48 found
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  1. Perceiving reality: consciousness, intentionality, and cognition in Buddhist philosophy.Christian Coseru - 2012 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    This book examines the epistemic function of perception and the relation between language and conceptual thought, and provides new ways of conceptualizing the Buddhist defense of the reflexivity thesis of consciousness: namely, that each cognitive event is to be understood as involving a pre-reflective implicit awareness of its own occurrence.
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  2. Consciousness, content, and cognitive attenuation: A neurophenomenological perspective.Christian Coseru - 2022 - In Rick Repetti (ed.), Routledge Handbook on the Philosophy of Meditation. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 354–367.
    This paper pursues two lines of inquiry. First, drawing on evidence from clinical literature on borderline states of consciousness, I propose a new categorical framework for liminal states of consciousness associated with certain forms of meditative attainment; second, I argue for dissociating phenomenal character from phenomenal content in accounting for the etiology of nonconceptual states of awareness. My central argument is that while the idea of nonconceptual awareness remains problematic for Buddhist philosophy of mind, our linguistic and categorizing practices cannot (...)
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  3. Whose Consciousness? Reflexivity and the Problem of Self-Knowledge.Christian Coseru - 2020 - In Mark Siderits, Ching Keng & John Spackman (eds.), Buddhist Philosophy of Consciousness: Tradition and Dialogue. Boston: Brill | Rodopi. pp. 121-153.
    If I am aware that p, say, that it is raining, is it the case that I must be aware that I am aware that p? Does introspective or object-awareness entail the apprehension of mental states as being of some kind or another: self-monitoring or intentional? That is, are cognitive events implicitly self-aware or is “self-awareness” just another term for metacognition? Not surprisingly, intuitions on the matter vary widely. This paper proposes a novel solution to this classical debate by reframing (...)
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  4. (1 other version)Reasons and Conscious Persons.Christian Coseru - 2020 - In Andrea Sauchelli (ed.), Derek Parfit’s Reasons and Persons: An Introduction and Critical Inquiry. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 160-186.
    What justifies holding the person that we are today morally responsible for something we did a year ago? And why are we justified in showing prudential concern for the future welfare of the person we will be a year from now? These questions cannot be systematically pursued without addressing the problem of personal identity. This essay considers whether Buddhist Reductionism, a philosophical project grounded on the idea that persons reduce to a set of bodily, sensory, perceptual, dispositional, and conscious elements, (...)
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  5. (1 other version)The Middle Way to Reality: on Why I Am Not a Buddhist and Other Philosophical Curiosities.Christian Coseru - 2021 - Sophia 60 (3):1-24.
    This paper examines four central issues prompted by Thompson's recent critique of the Buddhist modernism phenomenon: (i) the suitability of evolutionary psychology as a framework of analysis for Buddhist moral psychological ideas; (ii) the issue of what counts as the core and main trajectory of the Buddhist intellectual tradition; (iii) the scope of naturalism in the relation between science and metaphysics, and (iv) whether a Madhyamaka-inspired anti-foundationalism stance can serve as an effective platform for debating the issue of progress in (...)
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  6.  66
    Can Global Anti-Realism Withstand the Enactivist Challenge?Christian Coseru - 2022 - Analysis 82 (1):131-142.
    This paper argues that some defenses of global antirealism that critique both epistemic foundationalism and ontological priority foundationalism (e.g., Westerhoff 2020) turn on a false dilemma that ignores non-representational approaches to consciousness and cognition. Arguments against the existence of an external world and against introspective certainty, typically draw on a range of empirical findings (mainly about the brain-based mechanisms that realize cognition) and that are said to lend support to irrealism. Theories that incorporate these findings, such as the interface theory (...)
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  7. Consciousness, Naturalism, and Human Flourishing.Christian Coseru - 2019 - In Bongrae Seok (ed.), Naturalism, Human Flourishing, and Asian Philosophy: Owen Flanagan and Beyond. New York: Routledge. pp. 113–130.
    This chapter pursues the question of naturalism in the context of non-Western philosophical contributions to ethics and philosophy of mind: First, what conception of naturalism, if any, is best suited to capture the scope of Buddhist Reductionism? Second, can such a conception still accommodate the distinctive features of phenomenal consciousness (e.g., subjectivity, intentionality, first-person givenness, etc.). The first section reviews dominant conceptions of naturalism, and their applicability to the Buddhist project. In the second section, the author provides an example of (...)
