Philosophy Professor Christian Coseru has just published a book with Oxford University Press that advances a comparative approach to philosophy of mind. Perceiving Reality: Consciousness, Intentionality, and Cognition in Buddhist Philosophy, was released on September 5, 2012 and is now available through many online bookstores, including Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.

In this book, Coseru proposes a rigorous and highly original way to answer such questions as: What turns the continuous flow of experience into perceptually distinct objects? Can our verbal descriptions unambiguously capture what it is like to see, hear, or feel? How might we reason about the testimony that perception alone discloses?

“The central idea of this book is that perception should be understood as a practical engagement with the objects, situations and events of our lives, and thus as something that we do rather than something that happens to us,” Coseru explains. “The book offers a sustained argument that Buddhist philosophers have much to contribute to current debates about consciousness, attention, self-awareness, and intentionality.”

Perceiving Reality will be of interest to philosophers, scholars and students of Buddhist philosophy, and to all those with an interest in the study of consciousness and cognition.

From the dust jacket: “This excellent book takes cross-cultural philosophy to a new high point by combining Indian Buddhist philosophy with Western phenomenology and philosophy of mind. Offering a rich account of perceptual consciousness, Coseru also casts new light on attention, sensation, self-awareness, and conceptualization. Philosophers of mind and Buddhist scholars alike will find many new insights throughout this groundbreaking book.” Evan Thompson, author of Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology and the Sciences of Mind (Harvard University Press, 2007).

For more information, contact Coseru at coseruc@cofc.edu or 843.953.1935.