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Philosophy Then

The Missing Link

Peter Adamson perceives absences in Indian epistemology.

I suppose we can all agree that it’s impossible to see something that isn’t there. But here’s a trickier question: can you see that something isn’t there? The director of a play may expect an actor to walk in on cue. If this fails to happen, the director will see, with great alarm, the absence of the actor. Or maybe you are told to fetch pieces of fabric from a pile, taking only those that have no mark on them. In this case you’d be looking for the absence of a mark on the fabric.

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