Perceiving particulars: A Buddhist defense

Philosophy East and West

Volumn 54, Issue 3, 2004, Pages 367-382

  Siderits, Mark ^a  

^a ILLINOIS STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60950603930     PISSN: 00318221     EISSN: 15291898     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/pew.2004.0022     Document Type: Note

References (12)

1. Monima Chadha, "Perceptual Cognition: A Nyāya-Kantian Approach," Philosophy East and West 51 (2) (April 2001): 197-209
2. See Arindam Chakrabarti, "Against Immaculate Perception: Seven Reasons for Eliminating Nirvikalpaka Perception from Nyāya," Philosophy East and West 50 (1) (January 2000): 1-8
3. See also, in Philosophy East and West 51 (1) (January 2001)
4. Stephen H. Phillips, "There's Nothing Wrong with Raw Perception: A Response to Chakrabarti's Attack on Nyāya's Nirvikalpaka Pratyakscombining dot belowa" (pp. 104-113)
5. and Arindam Chakrabarti, "Reply to Stephen Phillips" (pp. 114-115)
6. Michael Dummett likewise calls Berkeley a realist in the sense that is at issue in the realism/antirealism dispute. See "Realism and Anti-Realism," in The Seas of Language (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 464
7. The perceptual judgment expressible as "This is a cow" is said by the Yogācāra-Sautrāntika to be more fully represented by the form "This is a cow because it is not non-cow." But the presence of a reason in this representation is not meant to suggest that the perceiver performs an act of inferring like that involved in judging that there is fire on the hill from the perception of smoke. The form is instead taken to represent the purely causal processes that give rise to the judgment. For details see my "Was Śāntarakscombining dot belowita a 'Positivist'?" Buddhist Logic and Epistemology, ed. B. K. Matilal (Reidel, 1985), pp. 184-197
8. For an attempt at explaining apoha semantics see my "Apohavā da, Nominalism and Resemblance Theories," Proceedings of the Third International Dharmakīrti Conference, ed. Shoryu Katsura (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1999): 341-348
9. Chakrabarti uses "individual" in a somewhat similar way in his "Non-particular Individuals," in The Philosophy of P. F. Strawson," ed. P. K. Sen and R. R. Verma (New Delhi: Indian Council of Philosophical Research, 1995) pp. 124-144. Note that like him I shall depart from the standard Nyāya practice and classify some relations as non-particular individuals. Specifically, I think that Nyāya's reason for refusing to so classify inherence - concern about a resulting infinite regress - is adequately dealt with by treating inherence as a self-linking connector
10. Tattvasaṅgraha of Śāntarakscombining dot belowita with the Commentary of Kamalaśīla, ed. Embar Krishnamacharya (Baroda: Oriental Institute, 1984), verses 1265-1306. It is Kamalaśīla who identifies the opponents as Sumati and Kumārila
11. Thomas Nagel gives a similar argument in "Brain Bisection and the Unity of Consciousness," Mortal Questions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 156. He is discussing how we should interpret the behavior of commisurotomy patients, in whom the nonverbal right hemisphere of the brain appears to give rise to actions at odds with the express beliefs and desires emanating from the (dominant) left hemisphere. Against the interpretation that such right-hemisphere processes should not be taken as conscious states, he says: If ... we consider the manifestations of the right hemisphere itself, there seems no reason in principle to regard verbalizability as a necessary condition of consciousness. There may be other grounds for the ascription of conscious mental states that are sufficient even without verbalization. And in fact, what the right hemisphere can do on its own is too elaborate, too intentionally directed and too psychologically intelligible to be regarded merely as a collection of unconscious automatic responses. Of course it might be argued that the concept of consciousness is insufficiently well formed to have clear application in cases like commisurotomy and indeterminate perception. But this would prove unacceptable to dualists like the Naiyāyikas, the Sautrāntikas, and Kant. For if there were no clear line to be drawn between physical and mental processes, it would prove difficult to avoid reduction of the mental to the physical
12. J. N. Mohanty, Reason and Tradition in Indian Thought (New York: Oxford University Press 1992), p. 174