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  8. Artificial Minds and the Dilemma of Personal Identity.Christian Coseru - 2024 - Philosophy East and West 74 (2):281-297.
    This paper addresses the seemingly insurmountable challenges the problem of personal identity raises for the prospect of radical human enhancement and synthetic consciousness. It argues that conceptions of personal identity rooted in psychological continuity akin to those proposed by Parfit and the Buddha may not provide the sort of grounding that many transhumanists chasing the dream of life extension think that they do if they rest upon ontologies that assume an incompatibility between identity and change. It also suggests that process (...)
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  9. Interpretations or Interventions? Indian philosophy in the global cosmopolis.Christian Coseru - 2017 - In Purusottama Bilimoria (ed.), History of Indian philosophy. New York, Abingdon UK: Routledge Taylor & Francis Palgrave. pp. 3–14.
    This introduction concerns the place that Indian philosophical literature should occupy in the history of philosophy, and the challenge of championing pre-modern modes of inquiry in an era when philosophy, at least in the anglophone world and its satellites, has in large measure become a highly specialized and technical discipline conceived on the model of the sciences. This challenge is particularly acute when philosophical figures and texts that are historically and culturally distant from us are engaged not only exegetically but (...)
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  10. Can There Be Something it is Like to Be No One?Christian Coseru - 2024 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 31 (5):62-103.
    This paper defends the persistence of the subjective or self-intimating dimension of experience in non-ordinary and pathological states of consciousness such as non-dual awareness, full absorption, drug-induced ego dissolution, and the minimal conscious state. In considering whether non-ordinary and pathological conscious states display any subjective features, we confront a dilemma. Either they do, in which case there needs to be some way of accounting for these features in phenomenal terms, or they do not, in which case there is nothing it (...)
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  11. Freedom From Responsibility: Agent-Neutral Consequentialism and the Bodhisattva Ideal.Christian Coseru - 2016 - In Rick Repetti (ed.), Buddhist Perspectives on Free Will: Agentless Agency? London, UK: Routledge / Francis & Taylor. pp. 92-105.
    This paper argues that influential Mahāyāna ethicists, such as Śāntideva, who allow for moral rules to be proscribed under the expediency of a compassionate aim, seriously compromise the very notion of moral responsibility. The central thesis is that moral responsibility is intelligible only in relation to conceptions of freedom and human dignity that reflect a participation in, and sharing of, interpersonal relationships. The central thesis of the paper is that revisionary strategies, which seek to explain agency in event-causal terms, set (...)
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  12. Dignāga and Dharmakīrti on Perception and Self-Awareness.Christian Coseru - 2016 - In John Powers (ed.), The Buddhist World. Routledge. pp. 526–537.
    Like many of their counterparts in the West, Buddhist philosophers realized a long time ago that our linguistic and conceptual practices are rooted in pre-predicative modes of apprehension that provide implicit access to whatever is immediately present to awareness. This paper examines Dignāga’s and Dharmakīrti’s contributions to what has come to be known as “Buddhist epistemology” (sometimes referred in the specialist literature by the Sanskrit neologism pramāṇavāda, lit. “doctrine of epistemic warrants”), focusing on the phenomenological and epistemic role of perception (...)
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  13. Mind in Indian Buddhist Philosophy.Christian Coseru - 2012 - In Ed Zalta (ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Perhaps no other classical philosophical tradition, East or West, offers a more complex and counter-intuitive account of mind and mental phenomena than Buddhism. While Buddhists share with other Indian philosophers the view that the domain of the mental encompasses a set of interrelated faculties and processes, they do not associate mental phenomena with the activity of a substantial, independent, and enduring self or agent. Rather, Buddhist theories of mind center on the doctrine of no-self (Pāli anatta, Skt.[1] anātma), which postulates (...)
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  14. Taking the Intentionality of Perception Seriously: Why Phenomenology is Inescapable.Christian Coseru - 2015 - Philosophy East and West 65 (1):227-248.
