Jed Forman

This paper explores philosophical issues of personal identity and its connection to forgetting through the famed Tibetan Buddhist thinker Tsongkhapa (1357–1419). Tsongkhapa, in turn, follows the Middle Way (madhyamaka) tradition of Nāgārjuna (c. 150–250 CE) and Candrakīrti (c. 600–650 CE). Specifically, Tsongkhapa demonstrates that we can make sense of a consistent personal continuity despite the disruptions of forgetting and remembering. In so doing, he nuances the notion of personhood, revealing that it does not exist in the way we think. I rely on a thought experiment derived from the hit TV show Severance to demonstrate the ramifications of his theory. By way of conclusion, I explore how Tsongkhapa’s analysis constitutes a notion of “positive forgetting.”

This paper explores Tsong kha pa’s (1357–1419), one of the most influential Tibetan Buddhist Philosophers in history, theory of universals. His theory is born out of a conundrum: Given his Buddhist commitments, he must maintain a certain nominalism, which contends that universals, by virtue of being conceptual, are mental projections and do not inhere in the world. At the same time, he must also explain how reasoning, which relies on universals, is epistemic. Tsong kha pa thus concludes that universals are, in fact, not completely the product of mere conceptual concoction. Neither, however, does Tsong kha pa argue a robust realism for universals in a manner that abandons Buddhism’s larger anti-realist agenda. Affording universals a quasi-real status, Tsong kha pa is able to save them from being vitiated alongside conceptual superimposition. Furthermore, this position allows Tsong kha pa to conclude that certain universals are the object of nonconceptual yogic perception, which by definition sees the world as it really exists. This move fits squarely with Tsong kha pa and his Dge lugs school’s wider realist ontological project.

Analogues between the coherentism-foundationalism debate in Western philosophy and Candrakīrti's critique of Dignāga's Pramāṇavāda approach are well attested.1 Many scholars who argue that Candrakīrti advocates a form of coherentism cite the following verse from Clear Words as evidence: Thus, knowledge of worldly objects is determined through the fourfold epistemic instruments. And those are established with respect to each other. When the epistemic instruments are correct, so are their objects, and when the objects to be validated are correct, so are their epistemic instruments. It is not at all the case that the nature of the epistemic instrument or of the epistemic object is...

Tibetan Buddhism, the Gelug school specifically, promotes a deep skepticism about the ability to know others’ minds. Its scripture is rife with cautionary tales allegorizing and extolling this skepticism in adherents, while claiming a buddha, by contrast, has eradicated this skepticism with their omniscience. I describe a buddha’s purported privileged epistemic access to others’ minds as “double-hiddenness.” On this skepticism, not just what a buddha knows, but if they know it is hidden, making their authority irreputable. I use critical theory to investigate the ramifications of this double hiddenness, demonstrating that the resultant subjectivization brought about by this extreme skepticism—although the product of power—is not merely a type of subjugation, as suggested by Foucault, but also constitutes a robust agency.

The creditions model is incredibly powerful at explaining both how beliefs are formed and how they influence our perceptions. The model contains several cognitive loops, where beliefs not only influence conscious interpretations of perceptions downstream but are active in the subconscious construction of perceptions out of sensory information upstream. This paper shows how this model is mirrored in the epistemology of two central Buddhist figures, Dignāga and Dharmakı̄rti. In addition to showing these parallels, the paper also demonstrates that by drawing on Dignāga and Dharmakı̄rti's theory, we can extend the explanatory power of the creditions model. Namely, while creditions explain how beliefs influence both the conscious interpretation and subconscious construction of sensory information, Dignāga and Dharmakı̄rti suggest beliefs can even be generative of sensory-like information. I recruit ancient Buddhist texts in conjunction with contemporary cognitive science scholarship to offer a hypothesis for the cognitive mechanisms responsible for this.

Most Indian and Tibetan religious traditions have some theory of yogic perception-a profound type of sentience afforded by meditative practice. And most consider it the bedrock of their religious authority, the primary means by which one gains spiritual insight. Disagreements about what yogis perceive abound, however, spanning many philosophical topics, including epistemology, ontology, phenomenology, and language. Out of Sight, Into Mind is a groundbreaking exploration of debates over yogic perception, revealing their contemporary relevance as a catalyst for comparative philosophy. Jed Forman examines intellectual and philosophical developments over a millennium in India and Tibet, offering rich analyses of many previously untranslated texts. He traces divergences and confluences between thinkers within and across traditions, demonstrating that accounts of yogic perception shifted from theories based on vision to ones based on the mind. Drawing on this investigation, Forman calls for broadening philosophical discourse, arguing that subjects like yogic perception have often been deemed "religious" and thus neglected. He contends that these Indian and Tibetan debates hold important lessons for present-day topics such as hermeneutics and exegesis, the relationship between conception and perception, representationalism versus phenomenalism, and the limits of language. Shedding new light on the intellectual history of yogic perception, this book models how a comparative approach can yield novel philosophical insights.