Pawel Odyniec, who is among the foremost experts on Vedānta and on K.C. Bhattacharya, organised a conference that looks extremely thought-provoking on May 22nd–24th. Please read more about the participants (among which Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, James Madaio, Jessica Frazier, Karl-Stephan Bouthilette…) and the program, and how to register at the link below:
https://konferens.ht.lu.se/spiritual-exercises
Category Archives: epistemology
Thoughts on Realisms interlinked by Arindam Chakrabarti/3
Main thesis: While we move from realism about objects to realism about subjects and other subjects, Arindam’s commitment to naïve realism decreases. Since I have discussed in the first two previous posts about how Arindam’s methodology makes him do philosophy while talking with other philosophers, let me now say that he is moving from talking mostly with Naiyāyikas to engaging closely with Abhinavagupta. And in fact in his interview with M. Keating Arindam had complained that I had called him a ‘staunch realist’ in a previous post. I now know why, given that he is less of a realist in this second part of the book.
(The inclination towards Abhinavagupta is highlighted also in Ram-Prasad’s book review.)
First, the facts: The first part defended realism about objects, this second part is about the knowing subject. Arindam argues against fictionalism (especially in chapter 15, entitled “Fictionalism about the mental”), and in favour of the persistence through time of the knowing subject as proven through memory and recognition, but also through our capacity to correct our errors (how else could one correct oneself, if there were not a subject who is aware of the mistake and goes back to it?).
This leads to an important subtopic, namely the epistemology of the knowing subject, which occupies at least two chapters, namely “In Defense of an Inner Sense” (chapter 13) and “Our Knowledge and Error about Our Own Cognitions” (chapter 14).
Another interesting subtopic regards the nature of the defended subject. I have already revealed that Arindam does not defend the Naiyāyika ātman (which is inherently quality-less), but rather a full-fledged knowing subject, closer to an aham than to an ātman. Ram-Prasad’s review says that Arindam is more comfortable with P. Strawson’s concept of person. In Sanskrit terms, one might want to go back to the dialogue with Abhinavagupta (who gets the idea of aham, I believe, from Mīmāṃsā), but Arindam also adds further remarks on the usage of the first-person pronoun (chapter 10). This, in turn, leads to the problem of solipsism and the existence of other knowing subjects (chapter 11). The connection with Abhinavagupta also enables Arindam to discuss a topic which is very much discussed in the Pratyabhijñā school, namely how can one know a subject *qua* subject? Does not one transform it into an object, thus violating its nature, as soon as one approaches it (chapter 12)?
In fact, chapter 11 (a refutation of solipsism entitled “The Self at Other Times and in Other Bodies”) is connected with both the establishment of a first-person-like subject (the topic of chapter 10) and with the inaccessibility of subjects to objectification (dealt with in chapter 12). If we can know other subjects qua subjects, we can at the same time establish the existence of other subjects and the possibility of their non-objectification. Arindam does not mention it, but I can’t avoid thinking of Buber’s “I and Thou” for its emphasis on two modalities of knowledge (an objectifying one, which knows others as things, and a relation one, through which subjects enter in a dialogue).
Chapter 12 also discusses anuvyavasāya, the second cognition occurring after a first cognition during which one becomes aware of having had that first cognition. If we know our cognitions only through anuvyavasāya, then we are not only objectifying other subjects while knowing them, but even ourselves. In fact, we can’t know even ourselves *qua* subjects. By contrast, if Prabhākara is right and each cognitive act includes an awareness of the object, the subject and the cognition, we can know ourselves from within.
Chapter 13 discusses the elusive inner sense faculty (manas) and its domain. Manas is generally invoked to explain one’s perception of inner qualia, such as pleasure and pain and to justify the phenomenon of attention (and lack of thereof) and the impossibility of simultaneous perceptions.
Further, chapter 14 also discusses how manas works as the sense faculty for the successive awareness of a just occurred awareness event. In this case, the contact (sannikarṣa) at stake occurs not directly between manas and the object of the preceding awareness event, but rather via the awareness event itself. It is through this mānasapratyakṣa (my label, Arindam does not use it), that we can move from the perception of an apple to the awareness of “I have seen an apple”.
