Books by Jonardon Ganeri
Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) is the quintessential philosophical outsider. Affiliated with no inst... more Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) is the quintessential philosophical outsider. Affiliated with no institution and associated with no traditional school, in his prose fiction and poetry Pessoa invents a new philosophy of the human subject. Writing both in Portuguese and English, Pessoa argues that imagination is key to human flourishing and human self-enrichment. Each of us, he claims, can use our powers of imagination to pluralize ourselves—that is to say, to live, simultaneously and in sequence, as a plurality of distinct subjects. Calling these artefact minds “heteronyms,” Pessoan synthetic selves are new ways to poetically experience the world. Pessoa’s new theory of the human subject is a radical departure from the history of Christian or Islamic thought. It is, on the other hand, deeply resonant with strands of thinking about the nature of self found in classical India. Reconstructing ourselves in imagination is a theme central to the great philosophical storybook of India, the Mokṣopāya or Yogavāsiṣṭha, a metaphysical tale of nested virtual realities and virtual selves. There are anticipations of Pessoa’s ideas too in the Mahābhārata. Fernando Pessoa, whose time in Durban briefly overlapped with that of Mahatma Gandhi, was well-read in Indian literature, having in his library the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore and books about Indian philosophy. He discusses the Upaniṣads and what he calls “the Indian ideal.” Indeed, from in of his more esoteric writings it is possible to identify a new variety of panpsychism in the spirit of Coleridge and Whitman.
Columbia University Press, 2021
Where do we look when we look inward? In what sort of space does our inner life take place? Augus... more Where do we look when we look inward? In what sort of space does our inner life take place? Augustine said that to turn inward is to find oneself in a library of memories, while the Indian Buddhist tradition holds that we are self-illuminating beings casting light onto a world of shadows. And a disquieting set of dissenters has claimed that inwardness is merely an illusion—or, worse, a deceit.
Jonardon Ganeri explores philosophical reflections from many of the world’s intellectual cultures, ancient and modern, on how each of us inhabits an inner world. In brief and lively chapters, he ranges across an unexpected assortment of diverse thinkers: Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic, Chinese, and Western philosophy and literature from the Upaniṣads, Socrates, and Avicenna to Borges, Simone Weil, and Rashōmon. Ganeri examines the various metaphors that have been employed to explain interiority—shadows and mirrors, masks and disguises, rooms and enclosed spaces—as well as the interfaces and boundaries between inner and outer worlds. Written in a cosmopolitan spirit, this book is a thought-provoking consideration of the value—or peril—of turning one’s gaze inward for all readers who have sought to map the geography of the mind.
Oxford University Press, Nov 19, 2020
Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) has become many things to many people in the years that have passed s... more Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) has become many things to many people in the years that have passed since his untimely death. For some he is simply the greatest Portuguese poet of the 20th century. For others he has gradually emerged as a forgotten voice in 20th century modernism. And yet Pessoa was also a philosopher, and it is only very recently that the philosophical importance of his work has begun to attract the attention it deserves. Pessoa composed systematic philosophical essays in his pre-heteronymic period, defending rationalism in epistemology and sensationism in the philosophy of mind. His heteronymic work, decisively breaking with the conventional strictures of systematic philosophical writing, is a profound and exquisite exploration in the philosophy of self. Virtual Subjects, Fugitive Selves pulls together the strands of this philosophy and rearticulates it in a way that does justice to its breathtaking originality. It reveals the extraordinary power of Pessoa's theory by applying it to the analysis of some of the trickiest and most puzzling problems about the self to have appeared in the global history of philosophy.
Oxford University Press, 2020
Classical Indian Philosophy
A history of philosophy without any gaps, Volume 5
Peter Adamson an... more Classical Indian Philosophy
A history of philosophy without any gaps, Volume 5
Peter Adamson and Jonardon Ganeri
A History of Philosophy
The fifth volume in the most readable and entertaining history of philosophy
Short, lively conversational chapters with vivid and humorous examples
Assumes no prior knowledge--ideal for beginners and anyone who wants to read philosophy for pleasure
No gaps! Tells the whole story, not just the most famous bits
A self-standing volume--may be read independently of others in the series
Meets the demand for the growing interest in Asian philosophy in the West
Drawing on the thought of the fifth century Buddhist philosopher Buddhaghosa, Jonardon Ganeri pre... more Drawing on the thought of the fifth century Buddhist philosopher Buddhaghosa, Jonardon Ganeri presents a radically revised account of mind in which attention, not self, explains the situation of human beings in the world. Attention consists in an organisation of awareness and action at the centre of which there is neither a practical will nor a phenomenological witness. Attention performs two roles in experience, a selective role of placing and a focal role of access. It improves our epistemic standing, because it is in the nature of attention to settle on what is real and to shun what is not real. When attention is informed by expertise, it is sufficient for knowledge. That gives attention a reach beyond the perceptual: for attention is a determinable whose determinates include the episodic memory from which our narrative identities are made, the empathy for others that situates us in a social world, and the introspection that makes us self-aware. Empathy is other-directed attention, placed on you and focused on your states of mind; it is akin to listening. Empathetic attention is central to a range of experiences that constitutively require a contrast between oneself and others, all of which involve an awareness of oneself as the object of another's attention. An analysis of attention as mental action gainsays authorial conceptions of self, because it is the nature of intending itself, effortful attention in action, to settle on what to do and to shun what not to do. In ethics, a conception of persons as beings with a characteristic capacity for attention offers hope for resolution in the conflict between individualism and impersonalism.
Attention, Not Self is a contribution to a growing body of work that studies the nature of mind from a place at the crossroads of three disciplines: philosophy in the analytical and phenomenological traditions, contemporary cognitive science and empirical work in cognitive psychology, and Buddhist theoretical literature.
