Classical Indian Philosophy of Mind: The Nyaya Dualist Tradition

By Kisor Kumar Chakrabarti

Book Overview

Addresses the psycho-physical dualism of the Nyaya school of Indian philosophy with references to both Indian and Western philosophy.

This book examines psycho-physical dualism as developed by the Nyāya school of Indian philosophy. Dualism is important to many world religions which promote personal immortality and to morality which promotes free will. For the Nyāya, the self is a permanent, immaterial substance to which non-physical internal states like cognition belong. This view is challenged by other Indian schools, especially the Buddhist and Cārvāka schools.

Chakrabarti brings out the connections between the Indian and the Western debates over the mind-body problem and shows that the Nyāya position is well developed, well articulated, and defensible. He shows that Nyāya dualism differs from Cartesian dualism and is not vulnerable to some traditional objections against the latter. A brief discussion of the Sāṃkhya and the Advaita theories of the self and the critique of these views from the Nyāya standpoint are included, as well as a discussion of a classical Nyāya causal argument for the existence of God. The appendix contains an annotated translation of selected portions of Udayana's masterpiece, Ātmatattvaviveka (Discerning the Nature of the Self.)

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0791441725
• ISBN13: 9780791441725
• Release Date: June 1999
• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Length: 329 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.9" x 8.9"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Excellent

As a student of Chakrabarti, I've got to say that this book was extremely enlightening. Not only does he offer very sound proofs for psycho-physical dualism, but he also offers refutations of Cartesian and Materialist views. His proofs are very simple and worded in ways that a layman can understand.

Careful, thorough and interesting

Chakrabarti introduces the Nyaya school's theory of a non-physical self with great care. Not only is Chakrabarti's work carefully done, but the Nyaya school's position itself is carefully argued. (The Nyaya school began with Gotama, traditionally dated at 6th C. bc.) Unlike most theories of a non-physical self, the Nyaya theory construes the self as extended in space. The book contains a plethora of arguments that there is a self, contra the Humean or Buddhist flux view, and that it is a non-physical thing, contra the materialist view. Also, Chakrabarti includes many translations of Nyaya texts from Gotama, Vatsyayana (2nd C. bc), and Udayana (11th C. ad). The book is a service to the history of philosophy, in that it brings this rigorously analytic school of philosophy to light. India had the first hardcore analytic philosophers in history, if Gotama's dates are correct. Read the passages. You feel like you're reading 20th C. philosophy of mind. But it's many centuries bc.