Walking Along the Paths of Buddhist Epistemology

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The monograph highlights the philosophical arguments offered by Buddhist thinkers on different aspects of knowledge. Various aspects of Buddhist epistemology right from the basic question of what the Buddhists mean by knowledge, the varieties of knowledge according to their belief ad their explanations of the validity of knowledge are examined.

A painstaking work of Prof. Madhumita Chattopadhyay, this study deals with different epistemological topics like the nature of knowledge validity of knowledge, knowledge of knowledge, perception, erroneous perception, inference and its related issues like ascertainment of vyapti, antarvyapati, prasanganuman and fallacies of inference. The author has referred to many primary sources which include different Sanskrit texts as well as the latest secondary literature available on these topics and discusses the important role of concept of absence and the theory of apoha or "negative nominalism" as a substitute for universals I Buddhist metaphysics. An attempt is made to explore whether solutions to modern epistemological problems as found in the Western tradition can be provided from the Buddhist perspective in order to show that Buddhist epistemology has a relevant role to play I the area of epistemology itself.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Madhumita Chattopadhyay

Madhumita Chattopadhyay is a Professor in the department of Philosophy, Jadavpur university from where she completed her PhD on Liar Paradox. Dr. Chattopadhyay was a Fellow of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla in 1999. She visited Japan with the Bukkyo dendo Kyokai fellowship in 2002. She taught at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA under the Fulbright Visiting Lecturer Scheme in 2004. She has also visited Budapest, Hungary in 2007 under the Indo-Hungarian educational exchange Program. Her areas of interest are philosophical logic, Buddhist Philosophy, Indian ethics and Comparative religion. She has authored two books â€“What to do with the Liar and Ratnakirti on Apoha. She has co-edited two other books â€“Ethics: An Anthology and Siksaksetre Parasparik Samparka (in Bengali). She has also published numerous scholarly articles in reputed journals.