Perceiving Reality

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

• Contents ; 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 ; Bibliography

A well-crafted and important work, a work that will without doubt influence the discussion of Buddhist epistemology, and the analysis of the relation between Buddhist thought and phenomenology for years to come.