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Buddhist Idealism, Epistemic and Otherwise: Thoughts on the Alternating Perspectives of Dharmakīrti

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Abstract

Some influential interpreters of Dharmakīrti have suggested understanding his thought in terms of a ‘sliding scale of analysis.’ Here it is argued that this emphasis on Dharmakīrti's alternating philosophical perspectives, though helpful in important respects, obscures the close connection between the two views in play (identified by later commentators as ‘Sautrāntika’ and ‘Yogācāra’). Indeed, with respect to these perspectives as Dharmakīrti develops them, the epistemology is the same either way. Insofar as that is right, John Dunne's characterization of Dharmakīrti's Yogācāra as ‘epistemic idealism’ may not, after all, distinguish this perspective from Sautrāntika; indeed, epistemic idealism can be understood as just the view these positions share. Thus, what distinguishes the ‘Yogācāra’ section of Dharmakīrti's texts is simply his making explicit that epistemological commitments the Sautrāntika does (or at least can coherently) hold are already compatible with idealism. Sautrāntika and Yogācāra thus differ only when one turns to the metaphysical arguments that (on the idealist's view) additionally show that only such mental things as sense data could be real.

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Notes

  1. See Cabezón (1990) for insightful reflections on some of the general issues here.

  2. Dharmakīrti’s verses are often unintelligible without a commentary; I have followed that of Manorathanandin (on whom, see Sāṃkṛtyāyana 19381940: i-ii) largely because it is the only one fully extant in Sanskrit. John Dunne’s study of Dharmakīrti (2004) is based chiefly on the earlier commentaries (now extant only in Tibetan translation) of Śākyabuddhi and Devendrabuddhi, on whom commentators like Manorathanandin clearly relied.

  3. Thanks to John Dunne for some helpful comments on these issues.

  4. For a careful development of this idea, see Dunne (2004, 53–79). Dunne’s book and that of Georges Dreyfus (1997) provide authoritative and philosophically sensitive overviews of the thought of Dharmakīrti, who is usually taken to have lived c. 600–660 c.e.

  5. Dunne (2004, 58–59). The fact that the ontological primitives, even on this realist account, may lack spatial extension obviously plays into the idealist hand that I will show to come out on top. On questions relating to spatial extension, see the brief discussion of Vasubandhu’s Viṃśatikā below, ‘Epistemic vs. Metaphysical Arguments for Idealism’.

  6. Ibid., 59. Dharmakīrti explicitly adopts a Yogācāra perspective, according to Dunne, ‘at the end of the third chapter, starting with the prologue at vv. 194ff.’ (Ibid., p.60n) The correct order of chapters for the Pramāṇavārttika has historically been a matter of controversy (see, e.g., Gnoli 1960, xv-xvii); on the reckoning of most contemporary scholars, the third chapter is the one concerning perception (pratyakṣa). That is how I will take it, even though the edition I will cite (Shastri 1968) represents things otherwise. The section Dunne here identifies comprises the passages chiefly to be considered in the present essay, which span roughly verses 321–353. For a useful pass through something like the same material, see also Dreyfus and Lindtner (1989).

  7. Dunne (2004, 59). The capital letters here are from the header to the paragraph in which Dunne sketches this view. Dunne notes that the Indian commentators most often refer to this perspective as antarjñeyavāda, ‘the view that objects of awareness are internal.’

  8. An example of metaphysical arguments for this conclusion would be Vasubandhu’s Viśatikā, verses 11–15–an argument, we will see (‘Epistemic vs. Metaphysical Arguments for Idealism’), to which Dharmakīrti’s commentators allude in this context. Dunne is not unaware of the sense that his qualifier ‘epistemic’ has, and his explanation effectively identifies the same point I am making: ‘Here, the term “epistemic” is meant to reinforce the notion that Dharmakīrti’s critique of extra-mental entities arises in the context of determining what it is that we know in perception (I admit that ‘Epistemic Idealism’ is a somewhat awkward neologism, but it is the most suggestive and least misleading terminology available).’ (Ibid., pp. 59–60n; emphasis mine). The characterization of this ‘epistemic idealism’ as the view that ‘all entities are mental’ suggests, however, the stronger, metaphysical point–which, I think, is also what is suggested by taking this to distinguish the ‘Yogācāra’ perspective from ‘Sautrāntika.’ It is with respect to these points, then, that I am trying to add some nuance–though what I am adding, in this regard, is in a sense simply a lengthy elaboration of Dunne’s own explanation, here, of his term ‘epistemic idealism.’