The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy tells the story of philosophy in India through a serie... more The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy tells the story of philosophy in India through a series of exceptional individual acts of philosophical virtuosity. It brings together forty leading international scholars to record the diverse figures, movements, and approaches that constitute philosophy in the geographical region of the Indian subcontinent, a region sometimes nowadays designated South Asia. The volume aims to be ecumenical, drawing from different locales, languages, and literary cultures, inclusive of dissenters, heretics and sceptics, of philosophical ideas in thinkers not themselves primarily philosophers, and reflecting India's north-western borders with the Persianate and Arabic worlds, its north-eastern boundaries with Tibet, Nepal, Ladakh and China, as well as the southern and eastern shores that afford maritime links with the lands of Theravda Buddhism. Indian Philosophy has been written in many languages, including Pali, Prakrit, Sanskrit, Malayalam, Urdu, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, Persian, Kannada, Punjabi, Hindi, Tibetan, Arabic and Assamese. From the time of the British colonial occupation, it has also been written in English. It spans philosophy of law, logic, politics, environment and society, but is most strongly associated with wide-ranging discussions in the philosophy of mind and language, epistemology and metaphysics (how we know and what is there to be known), ethics, metaethics and aesthetics, and metaphilosophy. The reach of Indian ideas has been vast, both historically and geographically, and it has been and continues to be a major influence in world philosophy. In the breadth as well as the depth of its philosophical investigation, in the sheer bulk of surviving texts and in the diffusion of its ideas, the philosophical heritage of India easily stands comparison with that of China, Greece, the Latin west, or the Islamic world.
This is a book about the self, self-consciousness, and subjectivity. Clearly we are animal creatu... more This is a book about the self, self-consciousness, and subjectivity. Clearly we are animal creatures, with animal bodies and animal desires and appetites. Equally clearly, we are conscious beings with interiority, able to think of ourselves as ourselves. Two influential depictions of our humanity have increasingly come to seem unworkable: the scientistic picture, that we are nothing but especially complex networks of neural firings; and the Abrahamic picture, that we are immaterial souls associated with but separable from our animal bodies. Do the Indians, who thought long and hard about the question of what it is to be a human being, have any alternative advice? I believe so. The answer I will offer arises out of my reflection upon their discussion, but is not the view of any single participant within it. My proposal will draw from Buddhist analyses of subjectivity and self-consciousness, and on other Indian theories of emergence, subconscious mechanisms, embodiment, and the emotions. What will gradually emerge from this exercise in conceptual retrieval from historical sources is a philosophical explanation of the compatibility of naturalism with the first-person stance, within the parameters of a new conception of self. Selves, embodied subjects of consciousness, come into view from the standpoint of a liberal naturalism.
"Ganeri's book is truly impressive in its scope and sophistication. Even if one is not enamored of the idea of selves that are distinct from persons—as I am not—one will flnd this book a creative contribution to the discussion of persons. Although I lack the competence to judge Ganeri's interpretation of Indian texts, I highly recommend this book for its rich discussion as well as its complex account of the self. Ganeri's holistic, nonscientistic, and nonreductive approach to our mental lives will be highly congenial to those who appreciate the richness of mental life, including its flrst-personal aspects."
—Lynne Rudder Baker, Review of Metaphysics 2013
"Ganeri manages the amazing feat of writing for two different audiences at once. One is Western-trained philosophers looking for answers to the puzzling questions the various properties of the self. They will find a thorough and sophisticated discussion that at the same time introduces them to a stunning set of intellectual gems from India's philosophical history. The second audience consists of scholars working on Ancient Indian materials dealing with the relation of body, mind, and self. Even though the discussion is going to be considerably more hard-going for this audience, they will find new insights into ways of thinking about the Ancient Indian discussion and the interrelation between various philosophical traditions on almost every page. The ease with which Ganeri manages to keep both audiences on board without sacrificing either philosophical sophistication, or distorting the nuances of the historical discussion by broad- brush generalizations found in less accomplished works on cross-cultural philosophical debates is nothing less than astonishing. It is no exaggeration to say that this book marks the beginning of a completely new phase in the study of Indian philosophy, one in which a firm grasp of the historical material forms the basis for going beyond pure exegesis, opening up the way for doing philosophy with ancient sources."
—Jan Westerhoff, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2013
"Emergence is but one of the many important issues tackled in a book whose scope extends over a large range of philosophical puzzles about the self. There are intriguing taxonomies of theories of the mind, ancient and modern, and an abundance of critical discus- sion, including an acute critique of the Buddhist view of the self. Both because of the clarity of its grasp of the contemporary landscape in analytic philosophy of mind, and because of the special slant given by the author’s knowledge of Indian philosophy, the work has a lot to offer. While it would be unrealistic to expect from this (or perhaps any) book definitive solutions to the intractable problems of mind and body, Ganeri’s understanding of what it means to ap- proach these problems from a broadly naturalist perspective seems to me to be a good deal more nuanced, and more philosophically in- teresting, than much of the contemporary literature in the philosophy of mind."
—John Cottingham, Philosophy, 2013
This book deals with a fascinating episode in the history of philosophy, one from which those who... more This book deals with a fascinating episode in the history of philosophy, one from which those who are interested in the nature of modernity and its global origins have a great deal to learn. I believe that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a remarkable project began to take shape in the Sanskritic philosophical world. Early modernity in India consists in the formation of a new philosophical self, one which makes it possible meaningfully to conceive of oneself as engaging the ancient and the alien in conversation. The ancient texts are now not thought of as authorities to which one must defer, but regarded as the source of insight in the company of which one pursues the quest for truth. This new attitude implies a change in the conception of one’s duties towards the past. Having reconstructed the historical intellectual context in detail, and after developing a suitable methodological framework, I review work on the concept of inquiry, the nature of evidence, the self, the nature of the categories, mathematics, realism, and a new language for philosophy. A study of early modern philosophy in India has much to teach us today—about the nature of modernity as such, about the reform of educational institutions and its relationship to creative research, and about cosmopolitan identities in circumstances of globalisation. Readers may also want to consult my essay "Philosophical Modernities: Polycentricity and Early Modernity in India" (Philosophy, 2014).
"Jonardon Ganeri's book is a treasure trove of new insights and fascinating figures that leaves this reader craving much more. He weaves a rich tapestry where ideas come to life, reinvigorating our understanding of Indian philosophy and the important lessons it can teach us today. The book is refreshing and exciting . . . Anyone interested in learning about early modern Indian philosophy will have the best work I know of on the subject in their hands. And those interested more in the philosophical issues than in comparing traditions will also profit greatly. . . a fascinating view of Indian philosophy and how its insights have genuine relevance for contemporary debates. I could not recommend it more highly"
—Thom Brooks, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2012
“Jonardon Ganeri’s The Lost Age of Reason … is a book that Indologists and students of Indian philosophy cannot afford to ignore” —Andrew Nicholson, Journal of the American Oriental Society 2013.
“[The Lost Age of Reason] is packed with attention to unjustly neglected philosophers, fluent translation of difficult texts, excellent exegesis and a challenging historical argument. This is a volume that deserves to be taken seriously by a broad readership in philosophy […] This volume is highly recommended to Western and to Indian philosophers.”
