Apropos our recent discussions (and here) of introducing Asian philosophy into content courses (e.g., Introduction to Philosophy), here is Christopher Framarin's informative review of Stephen Phillips's Epistemology in Classical India: The Knowledge Sources of the Nyaya School. (Framarin is at the University of Calgary, by the way, a school that has, for a long time had strength in Indian Philosophy.)
To convey the flavour of the subject matter, a brief extract from Framarin's review:
There are two types or "levels" of knowledge in Nyāya: unreflective knowledge (pramā) and certified knowledge (nirṇaya/siddhānta). Unreflective knowledge that p arises simply as a result of a subject "standing in the right causal relation to the truth that p" (5). A subject stands in the "right causal relation" to the truth that p, in this context, only if his belief that p (analyzed in terms of cognition[s], plus consequent dispositional properties [saṃskāras] [7, 9]) is generated by one or more of the four pramāṇas [=sources of knowledge MM](which are always factive [12]). [The four sources of knowledge are perception, inference, analogy, and testimony. MM]
Certified knowledge, in contrast, is knowledge that arises as a consequence of an agent confirming (certifying) that knowledge of the first sort is justified. An agent confirms his unreflective knowledge, in turn, by argument and/or identification of the source of the unreflective knowledge as a genuine pramāṇa (17).
Clearly, there is much from the Nyaya school that can be incorporated into discussions of knowledge, even if those discussions are introduced primarily through recent English-language sources.
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