Is Immediate Cognition Possible? The Buddhist Answer

23 January 2007
Leiden, the Netherlands

By Dr Victoria Lysenko, affiliated fellow, sponsored by J. Gonda Foundation

Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences, Affilated fellow IIAS

Does the immediacy of our knowledge about the world, as an access to the "given", constitute a kind of epistemological ideal or has it only a psychological value giving us some reassurance that our senses do not lead us astray? In case it is only a psychological concept or rather a psychological intuition is it still important for us to accommodate it in our theories? Is it possible to set aside the idea of immediacy in favour of a cultural, semiotic, social or whatever determination of our whole knowledge, including sensation? Suppose we give a positive answer to the last question, how could we make a difference between perception and rational knowledge? If, on the other hand, we keep immediacy as a kind of physiological event (sense stimulation), how could we prove that it's still a part of the cognitive process?

In this communication, I address myself to the problem of the immediacy of sensation, or, in more general terms, of perception (pratyaksha) as it was put and discussed in the tradition of Buddhist epistemology (pramanavada). My concern is to show that such Buddhist thinkers as Dignaga, Dharmakirti and their followers were quite aware of the difficulties and traps that may appear either on the acceptance of immediacy or on its rejection. In their disputes with Brahmanical thinkers, first of all the Nayaiyikas and Mimansakas, they were trying to exclude any kind of mental construction (kalpana) from the realm of the immediately given. But, deprived as it is of mental construction, the immediate perception becomes automatically incapable of providing any cognitive information about its object. That is why the Buddhist thinkers had to prove that pratyaksha, in spite of its non-conceptual character, is still a genuine instrument of knowledge (pramana). How did they manage to reconcile the "blindness" of pure sensation with its being part of the cognitive activity?

Date: Tuesday, 23 January 2007

Time: 16: 00 - 17:00 hours
Venue: P.J. Veth Building, Leiden University, Nonnensteeg 1-3, 2311 VJ, Leiden, Room 329

Information

International Intsitute for Asian Studies

Marloes Rozing

P.O. Box 9515

2300 RA Leiden

T +31-(0)71-527 3317

F +31-(0)71-527 4162

m.rozing@.let.leidenuniv.nl