Anand Vaidya: How Vedic Thought Challenges Western Epistemology
Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal
Curt Jaimungal
4.6 • 606 Ratings
🗓️ 24 October 2023
⏱️ 231 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | To say that something is real is to say that it doesn't change in time, that it's permanent in time. |
| 0:06.3 | So the idea that the self is an illusion, what is meant by that claim is it's not permanent in time. |
| 0:15.3 | Anand Vaidya is a professor at San Jose State University and focuses his research on areas where analytic philosophy |
| 0:21.8 | meets Indian philosophy. Today we discuss several topics, one of them being modal epistemology. |
| 0:27.4 | Epistemology is justified belief or the study of knowledge. And modal epistemology is the |
| 0:32.2 | possibility and necessity of such knowledge. Sometimes people reference possible worlds in this |
| 0:36.9 | discussion, yet Anand's research |
| 0:38.7 | indicates that if we rely solely on Louisian semantics for such discourse, well, it can be limiting. |
| 0:44.5 | In other words, what do non-Louisian modal semantics, as seen in some Indian philosophical |
| 0:49.6 | traditions, bring to the table? The point of toll is not to cover people who are guaranteed |
| 0:53.8 | views because of their large name, but rather to unearth to the table. The point of toll is not to cover people who are guaranteed views because of |
| 0:54.7 | their large name, but rather to unearth to the public hidden gems like Michael Levin or Gregory |
| 1:00.1 | Chaiton. That is, these titans in the academic world, but little known outside it. It reminds me |
| 1:05.9 | of a comedian Patrice O'Neill or an early Larry David say in the 80s, names that comics knew and respected, |
| 1:11.8 | but not much of the public knew about. Anand is one such individual. So many times in this |
| 1:16.6 | conversation I was in awe with Anand's ability to cite such a variety of sources and such a |
| 1:21.7 | disparity of concepts, weaving them together with dexterity and inventiveness. Anand is someone |
| 1:26.8 | who will become a staple on tow. |
| 1:28.3 | The notion of phenomenal consciousness is dominant in contemporary Western philosophy, |
| 1:33.3 | but Indian traditions introduce us to reflexive awareness, so that is, perceiving stimulus versus inward-looking understanding. |
| 1:39.3 | We talk about this distinction and several more, including dispelling myths about Vedic philosophy and religion. We talk about philosophy of language. We talk about consciousness. We talk about AI. Talk about free will. Talk about math. We talk about God. We talk about morality. We talk about virtually every subject that we talk about on different episodes of the Toll podcast, but all together in one. I don't think |
| 2:01.1 | that's ever happened before. This is one for the books, and I'm so excited for you all to hear |
... |
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