—Jay L. Garfield, The Philosophical Quarterly 2013.
The mistakes we make about ourselves result in our deepest sufferings. Philosophy, meant to be a ... more The mistakes we make about ourselves result in our deepest sufferings. Philosophy, meant to be a remedy for our souls’ affliction, claims to offer both a diagnosis and a cure. I look to ancient India, where Buddhists and Hindus alike grapple with this fundamental human quest for peace of mind. For Indian thinkers, a philosophical treatise about the self is meant not only to lay out the truth, but also to embed itself in a process of study and contemplation that will lead eventually to self-transformation. By combining attention to philosophical content with sensitivity to skilfully crafted literary form, I try to deepen and enrich our appreciation of some of the greatest intellectual works in history. My survey includes the Upaniṣads, the Buddha’s discourses, the epic Mahābhārata, and the philosopher Candrakīrti, whose work was later to become foundational in Tibetan Buddhism. I show how the figures of the Buddha, the sage, and the epic hero mediate the reader’s relationship with the text. I go on to reveal that many contemporary theories of selfhood are not only anticipated but developed to an extraordinary degree of sophistication in these works, and that there are other ideas about the self found here which modern philosophers have not yet begun to explore. In the Appendices, I begin to disclose some of the paths along which Indian ideas about the self have migrated throughout history to the West.
My aim in this book is to analyse India’s contribution to the study of reason. I seek to discover... more My aim in this book is to analyse India’s contribution to the study of reason. I seek to discover the active rational principles driving Indian theory, and to use this as a vehicle for disclosing a fabric of conceptual relations in their thinking about language, mind, and the normative. The book is based on courses I have taught and has been used successfully as a textbook for modules on Indian Philosophy within Philosophy curricula in the US and Britain. Unlike other books, I focus on the arguments rather than on merely surveying doctrine.
Words have powers, as do the people who understand them. A word has the power to stand in for or ... more Words have powers, as do the people who understand them. A word has the power to stand in for or take the place of a thing. Vibrations in the air, or ink marks on paper, manage somehow to act as substitutes for people and places, planets and atoms, thoughts and feelings. It is to this extraordinary function that the Sanskrit term for ‘meaning’ calls attention: ßakti - the power or capacity of a word to stand for an object. People who understand words have powers as well; most remarkably, the capacity to acquire knowledge about people, places, planets and so on, just by hearing noises or seeing marks. This too is a power, just as surely as is the power to see or remember or reason. It is the power to receive knowledge from the testimony of others. It is not all that surprising that these two powers, the semantic power of a word and the epistemic power of a hearer or reader, should be connected; but it was the singular achievement of the Indian philosophers of language to analyse the nature of that connection in far greater depth than anyone had done so before.
The study of language, indeed, occupies a position of immense significance in India’s intellectual history. Many centuries before the emergence of organised philosophical schools, sophisticated linguistic techniques including rule-based grammars and quasi-empirical methods of investigation were being developed in order to explore the structure of the Sanskrit language. Påˆini’s 4th century BC grammar, which the linguist Leonard Bloomfield famously described as ‘one of the greatest monuments of human intelligence’ (1933: 11), proved an impressive model for later grammarians and philosophers of language.
Two principal claims will inform the theory of meaning whose contours are to be developed. The first is that the central function of a word is to stand for an object, and hence that the meaning of a word is to be identified with the object for which it stands. The Indian literature in general exhibits from a very early stage a preference for a ‘realist’ or ‘direct referential’ approach to meaning. This is in marked contrast to the western literature, in which that approach has only recently become widely respectable2. Attention to the indexical nature of many expressions led Indian philosophers to draw a distinction between two notions of meaning: the reference of an expression on any occasion of its use (padårtha), and a constant, unvarying meaning element, variously thought of as the ‘basis’ for the use (prav®tti-nimitta) of the term, as the delimitor of its scope (ßakyatåvacchedaka), or simply as what remains constant across contexts (anugama).
In Gadådhara’s general semantic theory, three levels of meaning are distinguished. Expressions have first a reference or denotation (ßakya), which is the object or event for which the expression stands. Second, expressions are associated with a property the Naiyåyikas call the ßakyatåvacchedaka or prav®ttinimitta, a delimiting property whose function is to distinguish the
actual reference from objects of other types. Gadådhara identifies this with the cognitive mode (vi∑ayatåvacchedaka) under which the reference is discriminated in an understander’s thought. The third level of meaning is what Gadådhara calls the anugama, a constant or invariant element in the meaning of the expression. This level has importance with respect to indexical expressions, expressions which have a different reference in different contexts. Since an indexical is not an ambiguous term, there must be a component in its meaning which remains constant across contexts. In the case of the word ‘now’, for example, the component is the rule that ‘now’ always refers to the time at which the speaker performs the utterance.
Another idea to inform the Navya-Nyåya account is that a language is primarily a device for the reception of knowledge. The Naiyåyikas develop an epistemology based upon the doctrine that epistemological agents are endowed with capacities or faculties for the acquisition of knowledge, pramåˆas. The perceptual and the inferential faculties are the paradigmatic examples. Just how such faculties are to be characterized is a difficult question, but it seems that they are processes whose non-defective function is the production of true beliefs. Beliefs produced by such a process, in the absence of defeating conditions, carry epistemic warrant. The extension of this idea to language motivates the claim that to be linguistically competent is itself to be endowed with a faculty the exercise of which leads to the acquisition of knowledge, knowledge gleaned from the testimony of others. From its earliest time, the Nyåya study language as essentially a device for the reception of knowledge from others.
The Navya-Nyåya philosophers of language, indeed, construct a taxonomy of referring expressions based on what is involved in discriminating the reference of a term. Having introduced modes of thought into the theory of meaning, they are able to give a new account of two important types of expression which earlier writers had little or no success in explaining: theoretical names and anaphoric uses of pronouns. I will look at the meaning of these terms in the final two chapters of the book.
This is a completely revised and rewritten version of my earlier book, Semantic Powers.
A companion volume to Jonardon Ganeri’s popular textbook, Philosophy in Classical India: The Prop... more A companion volume to Jonardon Ganeri’s popular textbook, Philosophy in Classical India: The Proper Work of Reason, this new book surveys in a lively and accessible style the nature of practical and public reason in India. It provides what is missing in Amartya Sen’s widely admired The Argumentative Indian: detailed discussion of the thinkers—dissenters and heretics, as well as mainstream voices—whose astonishing ideas so enrich contemporary discussion.
