RT Review
T1 Consciousness, Idealism, and Skepticism: Reflections on Jay Garfield's Engaging Buddhism
JF Sophia
VO 57
IS 4
SP 559
OP 563
A1 Schwitzgebel, Eric
A2 Garfield, Jay L. 1955-
A2 Garfield, Jay L. 1955-
LA English
PB Springer Netherlands
YR 2018
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1664844198
AB Jay Garfield's Engaging Buddhism admirably shows the relevance of Indian philosophy to the interests of mainstream analytic Anglophone philosophers. Garfield deploys the Indian tradition to critique phenomenal realism, the view that there really are qualia or phenomenal properties-that there really is 'something it's like' to be undergoing the experience you are undergoing right now. I argue that Garfield's critique probably turns on a false dilemma that omits the possibility of introspection as a fallible tool for getting at a real stream of experience that may or may not be accurately reported. Garfield also argues that if we are phenomenal realists, metaphysical idealism remains a philosophical possibility, whereas if we join him in rejecting phenomenal realism then we can also justifiably reject metaphysical idealism. I accept this conditional but reverse its valence: One advantage of phenomenal realism, and also of engaging with the Indian philosophical tradition, is that it opens up wonderful possibilities, like metaphysical idealism, that mainstream analytic Anglophone philosophers tend to too swiftly dismiss.
K1 Idealism
K1 Indian Philosophy
K1 Phenomenal realism
K1 Skepticism
K1 Yogācāra
K1 Rezension
DO 10.1007/s11841-018-0670-9