Panel I: Knowledge


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Much of the debate surrounding the relationship between mind and reality concerns the nature of both the content and properties of mental thought—what contemporary Western philosophers refer to as “intentionality” and “qualia.” As in the West, Buddhist and Hindu epistemologists from India and Tibet have studied mental events and cognition in terms of direct realism, representationalism, and phenomenalism. Within the relatively neutral framework of logic in ancient India, a system of validation known as "valid cognition" (pramana) was employed to scrutinize the reliability of truth claims put forth by competing Nyaya, Mimamsa, Jain, and Buddhist philosophers. In his seminal book on the ancient Indian logician Dharmakirti, Georges B. J. Dreyfus contends that the pramana method provides a standard of validation—independent of religious or ideological backgrounds—that is useful for assessing the reliability of mental events.

Joining Buddhist philosophy professor Georges B. J. Dreyfus is Stephen H. Phillips (Hindu philosophy), Ned Block (Western philosophy of mind), and Susan Carey (developmental psychology). The goal of this panel is to contrast recent research on cognition with insights from the epistemological traditions of India and Tibet. Gary A. Tubb, Dharam Hinduja Senior Lecturer in Sanskrit Teaching and Indic Research at Columbia University, is the moderator.

Target Essay: Georges B.J. Dreyfus
Professor of Religion, Williams College


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Georges Dreyfus is Professor of Religion and Chair of the Department of Religion at Williams College. He received an M.A. and Ph.D. in the history of religion from the University of Virginia. His dissertation, "Ontology, Philosophy of Language, and Epistemology in Buddhist Tradition," was done under the direction of Paul Jeffrey Hopkins. He serves as the co-chair for the Tibetan and Himalayan Religions Group at the American Academy of Religion and is also a member of their Steering Committee. His languages of specialization include Tibetan, Sanskrit, and Pali.

He has published five books, including Tibetan Interpretations (1997) and The Sound of Two Hands Clapping: the Education of a Tibetan Buddhist Monk (2002), and many articles. He was the recipient of a Foreign Language Area Study Fellowship in 1988-89, a Fulbright Fellowship to India in 1989-90, and a National Endowment for the Humanities award in 1994-95.
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Response: Ned Block
Professor of Philosophy, New York University


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Ned Block is the Silver Professor of Philosophy and Psychology at NYU. He came to NYU in 1996 from MIT where he was Chair of the Philosophy Program. He works in philosophy of mind, foundations of neuroscience, and cognitive science and is currently writing a book on consciousness. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a Senior Fellow of the Center for the Study of Language and Information, a Sloan Foundation Fellow, a faculty member at two NEH Institutes and two NEH Seminars, the recipient of fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Science Foundation; and a recipient of the Robert A. Muh Award in Humanities and Social Science from MIT. He is a past president of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, a past Chair of the MIT Press Cognitive Science Board of Syndics, and past President of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness. The Philosophers' Annual selected his papers as one of the "ten best" in 1983, 1990, 1995 and 2002. He is co-editor of The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical Debates (MIT Press, 1997). The first of two volumes of his collected papers, Functionalism, Consciousness and Representation, is forthcoming from MIT Press.
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Response: Susan Carey
Professor of Psychology, Harvard University


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Susan Carey is a professor in the Laboratory for Developmental Studies at Harvard University. She has also taught psychology at NYU and MIT. She’s received numerous fellowships and honors, most recently from the National Academy of Science. Carey has written extensively on human cognition. Her published books include: Astuti, R., Solomon, G., and Carey, S. (in preparation), Cross-cultural studies of essentialism: Kinds and individuals (in preparation), The Origin of Concepts (MIT Press), Carey, S. & Gelman, R. (Eds.) (1991), and Conceptual Change in Childhood (Bradford Books, MIT Press).
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Response: Stephen H. Phillips
Professor of Indian Philosophy,
University Texas at Austin


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Stephen Phillips is a Sanskritist and specialist in classical Indian thought. He is author of over forty articles and author or co-author of four books: Aurobindo's Philosophy of Brahman (Brill, 1986), Classical Indian Metaphysics: Refutations of Realism and the Emergence of "New Logic" (Open Court, 1995, Indian edition, Motilal Banarsidass, 1998), Gangesa on the Upadhi, the "Inferential Undercutting Condition," Introduction, Translation, and Explanation (with N. S. Ramanuja Tatacharya, Indian Council of Philosophical Research, 2002), and Epistemology of Perception: Gangesa's Tattvacintamani, Vol. I, pratyaksa-khanda, introduction, translation, and commentary (with N. S. Ramanuja Tatacharya, forthcoming, Motilal Banarsidass). He is currently working on a four-volume translation of and commentary on the most important work of late classical Indian philosophy, Gangesa's Tattvacintamani (Jewel of Reflection on the Truth of Epistemology), which founded the 'New Logic' school in the fourteenth century. He has been Visiting Professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and currently teaches at the University of Texas at Austin.
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Group Discussion
Panel I: Knowledge


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