The Epistemology of Yogic Perception: Dignāga – Dharmakīrti’s School

One of the specific features of Indian philosophical thought in comparison with Western tradition is its addressing the subject of yogic and contemplative prac­tices. The article focuses on the interpretation of yogic experience in terms of Buddhist epistemology (pramāṇavāda – the teachings on the instrument of valid cognition). The concept of yogic perception (yogipratyaksha), which dates back to the Buddhist philosopher Dignāga, later becomes the subject of pan-Indian philosophical debates. The author analyzes the Buddha’s teachings on the Four Noble Truths as an object of yogic perception. If, according to Dignāga, yogic perception grasps its object directly, beyond its verbal elucidation by teachers, while the Noble Truths are transmitted through the Buddha’s word, the question arises as to how can they constitute the object of direct apprehension? The article proposes to understand yogic perception in the light of the three stages of under­standing in Buddhism: 1) śrutamayī (consisting in hearing) – the memorization from the words of teacher; 2) cintāmayī (consisting in reflection) – a critical ana­lytical discourse about the form and meaning of what was learned at the previous stage; and finally, 3) bhāvanāmayī (consisting in contemplation) – an individual appropriation of the ideas analyzed at the previous stage in meditation. The author argues that, according to this algorithm, only the intellectual mastering of Buddha’s teachings can shape a mindset that brings forth yogic liberating in­sight – the goal of the Buddhist soteriological aspirations

Epistemologia e arte: a questão do conhecimento estético em Francis Ponge

Este ensaio analisa a relação entre arte e conhecimento a partir da obra poética de Francis Ponge. O teor cognitivo está na iniciativa de edificação de uma mathesis singularis a partir do contato com os objetos em sua apreensão direta. A emoção poética, como fato original e causa do poema, é conduzida à descrição do objeto até a forma de uma lei estética apta à configuração objetiva do mundo. A forma estética visa a adequação entre as palavras e as coisas a partir de um recuso semiótico da linguagem, a saber, a onomatopéia. No interior do projeto cognitivo e intencional de Francis Ponge, a onomatopéia é o recurso que define o objeto, seguido por uma descrição fiel aos objetos em sua manifestação concreta. À luz da experiência poética de Francis Ponge, que correlaciona explicitamente a relação entre arte e conhecimento, estão abertas as possibilidades de pensar o conhecimento estético a partir de outras artes e artistas, como a pintura de Cézanne, entre outros. AbstractThis essay analyzes the relationship between art and knowledge from the poetry of Francis Ponge. The cognitive content is in the initiative of building a mathesis singularis from the contact with the objects in its direct apprehension. Poetic emotion, as the original fact and cause of the poem, is led to the description of the object into the form of an aesthetic law apt to the objective configuration of the world. The aesthetic form aims at matching words and things through a semiotic refusal of language, namely onomatopoeia. Within Francis Ponge's cognitive and intentional project, onomatopoeia is the defining feature of the object, followed by a faithful description of the objects in their concrete manifestation. In the light of Francis Ponge's poetic experience, which explicitly correlates the relationship between art and knowledge, the possibilities of thinking aesthetic knowledge from other arts and artists, such as Cezanne's painting, among others, are open.

Foundationalism

Some foundationalists are rationalists who rely on intuition and deduction. Others are empiricists, in a broad sense, and accept observation and induction or abduction or yet other ways to support beliefs by means of other beliefs. What they have in common is that they are all willing to hazard a positive view about what in general makes a belief epistemically justified in the way required for it to be a case of knowledge; and they all propose something of the following general form: belief b is justified if and only if either b is foundationally justified through a psychological process of direct apprehension p (such as rational intuition, observation, introspection, and so on) or else b is inferentially justified through a psychological process of reasoning r (such as deduction, induction, abduction, and so on) ultimately from beliefs all of which are acquired or sustained through p. If one rejects all forms of such foundationalism, then a question remains as to what distinguishes in general the cases where a belief is epistemically justified from the cases in which it is not. Can anything general and illuminating be said about what confers epistemic justification on a belief, and what gives a belief the epistemic status required for it to constitute knowledge (provided it is true)?

Memory and its offspring: Realism and the “specious present”

Without memory we could not recall events, nor could we imagine, image, or expect things. Representationist accounts of memory claim that to remember is to access stored representations of past events. This is logically impossible: there are no such things as mental representations. Memory is the direct apprehension of past events. Some assert that this claim involves the temporal absurdity of supposing that the past can be known directly in the present. There is no such absurdity: cognition and its objects have temporal duration as well as spatial location. Situations perceived and remembered are extended temporally as well as spatially. William James drew attention to the specious present, the belief that we live in a temporally unextended now. A solid ontological account of the metaphysics of time and space is provided uniquely in the empiricist metaphysics of John Anderson’s realism.

Prichard vs. Plato: Intuition vs. Reflection

When H.A. Prichard launched his attack on the “mistake” in moral philosophy of “supposing the possibility of proving what can only be apprehended directly by an act of moral thinking,” he had Plato squarely in his sights. I Plato, in fact, is the poster boy for the strategy of trying to “supply by a process of reflection a proof of the truth of what … they have prior to reflection believed immediately or without proof.” As if this were not mistake enough, Prichard charges Plato with being the “most significant instance” of the error of trying to “justify morality by its profitableness,” because Plato's general acuity brings into sharp relief just how pernicious is the temptation to offer such justifications. Prichard has in view Plato's attempt in Republic to demonstrate that justice is oikeion agathon - one's own good - and Prichard complains that at best such an account can make us want to be just, rather than show us that we are obligated to be just, as direct apprehension purports to do.

Virtual and Actual Existentials in English, Swedish and Icelandic

The focus of my analysis is the so-called existential construction. The languages examined are English, Swedish and Icelandic. The present article assumes the perspective of Ronald W. Langacker's cognitive grammar as the theoretical background. First of all, the assumption is that the unstressed, initial pronoun there, or its Scandinavian equivalents, are semantically definable as abstract-setting subjects of their respective sentences, with, possibly, the exception of Icelandic það. Secondly, the conceptualization of the existential scenes in the three languages is a dynamic process in each case. The dynamicity of the semantics of existential scenes is the result of assuming two planes, the actual and a virtual one, and establishing correspondences between them. The actual plane reflects our direct apprehension of reality. A virtual plane consists in the dynamic re-assignment of roles to the actual elements introduced by means of the virtual abstract-setting subject.

Believing and Seeing: The Roles of Faith, Reason, and Experience in Theravada Buddhism

In early Buddhism, “seeing” means the direct apprehension of reality, when the senses operate undistorted by the mediating, corruptible influences of preconceived notions or cognitive analysis. To see in this way is to be wise, to be a buddha. Yet one reaches this ultimate achievement by cultivating analysis of one's sense perceptions, guided by preconceived notions accepted on the basis of faith. By looking at several Pāli texts that teach the fundamentals of the Buddhist path, one can see how the Theravāda Buddhists resolve this congruity between their goal (direct, unmediated seeing) and the means to reach it (faith and reason): they treat both faith and reason as useful tools to be discarded when one has outgrown the need for them.