“Taking Amartya Sen’s claim about India’s long traditions of debate and tolerance of diversity as his starting point, this engaging and thought-provoking book explores a number of specific examples of argumentation and public reasoning in traditional Indian sources. Yet unlike Sen, who provides few details and who concentrates mainly on political figures, Ganeri’s approach is far more rigorous, examining a wide variety of sources, including: Nyāya texts on logic, philosophical narratives in the Upaniṣads, Nikāyas, and the Mahābhārata, and Śabara’s commentary on the Mīmāṃsā Sūtra. Throughout, Ganeri highlights the ways Indian sources make reasoned arguments, linking pre-modern examples of public and practical reason to current debates about politics and identity in India. One of Ganeri’s central arguments is that India’s religious traditions can sustain secular and democratic ideals: ‘It is a mistake to think that secularism in the public sphere demands that participants revoke conceptions of the good grounded in religious affiliation.’ Such claims have much to offer recent debates about secularism and the role of religion in the public sphere.”
- Brian Black, Religious Studies Review, Sept. 2013
“Recent philosophical writings on the subject of identity, though often focused on distant parts of the globe, have failed to tap the philosophical traditions outside the West in the analyses they provide. This ambitious book admirably overcomes that limitation and locates in the tradition of Indian philosophy a basis for the idea that our identities are not given to us, but are rationally chosen. Its range of historical references—from Manu to Matilal—is impressive and presented with confidence and verve. It will add rigor, detail and historical depth to a concept that still remains relatively undisciplined in its deployment in the study of politics and culture.”
- Akeel Bilgrami, Johnsonian Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University, US
“The first in-depth treatment of India’s argumentative philosophical and religious traditions in a work of social and political theory.”
- Emily Coolidge Toker, LSE Review of Books, April 2012"
Papers by Jonardon Ganeri
Scenes of Attention, 2023
I begin with a scene of attention. It is a scene in which my attention is captured by the absence... more I begin with a scene of attention. It is a scene in which my attention is captured by the absence of a sought-for object, a missing book. The absence of the book, I argue, is not a Gestalt contexture: the absence is not a figure against a back- ground. Rather, this absence is a vacancy in the figure position. The explanation of the idea of being presented as absent has required us to go beyond the formal structure of figure and ground, and it is here that we must make an appeal to the imagination, the manipu- lation of images. Imagining the book as present causes its absence to pop out when juxtaposed against the actually presented percep- tual scene. This mechanism of conscious nonperception has no clear equivalent in Sartre’s phenomenological description of a similar case.24 Instead, out of Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya’s brilliant insights, I seek to develop a more adequate understanding of the underlying mechanism and thus of the subtle relationships among attention, absence, and imagination.
Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2024
My aim in this paper is to discuss the imaginability of subjectless consciousness, and in particu... more My aim in this paper is to discuss the imaginability of subjectless consciousness, and in particular the question of whether one can imagine de se being subjectlessly conscious. I will not engage here with the further issue as to whether imaginability entails possibility, and so with the possibility simpliciter of consciousness being subjectless. The question I am interested in is, in another formulation, whether I can imagine being no one. I shall begin by reviewing the literature on a related, if distinct, question, namely that as to whether I can imagine being someone other than the one that I am.
Critical Philosophy of Race, 2024
In this article I draw upon an analogy between a debate in
the critical philosophy of race over t... more In this article I draw upon an analogy between a debate in
the critical philosophy of race over the metaphysics of race
and a debate in Buddhist philosophy of mind over the metaphysics
of selves. I argue that there is a defensible irrealist theory of race,
corresponding to the performativist theory of self found in certain
Buddhist thinkers.
Oxford Studies in Epistemology 7, 2022
On a common way of thinking about epistemology, it's about when a belief counts as knowledge or w... more On a common way of thinking about epistemology, it's about when a belief counts as knowledge or what the rational response to certain kinds of evidence is and why. Recent trends in virtue epistemology, however, have approached epistemology in a different way and in doing so have raised new questions about what it means to be a good knower and what kinds of skills are important for getting it right about the world. C1.P2 A central analogy that has emerged in examining these new questions is that of the archer. A skilled archer is one who hits her target not just by accident, but because she has developed a skill and uses it well. Her skill has a variety of aspects: she is strong enough to pull the string back, focused enough to avoid distraction, and calm enough to avoid getting flustered by the task. In the same way, a good knower is one who does "hit the truth" but doesn't get things right just by accident, but by examining evidence carefully, double checking for errors, being open-minded, and so on.¹ C1.P3 But skill, especially in difficult tasks, rarely means perfection. Even when an unpredictable gust of wind blows the arrow off course, the archer is still a good one. Someone might be quite skilled at responding to the evidence they have, but still get it wrong about how the world really is. Being a good archer doesn't mean hitting the bullseye every single time and being a good knower doesn't require always getting at the truth. The philosopher Bimal Matilal, for example, uses the analogy on behalf of the Nyāya epistemologists of classical India, to draw a distinction between epistemic skill and infallibility: "a cognitive episode. .. is a knowledge-episode when it hits the truth. Knowledgeness consists in its truthhitting character, and not in its indubitability. .. Even an archer cannot always hit ¹ Sosa (2015: 96) talks of competence, meaning that one is disposed to succeed when one tries. Though Sosa focuses on attempts and trying rather than success, he still sees epistemic life as centered on goal-directed voluntary activity.
The Monist, 2022
The phrase "cosmic consciousness" has a surprising and fascinating history. I will show how it fi... more The phrase "cosmic consciousness" has a surprising and fascinating history. I will show how it first enters into circulation in the writings of the remarkable Englishman Edward Carpenter (1844-1929), a socialist, philosopher, and prescient activist for gay rights and prison reform. Carpenter made a trip to India and Sri Lanka in 1890, where he spent two months sitting at the feet of Ramaswami, an Indian sage and disciple of Tilleinathan Swami. Carpenter invents the phrase in order to paraphrase Ramaswami's teaching, which was itself a commonplace among the Advaita-inspired sages of the period, that there is in human beings the possibility of an all-encompassing consciousness (the Sanskrit phrase jñana-akasa would later be offered as a translation of Carpenter's phrase). Later still, in the writings of William James and others, the phrase acquires a new and different meaning in the idea that the cosmos itself exhibits a form of consciousness. James, indeed, uses just this phrase in his early formulation of cosmopsychism.