    The Buddhist philosophical investigation of the elements of existence and/or experience (or dharmas) provides the basis on which Dignāga, Dharmakīrti, and their followers deliberate on such topics as the ontological status of external objects and the epistemic import of perceptual states of cognitive awareness. In this essay I will argue that the Buddhist epistemologists, insofar as they accord perception a privileged epistemic status, share a common ground with phenomenologists in the tradition of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, who contend that perception is (...)
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  15.  69
    Introduction: Is Subjectless Consciousness Possible?Christian Coseru - 2024 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 31 (5):6-25.
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  16. Buddhism, comparative neurophilosophy, and human flourishing.Christian Coseru - 2014 - Zygon 49 (1):208-219.
    Owen Flanagan's The Bodhisattva's Brain represents an ambitious foray into cross-cultural neurophilosophy, making a compelling, though not entirely unproblematic, case for naturalizing Buddhist philosophy. While the naturalist account of mental causation challenges certain Buddhist views about the mind, the Buddhist analysis of mind and mental phenomena is far more complex than the book suggests. Flanagan is right to criticize the Buddhist claim that there could be mental states that are not reducible to their neural correlates; however, when the mental states (...)
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  17. Introduction.Christian Coseru - 2023 - In Reasons and Empty Persons: Mind, Metaphysics, and Morality: Essays in Honor of Mark Siderits. Springer. pp. 1-15.
    Mark Siderits’ confluence approach to philosophy, first sketched in his landmark monograph, Personal Identity and Buddhist Philosophy (2003), is emblematic of what has arguably become the most influential way of engaging historically and culturally distant Buddhist thinkers and texts systematically and constructively. For nearly half a century, and rather fittingly for someone enthralled by Madhyamaka, Siderits has successfully charted a middle ground between the text-based, exegetical approach to Buddhist philosophy still dominant in many parts of Europe and East Asia and (...)
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  18. Reason's Myriad Way: In Praise of Confluence Philosophy.Christian Coseru - 2023 - In Reasons and Empty Persons: Mind, Metaphysics, and Morality: Essays in Honor of Mark Siderits. Springer. pp. 1-15.
    What are some of the distinctive virtues of the confluence approach that sets it apart from other attempts to do philosophy across cultural boundaries? First, unlike comparing and contrasting, the confluence approach remains faithful to the dominant conception of philosophy as an intellectual enterprise centered on dialogue and argumentation, in which philosophers pursue unresolved problems by building on the achievements of their acknowledged forbears. Second, confluence philosophy implements a syncretic and creative approach to doing philosophy by drawing on non-Western philosophical (...)
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  19. Consciousness and Causality: Dharmakīrti Against Physicalism.Christian Coseru - 2020 - In Birgit Kellner, McAllister Patrick, Lasic Horst & McClintock Sara (eds.), Reverberations of Dharmakīrti's Philosophy: Proceedings of the Fifth International Dharmakīrti Conference Heidelberg, August 26 to 30, 2014. Austrian Academy of Sciences. pp. 21-40.
    This paper examines Dharmakīrti's arguments against Cārvāka physicalism in the Pramāṇasiddhi chapter of his magnum opus, the Pramāṇavārttika, with a focus on classical Indian philosophical attempts to address the mind-body problem. The key issue concerns the relation between cognition and the body, and the role this relation plays in causal-explanatory accounts of consciousness and cognition. Drawing on contemporary debates in philosophy of mind about embodiment and the significance of borderline states of consciousness, the paper proposes a philosophical reconstruction that builds (...)
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  20. Naturalism and Intentionality: A Buddhist Epistemological Approach.Christian Coseru - 2009 - Asian Philosophy 19 (3):239-264.
    In this paper I propose a naturalist account of the Buddhist epistemological discussion of svasaṃvitti ('self-awareness', 'self-cognition') following similar attempts in the domains of phenomenology and analytic epistemology. First, I examine the extent to which work in naturalized epistemology and phenomenology, particularly in the areas of perception and intentionality, could be profitably used in unpacking the implications of the Buddhist epistemological project. Second, I argue against a foundationalist reading of the causal account of perception offered by Dignāga and Dharmakīrti. Finally, (...)
