西溪逻辑论坛第116期

Date: 27 May 2019 (18:30-20:30)
Venue: Room 259, Main Teaching Building, Xixi Campus, Zhejiang University
Speaker: Prof. Ramanujam (Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, India)
Title: The monkey on the tree and other dilemmas
Abstract: The talk is an attempt to discuss certain key ideas present in some systems of logic from ancient India, notably the Nyaya, which originally dates back to the 5th century CE. Many patterns of inference were discussed at length by Indian logicians from earlier, but Nyaya, and its newer version, Navya Nyaya, that developed after the 11th century CE, built a sophisticated epistemology as a basis for inference. When we consider the proposition: “The tree is in contact with the monkey at time t”, it could be argued that it is true because we see the monkey perched on a branch of the tree at that time; but it could also be argued that the proposition is false, since most of the tree that we see is quite monkey-less. Their point is that both arguments derive from certain ways of building knowledge, and it is these knowledge sources that we need to study carefully.

The talk is not a scholarly authoritative discussion on the topic, but an invitation to listen to ideas in logic from India’s past.

Slides: ram-indlogic

(Supported by 浙江大学董氏文史哲研究奖励基金)