Lajos Brons
My philosophical interests are divided over two broad areas. One is in the overlap of (meta-) ethics and social/political philosophy; the other is in the intersection of philosophy of language, metaphysics, and epistemology. Much (but not all) of my work is most closely affiliated with the analytic tradition both in style and content, and much of it is heavily influenced by the philosophies of Donald Davidson and W.V.O. Quine, but I am also interested in (parts of) Indian, Chinese, and continental philosophy.
Before I became a "philosopher" I was an economic geographer. I gradually moved from one discipline to the other, but I remain interested in geography, heterodox economics, and in the other social sciences as well.
Address: Sado, Niigata, Japan
Before I became a "philosopher" I was an economic geographer. I gradually moved from one discipline to the other, but I remain interested in geography, heterodox economics, and in the other social sciences as well.
Address: Sado, Niigata, Japan
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Books by Lajos Brons
The foundations of this “radicalized radical Buddhism” are provided by a realist interpretation of Yogācāra, elucidated and elaborated with some help from thinkers in the broader Tiantai/Tendai tradition and American philosophers Donald Davidson and W.V.O. Quine. A key implication of this foundation is that only this world and only this life are real, from which it follows that if Buddhism aims to alleviate suffering, it has to do so in this world and in this life. Twentieth-century radical Buddhists (as well as some engaged Buddhists) came to a similar conclusion, often expressed in their aim to realize “a Buddha land in this world.”
Building on this foundation, but also on Mahāyāna moral philosophy, this book argues for an ethics and social philosophy based on a definition of evil as that what is or should be expected to cause death or suffering. On that ground, capitalism should be rejected indeed, but utopianism must be treated with caution as well, which raises questions about what it means – from a radicalized radical Buddhist perspective – to aim for a Buddha land in this world.
The hegemony of psychopathy is responsible for massive human suffering. It must be fought and replaced with a counter-hegemonic set of values and beliefs that promote compassion and care. Fighting hegemony requires fighting the “pillars” that support it. Most important among these are the mass media and culture industry, and mainstream economics. The former is responsible for a continuous stream of hegemonic propaganda; the latter – among others – for providing a pseudo-scientific justification for the false belief that there is no alternative. This essay closes off with some considerations on tactics and strategy in the struggle against the hegemony of psychopathy, but does not – and cannot – offer any concrete advice.
Papers by Lajos Brons
These and many related questions in the “philosophy of mental time”, the topic of this special issue of the Annals of the Japan Association for Philosophy of Science, are not purely philosophical questions. Or at least, they are not likely to be satisfactorily answered by philosophers alone. Rather, they also need the input of neuroscientists, psychologists, physicists, linguists, and others. And conversely, answers to these questions may have implications outside the scope of philosophy. The papers in this special issue illustrate this inherent multi- or interdisciplinarity of the philosophy and science of mental time. In this theme introduction, we want to give a few more examples to illustrate this interdisciplinarity, but also to point out that much of the field is still wide open — that is, these illustrations raise more questions than answers.
The first part of this reply/postscript also expands (a bit) on my paper "Recognizing "Truth" in Chinese Philosophy" (2016)*. That paper, as well as my (2015)* mentioned above, are available here at Academia.edu.
Different views on the relation between phenomenal reality, the world as we consciously experience it, and noumenal reality, the world as it is independent from an experiencing subject, have different implications for a collection of interrelated issues of meaning and reality including aspects of metaphysics, the philosophy of language, and philosophical methodology. Exploring some of these implications, this paper compares and brings together analytic, continental, and Buddhist approaches, focusing on relevant aspects of the philosophy of Donald Davidson, Jacques Derrida, Dharmakīrti, and Dōgen. Prima facie, these philosophers have little in common, and indeed the differences are vast. Even in case of the two Western thinkers there is a fundamental difference between Davidson’s anti-dualist identification of phenomenal, experienced reality with the noumenal, real, external world on the one hand, and the bracketing or elimination of noumenal reality at the base of Derrida’s thought on the other, which lead to radically different ideas with regards to (the possibility and nature of) objectivity and our linguistic access to the real/external/noumenal world. Nevertheless, there are important similarities between Dharmakīrti’s theory of apoha and Davidson’s and Derrida’s theories of triangulation and différance respectively, and these similarities can be exploited to bridge some of the differences and attempt a constructive engagement. After briefly introducing analytic and continental approaches to meaning and reality (and Davidson’s and Derrida’s theories in particular) in section 2, and some relevant Buddhist approaches (including Dharmakīrti’s and Dōgen’s) in section 3, it will be argued in section 4 that Davidson’s theory of triangulation as a connection between the noumenal and the phenomenal needs Dharmakīrti’s theory of apoha as a complement, and that apoha is best understood through Derrida’s différance in turn. A further investigation into the implications of the resulting triangulation-différance-apoha integration in section 5 (and the concluding section 6) leads to a view on meaning and reality similar to the perspectivism advocated by the Japanese Buddhist philosopher Dōgen: the phenomenal is (mostly) necessarily noumenally real, but partial, one-sided, or incomplete.