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  21. Perception, Causally Efficacious Particulars, and the Range of Phenomenal Consciousness: Reply to Commentaries.Christian Coseru - 2015 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 22 (9-10):55-82.
    This paper responds to critical commentaries on my book, Perceiving Reality (OUP, 2012), by Laura Guerrero, Matthew MacKenzie, and Anand Vaidya. Guerrero focuses on the metaphysics of causation, and its role in the broader question of whether the ‘two truths’ framework of Buddhist philosophy can be reconciled with the claim that science provides the best account of our experienced world. MacKenzie pursues two related questions: (i) Is reflexive awareness (svasaṃvedana) identical with the subjective pole of a dual-aspect cognition or are (...)
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  22. Are Reasons Causally Relevant for Action? Dharmakīrti and the Embodied Cognition Paradigm.Christian Coseru - 2017 - In Steven Michael Emmanuel (ed.), Buddhist Philosophy: A Comparative Approach. Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell. pp. 109–122.
    How do mental states come to be about something other than their own operations, and thus to serve as ground for effective action? This papers argues that causation in the mental domain should be understood to function on principles of intelligibility (that is, on principles which make it perfectly intelligible for intentions to have a causal role in initiating behavior) rather than on principles of mechanism (that is, on principles which explain how causation works in the physical domain). The paper (...)
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  23. Foreword.Christian Coseru - 2018 - In Rick Repetti (ed.), Buddhism, Meditation, and Free Will : A Theory of Mental Freedom. Routledge.
    The question of whether freedom is incompatible with determinism frames much of the contemporary conversation on agency and moral responsibility. Those who look to science for answers reason that it is just a matter of time before science settles the question of free will once and for all (and settles it against deeply entrenched beliefs about libertarian freedom). Even incompatibilists, who think freedom is incompatible with determinism, are weary that concepts such as intention, deliberation, decision, and the weighing of reasons, (...)
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  24. Breaking Good: Moral Agency, Neuroethics, and the Spontaneity of Compassion.Christian Coseru - 2017 - In Jake H. Davis (ed.), A Mirror is for Reflection: Understanding Buddhist Ethics. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp. 109-128.
    This paper addresses two specific and related questions the Buddhist neuroethics program raises for our traditional understanding of Buddhist ethics: Does affective neuroscience supply enough evidence that contempla- tive practices such as compassion meditation can enhance normal cognitive functioning? Can such an account advance the philosophical debate concerning freedom and determinism in a profitable direction? In response to the first question, I argue that dispositions such as empathy and altruism can in effect be understood in terms of the mechanisms that (...)
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  25. Precis of Perceiving Reality: Consciousness, Intentionality, and Cognition in Buddhist Philosophy.Christian Coseru - 2015 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 22 (9-10):9-24.
    The point of departure for Perceiving Reality is the idea that per- ception is an embodied structural feature of consciousness whose function is determined by phenomenal experiences in a corresponding domain (of visible, tangibles, etc.). In Perceiving Reality, I try to develop a way of conceiving of our most basic mode of being in the world that resists attempts to cleave reality into an inner and outer, a mental and a physical domain. The central argument of the book is that (...)
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  26. Consciousness and the Mind-Body Problem in Indian Philosophy.Christian Coseru - 2018 - In Rocco J. Gennaro (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Consciousness. New York: Routledge. pp. 92-104.
    This chapter considers the literature associated with explorations of consciousness in Indian philosophy. It focuses on a range of methodological and conceptual issues, drawing on three main sources: the naturalist theories of mind of Nyaya and Vaisesika, the mainly phenomenological accounts of mental activity and consciousness of Abhidharma and Yogacara Buddhism, and the subjective transcendental theory of consciousness of Advaita Vedanta. The contributions of Indian philosophers to the study of consciousness are examined not simply as a contribution to intellectual history, (...)
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  27. Consciousness and Causal Emergence: Śāntarakṣita Against Physicalism.Christian Coseru - 2014 - In Jonardon Ganeri (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp. 360–378.
    In challenging the physicalist conception of consciousness advanced by Cārvāka materialists such as Bṛhaspati, the Buddhist philosopher Śāntarakṣita addresses a series of key issues about the nature of causality and the basis of cognition. This chapter considers whether causal accounts of generation for material bodies are adequate in explaining how conscious awareness comes to have the structural features and phenomenal properties that it does. Arguments against reductive physicalism, it is claimed, can benefit from an understanding of the structure of phenomenal (...)
