Perceiving Reality: Consciousness, Intentionality, and Cognition in Buddhist Philosophy, by Christian Coseru.

Abstract

The subtitle of this book is ‘Consciousness, Intentionality, and Cognition in Buddhist Philosophy’. Buddhist philosophy is an intellectual enterprise stretching two and a half millennia, but Coseru’s references to Buddhist philosophy, and Buddhists more generally, are very specific. He focuses on the epistemological tradition going back to Dignāga and Dharmakīrti (sixth century CE), but the axis around which the book’s presentation is developed are two later encyclopaedic works of Buddhist philosophy, Śāntarakṣita’s Tattvasaṃgraha (‘Compendium of True Principles’) and its commentary Tattvasaṃgraha-pañjikā by Kamalaśīla, two eighth-century authors who extensively drew on the epistemological work of Dignāga and Dharmakīrti. I will first of all give a brief overview of the main topics treated in the nine chapters of the book and subsequently consider more specifically some key themes that are of importance for the entire discussion. After some introductory remarks in chapter one, chapter two introduces the idea of Buddhist epistemology as an intellectual enterprise already built on naturalist foundations that would also benefit from further naturalization. Chapter three examines a set of empirical arguments one might present for the view that perception as an epistemic instrument ought to be restricted to non-conceptual cognitive states. Chapter four deals with the role of language in perception and conception, discussing along the way the question of the supposed psychologism of Indian logic and the exclusion semantics (apoha) developed by Buddhist epistemologists. The fifth chapter focuses on the epistemological and ontological concerns of Śāntarakṣita’s and Kamalaśīla’s works, with a particular emphasis on the relation between epistemic dispositions and altruistic concerns. Chapter six discusses perceptual knowledge, cognitive errors, and perceptual illusions, and chapter seven focuses on the question whether Buddhist epistemology can be conceived of as a foundationalist enterprise. Chapter eight examines the role of self-awareness or the reflexivity of consciousness in theorizing about the mind-world relation; chapter nine sums up much of the discussion and adds some further discussion of the role of embodied consciousness in a naturalized epistemology.