The foundations of this “radicalized radical Buddhism” are provided by a realist interpretation of Yogācāra, elucidated and elaborated with some help from thinkers in the broader Tiantai/Tendai tradition and American philosophers Donald Davidson and W.V.O. Quine. A key implication of this foundation is that only this world and only this life are real, from which it follows that if Buddhism aims to alleviate suffering, it has to do so in this world and in this life. Twentieth-century radical Buddhists (as well as some engaged Buddhists) came to a similar conclusion, often expressed in their aim to realize “a Buddha land in this world.”
Building on this foundation, but also on Mahāyāna moral philosophy, this book argues for an ethics and social philosophy based on a definition of evil as that what is or should be expected to cause death or suffering. On that ground, capitalism should be rejected indeed, but utopianism must be treated with caution as well, which raises questions about what it means – from a radicalized radical Buddhist perspective – to aim for a Buddha land in this world.
The hegemony of psychopathy is responsible for massive human suffering. It must be fought and replaced with a counter-hegemonic set of values and beliefs that promote compassion and care. Fighting hegemony requires fighting the “pillars” that support it. Most important among these are the mass media and culture industry, and mainstream economics. The former is responsible for a continuous stream of hegemonic propaganda; the latter – among others – for providing a pseudo-scientific justification for the false belief that there is no alternative. This essay closes off with some considerations on tactics and strategy in the struggle against the hegemony of psychopathy, but does not – and cannot – offer any concrete advice.
These and many related questions in the “philosophy of mental time”, the topic of this special issue of the Annals of the Japan Association for Philosophy of Science, are not purely philosophical questions. Or at least, they are not likely to be satisfactorily answered by philosophers alone. Rather, they also need the input of neuroscientists, psychologists, physicists, linguists, and others. And conversely, answers to these questions may have implications outside the scope of philosophy. The papers in this special issue illustrate this inherent multi- or interdisciplinarity of the philosophy and science of mental time. In this theme introduction, we want to give a few more examples to illustrate this interdisciplinarity, but also to point out that much of the field is still wide open — that is, these illustrations raise more questions than answers.
The first part of this reply/postscript also expands (a bit) on my paper "Recognizing "Truth" in Chinese Philosophy" (2016)*. That paper, as well as my (2015)* mentioned above, are available here at Academia.edu.
Different views on the relation between phenomenal reality, the world as we consciously experience it, and noumenal reality, the world as it is independent from an experiencing subject, have different implications for a collection of interrelated issues of meaning and reality including aspects of metaphysics, the philosophy of language, and philosophical methodology. Exploring some of these implications, this paper compares and brings together analytic, continental, and Buddhist approaches, focusing on relevant aspects of the philosophy of Donald Davidson, Jacques Derrida, Dharmakīrti, and Dōgen. Prima facie, these philosophers have little in common, and indeed the differences are vast. Even in case of the two Western thinkers there is a fundamental difference between Davidson’s anti-dualist identification of phenomenal, experienced reality with the noumenal, real, external world on the one hand, and the bracketing or elimination of noumenal reality at the base of Derrida’s thought on the other, which lead to radically different ideas with regards to (the possibility and nature of) objectivity and our linguistic access to the real/external/noumenal world. Nevertheless, there are important similarities between Dharmakīrti’s theory of apoha and Davidson’s and Derrida’s theories of triangulation and différance respectively, and these similarities can be exploited to bridge some of the differences and attempt a constructive engagement. After briefly introducing analytic and continental approaches to meaning and reality (and Davidson’s and Derrida’s theories in particular) in section 2, and some relevant Buddhist approaches (including Dharmakīrti’s and Dōgen’s) in section 3, it will be argued in section 4 that Davidson’s theory of triangulation as a connection between the noumenal and the phenomenal needs Dharmakīrti’s theory of apoha as a complement, and that apoha is best understood through Derrida’s différance in turn. A further investigation into the implications of the resulting triangulation-différance-apoha integration in section 5 (and the concluding section 6) leads to a view on meaning and reality similar to the perspectivism advocated by the Japanese Buddhist philosopher Dōgen: the phenomenal is (mostly) necessarily noumenally real, but partial, one-sided, or incomplete.
