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Śankara on memory and the continuity of the self

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 January 2001

BRIAN CARR
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD

Abstract

An issue much discussed by Indian philosophers and Western philosophers alike is one that concerns the need to assume a continuing self (or subject of experience) in giving an account of the world and our experience of it. This paper concentrates on two arguments put forward by the eighth-century AD Indian philosopher Śankara, in a short passage of his commentary on Bādarāyana's Brahmasūtra. The innovative peculiarity of these arguments is that they rest on an appeal to the content of memory judgements. Śankara takes the line that an analysis of the content of memory judgements shows that a Buddhist attempt to reconstrue memory as mere similarity between successive experiences is fundamentally flawed. Our concern, therefore, is whether Śankara's account of the content of memory judgements is correct, and whether it establishes the required continuity.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2000 Cambridge University Press

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