Perception

Introduction

Matilal, who held the Spalding Chair of Eastern Religions and Ethics at Oxford from 1976, published the book with Clarendon Press in 1986. He reconstructs the long debates between Nyaya, Buddhist and other Indian thinkers about perception: whether we perceive external objects or only mental forms, whether perception can be conceptual, how illusions are to be explained and what makes a cognition count as knowledge. He treats these debates as contributions to epistemology in their own right and argues them out in the terms of contemporary analytic philosophy, not as historical curiosities. The book is a key work of the comparative philosophy that Matilal championed.

Connections

Builds on

• Jewel of Reflection on the Truth (Tattvacintamani)c. 1325 · Gangesha

Responds to

• Pramanasamuccayac. 520 · Dignaga