Online research in philosophy

In this essay, which draws on a set of interrelated issues in the phenomenology of perception, I call into question the assumption that Buddhist philosophers of the Dignāga-Dharmakīrti tradition pursue a kind of epistemic foundationalism. I argue that the embodied cognition paradigm, which informs recent efforts within the Western philosophical tradition to overcome the Cartesian legacy, can be also found– albeit in a modified form–in the Buddhist epistemological tradition. In seeking to ground epistemology in the phenomenology of cognition, the Buddhist epistemologist, I claim, is operating on principles similar to those found in Husserl’s phenomenological tradition.

Contemporary philosophy of mind is much concerned with issues pertaining to ‘mental architecture’ — describing how mental processes are organized, typically by identifying sub-personal functional mechanisms which causally interact, often through the intermediary of a mental representation, thereby giving rise to psychological phenomena. Such internal mental mechanisms can be quite low-level and operate with a degree of relative independence; if so, they may be considered ‘modules’ or minimal centres of mental activity. A module or a set of modules may be specific to a given domain of phenomena, e. g. only processing visual data. The way in which a set of mental modules is arrayed makes up the architecture of the mind, offering structure to ‘inner space’. The detailed structural articulation of the mind offers psychological theories some traction on the slippery realm of the mental.

Epistemology – the study of the nature and scope of knowledge – has been an integral topic in Indian and Tibetan Buddhist scholastic communities for the past 1500 years. This article provides an overview of the Buddhist epistemological tradition, emphasizing the central role that the concept of pramana plays in Indian theories of knowledge. After elucidating the two pramanas accepted by the Buddhist epistemological tradition, the article concludes by discussing the relationship between Buddhist epistemology and Buddhist soteriology.

In this essay, which draws on a set of interrelated issues in the phenomenology of perception, I call into question the assumption that Buddhist philosophers of the Dignāga-Dharmakīrti tradition pursue a kind of epistemic foundationalism. I argue that the embodied cognition paradigm, which informs recent efforts within the Western philosophical tradition to overcome the Cartesian legacy, can be also found– albeit in a modified form–in the Buddhist epistemological tradition. In seeking to ground epistemology in the phenomenology of cognition, the Buddhist epistemologist, I claim, is operating on principles similar to those found in Husserl’s phenomenological tradition.

In this paper, I take up the problem of the self through bringing together the insights, while correcting some of the shortcomings, of Indo–Tibetan Buddhist and enactivist accounts of the self. I begin with an examination of the Buddhist theory of non-self ( anātman ) and the rigorously reductionist interpretation of this doctrine developed by the Abhidharma school of Buddhism. After discussing some of the fundamental problems for Buddhist reductionism, I turn to the enactive approach to philosophy of mind and cognitive science. I argue that human beings, as dynamic systems, are characterized by a high degree of self-organizing autonomy. Therefore, human beings are not reducible to the more basic mental and physical events that constitute them. I critically examine Francisco Varela’s enactivist account of the self as virtual and his use of Buddhist ideas in support of this view. I argue, in contrast, that while the self is emergent and constructed, it is not merely virtual. Finally I sketch a Buddhist-enactivist account of the self. I argue for a non-reductionist view of the self as an active, embodied, embedded, self-organizing process—what the Buddhists call ‘I’-making ( ahaṃkāra ). This emergent process of self-making is grounded in the fundamentally recursive processes that characterize lived experience: autopoiesis at the biological level, temporalization and self-reference at the level of conscious experience, and conceptual and narrative construction at the level of intersubjectivity. In Buddhist terms, I will develop an account of the self as dependently originated and empty, but nevertheless real.

In Buddhist texts authored in Indian and Tibetan traditions of scholasticism, one is regularly directed to check one’s understanding against “scripture and reasoning.” To date, however, comparatively little attention has been given to the usage of the latter term of this pair (Skt. yukti , Tib. rigs pa) in Indian Buddhist texts. Building on the work of Scherrer-Schaub, Kapstein and others, this paper discusses divergent glosses of the term yukti as found in Indian Buddhist texts. By highlighting continuities and discontinuities in these accounts, the paper aims to stimulate reflection on the ways in which our assumptions regarding reasoning—and, by extension, what is to count as “Buddhist philosophy”—are represented in, and perhaps contested by, thematizations offered within the tradition.

This question—why did Bodhidharma come from the West?— is ubiquitous in Chinese Ch’an Buddhist literature. Though some see it as an arbitrary question intended merely as an opener to obscure puzzles, I think it represents a genuine intellectual puzzle: Why did Bodhidharma come from theWest—that is, fromIndia? Why couldn’tChina with its rich literary and philosophical tradition have given rise to Buddhism? We will approach that question, but I prefer to do so backwards. I want to ask instead, “why was it so fortuitous for the development of Buddhist philosophy that Bodhidharma wentEast? I will argue that by doing so he gave a trajectory to Buddhist thought about the mind and knowledge that allows certain issues that are obscure in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, despite their centrality to the Buddhist critique of Indian orthodoxy, to come into sharper relief, and hence to complete a project begun, but not completable, in that Indo-European context.

It has been claimed that Indian Buddhism, as opposed to East Asian Chan/Zen traditions, was somehow against humour. In this paper I contend that humour is discernible in canonical Indian Buddhist texts, particularly in Indian Buddhist monastic law codes (Vinaya). I will attempt to establish that what we find in these texts sometimes is not only humourous but that it is intentionally so. I approach this topic by comparing different versions of the same narratives preserved in Indian Buddhist monastic law codes.

This chapter examines Indian views of the mind and consciousness, with particular focus on the Indian Buddhist tradition. To contextualize Buddhist views of the mind, we first provide a brief presentation of some of the most important Hindu views, particularly those of the S¯am . khya school. Whereas..