•  422
    Abhidharma Buddhist philosophy presents a version of what is now often called “panprotopsychism.” The most pressing group of problems for the Abhidharma panprotopsychism, like all other panpsychist views, is what Seager calls “the combination problem.” There are at least three versions of the problem: the subject-combination problem; the quality-combination problem; and the structure-combination problem. I begin with the Abhidharma Buddhist version of panprotopsychism and its account of consciou…Read more
  •  275
    Yet another attempt to salvage pristine perceptions!
    Philosophy East and West 56 (2): 333-342. 2006.
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Yet Another Attempt to Salvage Pristine Perceptions!Monima ChadhaIn a recent debate in this journal, Arindam Chakrabarti (2004) astutely identifies a new problem space that has opened up in the debate on nirvikalpaka perceptions. He indicates that the problem space is a grid arising out of the possible answers to three distinct but interrelated controversies. In this comment I primarily concern myself with the first two of these cont…Read more
  •  200
    Non-Conceptualism and the Problem of Perceptual Self-Knowledge
    European Journal of Philosophy 19 (2): 184-223. 2009.
    In this paper we (i) identify the notion of ‘essentially non-conceptual content’ by critically analyzing the recent and contemporary debate about non-conceptual content, (ii) work out the basics of broadly Kantian theory of essentially non-conceptual content in relation to a corresponding theory of conceptual content, and then (iii) demonstrate one effective application of the Kantian theory of essentially non-conceptual content by using this theory to provide a ‘minimalist’ solution to the prob…Read more
  •  177
    Meditation and unity of consciousness: a perspective from Buddhist epistemology (review)
    Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 14 (1): 111-127. 2015.
    The paper argues that empirical work on Buddhist meditation has an impact on Buddhist epistemology, in particular their account of unity of consciousness. I explain the Buddhist account of unity of consciousness and show how it relates to contemporary philosophical accounts of unity of consciousness. The contemporary accounts of unity of consciousness are closely integrated with the discussion of neural correlates of consciousness. The conclusion of the paper suggests a new direction in the sear…Read more
  •  166
    No Self and the Phenomenology of Agency
    Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 16 (2): 187-205. 2017.
    The Buddhists philosophers put forward a revisionary metaphysics which lacks a “self” in order to provide an intellectually and morally preferred picture of the world. The first task in the paper is to answer the question: what is the “self” that the Buddhists are denying? To answer this question, I look at the Abhidharma arguments for the No-Self doctrine and then work back to an interpretation of the self that is the target of such a doctrine. I argue that Buddhists are not just denying the di…Read more
  •  153
    No-Self and the Phenomenology of Ownership
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 96 (1): 14-27. 2018.
    The Abhidharma Buddhist revisionary metaphysics aims to provide an intellectually and morally preferred picture of the world that lacks a self. The first part of the paper claims that the Abhidharma ‘no-self’ view can be plausibly interpreted as a no-ownership view, according to which there is no locus or subject of experience and thus no owner of mental or bodily awarenesses. On this interpretation of the no-self view, the Abhidharma Buddhist metaphysicians are committed to denying the ownershi…Read more
  •  153
    Karma and the problem of evil: A response to Kaufman
    Philosophy East and West 57 (4): 533-556. 2007.
    The doctrine of karma, as elaborated in the Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain religious traditions, offers a powerful explanatory account of the human predicament, and in particular of seemingly undeserved human suffering. Whitley R. P. Kaufman is right to point out that on some points, such as the suffering of children, the occurrence of natural disasters, and the possibility of universal salvation, the karma theory appears, initially at least, much more satisfactory than the attempts made to solve the…Read more
  •  133
    Vows Without a Self
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 1 (20): 1-20. 2023.
    Vows play a central role in Buddhist thought and practice. Monastics are obliged to know and conform to hundreds of vows. Although it is widely recognized that vows are important for guiding practitioners on the path to enlightenment, we argue that they have another overlooked but equally crucial role to play. A second function of the vows, we argue, is to facilitate group harmony and cohesion to ensure the perpetuation of the dhamma and the saṅgha. However, the prominence of vows in the Buddhis…Read more
  •  121
    No speech, never mind!
    Philosophical Psychology 20 (5). 2007.
    In a series of classic papers, Donald Davidson put forward an ingenious argument to challenge the ascription of minds to nonlinguistic animals. Davidson's conclusions have been mercilessly demolished in the literature by cognitive ethologists, but none of them have directly addressed Davidson's argument. First, this paper is an attempt to elucidate and evaluate Davidson's central argument for denying minds to nonlinguistic animals. Davidson's central argument puts forth a challenge to those of u…Read more
  •  109
    Inner Awareness is Essential to Consciousness: A Buddhist-Abhidharma Perspective
    Review of Philosophy and Psychology 8 (1): 83-101. 2017.
