Ratio 31 (4):389-401 (2018)
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Abstract |
This article examines contemporary Buddhist defences of the idea that consciousness is reflexively aware or self-aware. Call this the Self-Awareness Thesis. A version of this thesis was historically defended by Dignāga but rejected by Prāsaṅgika Mādhyamika Buddhists. Prāsaṅgikas historically advanced four main arguments against this thesis. In this paper I consider whether some contemporary defence of the Self-Awareness Thesis can withstand these Prāsaṅgika objections. A problem is that contemporary defenders of the Self-Awareness Thesis have subtly different accounts with different assessment criteria. I start by providing a fourfold taxonomy of these different views and then progressively show how each can withstand Prāsaṅgika objections. And I conclude by giving reasons to think that even some Prāsaṅgikas can accept some version of the Self-Awareness Thesis.
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Keywords | Consciousness Reflexivity Self-Awareness Buddhism Dignaga Madhyamaka |
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DOI | 10.1111/rati.12200 |
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References found in this work BETA
Engaging Buddhism: Why It Matters to Philosophy.Jay L. Garfield - 2015 - Oxford University Press USA.
Perceiving Reality: Consciousness, Intentionality, and Cognition in Buddhist Philosophy.Christian Coseru - 2012 - Oxford University Press.
Dignāga's Argument for the Awareness Principle: An Analytic Refinement.Uriah Kriegel - 2019 - Philosophy East and West 69:144-156.
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Citations of this work BETA
Minimal Phenomenal Experience.Thomas Metzinger - 2020 - Philosophy and the Mind Sciences 1 (I):1-44.
Karma, Moral Responsibility and Buddhist Ethics.Bronwyn Finnigan - 2022 - In Manuel Vargas & John Doris (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Moral Psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 7-23.
Self, Me and I in the Repertoire of Spontaneously Occurring Altered States of Selfhood: Eight Neurophenomenological Case Study Reports.Andrew And Alexander Fingelkurts & Tarja Kallio-Tamminen - 2022 - Cognitive Neurodynamics 16:255–282.
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