  9. On Dignāga (c. 480–540 c.e.), see especially Hayes (1988). For a very usefully annotated translation of the first chapter of Dignāga’s Pramāṇasamuccaya, see Hattori (1968).

  10. Pramāṇasamuccaya 1.8d (pramāṇaṇ phalam eva sat). All translations from Dignāga are my own, and are made from the Sanskrit text reconstructed by Steinkellner (2005); cf. Hattori (1968, 28).

  11. The word svasaṃvitti (like the semantically equivalent svasaṃvedana) is formed from the reflexive pronominal prefix ‘sva-’, and a nominal form of the verbal root sam-√vid (“to be aware”). I will generally leave it untranslated, allowing my engagement with the considered passages to do the work of showing its significance.

  12. Pramāṇasamuccaya 1.9cd viṣayābhāsatâivâsya pramāṇaṃ....

  13. All references here are to verses in the section demarcated in n.6, above; translations are my own, unless otherwise noted.

  14. Manorathanandin, on verse 321b (Shastri 1968, 196): yad ucyate vyavahartṛbhir idam anenânbhūyate iti tad evêdam asmābhir vicāryate. When (as here) I cite passages from Manorathanandin’s commentary that comprise (because they are restating in prose) parts of Dharmakīrti’s verses, the latter will be given in bold type.

  15. See below, ‘Epistemic vs. Metaphysical Arguments for Idealism’, for what I take to be the tradition’s most compelling (and clear) argument for this conclusion.

  16. McDowell (1996, xv). Among the many passages from Dharmakīrti that might be cited in support of such a view, consider 3.224ab (Shastri 1968, 168): hetubhāvād ṛte nânyā grāhyatā nāma kācana (‘there is nothing at all called being apprehendable apart from being a cause’; cf. Dunne 2004, 85n51); and (giving a solution to the ‘time-lag’ problem) 3.247 (Shastri 1968, 175): bhinnakālaṃ kathaṃ grāhyaṃ iti ced grāhyatāṃ viduḥ, hetutvam eva yuktijñā jñānākārārpaṇakṣamam (‘If it is asked how something is apprehendable given its having occurred at a different time, those who understand reasoning know [that being apprehendable] is just being a cause which is capable of projecting an aspect into awareness’).

  17. The characterization of Dharmakīrti (in his Sautrāntika guise, anyway) as an empiricist is not uncontroversial; see, for example, Dreyfus (1996)–and, in response, Tillemans (2003), 104, 121n31. See, as well, Arnold (2008a).

  18. Shastri (1968, 197): tatsārūpyatadutpattī yadi saṃvedyalakṣaṇam / saṃvedyaṇ syāt samānārthaṇ vijñānaṇ samanantaram //.

  19. Suffice it to say that this is surely among the categories introduced by Buddhists to try to account for continuity in the context of what is basically a causal-reductionist project. On this idea (and, more generally, on some interesting philosophical problems having to do with Buddhist attempts thus to explain continuity), see Griffiths (1986), passim.

  20. This is an idea that figures prominently in Dharmakīrti’s proof of rebirth; see Taber (2003) for a useful overview.

  21. It may, however, be that on this view, the contrast between perceptual and other cognitions (which surely can also be described as exhibiting this kind of causal regularity) is lost.

  22. Shastri (1968, 197):... i dam dṛṣṭaṃ śrutaṃ vêdam iti yatrâvasāyadhīr utpadyate tasya so ’nubhavo nânyasya. na ca samanantarapratyaye dṛṣṭaśrutādyavasāyo bhavati tan na grāhyo’sau.

  23. Dharmakīrti’s verse 324d (ibid.): sâiva pratyāsattir vicāryate.

  24. This term is used in the same context, for example, by Dignāga’s commentator Jinendrabuddhi (c. 710–770 c.e.), who postdates (and is much influenced by) Dharmakīrti; see Steinkellner, et al. (2005), p.66 line 6–and, for discussion of this, Arnold (2008b). Jinendrabuddhi is here exploiting an idea introduced by one of Dharmakīrti’s commentators, who similarly thought that the only thing indisputably related to the occurrence of cognition could be something ‘not separated’ (avyavahita; the word is from the same root as Jinendrabuddhi’s avyavadhānena) from it; see Dunne (2004:261–62, 269).

