ABSTRACT
The problem of consciousness investigated in this volume is a problem primarily for physicalists. Dharmakı¯rti, like all other Indian Buddhist philosophers, rejects physicalism. 1 The motivation behind the panBuddhist consensus on physicalism is soteriological in nature: if a sentient being is no more than a body and a brain, then rebirth would seem to be ruled out, and at death everyone e ortlessly attains the professed Buddhist goal of cessation of rebirth. While this might be his motive for rejecting physicalism, Dharmakı¯rti nevertheless must supply an argument in response to the physicalist threat to his religious practice. We will examine the argument he provides. 2 But since it turns out to be unpromising, we will also examine his claim that consciousness is necessarily refl exive, to see if this might be used to construct a better reason to question a reductive physicalist account of sentience.
