Nilanjan Das
Biographic Data
| ID | 1125151 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nilanjan Das |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nilanjan |
| FAMILY NAME | Das |
| SIGNATURE | DAS N |
| AFFILIATIONS | University College London |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0100-3436 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 10 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 12 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1969 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Faith and the practical self
Gomes' The Practical Self is a rich and ambitious exploration of the connection between self-consciousness and objectivity. The argument of the book is this. As self-conscious creatures, we are required to have faith in ourselves as agents of our thinking. Our faith in ourselves as agents of our thinking is sustained by our participation in a practice—our practice of holding each other accountable for our attitudes. To participate in such a pract…
Vasubandhu on the First Person
In classical South Asia, most philosophers thought that the self (if it exists at all) is what the first-person pronoun ‘I’ stands for. It is something that persists through time, undergoes conscious thoughts and experiences, and exercises control over actions. The Buddhists accepted the ‘no self’ thesis: they denied that such a self is substantially real. This gave rise to a puzzle for these Buddhists. If there is nothing substantially real that…
Pratibhā , intuition, and practical knowledge
In Sanskrit philosophy, the closest analogue of intuition is pratibhā. Here, I will focus on the theory of pratibhā offered by the Sanskrit grammarian Bhartṛhari (fifth century CE). On this account, states of pratibhā play two distinct psychological roles. First, they serve as sources of linguistic understanding. They are the states by means of which linguistically competent agents effortlessly understand the meaning of novel sentences. Second, s…
Credal imprecision and the value of evidence
This paper is about a tension between two theses. The first is Value of Evidence : roughly, the thesis that it is always rational for an agent to gather and use cost‐free evidence for making decisions. The second is Rationality of Imprecision : the thesis that an agent can be rationally required to adopt doxastic states that are imprecise , i.e., not representable by a single credence function. While others have noticed this tension, I offer a ne…
The Search for Definitions in Early Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika
The Value of Biased Information
In this article, I cast doubt on an apparent truism, namely, that if evidence is available for gathering and use at a negligible cost, then it’s always instrumentally rational for us to gather that evidence and use it for making decisions. Call this ‘value of information’ (VOI). I show that VOI conflicts with two other plausible theses. The first is the view that an agent’s evidence can entail non-trivial propositions about the external world. Th…
Gaṅgeśa on Epistemic Luck
This essay explores a problem for Nyāya epistemologists. It concerns the notion of pramā . Roughly speaking, a pramā is a conscious mental event of knowledge-acquisition, i.e., a conscious experience or thought in undergoing which an agent learns or comes to know something. Call any event of this sort a knowledge-event . The problem is this. On the one hand, many Naiyāyikas accept what I will call the Nyāya Definition of Knowledge , the view that…
Externalism and exploitability
According to Bayesian orthodoxy, an agent should update—or at least should plan to update—her credences by conditionalization. Some have defended this claim by means of a diachronic Dutch book argument . They say: an agent who does not plan to update her credences by conditionalization is vulnerable (by her own lights) to a diachronic Dutch book, i.e., a sequence of bets which, when accepted, guarantee loss of utility. Here, I show that this argu…
A Problem for Ganeri’s Buddhaghosa
Jonardon Ganeri's Attention, Not Self is a terrific book. It aims to defend a picture of the mind that emerges from the work of Theravāda Abhidhamma Buddhists writing in Pāli, especially Buddhagosa (5th century CE). The Buddhists defend the theory of "no-self", i.e., the view that there is no ultimately existent referent of the first person pronoun "I", which plays the role of a subject with respect to conscious experiences and thoughts and the r…
Vātsyāyana’s Guide to Liberation
In this essay, my aim is to explain Vātsyāyana’s solution to a problem that arises for his theory of liberation. For him and most Nyāya philosophers after him, liberation consists in the absolute cessation of pain ( ātyantika-duḥkha-vimukti ). Since this requires freedom from embodied existence, it also results in the absolute cessation of pleasure. How, then, can agents like us (who habitually seek pleasure) be rationally motivated to seek liber…
Lakṣaṇā as Inference
India
Externalism and exploitability
According to Bayesian orthodoxy, an agent should update—or at least should plan to update—her credences by conditionalization. Some have defended this claim by means of a diachronic Dutch book argument . They say: an agent who does not plan to update her credences by conditionalization is vulnerable (by her own lights) to a diachronic Dutch book, i.e., a sequence of bets which, when accepted, guarantee loss of utility. Here, I show that this argu…
The Value of Biased Information
In this article, I cast doubt on an apparent truism, namely, that if evidence is available for gathering and use at a negligible cost, then it’s always instrumentally rational for us to gather that evidence and use it for making decisions. Call this ‘value of information’ (VOI). I show that VOI conflicts with two other plausible theses. The first is the view that an agent’s evidence can entail non-trivial propositions about the external world. Th…