  25. Indeed, this is arguably just the point of the pramāṇaphala doctrine–a point suggested by Dunne (2004, 261–2), discussing the commentator Śākyabuddhi’s idea that the pramāṇaphala doctrine especially concerns the ‘unmediated’ (avyavahita) effect of a pramāṇa. The distinctiveness of such an ‘unmediated’ effect is ‘that, as Śākyabuddhi notes, it “necessarily occurs.” This is so because the effect is not separated (avyavahita) from the instrument; it is, in fact, identical to the instrument itself.’

  26. Translated from Steinkellner et al. (2005), p.66.11–67.1: tasyâjñānasvabhāvatvāt sarvajñānahetutvāc ca.

  27. Shastri (1968, 199): nanu yadi bāhyo’rtho jñānen ânubhūyate tadā ko doṣaḥ, yena svasaṃvit phalam iṣyate. āha: yady anubhūyate, tadā nâiva kaścana doṣaḥ. anubhava eva tu bāhyasya nâstîty ucyate. tathā idam eva kim uktaṃ syāt bāhyo ’rtho jñānen ânubhūyata iti. Cf. Dunne’s translation of Dharmakīrti’s verse (2004, 277n): “‘If we maintain that an external object is experienced, what would be wrong with that claim?” There is nothing wrong with it, but what is the point of saying this: “An external object is experienced”?’

  28. Shastri (1968, 199–200): yadi buddhis tadākārā vā bāhyasarūpêty ucyate, satyam[;] asti sā buddhir ākāraviśeṣiṇī nīlānīlādyākāraviśeṣayuktā; kiṃtu sā buddhir bāhyād arthāj jāyeta, anyato vāsanāpratiniyamād vā iti vicāram idam arhati. Cf. Dunne’s translation of Dharmakīrti’s verse (2004, 277n): ‘If awareness has the image of the object, then it must have something that distinguishes [each] image [for each awareness]. It would be wise to look into whether that differentiation must come from something external, or whether it might just as easily come from something else.’

  29. These are among the categories meant to address problems of causal continuity; see n.19, above. They are mental just insofar as karma itself is finally mental. Thus, karma is glossed as cetanā (commonly translated ‘intention,’ and certainly something mental) by Vasubandhu in the Abhidharmakośa (4.1); in the Viṃśatikā (verse 7), Vasubandhu then draws the entailed Yogācāra conclusion that, per the principle of ontological parsimony, the effects of karma–what is produced by it (which for Buddhists is everything)–must also be mental.

  30. Ibid., 200: na tāvad buddhivyatirekiṇârthaḥ kaścid dhetutayôpalabhyate, buddhisvarūpamātravedanāt.

  31. Shastri (200): tatra darśanena jñānen ôpādhinā viśeṣaṇena rahitasya nīlāder agrahāt ta sya grahe ca nīlasya grahāt sahâiva nīladhiyor vedanāt darśanaṃ nīlādinirbhāsaṃ nīlākāraṃ vyavasthitaṃ. Cf. Dunne’s translation of Dharmakīrti’s verse (2004, 277n): ‘[1] There is no apprehension of an object devoid of qualification by the experience of it; and [2] when that experience itself is apprehended, the object is apprehended. Therefore for these two reasons, the cognitive appearance of blue is the experience (darśana) of blue. There is no independent ... external object.’

  32. Sellars (1997, 36). Sellars’s entire discussion at pp. 32–46 is relevant here; see also Robert Brandom’s comments at pp. 136ff. of this edition.

  33. Pramāṇasamuccaya 1.9cd; see n.12, above.

  34. Shastri (1968, 200): bāhyo nīlādir arthaḥ kevalaṃ nâsti, tatsādhakatvenâbhimatasyādhyakṣasyâsāmarthyāt. See n.32, above, for Dunne’s translation of Dharmakīrti’s concluding quarter verse.

  35. That is, whose content is ordinary macro-objects. It is perhaps a bit odd that Manorathanandin thus takes ‘elephants’ as an example of what might be the object of awareness, rather than a more stock example such as a pot.

