Ill-formed questions
Assume that you get a Ph.D student who wants to do medical research. He comes to you and tells you that he wants to find out an answer to the…
Read moreIs wearing a bindi religious?
Depending on the context of the discussion (say a dispute about some aspect of the Indian culture), the disputants can treat wearing the bindi or a saree as facts. However, in another…
Read moreTwo kinds of research in social sciences
There is, on the one hand, the intellectual tradition of expressing opinions and points of view. Here, as it suits thoughtful minds, one tries to express ideas carefully and in…
Read moreWhat is critique?
There is a very interesting notion of “critique”: it begins with Kant and stretches through Marx in the German philosophical tradition. In fact, it is most developed in Marx when he says…
Read moreNeurobiological Theory of Religion
You ask whether ‘in principle’ a neurobiological theory on religion could “account” for the experience of the believers. The answer depends on what kind of an account you are asking for and…
Read moreProfound criticism 1: the logic is different
Many come up with criticisms like ‘Buddhist logics are different’ or ‘one has to follow Indian logics’. These criticisms sound profound! They are damn shallow, unless they answer the following…
Read moreWhat makes one an intellectual?
Steve Farmer is not an expert on secularism only in the sense that he has followed it from the ‘outside’ (meaning, probably, he has not written anything about the issue…
Read moreUsefulness of Dictionaries
Arguments vs. theories
I have discovered that there is a fundamental difference between arguments and theory-building. As a philosopher, I have come to think that one could argue almost any position, within reasonable…
Read moreWhy people resist to think critically?
I have also come across expressions of similar thoughts and feelings both in India and in Europe and the United States. However, I think there are multiple grounds that generate…
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