain how this happens.  

Friday, February 9th

5:30-7:30 PM

Rm. 101, 80 Claremont Ave., Columbia University

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Friday, December 8--The Structure of Episodic Memory--NICHOLAS SILINS and SUSANNA SIEGEL

THE COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY

Welcomes:

Nicholas Silins (Cornell University) and Susanna Siegel (Harvard University)

Please join on us at Columbia University's Religion Department on FRIDAY, DECEMBER 8^th at 5:30 PM for their lecture entitled:

The Structure of Episodic Memory: Ganeri’s “Mental Time Travel and Attention”

We offer a framework for assessing what the structure of episodic memory might be, if one accepts a Buddhist denial of persisting or even momentary selves. Our paper is a response to Jonardon Ganeri's "Mental time travel and attention", and we focus on his exploration of Buddhaghosa's ideas about memory. In particular, we distinguish between memory perspectives on the past and memory relations that may or may not be successfully borne to the past.  We also critically examine 3 ways of trying to cash out what is distinctive about episodic memory: (1) episodic memory as mental time travel, (2) episodic memory as reliving of the past, and (3) episodic memory as reflective attention to the past.

Friday, December 8^th

5:30-7:30 PM

Rm. 101, 80 Claremont Ave., Columbia University

http://goo.gl/maps/zfUKH

Friday, Nov. 3--Responsibility with a Buddhist Face--DANIEL BREYER

THE COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY

Welcomes:

Daniel Breyer (Illinois State University)

With a response from:

Rick Repetti (Kingsborough Community College, CUNY)

Please join on us at Columbia University's Religion Department on FRIDAY, NOVEMEBER 3^rd at 5:30 PM for his lecture entitled:

"Responsibility with a Buddhist Face"

I’ve argued that the Indian Buddhist tradition, broadly construed, has tended to endorse a unique view of freedom and responsibility, a view I’ve called Buddhist Perspectivalism. According to this view, we should always regard ourselves as genuinely free and responsible agents, because we have good reason to do so, while we should never regard others in this way, because we have equally good reason to see them as neither free nor responsible. In this talk, I clarify Buddhist Perspectivalism as a theory of moral responsibility and defend it against some concerns that scholars like Christopher Gowans and Charles Goodman have raised.

Friday, November 3rd

5:30-7:30 PM

Rm. 101, 80 Claremont Ave., Columbia University

http://goo.gl/maps/zfUKH

Friday, October 6--A Global Norm in Favor of Global Attentiveness?--JAKE DAVIS

THE COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY

Welcomes:

Jake Davis (New York University)

With a response from:

Katja Vogt (Columbia University)

Please join on us at Columbia University's Religion Department on FRIDAY, OCTOBER 6^th at 5:30 PM for his lecture entitled:

"Is There a Global Norm in Favor of Global Attentiveness?"

In this paper, I propose a normative epistemic value in favor of a kind of quiet, responsive attentiveness that is global, rather than focused on a particular narrow scope of perceptual or conceptual content. I motivate the argument for the existence of such a norm by drawing on a range of global philosophical traditions, including Buddhist concepts of mindfulness as well as new research on Chinese, Polynesian, and ancient Greek traditions. These suggest conceptions of epistemic justification that take a global state of attentiveness as the unit of normative evaluation rather than individual justified true beliefs. Within this, I delineate a range of possible positions and assess what it would take to argue for each.

Friday, October 6^th

5:30-7:30 PM

Rm. 101, 80 Claremont Ave., Columbia University

http://goo.gl/maps/zfUKH

 

Friday, September 15--Implicit Commitments and the Logic of Prāsaṅgika--DOUGLAS DUCKWORTH

THE COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY

Welcomes:

Douglas Duckworth (Temple University)

Please join us on FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2017 at 5:30 PM for his lecture entitled,

“Truth or Consequences: Implicit Commitments and the Logic of Prāsaṅgika"

In the first chapter of his Prasannapadā, Candrakīrti famously defended Buddhapālita against Bhāviveka’s criticism that he had failed to formulate Nāgārjuna’s critique of causality in terms of probative arguments, but rather left the arguments in the form of reductios. This debate is well known to be the starting point of the “Prāsaṅgika-Madhyamaka” interpretation in Tibet.  Indeed, Tsongkhapa (1357-1419) has said that “an autonomous probative argument is not suitable to generate the view of thusness in an opponent” in the context of explaining Candrakīrti’s Prāsaṅgika (dgongs pa rab gsal, 226). In his critique of Tsongkhapa’s synthesis of Prāsaṅgika-Madhyamaka and pramāṇa, the fifteenth-century Sakya scholar, Daktsang (stag tsang), accused Tsongkhapa of “eighteen great contradictions,” including a contradiction that “the presence of inference contradicts the absence of probative arguments.” That is, Daktsang argued that a robust notion of inference - that is, inference qua pramāṇa - is antithetical to the logic behind Candrakīrti’s denial of probative arguments in this context. This paper discusses some of the issues driving this debate and shows how this debate sheds light on the place of epistemology in an anti-realist interpretation of Madhyamaka.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 15

5:30-7:30 pm

Rm. 101, 80 Claremont Ave., Columbia University

http://goo.gl/maps/zfUKH