[Buddha-l] Prominent Neobuddhist proposes religion based blacklisting for government jobs

[Richard Hayes]

On Aug 2, 2009, at 8:57 AM, Alberto Todeschini wrote:

> I'm finishing a paper on what the
> Nyāyasūtra says about this (i.e. the nigrahasthānas) with a bit of  
> help
> from other Naiyāyikas and Dharmakīrti's Vādanyāya. I'm also  
> borrowing
> Grice's Cooperative Principle and conversational maxims, with a bit of
> speech-act theory sprinkled in just to be on the safe side.

That sounds very interesting. I look froward to seeing it when it is  
in public view.

> (Grice and Austin/Searle have been very influential on the development
> of argumentation theory, especially on the pragma-dialectical  
> approach,
> which is the most popular now. I find argumentation theory and  
> informal
> logic to be more promising than classical logic -the logic developed  
> by
> Frege, Russell, etc.- in studying Indian logic)

I agree. When I first started studying Buddhist logic about thirty- 
five years ago, I approached it through the only theoretical framework  
I knew, which was formal mathematical logic and set theory. While that  
framework can be a little helpful in some places, it also gave me a  
number of expectations that were not fulfilled. I turned to ancient  
and medieval logic, and again they were helpful in limited ways but  
obstacles in others. A turning point for me was reading some of  
Stephen Toulmin's work, especially his observation that a better  
paradigm than mathematics for everyday logic is jurisprudence. That  
made a great deal of sense as an avenue for approaching Indian logic  
and debate, since much of the terminology there comes from the field  
of law. Also quite helpful was reading some of the Sanskrit medical  
literature and seeing how they went about diagnosing illness. The  
Indian diagnostic methods were strikingly similar to how Indian  
logicians went out interpreting observations as signs of what cannot  
be directly observed. Of course it is commonplace to note the  
similarity with Indian hetuvidyā and Mill's method of scientific  
inquiry.

> And two chapters of my dissertation discuss the same topic, especially
> the treatment in the Hetuvidyā section of the Yogācārabhūmi (the
> subsection is called 'vādanigraha') and in Asaṅga's  
> Abhidharmasamuccaya.

That sounds really interesting. It's another thing I look forward to  
reading someday.

> I'm also offering a historical overview, going back to some  
> Upaniṣads
> and of course early Buddhism.
>
> As Matilal, Mohanti, Potter and Katsura noticed, there is a genetic
> connection between debate practices and the development of Indian  
> logic.


It is probably worth remembering that the Buddha doubled the size of  
the bhikkhu-sangha by winning a debate at a time when debaters staked  
their disciples in wagers on who could beat whom in a logomachy. (Now  
you know why Lusthaus has such a huge following. He never loses a  
debate.)

Richard