    This paper defends the realist representationalist version of the Buddhist-Abhidharma account of consciousness. The account explains the intentionality and the phenomenality of conscious experiences by appealing to the doctrine of self-awareness. Concerns raised by Buddhist Mādhyamika philosophers about the compatibility of reflexive awareness and externality of the objects of perception are addressed. Similarly, the Hindu critiques on the incoherence of the Buddhist doctrine of reflexive awaren…Read more
  •  109
    Self-Conscious Emotions Without a Self
    Philosophers' Imprint 19. 2019.
    Recent discussions of emotions in Buddhism suggest that one of the canonical self-conscious emotions, shame, is an emotion to be endorsed and indeed cultivated. The canonical texts in the Abhidharma Buddhist tradition, endorse hiri as one of the wholesome factors “always found in all good minds” and as one of “the guardians of the world”. Shame is widely taken to be a self-conscious emotion, and so if hiri counts as shame, this seems to be in tension with the central Buddhist claim that we shoul…Read more
  •  103
    Self-awareness: Eliminating the myth of the “invisible subject”
    Philosophy East and West 61 (3): 453-467. 2011.
    In the sixth century a.d., in a debate with the Buddhists about the nature of Self, the well-known Naiyāyika Uddyotakara declared that there is no need prove that the Self or what is referred to by the pronoun “I” exists, for on that score there cannot be any significant disagreement.1 It is only this or that specific metaphysical nature of the self that is the subject of controversy. To limit the scope of the debate at issue here, we employ the same strategy. It is beyond doubt that many cognit…Read more
  •  95
    Eliminating Selves and Persons
    Journal of the American Philosophical Association 7 (3): 273-294. 2021.
    The Buddhist no-self and no-person revisionary metaphysics aims to produce a better structure that is motivated by the normative goal of eliminating, or at least reducing, suffering. The revised structure, in turn, entails a major reconsideration of our ordinary everyday person-related concerns and practices and interpersonal attitudes, such as moral responsibility, praise and blame, compensation, and social treatment. This essay explores the extent to which we must alter and perhaps discard som…Read more
  •  85
    Time-series of ephemeral impressions: the Abhidharma-Buddhist view of conscious experience
    Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 14 (3): 543-560. 2015.
    In the absence of continuing selves or persons, Buddhist philosophers are under pressure to provide a systematic account of phenomenological and other features of conscious experience. Any such Buddhist account of experience, however, faces further problems because of another cardinal tenet of Buddhist revisionary metaphysics: the doctrine of impermanence, which during the Abhidharma period is transformed into the doctrine of momentariness. Setting aside the problems that plague the Buddhist Abh…Read more
  •  83
    Perceptual cognition: A nyaya-Kantian approach
    Philosophy East and West 51 (2): 197-209. 2001.
    It is commonly believed that the given consists of particulars cognized as such in perceptual experiences. Against this belief it is argued that perceptual cognition must be restricted to universal features. A Nyāya-Kantian argument is presented to reveal the incoherence in the very idea of a conception-free awareness of particulars. For the Naiyāyika philosophers and Kant, conceptualization is a necessary ingredient of perceptual experience, since perceptual cognition requires the possibility o…Read more
  •  81
    Contents of experience
    Sophia 48 (3): 237-251. 2009.
    In this paper I aim to situate the Naiyayika theory of perception in contemporary philosophy of mind. Following the ancients, I suggest we reconsider the taxonomy and the assumed interactions between kinds of perceptual content. This reclassification will lead us to reconsider some aspects of the Cartesian conception of mind that continue to influence the work of contemporary theorists. I focus attention on different accounts of sensory perception favoured by ancient Indian Naiyayika philosopher…Read more
  •  80
    A Buddhist Epistemological Framework for Mindfulness Meditation
    Asian Philosophy 25 (1): 65-80. 2015.
    One of the major aims of this article is to provide the theoretical account of mindfulness provided by the systematic Abhidharma epistemology of conscious states. I do not claim to present the one true version of mindfulness, because there is not one version of it in Buddhism; in addition to the Abhidharma model, there is, for example, the nondual Mahāmudrā tradition. A better understanding of a Buddhist philosophical framework will not only help situate meditation practice in its originating tr…Read more
  •  69
    The Self in Early Nyāya: A Minimal Conclusion
    Asian Philosophy 23 (1): 24-42. 2013.
