Indian epistemology - a short note

Indian Epistemology - a short note Addendum to the Plato, Gettier, Turing paper Rohit Parikh March 6, 2015 After Adriana Renero and I wrote the paper “Justified true belief, Plato, Gettier and Turing” and after it was proof-set, we discovered that we had said nothing about the Indian contributions to epistemology (IE from now on). Work in IE begins with Gautama (not the Buddha) around the 3rd century CE and proceeds through various developments to the 17th century. Two major figures in IE are Gautama, the 3rd century author of Nyaya-sutra and the founder of the Nyaya school, and Gangesa, the 14th century author of Tattva-chinta-mani and the founder of Navya Nyaya (new Nyaya). (Gautama’s Nyaya school is sometimes called Pracina or ancient Nyaya to distinguish it from Gangesa’s later school). Both the schools mentioned, Nyaya and Navya Nyaya are Vedic, but there are other Vedic schools as well as some atheist (or non-Vedic) schools as well as some Buddhists who showed keen interest in knowledge (prama ). Some Buddhists are presentists, believing that nothing except the present is real. For a fuller list, please consult [3]. However, two persons who seem most aware of Gettier like problems are Prasastapada in the 6th century and Sri Harsa in the 11th. (All dates are rough). A common example used is: Suppose smoke is seen on a mountain, smoke is associated with fire and so one infers fire on the mountain. Actually, what was seen was steam or dust, mistaken for smoke; but as a matter of fact there is a fire on the mountain. Does one know then that there is fire on the mountain? Both Prasastapada and Sri Harsa say no, but oddly enough, Gangesa, who followed them both seems to regard at least some Gettier cases as cases of actual knowledge. Gangesa, who is very much a physicalist only allows certain kinds of errors and some particular ones do not fall in his taxonomy of errors. Sources of knowledge (pramana ) are often classified into a) perception b) inference c) testimony and d) similarity. But some Indian philosophers have rejected all of these except for perception. Testimony is suspect because one does not know that the speaker is honest and knowledgeable. As for inference, if one infers Gx from F x and (∀x)(F x → Gx), then the inference is vulnerable to one’s being wrong about (∀x)(F x → Gx). And even perception might be veridical only when it is non-conceptual. A pre-lingual child who sees a cow “knows” what she sees but cannot tell us what she saw. But an adult saying, “I saw a cow” is not safe from concepts and the ills they are heir to. 1

Not being experts in this area we will not say more but will refer the reader to Saha [4], Ganeri [1] and Phillips [3]. All three have very kindly helped us with our investigations, but of course any errors are our own. See also [2].

References [1] Ganeri, Jonardon. ”Epistemology in Pracina and Navya Nyaya (review).” Philosophy East and West 57.1 (2007): 120-123. [2] Matilal, Bimal Krishna. Perception: An essay on classical Indian theories of knowledge, Oxford U. Press (1986) [3] Phillips, Stephen, ”Epistemology in Classical Indian Philosophy”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2015 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). [4] Saha, Sukharanjan, Epistemology in Pracina and Navya Nyaya, Jadavpur University (2003).

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