Brains, Buddhas and Believing: The Problem of Intentionality in Classical Buddhist and Cognitive-Scientific Philosophy of Mind

Through a careful exploration of the philosophical problems commonly faced by the seventh-century Indian Buddhist thinker Dharmakirti and twenty-first-century philosophers such as Jerry Fodor and Daniel Dennett, Dan Arnold seeks to advance an understanding of both first-millennium Indian arguments and modern debates in philosophy of mind. The issues center on what modern philosophers have called intentionality fact that mental events are about (or mean, or represent) other things. Tracing an account of intentionality through the arguments of Dharmakirti and some of his contemporaneous Indian critics, as well as Kant, Wilfrid Sellars, and John McDowell, Arnold shows how seemingly arcane arguments among first-millennium Indian thinkers can illuminate matters still very much as the heart of present-day philosophy. He wants to look arguably the dominant trajectory of Indian Buddhist philosophy-that stemming from Dharmakirti (c. 600-660 C.E.)-through the lens of central issues in contemporary philosophy of mind. He suggests that there are indeed important respects in which Dharmakirti's project is akin to those of contemporary cognitive-scientific philosophers-and that this is so much the worse for Dharmakirti. We can learn much, both about Dharmakirti and about contemporary philosophy of mind, by appreciating that (and how) some of Dharmakirti's central positions are vulnerable to arguments.…