    In this paper I revisit the early Nyāya argument for the existence of a self. In section 1, I reconstruct the argument in Nyāya-sūtra 1.1.10 as an argument from recognition following the interpretation in the Nyāyasūtra-Bhāṣya and the Nyāya-Vārttika. In Section 2, I reassess the plausibility of the Nyāya argument from memory/recognition in the Bhāṣya and the Vārttika in the light of recent empirical research. I conclude that the early Nyāya version of the argument from recognition can only estab…Read more
  •  67
    A Buddhist Explanation of Episodic Memory: From Self to Mind
    Asian Philosophy 24 (1): 14-27. 2014.
    In this paper, I argue that some of the work to be done by the concept of self is done by the concept of mind in Buddhist philosophy. For the purposes of this paper, I shall focus on an account of memory and its ownership. The task of this paper is to analyse Vasubandhu’s heroic effort to defend the no-self doctrine against the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣikas in order to bring to the fore the Buddhist model of mind. For this, I will discuss Vasubandhu’s theory of mind in the early Abhidharma as well as post-Ab…Read more
  •  65
    Self-Control without a Self
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 101 (4): 936-953. 2023.
    Self-control is essential to the Buddhist soteriological project, but it is not immediately clear how we can make sense of it in light of the doctrine of no-self. Exercising control over our actions, thoughts, volitions, and emotions seems to presuppose a conception of self and agency that is not available to the Buddhist. Thus, there seems to be a fundamental mismatch in the practical instructions for exercising control in the Buddhist texts and the doctrine of no-self. In this paper, we develo…Read more
  •  62
    An independent, empirical route to nonconceptual content
    Consciousness and Cognition 18 (2): 439-448. 2009.
    The overall goal of this paper is to offer an independent, empirical route to characterize the content on nonconceptual content. I pursue a recent move by Pylyshyn, a leading cognitive scientist and philosopher of mental representation, who focuses on empirical considerations in favor of nonconceptual representations. Pylyshyn proposes a minimalist view of nonconceptual representations. I offer empirical reasons that force us to go beyond minimalist account and reinstate empirically defensible r…Read more
  •  61
    Perceiving Particulars-as-Such Is Incoherent: A Reply to Mark Siderits
    Philosophy East and West 54 (3): 382-389. 2004.
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Perceiving Particulars-as-such Is Incoherent—A Reply to Mark SideritsMonima ChadhaI am honored by Mark Siderits' response to my article1 and thankful to him for the opportunity it affords me to clarify the arguments and develop the theses presented therein further. My discussion focuses primarily on a pair of epistemological theses drawing attention to what we can and cannot perceive.2 The negative thesis is that we cannot perceive p…Read more
  •  56
    On Knowing Universals: The Nyāya Way
    Philosophy East and West 64 (2): 287-302. 2014.
  •  56
    The Problem of the Unity of Consciousness: A Buddhist Solution
    Philosophy East and West 65 (3): 746-764. 2015.
    In the last decade, the research into the sciences of the mind has witnessed what some aptly call a “consciousness boom”. This boom has resulted in a new willingness to include the earlier frowned-upon discussions of dimensions, traditions, and practices into these sciences. Nowadays it is commonplace to find philosophers and scientists engaging in discussions of Conscious Presence, Subjectivity, Out-of-Body Experiences, Meditation, Phenomenology, and, more recently, Asian—particularly Indian—th…Read more
  •  50
    Experiential Unity without a Self: The Case of Synchronic Synthesis
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 99 (4): 631-647. 2021.
    The manifest fact of experiential unity—namely, that a single experience often seems to be composed of multiple features and multiple objects—was lodged as a key objection to the Buddhist no-self view by Nyāya philosophers in the classical Indian tradition. We revisit the Nyāya-Buddhist debate on this issue. The early Nyāya experiential unity arguments depend on diachronic unification of experiences in memory, but later Nyāya philosophers explicitly widened the scope to incorporate new unity arg…Read more
  •  48
    Reconstructing memories, deconstructing the self
    Mind and Language 34 (1): 121-138. 2018.
    The paper evaluates a well‐known argument for a self from episodic memories—that remembering that I did something or thought something involves experiencing the identity of my present self with the past doer or thinker. Shaun Nichols argues that although it phenomenologically appears to be the case that we are identical with the past self, no metaphysical conclusion can be drawn from the phenomenology. I draw on literature from contemporary psychology and Buddhist resources to arrive at a more r…Read more
  •  48
    Attention, Not Self
    Philosophical Review 128 (3): 352-356. 2019.