ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 is concerned with the way the Pratyabhijñā pursues its main apologetic purpose, that is to say, how it counters the Buddhist criticism of selfhood examined in the previous chapter. The Pratyabhijñā’s thinkers focus on the way memory works and argue that a past event cannot be recollected without assuming the existence of a permanent self that persists over time. Their crucial argument is that knowledge is a self-revealing event, and as such, it cannot be the content of other knowledge episodes. In their view, the explanation of memory the Buddhists defend, which is founded on the idea that a past event is recollected through a chain of causally linked cognitions, is inadequate.