Vātsyāyana’s Guide to Liberation
In this essay, my aim is to explain Vātsyāyana’s solution to a problem that arises for his theory of liberation. For him and most Nyāya philosophers after him, liberation consists in the absolute cessation of pain ( ātyantika-duḥkha-vimukti ). Since this requires freedom from embodied existence, it also results in the absolute cessation of pleasure. How, then, can agents like us (who habitually seek pleasure) be rationally motivated to seek liber…
Gaṅgeśa on Epistemic Luck
This essay explores a problem for Nyāya epistemologists. It concerns the notion of pramā . Roughly speaking, a pramā is a conscious mental event of knowledge-acquisition, i.e., a conscious experience or thought in undergoing which an agent learns or comes to know something. Call any event of this sort a knowledge-event . The problem is this. On the one hand, many Naiyāyikas accept what I will call the Nyāya Definition of Knowledge , the view that…
India
Lakṣaṇā as Inference
Externalism and exploitability
According to Bayesian orthodoxy, an agent should update—or at least should plan to update—her credences by conditionalization. Some have defended this claim by means of a diachronic Dutch book argument . They say: an agent who does not plan to update her credences by conditionalization is vulnerable (by her own lights) to a diachronic Dutch book, i.e., a sequence of bets which, when accepted, guarantee loss of utility. Here, I show that this argu…
A Problem for Ganeri’s Buddhaghosa
Jonardon Ganeri's Attention, Not Self is a terrific book. It aims to defend a picture of the mind that emerges from the work of Theravāda Abhidhamma Buddhists writing in Pāli, especially Buddhagosa (5th century CE). The Buddhists defend the theory of "no-self", i.e., the view that there is no ultimately existent referent of the first person pronoun "I", which plays the role of a subject with respect to conscious experiences and thoughts and the r…
Vātsyāyana’s Guide to Liberation
In this essay, my aim is to explain Vātsyāyana’s solution to a problem that arises for his theory of liberation. For him and most Nyāya philosophers after him, liberation consists in the absolute cessation of pain ( ātyantika-duḥkha-vimukti ). Since this requires freedom from embodied existence, it also results in the absolute cessation of pleasure. How, then, can agents like us (who habitually seek pleasure) be rationally motivated to seek liber…
Gaṅgeśa on Epistemic Luck
This essay explores a problem for Nyāya epistemologists. It concerns the notion of pramā . Roughly speaking, a pramā is a conscious mental event of knowledge-acquisition, i.e., a conscious experience or thought in undergoing which an agent learns or comes to know something. Call any event of this sort a knowledge-event . The problem is this. On the one hand, many Naiyāyikas accept what I will call the Nyāya Definition of Knowledge , the view that…
Vasubandhu on the First Person
In classical South Asia, most philosophers thought that the self (if it exists at all) is what the first-person pronoun ‘I’ stands for. It is something that persists through time, undergoes conscious thoughts and experiences, and exercises control over actions. The Buddhists accepted the ‘no self’ thesis: they denied that such a self is substantially real. This gave rise to a puzzle for these Buddhists. If there is nothing substantially real that…
Pratibhā , intuition, and practical knowledge
In Sanskrit philosophy, the closest analogue of intuition is pratibhā. Here, I will focus on the theory of pratibhā offered by the Sanskrit grammarian Bhartṛhari (fifth century CE). On this account, states of pratibhā play two distinct psychological roles. First, they serve as sources of linguistic understanding. They are the states by means of which linguistically competent agents effortlessly understand the meaning of novel sentences. Second, s…
Credal imprecision and the value of evidence
This paper is about a tension between two theses. The first is Value of Evidence : roughly, the thesis that it is always rational for an agent to gather and use cost‐free evidence for making decisions. The second is Rationality of Imprecision : the thesis that an agent can be rationally required to adopt doxastic states that are imprecise , i.e., not representable by a single credence function. While others have noticed this tension, I offer a ne…
The Search for Definitions in Early Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika
The Value of Biased Information
In this article, I cast doubt on an apparent truism, namely, that if evidence is available for gathering and use at a negligible cost, then it’s always instrumentally rational for us to gather that evidence and use it for making decisions. Call this ‘value of information’ (VOI). I show that VOI conflicts with two other plausible theses. The first is the view that an agent’s evidence can entail non-trivial propositions about the external world. Th…
Faith and the practical self
Gomes' The Practical Self is a rich and ambitious exploration of the connection between self-consciousness and objectivity. The argument of the book is this. As self-conscious creatures, we are required to have faith in ourselves as agents of our thinking. Our faith in ourselves as agents of our thinking is sustained by our participation in a practice—our practice of holding each other accountable for our attitudes. To participate in such a pract…
Philosophy (11 works) · Epistemology (9 works) · Indian and Buddhist Studies (7 works) · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Computer Science (4 works) · Linguistics (4 works) · Emotions and Moral Behavior (3 works) · Philosophy and Theoretical Science (3 works) · Philosophy of religion (3 works)