Ontology is often described as the inquiry into what exists, but there is some disagreement among (meta-) ontologists about what “existence” means and whether there are different kinds or senses of “existence” or just one; that is, whether “existence” is equivocal or univocal. Furthermore, there is a growing number of philosophers (many of whom take inspiration from Aristotle’s metaphysical writings) who argue that ontology should not be concerned so much with what exists, but with what is fundamental or real (or something similar). Each of the positions in this debate is centered on a concept or small class of concepts that is intended to capture what ontology is about. Examples of such ontological core concepts are: existence, subsistence, Dasein, being, independent being, being real, being fundamental, being a fundamental constituent of reality, being irreducible. This paper intends to answer the twofold question of what (kind of notions) these ontological core concepts are, and how (and how much) they (can) differ. I will argue that there can be no difference between such concepts other than differing domains, and that any domain is a restriction in a maximally expanded universe, and therefore, equivalent to a (restricting) property. Furthermore, such differences between domains (or restricting properties) are intertranslatable, and consequently, there is not much room for substantial difference. Whatever difference remains is largely due to differences in focus or differences in the (phrasing of) questions ontologists try to answer.
A book-length follow up on this text, "A Buddha Land in This World: Philosophy, Utopia, and Radical Buddhism", has been published in 2022 and can also be found here at Academia.edu
The "book note" focuses on the ambiguous purpose of the book in relation with its envisaged project of engagement between mainstream Western philosophy and Buddhist philosophy. Additional comments in the extended review concern terminological problems (such as "dukkha"/"suffering" and metaphysical "dependence"), obscurity, and conflicting dogmas, and further explore the aforementioned ambiguous aim and purpose of the book.
An updated version of this talk was published as “Aphantasia, SDAM, and Episodic Memory” in the Annals of the Japan Association for Philosophy of Science, vol. 28 (2019), pp. 9-32.
This talk/paper consists of four parts that are only loosely connected. The first (section 2) discusses the nature of philosophy and its relation to science and proposes that philosophy is a part of science characterized by a primarily deductive approach, and that philosophy's roles within science are critical and exploratory. The next three parts are more directly related to the workshop's themes but are also intended to illustrate those two roles. The second part (section 3) presents a brief grammatical analysis of the verb "to be conscious (of)" and applies that analysis to the "problem of the rock" (or the "generality problem") for Higher Order theories of consciousness to conclude that that " problem " makes no sense. The third part (section 4) summarizes theories of temporal consciousness and points out a number of fundamental problems that most (if not all) of these theories share. The last part (section 5) is intended more to illustrate the exploratory role of philosophy in science (than its critical role) and draws together several lines of thought and research to show why a certain aspect of animal consciousness matters.
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A heavily revised version of section 3 of this talk was published as "The Problem of the Rock and the grammar of consciousness" in 2017.
This implies that if two theories assign different truth values to "Fs exist", while they agree about the relevant properties of Fs, then the two theories quantify over different domains, and a choice between these two theories is, therefore, a choice between domains. However, none of the common arguments for or against particular domains is up to the task, and therefore, there are at least some cases in which there is no single right domain. The choice for a particular domain is a pragmatic choice.
In addition to substantiating the above arguments, this paper discusses its implications for the metaphysical debate between Carnap and Quine and the contemporary controversies in meta-ontology.
If you are a teacher, feel free to use it in any way you like (including "stealing" from it). Feedback would be highly appreciated.
If you are a student and you found this guide helpful, feel free to share it with others.
This guide is formatted to be printed as an A5 booklet.
Because this workshop is given in English in Japan, it is assumed that most attendees speak those two languages (or are somewhat familiar with both at least), and for that reason, most examples are from English and Japanese.
See also "What does it mean for something to exist?" in the Published Papers section, and "Quantifiers, domains, and (meta-) ontology" in the Working Papers section.
The complete book is available here: https://www.academia.edu/76418949
The complete book is available here: https://www.academia.edu/76418949
The complete book is available here: https://www.academia.edu/76418949
The complete book is available here: https://www.academia.edu/76418949
The complete book is available here: https://www.academia.edu/76418949
The complete book is available here: https://www.academia.edu/76418949
The complete book is available here: https://www.academia.edu/76418949
The complete book is available here: https://www.academia.edu/76418949
The complete book is available here: https://www.academia.edu/76418949
The complete book is available here: https://www.academia.edu/76418949
The complete book is available here: https://www.academia.edu/76418949
The complete book is available here: https://www.academia.edu/76418949
The complete book is available here: https://www.academia.edu/76418949
The complete book is available here: https://www.academia.edu/76418949
The complete book is available here: https://www.academia.edu/76418949
The complete book is available here: https://www.academia.edu/76418949
The complete book is available here: https://www.academia.edu/76418949
The complete book is available here: https://www.academia.edu/76418949
The complete book is available here: https://www.academia.edu/76418949