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This volume explores three significant issues — absence, the consciousness of the contemporary, and new philosophical episteme — relevant to thought-systems in the Indian subcontinent. The author discusses the present lack of original philosophical discourse in the context of South Asia, especially India and investigates the reasons of such absences. It examines the reasons for decline in traditional philosophical schools and Sanskritic studies in the subcontinent. The book also discusses the manner in which Indian thinkers from the times of nineteenth century social reforms to the present day have interacted with the contemporary issues of philosophical engagement the world over. It also explores the relevance of classical texts and thought systems alongside contemporary philosophical consciousness. A major part of the discussion comprises of philosophical analysis of a new contemporary Indian text entitled, Desire and Liberation: The Fundamentals of Cosmicontology by Vaddera Chandidas.

This book looks at first-millennium Indian arguments and contemporary debates on the philosophy of mind and shows that seemingly arcane arguments among first-millennium Indian thinkers can illuminate matters still very much at the heart of contemporary philosophy. It explains how pre-modern Buddhists are sometimes characterized as veritable “mind scientists” whose insights anticipated modern research on the brain and mind. It confronts a significant obstacle to popular attempts at harmonizing classical Buddhist and modern scientific thought: the fact that since most Indian Buddhists hold that the mental continuum is uninterrupted by death they disagree with the idea that everything about the mental can be explained in terms of brain events. It also shows that a predominant stream of Indian Buddhist thought, associated with the seventh-century thinker Dharmakīrti, turns out to be vulnerable to arguments that modern philosophers have levelled against physicalism. It explains that these issues center on what modern philosophers have called intentionality—the fact that the mind can be about (or represent or mean) other things. Tracing an account of intentionality through Kant, Wilfrid Sellars, and John McDowell, the book argues that intentionality cannot, in principle, be explained in causal terms. The book shows that despite his concern to refute physicalism, Dharmakīrti's causal explanations of the mental mean that modern arguments from intentionality cut as much against his project as they do against physicalist philosophies of mind.