We are delighted to welcome our new member Karmen Yap!
Karmen Yap (葉嘉雯) is a PhD researcher in the joint doctoral programme of Ghent University (Ghent Centre for Buddhist Studies) and National Chengchi University, Taiwan, under the supervision of Prof. Bart Dessein and Prof. Lin Chen-kuo. Her research focuses on Yogācāra epistemology and contemporary analytic philosophy, with particular attention to the Yogācāra–Madhyamaka debates in Indian and Chinese Buddhism and to Buddhist pramāṇa theory.
Her dissertation, Engaging Dharmapāla and Wilfrid Sellars on Yogācāra Epistemology and Foundationalism, revisits the sixth-century Emptiness–Existence dispute (空有之諍) between Bhāviveka and Dharmapāla. It reads the dispute as an epistemological controversy rather than a purely metaphysical one. The project sets Bhāviveka’s three critiques of the three-nature theory alongside Sellars’s critique of the Myth of the Given and his distinction between the manifest and scientific images. On that basis it asks whether Dharmapāla’s Yogācāra is committed to foundationalism, and argues that non-conceptual cognition can be epistemically significant without serving as a justificatory foundation. The dissertation also includes the first English translation of the chapter “Refuting Permanence” (破常品) of Dharmapāla’s Dasheng guang bailun shilun 大乘廣百論釋論, his commentary on Āryadeva’s Catuḥśataka.
Karmen holds an MA in Philosophy from National Tsing Hua University, where her thesis read William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience from a Buddhist experiential perspective. She also holds a BS in Finance (magna cum laude) and Asian Area Studies from Seton Hall University. She has presented her work at conferences in Taiwan and Japan, including at the University of Tokyo. She has served as a research assistant on NCCU projects in Buddhist philosophy and cognitive science, and helped organize the international conference Dignāga and His Philosophical Legacy (2025).