Fernando Pessoa and Philosophy, edited by Bartholomew Ryan, Giovanbattista Tusa, and Antonio Cardiello, 2021
I include links to the Arquivo Pessoa for many of the references. This remarkable digital humanit... more I include links to the Arquivo Pessoa for many of the references. This remarkable digital humanities tool, a searchable online archive of Pessoa's entire writing in Portuguese, English and French, is of enormous assistance when investigating Pessoa's fragmented body of work, and I would not have been able to write this chapter without it. Should a reader wish to locate it, the Arquivo includes print publication details for each text where they exist. The Arquivo does not contain Pessoa's marginal notes in the books he owned, and a second very important digital resource in Pessoa studies is the digital scan of Pessoa's library at the Casa Fernando Pessoa: http: / /bib liote capar ticul ar .ca safer nando pesso a .pt/ index /inde x .htm. Translations in this chapter from those texts that are originally not in English but Portuguese are by Austin Simões-Gomes, to whom I am extremely grateful. I also thank my student Rodrigo Lugue for additional research support in writing this chapter, and to Bartholomew Ryan for many improvements.
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Books by Jonardon Ganeri
Jonardon Ganeri explores philosophical reflections from many of the world’s intellectual cultures, ancient and modern, on how each of us inhabits an inner world. In brief and lively chapters, he ranges across an unexpected assortment of diverse thinkers: Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic, Chinese, and Western philosophy and literature from the Upaniṣads, Socrates, and Avicenna to Borges, Simone Weil, and Rashōmon. Ganeri examines the various metaphors that have been employed to explain interiority—shadows and mirrors, masks and disguises, rooms and enclosed spaces—as well as the interfaces and boundaries between inner and outer worlds. Written in a cosmopolitan spirit, this book is a thought-provoking consideration of the value—or peril—of turning one’s gaze inward for all readers who have sought to map the geography of the mind.
A history of philosophy without any gaps, Volume 5
Peter Adamson and Jonardon Ganeri
A History of Philosophy
The fifth volume in the most readable and entertaining history of philosophy
Short, lively conversational chapters with vivid and humorous examples
Assumes no prior knowledge--ideal for beginners and anyone who wants to read philosophy for pleasure
No gaps! Tells the whole story, not just the most famous bits
A self-standing volume--may be read independently of others in the series
Meets the demand for the growing interest in Asian philosophy in the West
Attention, Not Self is a contribution to a growing body of work that studies the nature of mind from a place at the crossroads of three disciplines: philosophy in the analytical and phenomenological traditions, contemporary cognitive science and empirical work in cognitive psychology, and Buddhist theoretical literature.
"Ganeri's book is truly impressive in its scope and sophistication. Even if one is not enamored of the idea of selves that are distinct from persons—as I am not—one will flnd this book a creative contribution to the discussion of persons. Although I lack the competence to judge Ganeri's interpretation of Indian texts, I highly recommend this book for its rich discussion as well as its complex account of the self. Ganeri's holistic, nonscientistic, and nonreductive approach to our mental lives will be highly congenial to those who appreciate the richness of mental life, including its flrst-personal aspects."
—Lynne Rudder Baker, Review of Metaphysics 2013
"Ganeri manages the amazing feat of writing for two different audiences at once. One is Western-trained philosophers looking for answers to the puzzling questions the various properties of the self. They will find a thorough and sophisticated discussion that at the same time introduces them to a stunning set of intellectual gems from India's philosophical history. The second audience consists of scholars working on Ancient Indian materials dealing with the relation of body, mind, and self. Even though the discussion is going to be considerably more hard-going for this audience, they will find new insights into ways of thinking about the Ancient Indian discussion and the interrelation between various philosophical traditions on almost every page. The ease with which Ganeri manages to keep both audiences on board without sacrificing either philosophical sophistication, or distorting the nuances of the historical discussion by broad- brush generalizations found in less accomplished works on cross-cultural philosophical debates is nothing less than astonishing. It is no exaggeration to say that this book marks the beginning of a completely new phase in the study of Indian philosophy, one in which a firm grasp of the historical material forms the basis for going beyond pure exegesis, opening up the way for doing philosophy with ancient sources."
—Jan Westerhoff, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2013
"Emergence is but one of the many important issues tackled in a book whose scope extends over a large range of philosophical puzzles about the self. There are intriguing taxonomies of theories of the mind, ancient and modern, and an abundance of critical discus- sion, including an acute critique of the Buddhist view of the self. Both because of the clarity of its grasp of the contemporary landscape in analytic philosophy of mind, and because of the special slant given by the author’s knowledge of Indian philosophy, the work has a lot to offer. While it would be unrealistic to expect from this (or perhaps any) book definitive solutions to the intractable problems of mind and body, Ganeri’s understanding of what it means to ap- proach these problems from a broadly naturalist perspective seems to me to be a good deal more nuanced, and more philosophically in- teresting, than much of the contemporary literature in the philosophy of mind."
—John Cottingham, Philosophy, 2013
"Jonardon Ganeri's book is a treasure trove of new insights and fascinating figures that leaves this reader craving much more. He weaves a rich tapestry where ideas come to life, reinvigorating our understanding of Indian philosophy and the important lessons it can teach us today. The book is refreshing and exciting . . . Anyone interested in learning about early modern Indian philosophy will have the best work I know of on the subject in their hands. And those interested more in the philosophical issues than in comparing traditions will also profit greatly. . . a fascinating view of Indian philosophy and how its insights have genuine relevance for contemporary debates. I could not recommend it more highly"
—Thom Brooks, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2012
“Jonardon Ganeri’s The Lost Age of Reason … is a book that Indologists and students of Indian philosophy cannot afford to ignore” —Andrew Nicholson, Journal of the American Oriental Society 2013.
“[The Lost Age of Reason] is packed with attention to unjustly neglected philosophers, fluent translation of difficult texts, excellent exegesis and a challenging historical argument. This is a volume that deserves to be taken seriously by a broad readership in philosophy […] This volume is highly recommended to Western and to Indian philosophers.”
—Jay L. Garfield, The Philosophical Quarterly 2013.
