In texts, through thoughts, with pleasure

This is a: article, written by Birgit Kellner 207 days ago.
Keywords: Indian logic

The proceedings of the panel “Logic in Earliest Classical India” of the 12th World Sanskrit Conference in Helsinki (2003) finally appeared (kudos to the editor Brendan Gillon, and to Petteri Koskikallio for his neverending patience with obstinate authors!):

Logic in Earliest Classical India, edited by Brendan S. Gillon. Papers of the 12th World Sanskrit Conference, v. 10.2. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers.

Table of Conents (pasted from B. Gillon’s announcement on INDOLOGY):

The Development of Logic in Early Classical India
by Brendan S. Gillon

Reasoning as a Science, its Role in Early Dharma
Literature, and the Emergence of the Term nyaya
by Karin Preisendanz

On the Proof Passage of the Carakasamhita:
Editions, Manuscripts and Commentaries
by Ernst Prets

The Logical Reason Called virodhin in Vaisesika and Its
Significance for Connection-based Theories of Reasoning
by Birgit Kellner

The Discussion of pramanas in the Spitzer Manuscript
by Eli Franco

The Logic of the Saüdhinirmocanastra: Establishing
Right Reasoning Based on Similarity (sarupya) and
Dissimilarity (vairupya)
by Chizuko Yoshimizu

Obversion and Contraposition in the Nyayabhasya
by Brendan S. Gillon

Anumana in Bhartrhari’s Vakyapadiya
by Akihiko Akamatsu

Comment

This is a: article, written by Birgit Kellner 215 days ago.
Keywords: Buddhist epistemology, apoha, philosophy of language

Ole Holten Pind’s PhD dissertation at the University of Vienna has just been released on the university’s e-theses server and is available for download as a PDF:

“Dignāga’s Philosophy of Language: Dignāga on anyāpoha. Pramāṇasamuccaya V. Texts, Translation and Annotation”: http://othes.univie.ac.at/8283/ (374 pages, 2.4MB)

The theory of apoha, “exclusion”, is the specific contribution that Buddhist epistemologists have made to the philosophical inquiry into language (especially semantics) in ancient India, centering around the idea that words signify their referents not directly, but by excluding that which is not within their scope. (“Cow” refers to things that are not non-cows.) It is not only a theory of meaning and signification, but has served as a site for much important theorizing of the nature of concepts and how they are cognized.

Recent studies have focused on elaborations of the apoha theory after Dharmakīrti; Pind’s dissertation goes back to the sources and deals with the initial exposition of that theory by Dignāga in the fifth chapter of the latter’s Pramāṇasamuccaya and -vṛtti. Long awaited, direly needed!

Comment

This is a: snip, written by Birgit Kellner 241 days ago.
Keywords: digital tricks

Some digital archives don’t offer entire books for download, but only allow you to see one page at a time – you have to use their website to go through the book.

This is inconvenient. And especially when the books in question are in the public domain anyway, I see no reason why publicly funded digital archives should operate this way. Perhaps some users only want to look at an individual page, but why not offer a PDF (or DjVU) download in addition, for those who prefer to read offline? (Or even print?)

The workaround: find out the directory that contains the files (for instance by right-clicking on a page image on the site in your Firefox, choosing “copy image address”, and pasting into a text editor), and then run:

wget -r http://thesite.com/thedirectory/

(Oh, and install wget for your operating system in case you are so unfortunate as not to have it.)

Some sites prohibit users from downloading entire directories. But it shouldn’t be too difficult to generate a list of all the files you want, and store them in a file (say, list.txt), with one download URL per line. And then:

wget -i list.txt.

This should do the trick. But if the site is so malicious as to prohibit access through wget altogether, just pretend you are a browser:

wget -U firefox -i list.txt.

Watch the files fly to your harddrive, and enjoy.

Comment [2]