In 2011, Professor Emerita Ruth Kleinfeld Lenney (1928-2021) generously donated to the UH Foundation to create the Center for Eastern Philosophy of Consciousness and the Humanities (EPOCH) and what would eventually become the Ruth Lenney Distinguished Chair in Indian Philosophy of Mind.
A scientist by training and a philosopher by passion, Professor Kleinfeld Lenney was devoted to the fl ourishing of philosophy. She is remembered for her generosity, intellectual curiosity, and abiding belief that philosophy is a living, shared pursuit. Noting our department’s unique strength in comparative and cross-cultural philosophy of mind, she founded the EPOCH Project to foster sustaining dialogues between non-Western and Western views of consciousness. The Lenney Distinguished Chain ensures that the Department would remain a permanent home for cross-cultural philosophy of mind for future generations of scholars. Professor Emeritus Arindam Chakrabarti served as the inaugural Lenney Distinguished Professor and the director of the EPOCH Project.
The EPOCH Project
The EPOCH Project is committed to the advancement of research and scholarship in contemporary philosophy of mind, utilizing the rich analytical and phenomenological resources from various Eastern traditions including Indian and Buddhist philosophies.
It is currently directed by Professor Keya Maitra, who continues the Project’s founding vision by advancing rigorous cross-cultural scholarship in philosophy of mind while also broadening its scope to include voices too often excluded from the philosophical conversation.
So far, the Project has focused mainly on bringing Indian and Buddhist traditions into sustained dialogue with traditional and contemporary discussion in analytic and continental philosophies of mind, consciousness and cognitive science. It engages central debates on the self and no-self, the scope of concepts, the nature of consciousness, the relation between cognition and emotion, the possibility of non-conceptual perception, and much more. By doing so, it challenges mainstream philosophy’s long-standing exclusionary practices. Its mission is to foster a distinctive and integrative philosophical voice: one that resists insularity, centers non-Western perspectives, and foregrounds feminist, Indigenous, and other historically marginalized contributions.
EPOCH continues to support various projects. Among these is a graduate assistantship dedicated to non-Western philosophy of mind as well as a visiting scholar program, designed to bring leading fi gures in Indian and Buddhist philosophy to Mānoa for colloquia, lectures, workshops and seminars. One of EPOCH’s most notable achievements was the 2017 workshop “Realism/Anti-Realism, Omniscience, God/No-God,” which featured scholars from around the world.
The EPOCH Project’s long-term goal has always been to advance and establish more fi rmly the importance of scholarly contributions that have been emerging at the intersection of non-Western perspectives including Indian and Buddhist philosophies of mind, on the one hand, and contemporary Western philosophy of mind, on the other. Philosophy of mind is one of the most thriving fi elds in contemporary philosophy. Indian and Buddhist philosophy, independently, are known to be rich in debates concerning contemporary topics in philosophy of mind and cognitive science, broadly construed. These cross-cultural intersections have been well-traversed in the scholarly work of members of the Department. The EPOCH’s goal is to highlight these contributions as well as sustain exciting cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary explorations of these important topics.
Events and Members of the EPOCH Project
Chart Legend: Events, Graduate Assistanceships, and Members of the EPOCH Project
| 2011-2012 | Joshua Stoll | Philosophy of mind, epistemology of other minds, and value in intersubjectivity (Ph.D. 2018: “The You-Turn in Philosophy of Mind”) |
| 2012-2013 | Benjamin Zenk | Disagreement and comparative philosophy (Ph.D. 2018: “The Paradox of Philosophical Disagreement: A Study of Nāgārjuna, Haribhadra, and Gadamer”) |
| 2013-2014 | Ian Nicolay | Imagination, metaphysics, and ethics (Dissertation defended 2025: “Towards a New Theory of Knowing by Imagining”) |
| 2014-2015 | Jay McKinney | Cognitive science, “4e” philosophy of mind |
| 2015-2016 | Jane Allred | Conceptions of gender in Sanskrit and Kannaḍa grammatical traditions and poetics |
| 2016 | Ana Laura Funes Maderey | Ph.D., 2016 “Philosophy of Mind as a Philosophy of Body: A Comparative Discussion on Introspective Proprioception and the Subtle Dimensions of Bodily Self-Awareness in Samkhya-Yoga, Advaita Vedanta and Kashmir Saivism” |
| 2016-2019 | Emma Irwin-Herzog | Comparative philosophy of consciousness (Ph.D. 2024: “Alternative Talk of the Indefinite: A Cross-Cultural Examination of Epistemic and Semantic Problems in the Metaphysics of Consciousness”) |
| March 10-2, 2017 | Event | International workshop: Realism/Anti-Realism, Omniscience, God/No-God |
| 2020-2021 | Lisa Widdison | Ph.D., 2021 “The Epistemic Value of Aestheticized Emotions: Wonder, Pathos and Comedy in Aesthetic Experience” |
| 2022 | Nicholas Raffel | Aesthetics, existential phenomenology, Indian philosophy (with a focus on Buddhism), and philosophy of literature |
| November 4, 2022 | Event | The Annual Ruth Lenney Memorial EPOCH Lecture: Can Machines Have Emotions? Presented by Anand Jayprakash Vaidya, Professor of Philosophy at San José State University |
| 2023 | Andrew Kelly | Research in Buddhism, Cynicism, Skepticism, Political Philosophy, Hermeneutics, and Public Philosophy |
| 2023-2024 | Ian Nicolay | Imagination, metaphysics, and ethics (Dissertation defended 2025: “Towards a New Theory of Knowing by Imagining”) |
| December 4-7, 2024 | Event | The Prospects, Problems, and Urgency of Global Intercultural Philosophy Now in collaboration with the CALL Uehiro Program |
| 2025 | Taylor Hunter | Research in Environmental Political Philosophy (climate and Indigenous justice), Social Epistemology (feminist and Indigenous epistemologies), Embodied Phenomenology, Evolutionary Theory, and Indian Philosophy (Buddhism, Advaita Vedānta) |
For more information regarding the EPOCH Project, please contact Keya Maitra.