Resistances to Autobiography: The Indian Experiment with life-writing

The article underlines that the epistemology of the self and the practice of life-writing in India marks a departure from the Western conventions and modes of expression. Although there are resistances to autobiography from the Western theoretical standpoint, the genre meets with a twofold resistance in postcolonial milieu in its negotiation with the Indian metaphysics of self. Autobiography in decolonising India negotiates complex pathways between an ardent adherence to Indian epistemology and a potent resistance to the Western modes of writing the self. In a framework to understand the phenomenon of resistance implicit in autobiography in general and the internal resistances to autobiography manifest in the genre during decolonisation in particular, the article argues that such resistances within the genre have redefined the very idea of the self in writing, generated a nuanced notion of the self in narration, as well as challenged the process of writing the self in decolonisation.

Researches in Indian epistemology and Indian atomism in the works of V. Lysenko and N. Kanaeva

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Decolonizing Knowledge. Starting Points, Consequences and Challenges

The call for the decolonization of knowledge refers to both its colonization and contingency and puts the focus on the multiplicity of knowledge. This contradicts European-North-American thinking and definitions of knowledge. Consequently, to advance an epistemological decolonization of knowledge, the actual process of defining knowledge will be analysed and the multiplicity of perspectives stressed at the epistemological level. Using Indian epistemology as an example, I will work out differences in definitions of knowledge and therefore basic diversifications in describing and explaining the emergence of knowledge. Truth-value-neutral forms of knowledge in particular challenge dominant European-North-American philosophical definitions, which incontrovertibly include assumptions of true or false knowledge. An interesting overlap between some Indian epistemologies and postcolonial theories can be observed with regards to the central role of the contextualization of knowledge production and the socially embodied nature of scientific knowledge in general. If the incentives gained are to be taken seriously, the consequences for educational science in general as well as educational practices must be discussed. According to the findings of organizational theory, emphasis on diversification and complication is also seen as an opportunity for the emergence of fresh meaning. Referring to Helen Verran’s concept of generative tension as a sign of collective creativity, encounters between diverse forms of knowledge and epistemological principles are seen as sources of creative processes and prerequisite for the emergence of new positions, perspectives etc., and thus as incubators for innovations.

American Indian epistemology in Deborah A. Miranda’s 'Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir'

The essay proposes that Deborah A. Miranda’s Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir (2013) is a work animated by the principles of American Indian epistemology. First, a model of Native philosophy is outlined after Native philosopher Thomas Norton-Smith. Secondly, four dimensions of Miranda’s work – its ethical and procedural purpose, generic location, metalinguistic strategy, narrative as a vehicle of knowledge – are analyzed in the light of Norton-Smith, Roland Barthes, California historians, American Indian literary studies, decolonial theory, and auto-ethnography. In conclusion, it is posited that Miranda’s story is an animated entity enacting ontological, intersubjective, historical difference, and that it intervenes into the genre of memoir/autobiography.

Testimony in Indian philosophy

A prominent topic in Indian epistemology is śābdapramāṇa, knowledge derived from linguistic utterance or testimony. The classical material is extensive and varied, initially concerned with providing grounds for accepting the wisdom of śruti or ‘the heard word’, that is, the canonical scriptures. The Buddhists, however, saw no need for śābdajñāna (information gained through words) as an independent source of knowledge, because any utterance (including the Buddha’s) that has not been tested in one’s own experience cannot be relied upon; and in any case, the operation of such knowledge can be accounted for in terms of inference and perception. The Nyāya, following the Mīmāṃsā, developed sophisticated analyses and a spirited defence of the viability and autonomy of testimony. The problem is recast thus: is śābdapramāṇa linguistic knowledge eo ipso, or does verbal understanding amount to knowledge only when certain specifiable conditions, in addition to the generating conditions, are satisfied? The more usual answer is that where the speaker is reliable and sincere, and there is no evidence to the contrary, the generating semantic and phenomenological conditions suffice to deliver valid knowledge. If doubt arises, then other resources can be utilized for checking the truth or falsity of the understanding, or the reliability of the author (or nonpersonal source), and for overcoming the defects.

