Title: Why do I do as you say?
Description: This dissertation explores the philosophical problem of why we act on or carry out commands that are issued to us in the form of utterances. The principal source for examining this problem is the work of Jayanta Bhat[dotbelow]t[dotbelow]a (c. 850-925 CE), a philosopher belonging to the Nyaya text tradition in India. In the context of his investigation into what utterances convey in his major philosophical work, the Nyayamañjari, Jayanta systematically examines several theories of injunction, including those propounded by the two rival interpretive views of the Mim[dotbelow]asa text tradition, Bhat[dotbelow]t[dotbelow]a and Prabhakara Mimam[dotbelow]sa. Through a close, critical reading of Jayanta Bhat[dotbelow]t[dotbelow]a's text, this dissertation addresses what command utterances convey and how they motivate action. It does so from the joint perspectives of linguistic theory and action theory: outlining the fundamental grammatical presuppositions and linguistic commitments of the theories of injunction that Jayanta examines, but also analyzing how these theories purport to explain the action that ensues when an injunction is heard by delineating the causal structures of action and motivation that they presuppose.

The first two chapters of the dissertation examine Jayanta Bhat[dotbelow]t[dotbelow]a's philosophical treatment of injunction and focus on his definition of the criteria for evaluating utterances and his critical examination of different theories of prescriptive force. The third chapter contains an annotated translation of the fifth book of the Nyayamañjari, the section of this work that deals with the investigation of command utterances, what they convey and how they enjoin their hearers to act. In providing an analytical study of Jayanta Bhat[dotbelow]t[dotbelow]a's examination of injunctions through a close, critical engagement with the primary text, this dissertation contributes to the study of injunction theories, the philosophy of language and the philosophy of action in classical Indian philosophy. It also develops a general scholarly model for working with untranslated and unstudied (or understudied) works of Indian philosophy, one that is critical, textually-sensitive, and problem-based and that can be adopted and adapted to the study of other aspects of Jayanta Bhat[dotbelow]t[dotbelow]a's thought, or to the study of the philosophical problems raised by other thinkers across different text traditions.