  36. Shastri (1968, 200): kasyacij jñānasya gajādyākārasya kiñcid eva jñānam antarvāsanāyāḥ samanantarapratyayāntaravarttinyā niyatajñānajananayogyatālakṣaṇāyāḥ prabodhakaṃ kāryotpādanābhimukhyakārakaṃ. tataḥ prabodhakavaśāt dhiyāṃ niyatākāratayā viniyamaḥ, na bāhyārthavyapekṣayā. Cf. Dunne’s translation (2004, 277n), which reads Dharmakīrti’s verse 336 continuously with 335 (n.32, above): ‘Instead, something activates the internal imprint for some experience. It is due to that awakening of an imprint that there is the restriction [of a particular image] to a [particular] cognition; that restriction is not dependent on an external object.’

  37. See n.50, below, for Dharmakīrti’s development of this point.

  38. Shastri (1968, 200): na[;] tathâpi parokṣasya bāhyasya sādhakasyâbhāve ’pi nâbhāvasthitir iti cet. I take the initial ‘na’ as syntactically independent of the sentence that follows–as expressing, that is, the Sautrāntika’s initial denial of the account just proposed by the Yogācāra, with the ensuing sentence giving the reason for so denying.

  39. An unusual rhetorical flourish from Manorathanandin!

  40. Ibid.: pratibhāsamānaṃ jñānaṃ bāhyaṃ tu na pratibhāsata evêti tāvatâvābhimatasiddheḥ sādhakapramāṇarahitapiśācāyamānabahirarthaniśedhenâsmākam ādaraḥ. yadi tu tanniśedhanirbandho garīyān sāṃśatvānaṃśatvakalpanayā paramāṇupratiṣedhe ācāryīyaḥ paryeṣitavyaḥ.

  41. It is, to that extent, presupposed by Vasubandhu’s arguments (as perhaps by metaphysical arguments more generally) that what we can or cannot adequately conceive tells us something about what is actually possible; whether that is a warranted presupposition is a topic for another day.

  42. Verses 11–15–on which see, especially, Kapstein (2001).

  43. Recent developments in physics suggest that Vasubandhu’s arguments are not a mere historical curiosity. See, for example, Elizabeth Kolbert’s (2007) New Yorker piece on the imminent opening of the Large Hadron Collider. Kolbert quotes physicist Jos Engelen on what is promised by research projects such as this: ‘what we want is to reduce the world to objects that have no structure, that are points, that are as simple as we can imagine. And then build it up from there again’ (emphasis added). The thought, in other words, is that physicists cannot be confident that they have found the most basic sub-atomic particles until they have found something further irreducible–which means they are effectively looking for (what alone has ‘no structure’) mathematical points. Here, then, is a massively funded research project dedicated, in effect, to the empirical discovery of what is a mathematical abstraction–to the empirical discovery, that is, of something which, though lacking spatial extension itself, somehow explains the spatially extended character of everything else. Vasubandhu’s arguments are meant to show precisely such an endeavor to be incoherent. It should be noted that it is not universally agreed that Vasubandhu should here be understood as arguing for idealism; see, for example, Lusthaus (2002) for an influential case for a non-idealist reading of Vasubandhu. While ‘Yogācāra’ names, of course, a position developed within a vast corpus of works, I confess that I do not see how the Viṃśatikā, at least, can be understood as offering anything other than a metaphysical argument for idealism. Manorathanandin’s explicit differentiation between, in effect, epistemic and metaphysical arguments–between less and ‘more weighty’ (garīyān) intentions to ‘refute external objects’ (bahirarthaniśedha)–seems to me to represent a point that could be enlisted as part of a case for a strong ‘idealist’ reading of Yogācāra. For a cogent philological argument to the effect that non-idealist readings of texts like the Viṃśatikā are unconvincing, see Schmithausen 2005.

  44. The characteristically Yogācāra point here is that when rightly understood, awareness is finally to be seen as altogether lacking an intentional structure; it is only insofar as we are benighted by ignorance (of the sort which it is the constitutive concern of Buddhism to eliminate) that we mistakenly suppose that we stand, as knowing subjects, over and against the world that is known by us.

