Ashoka University is a private university located in Sonipat, Haryana, India, focusing on liberal arts and sciences. It was established in 2014.&nbsp;It is guided by an academic council of academics and scholars from around the world. The council sets the university&#39;s academic standard, advising on matters of curriculum, faculty hiring and research.&nbsp;

Ashoka University offers a full-time 3 (+ 1) year undergraduate programme. The University comprises of&nbsp;2500 plus students, with a mix of both national and international students.&nbsp; &nbsp;

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Ashoka University

The article concerns a mediaeval Indian debate over whether, and if so how, we can know that a self (ātman) exists, understood here as a subject of cognition (jñātṛ) that outlives individual cognitions, being their common substrate. A passage that has not yet been translated from Sanskrit into a European language, from Jayanta Bhaṭṭa’s Nyāyamañjarī (c. 890 CE), ‘Blossoms of Reasoning’, is examined. This rich passage reveals something not yet noted in secondary literature, namely that Mīmāṃsakas advanced four different models of what happens when the self perceives itself. The article clarifies the differences between the four, and the historical and logical relationships between them. It also hypothesizes pressures that constituted the need for the creation of the newer views, i.e. perceived problems with the earlier views, which the proponents of the newer views saw themselves as overcoming. © 2020, Springer Nature B.V.

Department of Philosophy

Journal of Indian Philosophy

Four Mīmāṃsā Views Concerning the Self’s Perception of Itself

This essay contrasts Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika and Buddhist explanations of attention. Section 1 lays out the ontological postulates that Nyāya-Vaiśeṣikas and Buddhists deemed necessary for the explanation of attention. Section 2 looks at three arguments that the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣikas gave for their principal postulate, the manas, and three corresponding Buddhist responses to these arguments. Sections 3 and 4 look at contrasting Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika and Buddhist explanations of, respectively, "shifts of attention" and "competition for attention." Section 5 considers whether the Buddhist model can adequately account for voluntary or endogenous attention, and whether the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika model can adequately account for involuntary or exogenous attention. The final section identifies three things that are commonly attributed to attention and that may seem impossible in both the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika and the Buddhist models; it shows how the two Indian models can account for them.

Philosophy East and West

Contrasting nyaya-vaise?ika and buddhist explanations of attention

The chapter looks at positions taken in the self versus no-self debate between Buddhism and the Brahmanical traditions. Section 1 identifies key issues in the debate between Nyāya and Buddhism. Section 2 introduces the Śaiva Siddhānta view, honouring its self-representation as falling in the middle ground between Nyāya and Buddhism. Section 3 argues that this self-representation is misleading, that Śaiva Siddhānta’s position is just as extreme as Nyāya’s, and then diagnoses this polarization of the debate as resulting from a shared presupposition. Section 4 identifies some better candidates for the middle ground - Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā, Jainism, Personalist Buddhism (pudgalavāda) and ‘Buddhism without momentariness’ - and explicates their views by placing them on a spectrum. © 2018 selection and editorial matter, Purushottama Bilimoria; individual chapters, the contributors.

History of Indian Philosophy

A spectrum of metaphysical positions concerning the existence or non- existence of a self: Nyāya, śaiva siddhānta, mīmāṃsā, jainism and buddhism