Giuseppe Ferraro
Giuseppe Ferraro holds a PhD in Philosophy from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), as well as a degree and master's degree in Philosophy and Political Science from Sapienza University of Rome. He completed postdoctoral studies in Philosophy at both UFMG and the University of Campinas (UniCamp).
Currently serving as Professor of Philosophy and History at Fundação Torino International School in Belo Horizonte, he previously held a position as Visiting Professor at UFMG's Faculty of Philosophy from 2021 to 2023.
An accomplished scholar, Ferraro has authored numerous articles and seven books, including: an award-winning doctoral thesis (published by UFMG Press), recognized by ANPOF as the "best thesis" of the 2013-14 biennium. The first Portuguese translations from Sanskrit of Nāgārjuna's Fundamental Verses of the Middle Way (Phi) and The Dissolution of Controversies (Phi) - the latter being a finalist for the prestigious 2022 Jabuti Award; a comprehensive history of Indian Buddhist philosophy, published in Portuguese (Buddhadharma), Italian (Carocci), and English (Motilal Banarsidass); and an Italian-language monograph (Mimesis) examining the political implications of the determinism/free will debate.
Perception and inference in buddhist epistemology
In the canonical doctrine of the Buddha – the so-called Buddhism of the Nikāyas – we find the distinction between the direct apprehension of particulars and their classification into concepts and universal categories. Within the scope of the "logical-epistemological" school (also known as Sautrāntika-Yogācāra) of Dignāga and Dharmakīrti, this distinction becomes the foundation of an epistemology grounded on two pramāṇas or “means of valid knowledge”: perception (pratyakṣa) and inference (anumāna), whose objects are, respectively, particulars (svalakṣaṇa), which exist in themselves and ultimately, and universals (sāmānyalakṣaṇa), which exist only as mental categories, without correspondence to reality itself. Both the Buddha and his Sautrāntika-Yogācārin epigones recognize a valid use of inference, while also cautioning against its misuse, pointing toward the soteriological ideal of yogipratyakṣa: the awakened being’s epistemic capacity to perceive particular objects free from the imposition of universal categories. I will explore the most significant aspects of this nirvāṇa-oriented epistemology.
©2025 by The XI International Conference of Eastern Philosophy at Unicamp
Brazil-China Study Group