Thinker · TH-0124
Dharmakīrti
Dharmakīrti was an Indian Buddhist philosopher, traditionally associated with Nalanda, who developed Dignāga's theory of the means of knowledge (pramāṇa) into a comprehensive system.…
धर्मकीर्ति
Also known as Dharmakirti
c. 6th – 7th century CE · India (Nalanda, by tradition)
Traditions: Buddhist
Dharmakīrti was an Indian Buddhist philosopher, traditionally associated with Nalanda, who developed Dignāga's theory of the means of knowledge (pramāṇa) into a comprehensive system. He held that there are only two sources of knowledge, perception and inference, both grounded in causal efficacy: what is real is what can produce effects. His work became the foundation of later Buddhist epistemology in India and Tibet. His exact dates are uncertain.
Key ideas
- Only perception and inference are genuine sources of knowledge.
- The real is what has causal efficacy (arthakriyā); only momentary particulars are ultimately real.
- Perception is free of conceptual construction; concepts work by exclusion (apoha).
- Valid inference rests on natural relations of identity or causation between reason and conclusion.
Major works
- Pramāṇavārttika (Commentary on the Means of Knowledge)
- Pramāṇaviniścaya (Ascertainment of the Means of Knowledge)
- Nyāyabindu (Drop of Reasoning)
In the conversation
- Discussion Udayana, Ibn Sina and Leibniz: three arguments for a first cause that do not need a beginning
- Question Is Vasubandhu’s doctrine of momentariness the same as modern stage theory?
- Question What is apoha, and how can a word mean something by excluding everything else?
- Question One source of knowledge, two, four, five or six? Why Indian schools argued over the count
- Discussion Frege said logic is not psychology. A cognitive scientist would like a word
- Discussion A thousand years of Buddhists and Vedāntins arguing about the self: failure or success?
- Question How is apoha supposed to work? ‘Cow’ means ‘not non-cow’ sounds circular to me
- Discussion Dignāga’s apoha and Frege’s sense are answers to different questions
- Debate Sellars was right that raw experience can cause a belief but never justify one
- Debate Dharmottara’s mirage is not really a Gettier case, and calling it one flattens both traditions
- Discussion Seeing before naming: are Dignāga and Merleau-Ponty saying the same thing about perception?
- Question What are Udayana’s arguments for God, and whom was he arguing against?
- Debate The self-defeat charge against the Cārvākas attacks a position they probably did not hold
- Question What is apoha, and does defining by exclusion help with the frog-and-fly problem?