DHARMAKIRTI

flourished 7th century Indian Buddhist philosopher and logician. He asserted that inference and direct perception are the only valid kinds of knowledge and that, in the processes of the mind, cognition and the cognized belong to distinct moments. According to him, the object of inference, either analytical or synthetic, is the universal ( samanyalaksana) and the object of perceptionwhich may be perceived by the five senses, by the mind, by self-consciousness, or by the practice of Yogais the pure particular (svalaksana). Dharmakirti claimed that every person is a transitory being and, in his turn, assumes the continuous existence of an individual. The individual is a continuation of moments, compiled by imaginative and discriminative thinking.