Sankara on memory and the continuity of self (On the innovative peculiarity of eighth-century-AD Indian Buddhist philosophy)

An issue much discussed by Indian philosophers and Western philosophers ali ke 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. Th is paper concentrates on two arguments put forward by the eighth-century AD Indian philosopher Sankara, in a short passage of his commentary on Badara yana's "Brahmasutra". The innovative peculiarity of these arguments is that they rest on an appeal to the content of memory judgements. Sankara takes the line that an analysis of the content of judgements shows that a Buddhis t attempt to reconstrue memory as mere similarity between successive experi ences is fundamentally flawed. Our concern, therefore, is whether Sankara's account of the content of memory judgements is correct, and whether it est ablishes the required continuity.