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  28. Free Your Mind: Buddhism, Causality, and the Free Will Problem.Christian Coseru - 2020 - Zygon 55 (2):461-473.
    The problem of free will is associated with a specific and significant kind of control over our actions, which is understood primarily in the sense that we have the freedom to do otherwise or the capacity for self‐determination. Is Buddhism compatible with such a conception of free will? The aim of this article is to address three critical issues concerning the free will problem: (1) what role should accounts of physical and neurobiological processes play in discussions of free will? (2) (...)
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  29. Presence of Mind: Consciousness and the Sense of Self.Christian Coseru - 2019 - In Manidipa Sen (ed.), Problem of the Self: Consciousness, Subjectivity, and the Other. Delhi, India: Aatar Books. pp. 46–64.
    It is generally agreed that consciousness is a somewhat slippery term. However, more narrowly defined as 'phenomenal consciousness' it captures at least three essential features or aspects: subjective experience (the notion that what we are primarily conscious of are experiences), subjective knowledge (that feature of our awareness that gives consciousness its distinctive reflexive character), and phenomenal contrast (the phenomenality of awareness, absence of which makes consciousness intractable) (cf. Siewert 1998). If Buddhist accounts of consciousness are built, as it is claimed, (...)
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  30. On Pursuing the Dialogue Between Buddhism and Science in Ways That Distort Neither.Christian Coseru - 2021 - APA Newsletter on Asian and Asian American Philosophers and Philosophies 20 (2):8-15.
    This paper examines two central issues prompted by a recent critique of this Buddhist modernist phenomenon in Evan Thompson’s Why I Am Not a Buddhist: (i) the suitability of evolutionary psychology as a framework of analysis for Buddhist moral psychological ideas; and (iv) whether a Madhyamaka-inspired anti-foundationalism stance can serve as an effective platform for debating the issue of progress in science. The main argument of this paper is that if Buddhism is to enter into a fruitful dialogue with the (...)
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  31. More or Less within My Power: Nature, Virtue, and the Modern Stoic.Christian Coseru - 2018 - Reason Papers 40 (2):8-18.
    Can the Stoic conception of what is within our power be adapted to fit our scientifically informed view of nature in general and of human nature in particular? This paper argues that it can, but not without a revision of the Stoic’s classical dichotomy of power principle, namely that some things are up to us, while others are beyond our control. Given the extent to which the Stoic way of life flows from a certain conception of what is real, a (...)
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  32. Karma, Rebirth, and Mental Causation.Christian Coseru - 2007 - In Charles Prebish, Damien Kewon & Dale Wright (eds.), Revisioning Karma. Journal of Buddhist Ethics Online Books. pp. 133-154.
    Attempts to provide a thoroughly naturalized reading of the doctrine of karma have raised important issues regarding its role in the overall economy of the Buddhist soteriological project. This paper identifies some of the most problematic aspects of a naturalized interpretation of karma: (1) the strained relationship between retributive action and personal identity, and (2) the debate concerning mental causation in modern reductionist accounts of persons. The paper explores the benefits of a phenomenological approach in which reductionist accounts of karma (...)
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  33.  34
    Selves: subpersonal, immersed, and participating: A Review Essay of Jonardon Ganeri, The self: naturalism, consciousness, and the first-person stance, Oxford University Press, 2012, 374 pages ISBN 978-0-19—965236-5.Christian Coseru - 2015 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 14 (4):1083-1088.
    This book marks the beginning of a new phase in the philosophical investigation of classical and contemporary accounts of the self: canonical boundaries have been crossed and doctrinal justification abandoned in favor of a cosmopolitan ideal of syncretic, theoretically perspicuous, and historically informed systematic reflection. That such reflection bears on so central a concept as the self is only fitting given its implications for a broad range of questions concerning agency, the mind-body problem, and self-knowledge that are now pursued across (...)
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  34. (1 other version)Reason and Experience in Buddhist Epistemology.Christian Coseru - 2013 - In Steven M. Emmanuel (ed.), A Companion to Buddhist Philosophy. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 241–255.