  45. Shastri (1968, 201): yasmād bāhyo’rtho nânubhūyate, tasmād ekaṃ vijñānaṃ avidyopaplutatvāt dvirūpaṃ bodharūpaṃ nīlādirūpañ câsti. yat yasmāj jñānam evaṃ dvyākāratayânubhūyate svavedanena yathânubhavaṃ kālāntare smaryate ca. tathā cânyasya saṃvedanābhāvāt, ubhayādyākārasya nīlādyanubhavarūpasya saṃvedanaṃ phalaṃ. tad evaṃ, prameyo grāhyākāraḥ, pramāṇaṃ grāhakākāraḥ, phalaṃ svasaṃvid iti darśitaṃ bhavati. Cf. Dunne’s translation (2004, 277n) of Dharmakīrti’s verse: ‘Therefore that one awareness which is experienced and remembered in that fashion has two aspects (dvirūpa); the instrumental result is the reflexive awareness of both aspects.’

  46. On this line of argument, see, inter alia, Ganeri (1999).

  47. Pramāṇasamuccaya 1.10: yadābhāsaṃ prameyaṃ tat pramāṇaphalate punaḥ, grāhakākārasaṃvittyos trayaṃ nâtaḥ pṛthakkṛtam. The status of Dharmakīrti’s verse 337 (and of the verse from Dignāga given here) as a locus classicus seems to be suggested by the fact that several editions of Manorathanandin’s commentary append annotations (in the manuscript...?) citing Dignāga’s main verses on the subject. The interlinear reference to Dignāga is then followed by a comment that reads (per Sāṇkrtyāyana 19381940, 222): ‘Based on following this group of four verses from Dignāga, four alternatives regarding the result have been expressed; these alternatives are just possibilities–but the conclusion rendered is just Vijñānavāda’ (sūtracatuṣṭayānurodhāc catur āvarttitaḥ phalavikalpaḥ; sambhavamātreṇâmī vikalpāḥ[;] samāptis tu vijñānavāda eva kṛtā).

  48. That is, it is largely owing to one’s own cultivated dispositions that something is found attractive or not. Reference to the affective character of experience here is another way to make the point that we experience things only as they are experienced; for the experienced fact of something’s being, for example, ‘desired or not desired’ is surely a fact about our awareness, not about the putative objects thereof. Insofar, then, as our experience of things typically involves some such affective response, it is clear that what we are immediately aware of is only a representation that is itself internal to awareness.

  49. Shastri (1968, 201): yadā bahirarthavāde’pi paro bāhyo’rtha iṣṭo ’niṣṭo ’pi vā niṣpannatadbhāvo bhāvanāvaśād vyavasthiteṣṭāniṣṭabhāvaḥ sarūpāyā vijñapter hetuḥ san viṣayo bhavati, tadā tasyā vijñaptes tathā iṣṭāniṣṭākāreṇânubhavo viṣayasya cânubhava ucyate. tena viṣayasārūpyaṃ pramāṇam arthasaṃvit phalam uktaṃ. Cf. Dunne’s translation of Dharmakīrti’s verse (2004, 277n): ‘When the object is considered to be other than the mind and established with a nature that is desired or not desired, then the object is the cause of the representation and the effect is the experience of that representation in that way, i.e., as desired or not desired.’

  50. See n.38, above.

  51. Shastri (1968, 201): yadā jñānasyâṃśe ākāre viplavavaśāt artha sya vyavasthiter jñānaṃ saviṣayam isṭam, tadā ya ātmano jñānākārasy ânubhavaḥ sa evârthasya niścayaḥ saṃvedanam iṣyate. tataś ca vijñānavāde ’py arthākāraḥ pramāṇam arthasaṃvit phalam aviruddhaṃ. Cf. Dunne’s translation (2004, 277n) of Dharmakīrti’s verse: ‘If awareness includes the object (yadā saviṣayaṃ jñānaṃ) due to the positing (vyavasthiti) of the object as an aspect (aṃśa) of awareness [and not as actually external], then the determination (viniścaya) of the object is just the awareness’ experience of itself.’

  52. Shastri (1968, 204): iti tasmāt sâivâtmasaṃvid arthasaṃvid iṣṭā, yataḥ svarūpād bahirbhūto ’rthātmā na dṛśyate, buddhyākāra eva tu vedyate. atas tadvedanadarśanam evârthavedanaṃ.... paramārthataḥ svavid api satī arthavid matā.

