Ethan Mills

Beginning with the earliest strata of Indian philosophy (Ṛg Veda, Upaniṣads, and early Buddhism), this book uncovers a distinct tradition of skepticism in Indian philosophy by developing a study of the “three pillars” of Indian skepticism near the beginning, middle, and end of the classical era: Nāgārjuna (c. 150-200 CE), Jayarāśi (c. 770-830 CE), and Śrī Harṣa (c. 1125-1180 CE).  The thesis of the book is that the philosophical history of India contains a strong tradition of skepticism about philosophy; furthermore, understanding this tradition ought to be an important part of our contemporary metaphilosophical reflections on the purposes and limits of philosophy, which demonstrates the value of expanding the history of philosophy to include non-Western traditions.  Unlike varieties of epistemological skepticism, which consist of doubts about knowledge in particular domains (the external world, induction, etc.), skepticism about philosophy consists of a therapy that seeks to undermine the impulse to engage in philosophy.  This type of skepticism is found most clearly in the Western tradition in Hellenistic Pyrrhonian skepticism. This book argues that in the Indian tradition, skepticism about philosophy is represented most clearly by the “three pillars”: Nāgārjuna, Jayarāśi, and Śrī Harṣa.

B. K. Matilal (1935-1991) was undoubtedly one of the most influential scholars of Indian philosophy in the late 20th century.  His work has greatly influenced many who work on Indian philosophy today, especially those who do so in philosophy departments in the Anglophone world.  One of his greatest influences has been what I call “the Matilal Strategy,” which he saw as a way to make the study of classical Indian philosophy more visible within the philosophical community.  After discussing Matilal’s articulation and defense of this strategy as well as ways in which it continues to influence the field, I argue that, while the Matilal Strategy still has an important place, there are alternative approaches worth our attention.  I consider two such alternatives, which I call “joining the consciousness club” and “expanding the history of philosophy.”

The Indian Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu (c. 400 CE) has seldom been considered in conjunction with the problem of external-world skepticism despite the fact that his text, Twenty Verses, presents arguments from ignorance based on dreams.  In this article, an epistemological phenomenalist interpretation of Vasubandhu is supported in opposition to a metaphysical idealist interpretation.  On either interpretation, Vasubandhu gives an invitation to the problem of external-world skepticism, although his final conclusion is closer to skepticism on the epistemological phenomenalist interpretation.  The article ends with reflections on what light Vasubandhu might shed on the issue of whether skepticism is a natural problem in epistemology as well as why, despite Vasubandhu, the skeptical problem was not a central issue in the later Indian tradition.  NOTE: This paper cannot be shared at this time.  Please obtain it from a library or from the journal directly.

While the contemporary problem of the criterion raises similar epistemological issues as Agrippa’s Trilemma in ancient Pyrrhonian skepticism, the consideration of such epistemological questions has served two different purposes. On one hand, there is the purely practical purpose of Pyrrhonism, in which such questions are a means to reach suspension of judgment, and on the other hand, there is the theoretical purpose of contemporary epistemologists, in which these issues raise theoretical problems that drive the search for theoretical resolution. In classical India, similar issues arise in Nāgārjuna’s Vigrahavyāvartanī, but it is not entirely clear what Nāgārjuna’s purpose is. Contrary to the theoretical interpretations of several recent scholars such as Jan Westerhoff according to which Nāgārjuna is proffering a contextualist epistemological theory, I argue that Nāgārjuna as well as the later Madhyamaka Candrakīrti, much like Pyrrhonian skeptics, employed concerns about epistemic criteria in service of purely practical purposes. There is no positive epistemological theory to be found in Nāgārjuna’s Vigrahavyāvartanī and Candrakīrti’s Prasannapadā; furthermore a putative thesis of universal emptiness is self-undermining, a conclusion which itself can be seen as part of a therapeutic program. Nonetheless, the historical persistence of these epistemological issues shows that they ought to continue to be areas of theoretical inquiry for epistemologists today. I end with reflections on the wider relevance of my conclusions, particularly with regard to demonstrating the value of philosophy.

I discuss two critiques of Dignāga’s epistemology, one from Candrakīrti and another from Jayarāśi.  I argue that they are two versions of what I call the core problem: if the content of Dignāga’s epistemology were correct, two fundamental beliefs within this epistemological theory could not be established or known to be true, as Dignāga claims they are.  In response to objections found within the classical Indian tradition as well as several plausible contemporary objections, I then argue that the core problem remains a serious issue with which those sympathetic to Dignāga ought to contend.

With Wes Smith. “Horrific Thoughts: Incorporating Student Film-Making in a Course on Horror and Philosophy,” The Blog of the APA, May 2, 2019.
(https://blog.apaonline.org/2019/05/02/incorporating-student-film-making-in-a-course-on-horror-and-philosophy/ )

Special issue co-edited with Matthew Dasti for International Journal for the Study of Skepticism

Tentative description: 
This will be a single-volume inquiry into the major features of skepticism within India, meant to be accessible to non-Indologist philosophers while informed by and responsive to current historical and philological research.
A welcome trend in contemporary academic epistemology is an increased willingness to take seriously thinkers and traditions outside of the Western canon. This is especially the case for classical Indian philosophy, which has exceptionally rich developments in theories of justification, a family of “knowledge source” approaches to epistemology with natural resonances with contemporary reliablism and externalism, and millennia of sustained attention to the nature of cognition, both from a phenomenological perspective and from the standpoint of justificatory practices.
Within the classical Indian scene, there were also a number of challengers to the notion that we can identify discrete knowledge sources (perception, inference, testimony, etc.) and then build up an objective, settled conception of the world by reliance upon such sources. The historical Buddha was likely one such challenger, but there were many others, with varied motivations. Some were mystics, distrustful of the urge to capture reality with our cognitive faculties; others were materialists and hedonists who scoffed at religiosity and those who sought to justify a world beyond what was right in front of their own faces.
Recent scholarship on Indian skeptics has often been devoted to making sense of where to place them in a philosophical taxonomy.  Are some of the most important figures in Indian skepticism better thought of as anti-realists or idealists?  Other scholarship has attempted to understand how the skeptics try to make sense of ordinary, uncritical life, if we are to abandon the search for objective, settled claims on the world.
It is as difficult to summarize Indian skeptics in a single, clean definition as it would be to summarize “Western” skeptics. But to gesture toward some distinguishing characteristics, let us note a few. As noted above, epistemology in India is centered on the identification and analysis of knowledge sources (pramāṇa). While such epistemology has internalist shadings, its dominant orientation is reliablist. Because of this, skeptics in India tend to concern themselves with undermining attempts to justify claims by appeal to mechanisms that consistently generate knowledge.  A second feature of skepticism in India is that it is often (although not always) a form of conceptual skepticism; that is, skeptics attempt to demonstrate, often by means of a form of argument called prasaṅga (unwanted consequences), that their opponents’ conceptions of the knowledge sources or other philosophical concepts are either internally inconsistent or at odds with the opponents’ other commitments.  Another characteristic is a widespread (though definitely not universal) notion of “two truths” that is prevalent in Buddhist thought and some of the Hindu schools, which recognize higher and lower orientations toward reality.  Buddhist skeptics, most famously Nāgārjuna (c. 200) CE and his followers, use a precise skeptical dialectic to undermine clams to objective, settled truth. What then to say about life as understood normally? And is it possible to gain access to knowledge that is indeed non-contextualized and settled? Or is there no ultimate distinction between the two tiers, with the “higher” tier being nothing more than a futile – even harmful – abstraction?