    As a specific domain of inquiry, “ Buddhist epistemology” stands primarily for the dialogical-disputational context in which Buddhists advance their empirical claims to knowledge and articulate the principles of reason on the basis of which such claims may be defended. The main questions pursued in this article concern the tension between the notion that knowledge is ultimately a matter of direct experience---which the Buddhist considers as more normative than other, more indirect, modes of knowing---and the largely discursive and argumentative ways (...)
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  35. Consciousness, Personal Identity, and the Self, No-Self Debate.Christian Coseru - 2017 - Voprosi Filosofii (The Problems of Philosophy) 10:130-140.
    Given that all Buddhists give universal scope to the no-self view, accounts of personal identity in Buddhism cannot rest on egological conceptions of self-consciousness. Without a conception of consciousness as the property, function, or dimension of an enduring subject or self, how, then, do mental states acquire their first-personal character? What it is that in virtue of which mental states exhibit a basic or minimal sense of self? These questions are at the heart of a long debate about the nature (...)
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  36.  84
    On Engaging Buddhism Philosophically.Christian Coseru - 2018 - Sophia 57 (4):535-545.
    This paper provides an outline and critical introduction to a symposium on Garfield’s Engaging Buddhism: Why It Matters to Philosophy. The main issues addressed concern: (i) the problem of personal identity, specifically the issue of whether the no-self view can satisfactorily account for such phenomena as agency, responsibility, rationality, and subjectivity, and the synchronic unity of consciousness they presuppose; (ii) a critique of phenomenal realism, which is shown to rests on a false dilemma, namely: either we must take people’s introspective (...)
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  37. (1 other version)Consciousness, physicalism, and the problem of mental causation.Christian Coseru - 2023 - In Itay Shani & Susanne Kathrin Beiweis (eds.), Cross-cultural approaches to consciousness: mind, nature and ultimate reality. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
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  38.  41
    Introduction to Symposium on Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy by Evan Thompson.Christian Coseru - 2016 - Philosophy East and West 66 (3):923-926.
    The papers gathered here were first presented at an “Author Meets Critics” invited session that I organized for the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association meeting, held in Vancouver, April 1–5, 2015, on Evan Thompson’s book Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy. Thompson opened the session with a précis of his book, which was followed by critical commentaries from John Dunne, Owen Flanagan, and Jay Garfield; Jennifer Windt was also an invited contributor to this (...)
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  39. Know Thy Knowing: On the Reflexive Form of Self-knowledge.Christian Coseru - 2024 - In Amber D. Carpenter & Pierre-Julien Harter (eds.), Crossing the Stream, Leaving the Cave: Buddhist-Platonist Philosophical Inquiries. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 167-196.
    Drawing on three Platonic dialogues (Charmides, Alcibiades I, and Theaetetus) and the epistemology of Dignāga and Dharmakīrti, this chapter argues that the self-knowledge project need not depend on a metaphysics of self if the awareness present in each knowledge episode is taken to exhibit a reflexive dimension. Whatever the ultimate ground for self-knowledge, it must be such as to provide unity and coherence to experience, even if the achieved unity or harmony is not something determinate or fixed (as suggested by (...)
     
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  40.  43
    Personal identity and cosmopolitan philosophy.Christian Coseru - 2017 - Philosophical Studies 174 (7):1749-1760.
    Jonardon Ganeri’s The Self: Naturalism, Consciousness, and the First-Person Stance is a trailblazing study in cross-cultural philosophy of mind. Its liberal conception of naturalism makes room for a rich analytic taxonomy of conceptions of personal identity that go well beyond the standard models of Cartesianism, Physicalism, and Reductionism. But this naturalistically respectable model of the self must contend with the fact that the findings of the cognitive sciences are also compatible with ontological antirealism about the self. And while the book (...)
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  41. Reasons and Empty Persons: Mind, Metaphysics, and Morality: Essays in Honor of Mark Siderits.Christian Coseru (ed.) - 2023 - Springer.
    Best known for his groundbreaking and influential work in Buddhist philosophy, Mark Siderits is the pioneer of “fusion” or “confluence philosophy", a boldly systematic approach to doing philosophy premised on the idea that rational reconstruction of positions in one tradition in light of another can sometimes help address perennial problems and often lead to new and valuable insights. -/- Exemplifying the many virtues of the confluence approach, this collection of essays covers all core areas of Buddhist philosophy, as well as (...)
