Combining insights from Buddhist phenomenology and epistemology, but also drawing on the work of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and recent work in analytic philosophy of mind and phenomenology, Christian Coseru develops a framework for understanding perception as a mode of apprehension that is intentionally constituted and, under certain circumstances, represents a type of implicit knowing that is pragmatically oriented and effective.

The book's main focus is about the role that a particular understanding of the structure of awareness must play in settling epistemological disputes. What is significant about these arguments is that they provide a model for integrating the phenomenological and cognitive psychological concerns of Abhidharma traditions within the dialogical-disputational context of Buddhist epistemology. Taking as point of departure the classic debate between Buddhists philosophers and their opponents, Perceiving Reality examines the function of perception as a source of knowledge and its relation to attention, language and discursive 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.

Coseru advances an innovative approach to Buddhist philosophy of mind in the form of phenomenological naturalism, and moves beyond comparative approaches to philosophy by emphasizing the continuity of concerns between Buddhist and Western philosophical accounts of the nature of perceptual content and the character of perceptual consciousness.

Christian Coseru is Associate Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at the College of Charleston

Abbreviations

Acknowledgments

1. Introduction: Taking the Structure of Awareness Seriously

2. Naturalizing Buddhist Epistemology
2.1. Doctrine and Argument
2.2. Reason and Conceptual Analysis
2.3. Interpretation and Discourse Analysis
2.4. Cognition as Enactive Transformation
2.5. Logic and the Subjectivity of Thought
2.6. Phenomenological Epistemology and the Project of Naturalism

3. Sensation and the Empirical Consciousness
3.1. No-self and the Domains of Experience
3.2. Two Dimensions of Mind: Consciousness as Discernment and Sentience
3.3. Attention and Mental Proliferation
3.4. Cognitive Awareness and Its Object

4. Perception, Conception, and Language
4.1. Shared Notions about Perceptual Knowledge
4.2. Debating the Criteria for Reliable Cognition
4.3. Cognitive Aspects and Linguistic Conventions
4.4. Epistemology as Cognitive Event Theory

5. An Encyclopedic and Compassionate Setting for Buddhist Epistemology
5.1. Dependent Arising and Compassion
5.2. Mapping the Ontological and Epistemological Domains
5.3. Perception and the Principle of Clarity

6. Perception as an Epistemic Modality
6.1. The Conditions for Perceptual Knowledge
6.2. Perception, Conception, and the Problem of Naming
6.3. Phenomenal Content, Phenomenal Character, and the Problem of Reference
6.4. Cognitive Errors and Perceptual Illusions

7. Foundationalism and the Phenomenology of Perception
7.1. Intrinsic Ascertainment and the "Given"
7.2. Particulars and Phenomenal Objects
7.3. Foundationalism and Its Malcontents
7.4. Naturalism and Its Discontents
7.5. Beyond Representation: An Enactive Perception Theory

8. Perception, Self-Awareness, and Intentionality
8.1. Reflexivity and the Aspectual Nature of Intentional Reference
8.2. Phenomenal Objects and the Cognitive Subconscious
8.3. The Intentional Structure of Awareness
8.4. An Epistemological Conundrum: Explaining the Subject-Object Relation

9. In Defense of Epistemological Optimism
9.1. A Moving Horizon
9.2. Embodied Consciousness: Beyond "Seeing" and "Seeing As"
9.3. Epistemic Authority Without Manifest Truth