Bimal K. Matilal's Philosophy: Language, Realism, Dharma, and Ineffability

Realism and Anti-realism in the Philosophy of Psychiatry1

This paper invalidates the anti-realist point of view on the existence of mental illness by reviewing the anti-psychiatry challenge to official psychiatry. We present the anti-realist ideas of Thomas Szasz as the most radical anti-psychiatric author followed by the more moderate thoughts of Cooper and Laing. We then present the criticism of all these authors, most notably by the Canadian philos...

Projection and Realism in Hume's Philosophy (review)

On Rumi’s Philosophy of Language

This paper examines the nature of language in the works of Mawlana Jalal al-Din Rumi and consists of three sections: Language and Reality in Rumi; the Complex view of Language in Fihi ma Fihi (the Discourses of Rumi); and, Poetry and Mysticism in Rumi. The paper discusses three main topics: Rumi's ambivalent attitude to language, which is seen as both a means of conveying truth and guidance and...

Epistemic structural realism and Poincaré’s philosophy of science

Recent discussions of structuralist approaches to scientific theories have stemmed primarily from Worrall’s (1989), in which he defends a position (since characterized

Ineffability and Nonsense

There are criteria of ineffability whereby, even if the concept of ineffability can never serve to modify truth, it can sometimes (non-trivially) serve to modify other things, specifically understanding. This allows for a reappraisal of the dispute between those who adopt a traditional reading of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and those who adopt the new reading recently championed by Diamond, Conant...