  53. ‘Contentful’ renders avabhāsinaḥ, ‘having an appearance’; ‘cognition’ is supplied by Manorathanandin as the antecedent of the genitive pronoun tasya, which is all that appears in Dharmakīrti’s verse.

  54. Shastri (1968, 205): tadā tasya jñānasy âvabhāsino yathā kathañcid iṣṭāniṣṭādinā bhāsamānam artharūpam arthākāraṃ muktvā kathaṃ kena prakāreṇ ârtha sya grahaḥ syāt.

  55. Literally, ‘considering his assistance’ (sāhāyyakaṃ manyamāna).

  56. Ibid.: ...iti manyate Sautrāntikaḥ. Yogācāras tu tasya sāhāyyakaṃ manyamāna āha: [353c1-d:] satyaṃ na jāne ’ham apîdṛśam // satyaṃ na jāne ’ham apîdṛśam arthagrahaḥ katham iti.

  57. On the possibility that at least some Buddhists (notably, Śāntarakṣita) understood the point of the svasaṃvitti doctrine to be similar, see Arnold (2005).

  58. Cf. Sellars (1997, 76): ‘...in characterizing an episode or a state as that of knowing, we are not giving an empirical description of that episode or state; we are placing it in the logical space of reasons, of justifying and being able to justify what one says.’ John McDowell has concisely stated the sense in which Kant’s passages concerning the transcendental unity of apperception lead to the Sellarsian point: ‘Experiences in which the world is disclosed are apperceptive. Perception discloses the world only to a subject capable of the “I think” of apperception.’ And ‘if an experience is world-disclosing, which implies that it is categorically unified, all its content is present in a form in which...it is suitable to constitute contents of conceptual capacities.’ (1997, 346–348)

  59. See note 54, above.

  60. McDowell (1998b, 257–58). I take McDowell’s scare quotes here not to query or ‘bracket’ the external world, but to question the idea of its being definable as constitutively external to our supposedly ‘internal’ cognitive space.

  61. See note 32, above.

  62. For a different (but, I think, related) argument to the same effect, see Ram-Prasad (2002, 52–64). While it seems to me that Ram-Prasad (who here follows Śaṅkara) errs in taking Vasubandhu’s use (in the Viṃśatikā) of the dream analogy as part of his demonstrative argument for idealism–Vasubandhu’s main argument, I have said, is at verses 11–15 of that text, and I take the appeal to the example of dreams to advance a subsidiary point–he has read Śaṇkara as making a similar argument about the conditions of the intelligibility of any concept of externality.

  63. Dharmakīrti’s commentator Dharmottara arguably agrees with this thought, even if his avowed faithfulness as a commentator precludes his putting it so baldly; for on Dharmottara’s reading, the point of the Buddhist pramāṇaphala doctrine appears very different than as elaborated (vis-à-vis svasaṃvitti) by Dignāga and Dharmakīrti. For Dharmottara, the point is that pramāṇa really denotes the ‘result of the pramāṇa’ (pramāṇaphala) in the sense that only when cognition issues in a resulting judgment is there any epistemic content. On this point, see Arnold (2008a). Cf., as well, Dreyfus (2007, 107n), who says, based on ‘using Dharmottara’s ideas rather than Dharmakīrti’s,’ that ‘it looks as if Dharmakīrti is bound to maintain that perceptual aspects are transformed almost retrospectively into representations by conceptions’.

  64. But not to all recognizably ‘Buddhist’ workings-out of these insights; I have tried to argue that Madhyamaka may represent an alternative elaboration of Buddhist insights that does not depend on the kinds of presuppositions I have here tried to show to be problematic. See, inter alia, Arnold (2008c).

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Correspondence to Dan Arnold.

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Of the many people who have helped me advance my understanding of the issues discussed here, I would especially like to thank the Sanskrit students who suffered through my attempts to teach the chiefly considered section of Dharmakīrti’s Pramāṇavārttika: Colleen Christensen, Michelle Guittar, Sonam Kachru, Katarzyna Pazucha, and Charles Preston.

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Arnold, D. Buddhist Idealism, Epistemic and Otherwise: Thoughts on the Alternating Perspectives of Dharmakīrti. SOPHIA 47, 3–28 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-008-0046-7

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