Jonardon Ganeri: Minimal Physicalism: An Indian Approach to the Mind-Body Problem
In some of his writings about the mind-body problem, Jaegwon Kim envisages a possible position in the philosophy of mind, a position which combines a commitment to substance dualism with an endorsement of supervenience of the mental on the physical. He describes the position as a "minimal physicalism" and says that it is "implausible but not unintelligible", arguing that the more robustly physicalist view that mental properties are themselves properties of the body is to be preferred on considerations of simplicity. Kim seems to think that nobody has actually held the view, but I will show that it is indeed the position of one group of Indian philosophers. I will consider the range of arguments they provide against more robust physicalisms, what they say about the autonomy of the will, and what arguments in favour of minimal physicalism might be given. I will compare this theory with the non-Cartesian substance dualism recently proposed by E. J. Lowe.
Mark Siderits Neither the Same nor Different
Suppose there is rebirth, and that in a single series of lives P1 is a person in one life and P2 is a person in the immediately succeeding life. The Buddha says that P1 and P2 are neither the same nor different. After explaining what I think the Buddha may have meant by this claim, I explore what it might tell us concerning the recent debate over whether things persist by enduring or by perduring. The hope is that by doing so we may gain important insights into the overall structure of the debate, as well as perhaps uncover some options that have not been adequately explored.
Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad What is defended when ‘atman' is defended? Hindu philosophers on self.
There has been excellent recent work on interpretations of various Buddhist positions which all deny the existence of atman (generally translated as ‘self)’. It has been relatively less clear as to what various Hindu schools mean when they propound a theory of self (atmavada), especially given the wide range of metaphysical positions they hold. Commentators have pointed out that Buddhists generally argue that the concept of a ‘person’ is constructed, at most a useful fiction, and that this resembles many contemporary views. While this may be the case, it cannot have been the point of disagreement with Hindu schools, since they too think that personhood is constructed and possibly an erroneous construal of the core self. It is therefore worth exploring Hindu conceptions of the constructed person (usually called the ‘made-up “I”’ ahamkara) first. This then raises the pointed question of what the Hindu-Buddhist disagreement was about. Although there are different theories of atman in Hindu thought, they all defend this notion through appeal to some form of diachronic unity which they maintain is required to explain the structure of phenomenality. However, we have to look more carefully at these arguments to see whether such unity is supposed to be of consciousness alone, or whether it is something richer, like diachronic personal identity. An examination of a few different thinkers will help us see what it was that Hindu schools took themselves to be defending, and therefore what they thought was the key feature of self (atman).
Paul O'Grady Wisdom as an epistemological category
Analytical epistemology tends not to focus so much on questions of different kinds of knowledge in the way, for example, Aristotle discussed different kinds in the Ethics. I want to argue for a conception of wisdom different to that of Aristotle. This kind of knowledge has both theoretical and practical aspects to it. It is agent-relative in a number of ways. It is significantly affected by various factors which are not fully cognitive. The chief function of this kind of knowledge is to provide a framework within which all other kinds of knowledge can be synthesized and interrelated. I shall use examples from Buddhist epistemology to illustrate some of my claims.
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