Reading guide
2 readings
Knowledge and dependence in South Asian debates
Reading guide · 2 readings
Nyāya and Madhyamaka pursue different arguments about knowing and about what things depend on. The selections invite close comparison, but they do not add up to one account shared by South Asian traditions.
Read together
Reasons and their limits
Read a Nyāya inference and a challenge to intrinsic nature. Ask separately what makes a claim knowledge and what it would mean for something to exist independently. The module gives the wider sequence in which these readings sit.
Guided course · Module 3 · Lesson 9
How can we tell whether we know?
Nyāya counts perception, inference and testimony among the ways of coming to know, and sets out an inference in five steps. How can inquiry check its own instruments without demanding certainty in advance?
Guided course · Module 3 · Lesson 12
Does emptiness mean that nothing exists?
Nāgārjuna replies to the objection that emptiness would make change impossible: intrinsic nature, he argues, is what would rule change out. Denying intrinsic nature leaves ordinary distinctions, actions and their consequences in place.