Brains, Buddhas, and Believing

In the recent, burgeoning discourse on Buddhist thought and cognitive science, premodern Buddhists are sometimes characterized as veritable mind scientists whose insights anticipate modern research on the brain and mind. Aiming to complicate this story, Dan Arnold confronts a significant obstacle to popular attempts at harmonizing classical Buddhist and modern scientific thought: since most Indian Buddhists believe that the mental continuum is uninterrupted by death (its continuity is what Buddhists mean by rebirth), they would have no truck with claims that everything about the mental is explicable with reference to brain events. Yet despite this significant divergence, a predominant stream of Indian Buddhist thought, associated with the seventh-century thinker Dharmakrti, turns out to be vulnerable to arguments modern philosophers have leveled against physicalism.

Autorentext

Dan Arnold is associate professor of philosophy of religions at the University of Chicago Divinity School, where he also received his Ph.D. His first book, Buddhists, Brahmins, and Belief: Epistemology in South Asian Philosophy of Religion, won an American Academy of Religion Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion.

Inhalt

Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Dharmakirti's Proof of Rebirth 2. The Cognitive-Scientific Revolution 3. Responsiveness to Reasons as Such 4. The Apoha Doctrine 5. The Svasamvitti Doctrine 6. Indian Arguments from Practical Reason Concluding Reflections Notes References Index