The study of language, indeed, occupies a position of immense significance in India’s intellectual history. Many centuries before the emergence of organised philosophical schools, sophisticated linguistic techniques including rule-based grammars and quasi-empirical methods of investigation were being developed in order to explore the structure of the Sanskrit language. Påˆini’s 4th century BC grammar, which the linguist Leonard Bloomfield famously described as ‘one of the greatest monuments of human intelligence’ (1933: 11), proved an impressive model for later grammarians and philosophers of language.
Two principal claims will inform the theory of meaning whose contours are to be developed. The first is that the central function of a word is to stand for an object, and hence that the meaning of a word is to be identified with the object for which it stands. The Indian literature in general exhibits from a very early stage a preference for a ‘realist’ or ‘direct referential’ approach to meaning. This is in marked contrast to the western literature, in which that approach has only recently become widely respectable2. Attention to the indexical nature of many expressions led Indian philosophers to draw a distinction between two notions of meaning: the reference of an expression on any occasion of its use (padårtha), and a constant, unvarying meaning element, variously thought of as the ‘basis’ for the use (prav®tti-nimitta) of the term, as the delimitor of its scope (ßakyatåvacchedaka), or simply as what remains constant across contexts (anugama).
In Gadådhara’s general semantic theory, three levels of meaning are distinguished. Expressions have first a reference or denotation (ßakya), which is the object or event for which the expression stands. Second, expressions are associated with a property the Naiyåyikas call the ßakyatåvacchedaka or prav®ttinimitta, a delimiting property whose function is to distinguish the
actual reference from objects of other types. Gadådhara identifies this with the cognitive mode (vi∑ayatåvacchedaka) under which the reference is discriminated in an understander’s thought. The third level of meaning is what Gadådhara calls the anugama, a constant or invariant element in the meaning of the expression. This level has importance with respect to indexical expressions, expressions which have a different reference in different contexts. Since an indexical is not an ambiguous term, there must be a component in its meaning which remains constant across contexts. In the case of the word ‘now’, for example, the component is the rule that ‘now’ always refers to the time at which the speaker performs the utterance.
Another idea to inform the Navya-Nyåya account is that a language is primarily a device for the reception of knowledge. The Naiyåyikas develop an epistemology based upon the doctrine that epistemological agents are endowed with capacities or faculties for the acquisition of knowledge, pramåˆas. The perceptual and the inferential faculties are the paradigmatic examples. Just how such faculties are to be characterized is a difficult question, but it seems that they are processes whose non-defective function is the production of true beliefs. Beliefs produced by such a process, in the absence of defeating conditions, carry epistemic warrant. The extension of this idea to language motivates the claim that to be linguistically competent is itself to be endowed with a faculty the exercise of which leads to the acquisition of knowledge, knowledge gleaned from the testimony of others. From its earliest time, the Nyåya study language as essentially a device for the reception of knowledge from others.
The Navya-Nyåya philosophers of language, indeed, construct a taxonomy of referring expressions based on what is involved in discriminating the reference of a term. Having introduced modes of thought into the theory of meaning, they are able to give a new account of two important types of expression which earlier writers had little or no success in explaining: theoretical names and anaphoric uses of pronouns. I will look at the meaning of these terms in the final two chapters of the book.
This is a completely revised and rewritten version of my earlier book, Semantic Powers.
“Taking Amartya Sen’s claim about India’s long traditions of debate and tolerance of diversity as his starting point, this engaging and thought-provoking book explores a number of specific examples of argumentation and public reasoning in traditional Indian sources. Yet unlike Sen, who provides few details and who concentrates mainly on political figures, Ganeri’s approach is far more rigorous, examining a wide variety of sources, including: Nyāya texts on logic, philosophical narratives in the Upaniṣads, Nikāyas, and the Mahābhārata, and Śabara’s commentary on the Mīmāṃsā Sūtra. Throughout, Ganeri highlights the ways Indian sources make reasoned arguments, linking pre-modern examples of public and practical reason to current debates about politics and identity in India. One of Ganeri’s central arguments is that India’s religious traditions can sustain secular and democratic ideals: ‘It is a mistake to think that secularism in the public sphere demands that participants revoke conceptions of the good grounded in religious affiliation.’ Such claims have much to offer recent debates about secularism and the role of religion in the public sphere.”
- Brian Black, Religious Studies Review, Sept. 2013
“Recent philosophical writings on the subject of identity, though often focused on distant parts of the globe, have failed to tap the philosophical traditions outside the West in the analyses they provide. This ambitious book admirably overcomes that limitation and locates in the tradition of Indian philosophy a basis for the idea that our identities are not given to us, but are rationally chosen. Its range of historical references—from Manu to Matilal—is impressive and presented with confidence and verve. It will add rigor, detail and historical depth to a concept that still remains relatively undisciplined in its deployment in the study of politics and culture.”
- Akeel Bilgrami, Johnsonian Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University, US
“The first in-depth treatment of India’s argumentative philosophical and religious traditions in a work of social and political theory.”
- Emily Coolidge Toker, LSE Review of Books, April 2012"
Papers by Jonardon Ganeri
the critical philosophy of race over the metaphysics of race
and a debate in Buddhist philosophy of mind over the metaphysics
of selves. I argue that there is a defensible irrealist theory of race,
corresponding to the performativist theory of self found in certain
Buddhist thinkers.
Jonardon Ganeri explores philosophical reflections from many of the world’s intellectual cultures, ancient and modern, on how each of us inhabits an inner world. In brief and lively chapters, he ranges across an unexpected assortment of diverse thinkers: Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic, Chinese, and Western philosophy and literature from the Upaniṣads, Socrates, and Avicenna to Borges, Simone Weil, and Rashōmon. Ganeri examines the various metaphors that have been employed to explain interiority—shadows and mirrors, masks and disguises, rooms and enclosed spaces—as well as the interfaces and boundaries between inner and outer worlds. Written in a cosmopolitan spirit, this book is a thought-provoking consideration of the value—or peril—of turning one’s gaze inward for all readers who have sought to map the geography of the mind.
A history of philosophy without any gaps, Volume 5
Peter Adamson and Jonardon Ganeri
A History of Philosophy
The fifth volume in the most readable and entertaining history of philosophy
Short, lively conversational chapters with vivid and humorous examples
Assumes no prior knowledge--ideal for beginners and anyone who wants to read philosophy for pleasure
No gaps! Tells the whole story, not just the most famous bits
A self-standing volume--may be read independently of others in the series
Meets the demand for the growing interest in Asian philosophy in the West
Attention, Not Self is a contribution to a growing body of work that studies the nature of mind from a place at the crossroads of three disciplines: philosophy in the analytical and phenomenological traditions, contemporary cognitive science and empirical work in cognitive psychology, and Buddhist theoretical literature.
