Title
Gaṅgeśa on Self-Presentation
Abstract
If I undergo a conscious experience or thought, must I be aware of that experience or thought as it occurs? During the second millennium, Sanskrit authors arguably began to converge on a positive verdict: Occurrent experiences or thoughts simply constitute self-knowledge, or are ‘self-presenting’ (svaprakāśa). Authors of the Nyāya epistemological tradition, however, dissented from the emerging consensus. In this talk, I examine arguments against self-presentation from Gaṅgeśa (c. 14th century), the central figure of ‘new’ Nyāya and one of the most influential Sanskrit thinkers of the second millennium.
Jettisoning early Buddhist arguments, Gaṅgeśa reaches across Prābhākara and Vedānta sources to first develop a strong case for ‘three-factor perception’ (tripuṭīpratyakṣa), a self-presentation theory of introspection attributable to Śālikanātha (c. 9th century) according to which all occurrent experiences and thoughts both have de se content and constitute self-knowledge: To perceive a piano is to perceive that one is aware of the piano. The resulting arguments, I show, are driven by a set of historically identifiable principles governing ordinary patterns of behaviour (vyavahāra) and their relation to aboutness (viṣayatva). Against these arguments, Gaṅgeśa presents a convincing case not only that the relevant principles are false, but that the phenomena that three-factor perception is meant to explain can be captured by first-order attitudes towards the facts with simple object-directed indexical content. On grounds of cognitive economy, he concludes, we should reject claims that occurrent experiences or thoughts must constitute self-knowledge, instead preferring a higher-order perception account on which self-knowledge is required only situationally.
Bio
Jack Beaulieu is the Fellow by Examination in Philosophy at Magdalen College, Oxford. He holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Toronto and was previously an undergraduate at the University of British Columbia from 2014–2018. A historian of Sanskrit philosophy, his research primarily focuses on second-millennium Nyāya, especially its immensely influential central figure, Gaṅgeśa, and his engagement with earlier Prābhākara authors. His paper on Gaṅgeśa’s commentator, “Raghunātha on Seeing Absence,” was awarded the 2023 Rogers Prize by the British Journal for the History of Philosophy, its annual prize for best article.