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  42. The Continuity Between Madhyamaka and Yogācāra Schools of Mahāyāna Buddhism in India.Christian Coseru - 1996 - Journal of the Asiatic Society 37 (2):48–83.
    Do the two rival schools of Indian Buddhist philosophy, Madhyamaka and Yogācāra, share more in common than it may appear at first blush? Interpretation of Madhyamaka that see it as a philosophical enterprise concerned with language games, conceptual holism, and the limits of philosophical discourse, it is argued, miss the point about its distinctly epistemic concern with conventions of everyday practice. Likewise, interpretations of Yogācāra that regard it as a form of pure idealism overlook its uniquely phenomenological epistemology. Offering a (...)
     
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  43.  67
    Review of Minds Without Fear: Philosophy in the Indian Renaissance. [REVIEW]Christian Coseru - 2018 - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2018 (10):1-5.
    A prevailing view among specialists is that Indian philosophy "proper" can only be philosophy written in Sanskrit and a few other Prakrits (any of the several Middle Indo-Aryan vernaculars formerly spoken in India), in a doxographical style, and along more or less clearly drawn scholastic lines. As such, it encompasses the entirety of speculative and systematic thought in India up to the advent of British colonial rule in the 19th Century. Minds Without Fear challenges this dominant view of the history (...)
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  44. A "Restricted" Interpretation of Dharmakīrti's Philosophy. [REVIEW]Christian Coseru - 2006 - H-Net Reviews in the Humanities and Social Sciences.
    The continuing surge in work on Dharmakīrti represents one of the most fertile enterprises within the field of Buddhist Studies. The only South Asian philosopher to have been the subject of four international conferences, Dharmakīrti commands a veritable legacy of scholarship, whether directly, through the translation and study of his own works, or indirectly, through the study of his followers, commentators, and one-time opponents.[1] In the context of this burgeoning enterprise, characterized by a high degree of specialization, any attempt to (...)
     
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  45. A Review Essay of Destructive Emotions: How Can We Overcome Them? A Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai Lama. [REVIEW]Christian Coseru - 2004 - Journal of Buddhist Ethics 11 (1):98-102.
    Destructive Emotions is part of a new wave of works seeking to enlarge the scope of cognitive science by joining together scientific and contemplative approaches to the study of consciousness and cognition. While some still regard this rapprochement with suspicion, a growing number of scholars and researchers in the sciences of the mind are persuaded that contemplative practices such as we find, for instance, in Buddhism resemble a vast and potentially useful introspective laboratory.
     
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  46. A review of Zen Buddhism and Environmental Ethics. [REVIEW]Christian Coseru - 2008 - Sophia 47 (1):75-77.
    Simon P. James' Zen Buddhism and Environmental Ethics offers an engaging, sophisticated, and well-argued defence of the notion that Zen Buddhism has something positive to offer the environmental movement. James' goal is two-fold: first, dispel criticism that Zen (by virtue of its anti-philosophical stance) lacks an ethical program (because it shuns conventional morality), has no concern for the environment at large (because it adopts a thoroughly anthropocentric stance), and deprives living entities of any intrinsic worth (because it operates from the (...)
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  47.  88
    A Review of Buddhism, Virtue, and Environment, by David E. Cooper and Simon P. James. [REVIEW]Christian Coseru - 2007 - Sophia 46 (2):75-77.
    Do Buddhist ‘moral’ principles, such as generosity, equanimity, and compassion, consistently map onto Greek and, more generally, Western ‘virtues’? In other words, is it at all possible to talk about a Buddhist ‘virtue ethics’? Should equanimity, for instance, be understood as having the same function in Buddhist moral thought as temperance has for Plato, Aristotle, or the Stoics? Does the Buddha’s effort to embody certain cardinal virtues (sīla) resemble the classical Greek and Roman pursuit of a life of personal flourishing (...)
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    Moonshadows: Conventional Truth in Buddhist Philosophy. [REVIEW]Christian Coseru - 2016 - Journal of Buddhist Philosophy 2:285-290.
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