"Ganeri's book is truly impressive in its scope and sophistication. Even if one is not enamored of the idea of selves that are distinct from persons—as I am not—one will flnd this book a creative contribution to the discussion of persons. Although I lack the competence to judge Ganeri's interpretation of Indian texts, I highly recommend this book for its rich discussion as well as its complex account of the self. Ganeri's holistic, nonscientistic, and nonreductive approach to our mental lives will be highly congenial to those who appreciate the richness of mental life, including its flrst-personal aspects."
—Lynne Rudder Baker, Review of Metaphysics 2013
"Ganeri manages the amazing feat of writing for two different audiences at once. One is Western-trained philosophers looking for answers to the puzzling questions the various properties of the self. They will find a thorough and sophisticated discussion that at the same time introduces them to a stunning set of intellectual gems from India's philosophical history. The second audience consists of scholars working on Ancient Indian materials dealing with the relation of body, mind, and self. Even though the discussion is going to be considerably more hard-going for this audience, they will find new insights into ways of thinking about the Ancient Indian discussion and the interrelation between various philosophical traditions on almost every page. The ease with which Ganeri manages to keep both audiences on board without sacrificing either philosophical sophistication, or distorting the nuances of the historical discussion by broad- brush generalizations found in less accomplished works on cross-cultural philosophical debates is nothing less than astonishing. It is no exaggeration to say that this book marks the beginning of a completely new phase in the study of Indian philosophy, one in which a firm grasp of the historical material forms the basis for going beyond pure exegesis, opening up the way for doing philosophy with ancient sources."
—Jan Westerhoff, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2013
"Emergence is but one of the many important issues tackled in a book whose scope extends over a large range of philosophical puzzles about the self. There are intriguing taxonomies of theories of the mind, ancient and modern, and an abundance of critical discus- sion, including an acute critique of the Buddhist view of the self. Both because of the clarity of its grasp of the contemporary landscape in analytic philosophy of mind, and because of the special slant given by the author’s knowledge of Indian philosophy, the work has a lot to offer. While it would be unrealistic to expect from this (or perhaps any) book definitive solutions to the intractable problems of mind and body, Ganeri’s understanding of what it means to ap- proach these problems from a broadly naturalist perspective seems to me to be a good deal more nuanced, and more philosophically in- teresting, than much of the contemporary literature in the philosophy of mind."
—John Cottingham, Philosophy, 2013
"Jonardon Ganeri's book is a treasure trove of new insights and fascinating figures that leaves this reader craving much more. He weaves a rich tapestry where ideas come to life, reinvigorating our understanding of Indian philosophy and the important lessons it can teach us today. The book is refreshing and exciting . . . Anyone interested in learning about early modern Indian philosophy will have the best work I know of on the subject in their hands. And those interested more in the philosophical issues than in comparing traditions will also profit greatly. . . a fascinating view of Indian philosophy and how its insights have genuine relevance for contemporary debates. I could not recommend it more highly"
—Thom Brooks, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2012
“Jonardon Ganeri’s The Lost Age of Reason … is a book that Indologists and students of Indian philosophy cannot afford to ignore” —Andrew Nicholson, Journal of the American Oriental Society 2013.
“[The Lost Age of Reason] is packed with attention to unjustly neglected philosophers, fluent translation of difficult texts, excellent exegesis and a challenging historical argument. This is a volume that deserves to be taken seriously by a broad readership in philosophy […] This volume is highly recommended to Western and to Indian philosophers.”
—Jay L. Garfield, The Philosophical Quarterly 2013.
The study of language, indeed, occupies a position of immense significance in India’s intellectual history. Many centuries before the emergence of organised philosophical schools, sophisticated linguistic techniques including rule-based grammars and quasi-empirical methods of investigation were being developed in order to explore the structure of the Sanskrit language. Påˆini’s 4th century BC grammar, which the linguist Leonard Bloomfield famously described as ‘one of the greatest monuments of human intelligence’ (1933: 11), proved an impressive model for later grammarians and philosophers of language.
Two principal claims will inform the theory of meaning whose contours are to be developed. The first is that the central function of a word is to stand for an object, and hence that the meaning of a word is to be identified with the object for which it stands. The Indian literature in general exhibits from a very early stage a preference for a ‘realist’ or ‘direct referential’ approach to meaning. This is in marked contrast to the western literature, in which that approach has only recently become widely respectable2. Attention to the indexical nature of many expressions led Indian philosophers to draw a distinction between two notions of meaning: the reference of an expression on any occasion of its use (padårtha), and a constant, unvarying meaning element, variously thought of as the ‘basis’ for the use (prav®tti-nimitta) of the term, as the delimitor of its scope (ßakyatåvacchedaka), or simply as what remains constant across contexts (anugama).
In Gadådhara’s general semantic theory, three levels of meaning are distinguished. Expressions have first a reference or denotation (ßakya), which is the object or event for which the expression stands. Second, expressions are associated with a property the Naiyåyikas call the ßakyatåvacchedaka or prav®ttinimitta, a delimiting property whose function is to distinguish the
actual reference from objects of other types. Gadådhara identifies this with the cognitive mode (vi∑ayatåvacchedaka) under which the reference is discriminated in an understander’s thought. The third level of meaning is what Gadådhara calls the anugama, a constant or invariant element in the meaning of the expression. This level has importance with respect to indexical expressions, expressions which have a different reference in different contexts. Since an indexical is not an ambiguous term, there must be a component in its meaning which remains constant across contexts. In the case of the word ‘now’, for example, the component is the rule that ‘now’ always refers to the time at which the speaker performs the utterance.
Another idea to inform the Navya-Nyåya account is that a language is primarily a device for the reception of knowledge. The Naiyåyikas develop an epistemology based upon the doctrine that epistemological agents are endowed with capacities or faculties for the acquisition of knowledge, pramåˆas. The perceptual and the inferential faculties are the paradigmatic examples. Just how such faculties are to be characterized is a difficult question, but it seems that they are processes whose non-defective function is the production of true beliefs. Beliefs produced by such a process, in the absence of defeating conditions, carry epistemic warrant. The extension of this idea to language motivates the claim that to be linguistically competent is itself to be endowed with a faculty the exercise of which leads to the acquisition of knowledge, knowledge gleaned from the testimony of others. From its earliest time, the Nyåya study language as essentially a device for the reception of knowledge from others.