Knowledge, Indian views of

Classical Indian epistemology centres on a complex of terms for knowledge, knower and the known or knowable, including pramāṇa, ‘means to knowledge’ or ‘source of knowledge’. Views about perception, inference, testimony and a few additional candidate sources are the topics of core proposals of competing epistemological theories. Certain types of scepticism are also addressed, but explaining how it is possible that we know anything has been less central than other issues. Debates about knowledge – and doubt as well – are often caught up in larger war plans concerning the nature of awareness. The various classical schools typically bring views about awareness with them to the epistemological arena, but a neutral, common touchstone for and important constraint on all pramāṇa theorizing is what is called speech behaviour, vyavahāra, reflecting, it is presumed, bits of everyday knowledge. Verbalizations of perception, for example, ‘That is a pot’, of inference, for example, ‘There is fire on yonder mountain’ (made on the basis of the sight of smoke and an understanding of the general rule that wherever there is smoke, there is fire), of information acquired through testimony, and so on, are the givens for which a successful theory has to account. Principal candidate sources proposed in addition to perception and inference are testimony, analogy, circumstantial implication and negative perception. Mystical experience as a pramāṇa for spiritual matters is viewed as a variety of perception by its advocates, and scripture as a variety of testimony. With stock examples of bits of knowledge agreed upon, disagreement typically centres on what the source is for a particular example and whether admission of any source in addition to perception and inference is ever required. Or, in some cases, a stock example is slightly modified, better to align with a stance taken on a putatively additional pramāṇa. With regard to what the sources make known, some argue that each pramāṇa works within a range of possibilities unique to itself, with no overlap. Thus what is known by perception cannot be known by inference. Others dispute such contentions, although at least a few such restrictions on individual knowledge sources are usually recognized. Buddhists and some others appear to be motivated to deny pramāṇa status to testimony because appeal to testimony is used to justify what they see as objectionable religious theses. Similarly, the Cārvāka materialist denies inference, apparently out of fear of its power to prove the existence of spiritual entities such as God or the soul. The Buddhist Nāgārjuna and others challenge the pramāṇa programmes proffered by epistemologists of all stripes, and provoke what may be called meta-epistemological responses that bring out connections between pramāṇa proposals and a logic of presumption. In particular, the Nyāya response to Nāgārjuna and company is by any light an admirable effort of philosophy.

Epistemology, Indian schools of

Each classical Indian philosophical school classifies and defines itself with reference to a foundational text or figure, through elaboration of inherited positions, and by disputing the views of other schools. Moreover, the schools have literatures that define them in a most concrete sense, literatures that in some cases stretch across twenty centuries and comprise hundreds of texts. And without exception, every school takes a stance on the nature of knowledge and justification, if only, as with the Mādhyamika Buddhist, to attack the positions of others. A blend of epistemology, ontology or metaphysics, and, sometimes, religious or ethical teachings constitutes the view of most schools, and sometimes only very subtle shifts concerning a single issue differentiate one school’s stance from another’s. Relabelling schools of Indian epistemology using terminology forged in Western traditions (‘foundationalism’, ‘coherentism’, and so on) risks skewing the priorities of classical disputants and distorting classical debates. Nevertheless, there are positions shared across some of the schools, as well as refinements of position that apparently because of merit received greater attention in classical discussions and appear to deserve it still. Given the broad context of world philosophy, selectivity cannot be free from bias stemming from a sense of reverberation with non-Indian traditions of thought. With these warnings in mind, we may proceed to examine three important approaches within classical Indian philosophy to questions of epistemology. First, the late Yogācāra Buddhist philosophers, Dignāga (b. circa 480), Dharmakīrti (c.600–660) and followers, present a complex first-person approach to questions about knowledge that is constrained by an anti-metaphysical theme (found in earlier Buddhist treatises), along with a phenomenalism that grows out of a vivid sense of the real possibility of nirvāṇa experience as the supreme good. Their thought also exhibits an academic strand that is sensitive to non-Buddhist philosophical discussions. Second, a reliabilism identifying sources of veridical awareness is the most distinctive, and most central, approach to epistemology within classical Indian philosophy as a whole. Even the Yogācāra first-person approach gets framed in terms of reliable sources (perception and inference as pramāṇas, ‘sources of knowledge’). Philosophers of diverse allegiance make contributions to what may be called this field of thought (as opposed to an approach), since, to repeat, it is the philosophical mainstream. However, the Nyāya school (the ‘Logic’ school) leads in most periods. Finally, the Brahmanical school known as Mīmāṃsā (‘Exegesis’), supplemented in particular by centuries of reflection under an Advaita Vedānta flag, develops what can be called an ethics of belief, namely, that we should accept what we see (for example) as real (and the propositional content of perceptual awarenesses as true), what we are told by another as true, what we infer as true, and so on, except under specific circumstances that prove a proposition false or at least draw it into question. The (Nyāya) epistemological mainstream is moved to incorporate a variation on this position; for Mīmāṃsā and Advaita, ‘self-certification’ (svataḥprāmāṇya), or the intrinsic veridicality of cognition, defines an alternative approach to questions about knowledge, awareness and a presumed obligation to believe.