The Navya-Nyåya philosophers of language, indeed, construct a taxonomy of referring expressions based on what is involved in discriminating the reference of a term. Having introduced modes of thought into the theory of meaning, they are able to give a new account of two important types of expression which earlier writers had little or no success in explaining: theoretical names and anaphoric uses of pronouns. I will look at the meaning of these terms in the final two chapters of the book.
This is a completely revised and rewritten version of my earlier book, Semantic Powers.
“Taking Amartya Sen’s claim about India’s long traditions of debate and tolerance of diversity as his starting point, this engaging and thought-provoking book explores a number of specific examples of argumentation and public reasoning in traditional Indian sources. Yet unlike Sen, who provides few details and who concentrates mainly on political figures, Ganeri’s approach is far more rigorous, examining a wide variety of sources, including: Nyāya texts on logic, philosophical narratives in the Upaniṣads, Nikāyas, and the Mahābhārata, and Śabara’s commentary on the Mīmāṃsā Sūtra. Throughout, Ganeri highlights the ways Indian sources make reasoned arguments, linking pre-modern examples of public and practical reason to current debates about politics and identity in India. One of Ganeri’s central arguments is that India’s religious traditions can sustain secular and democratic ideals: ‘It is a mistake to think that secularism in the public sphere demands that participants revoke conceptions of the good grounded in religious affiliation.’ Such claims have much to offer recent debates about secularism and the role of religion in the public sphere.”
- Brian Black, Religious Studies Review, Sept. 2013
“Recent philosophical writings on the subject of identity, though often focused on distant parts of the globe, have failed to tap the philosophical traditions outside the West in the analyses they provide. This ambitious book admirably overcomes that limitation and locates in the tradition of Indian philosophy a basis for the idea that our identities are not given to us, but are rationally chosen. Its range of historical references—from Manu to Matilal—is impressive and presented with confidence and verve. It will add rigor, detail and historical depth to a concept that still remains relatively undisciplined in its deployment in the study of politics and culture.”
- Akeel Bilgrami, Johnsonian Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University, US
“The first in-depth treatment of India’s argumentative philosophical and religious traditions in a work of social and political theory.”
- Emily Coolidge Toker, LSE Review of Books, April 2012"
the critical philosophy of race over the metaphysics of race
and a debate in Buddhist philosophy of mind over the metaphysics
of selves. I argue that there is a defensible irrealist theory of race,
corresponding to the performativist theory of self found in certain
Buddhist thinkers.
Consciousness is a much smaller part of our mental life than we are conscious of, because we cannot be conscious of what we are not conscious of…It is like asking a flashlight in a dark room to search around for something that doesn’t have any light shining on it. The flashlight, since there is light in whatever direction it turns, would have to conclude that there is light everywhere. And so consciousness can seem to pervade all mentality when actually it does not. (1976, p. 23)
I think that this same type of illusion is what explains the grip of the idea of immortality. Throughout one’s lifetime one is aware of being alive, and so it seems as if one is always alive, even when, at the moment of death, the door of life is closed. You think the light of life is always shining; i.e that you are immortal. Yet this is to forget that it is living which turns on the light of life. From the fact that for as long as we are alive we are conscious of being so, it does not follow that there is a similar consciousness even when we are no longer alive.
In this paper I look at responses to the illusion of immortality in two thinkers widely separated in time and space: the 5th century Theravāda Buddhist exegete, Buddhaghosa, and the 20th century Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa. As we will see there are some profound and surprising affinities between these two thinkers, and each can be read in a way that helps to illuminate the thought of the other.
Jonardon Ganeri ([email protected])
University of Oxford
My plan for this series of lectures is as follows. In the first lecture I will offer a fresh reading of a key early Nyāya text. My aim will be to demonstrate a way of understanding the text which frees it from a gloss put on it by later interpreters, a conceptualist gloss that eventually binds it to a thesis incompatible with naïve realism or relationalism. In the second lecture I will examine key Nyāya arguments for Nyāya realism, the most important of which is that amodal perception of wholes is better explained with its framework than within Buddhist representationalism.
I then turn to three forms of experience that enrich the picture. The first is illusion, and my argument in the third lecture will be that neither disjunctivism nor objective looks theory is more compelling than the Nyāya’s own explanation of perceptual error. This explanation draws on synaesthetic phenomena to defend the existence of anomalous relations of acquaintance with absent features. The second case is absence experience, the best non-inferential theory of which concedes a role to mental imagery. Even a dogged commitment to absence realism cannot help Nyāya here. The view I defend is a non-disjunctivist version of naïve realism, one in which the relation of presentation is enriched to include both the presentation-as-present of absent features and the presentation-as-absent of absences through mismatch with mental imagery.
The third case is the spectatorial experience of artworks. A sophisticated Indian analysis of such experience, as it relates to audience engagement in theatre (rasa), leads me to a threefold analysis in which the perception of an artwork incorporates elements both of virtual acquaintance and absence experience (prominent in aniconic representation). In all this my aim is to reprise Wollheim’s “two perceptual projects” hypothesis but in a different form. What replaces the distinction between seeing face-to-face and seeing-in is an orthogonal one, between what is presented-as-present and what is presented-as-absent.
I will focus on the relationship between perceptual experience and attention. We have been taught by Richard Wollheim that the perceptual experience of an artwork consists in a twofold attention, and by Krishnacandra Bhattacharyya that the perceptual experience of absence consists in a negative attention (a figure-ground structure with an empty figure-position). Attention explains how we can experience wholes and why there are illusions, and I want to resist the view that what does the explanatory work is the thesis that perceptual experience is saturated by concepts and conceptualisation. So I will argue that a suite of Sanskrit ideas are better understood as matters of attention rather than conceptualisation: savikalpaka-pratyakṣa (the idea of perceptual structure), avayavi-pratyakṣa (perceptual completion in the perception of whole objects), viparyaya (the idea of perceptual error and illusion), abhāva-pratyakṣa (absence perception), and finally rasa (aesthetic experience as perceptual). The key concepts I will draw upon from the psychology and philosophy of attention are: the distinction between selection and access, the idea of a perceptual chunk, feature-binding, the figure-ground distinction, and simultaneous divided attention.
So I argue for a non-disjunctivist version of naïve realism, inspired by the work of Bimal Matilal but extending it.