Moreover, Arindam also mentions manas’ role in the context of language-based knowledge: “In Navya Nyāya semantics, the resulting understanding of meaning is not classified as knowledge by testimony (śabdabodha) or information gathered from words, but as make-believe awareness generated by the manas (āhāryamanasa bodha), which can creatively put together a cow and chairing [found together in a non-sensical poem]” (p. 152). The āhārya (‘artificial’) suggests that manas can also play an active role, and in fact Arindam points out to this possibility while discussing the Yuktidīpikā stance about it. Can this work also in Nyāya? This artificial language-based understanding seems to suggest that manas can concoct a non-committal understanding. Along this line, is manas also able to lead to synaesthetic judgements (“I like this music more than I enjoyed the smell of the jasmine flowers”)? I would be inclined to say that it cannot (since it is a sense faculty, it cannot be responsible for judgements), but any synaesthetic judgement by the buddhi presupposes the manas as being able to run from one sense experience to the next so as to make the buddhi able to formulate a comparative judgement. Let me also follow Arindam’s lead and add an “Unscientific post-script”: Can manas also be responsible for proprio-perception (perception of one’s own body and its position in space as standing, sitting etc.)? Of inner sensations such as hunger? Or are they awareness events and as such cognised like any other awareness event?
Chapter 14 discusses epistemology and intrinsicism (svataḥprāmāṇy) and extrinsicism (parataḥprāmāṇya) in connection with some theories in Analytic epistemology, primarily internalism vs externalism, and then also fallibilism and reflexivism. I discussed aspects of this topic elsewhere (in a nutshell: I think that intrinsic validity disjoins elements that are generally found conjoined in internalism, namely access to cognitions and no external reasons needed). I am also not completely convinced of the connection between infallibilism and intrinsicism. On p. 160, Arindam writes: “If intrinsicism is correct, then once a true cognition is registered, it would be impossible to entertain a doubt about whether it is knowledge or error. But in certain circumstances, when for the first time cognition about an unfamiliar object occurs, it is often made the subject of subsequent doubt”. The last step evokes Gaṅgeśa’s distinction between familiar and unfamiliar circumstances and doubt being the default response only in the latter case. Gaṅgeśa’s was a good step forward if compared to the previous position considering doubt the default attitude in all cases (so that we would not be able to prepare a coffee with our usual coffee machine in the morning before having verified that it is really a coffee machine, that the tin really contains coffee, that the liquid coming from the tap is really water etc. etc.).
Still, I don’t think that the one described by Arindam is a counter-argument against intrinsicism. A svataḥprāmāṇyavādin would say that even in the case of an unfamiliar object, we initially cognise it as X, even if immediately thereafter we might switch on the light, correct ourselves and realise it was not an X but a Y. Overturning the previous cognition is not excluded by svataḥprāmāṇya (in fact, it is its very foundation!), that rather attacks the idea that doubt is our first response to familiar (or unfamiliar) circumstances.
A last word on methodology and the need of Global Philosophy, by Arindam himself: “Within the insular power-enclaves of philosophy, even a mention of non-Western theories […] is punished by polite exclusion. Well-preserved ignorance about other cultures and mono-cultural hubris define the mainstream of professional philosophy in Euro-America. In many cases, the discovery of exciting connections, sharp oppositions, or imaginable parallelisms is greeted with condescension or cold neglect” (p. 145).
Uddyotakara on absence (NV on 1.1.4)
Uddyotakara is perhaps the first extant Nyāya thinker discussing six types of contact in his commentary on the definition of direct perception (pratyakṣa) in his commentary on NS 1.1.4. By doing so, he can add a specific kind of contact in charge for grasping absence. He calls it viśeṣaṇaviśeṣyabhāva, possibly `the condition of being specified by a specifier (being absence)’.
Unfortunately, he does not seem to elaborate thereon. Vācaspati elaborates extensively and discusses absent pots on the floor, the sheer floor and all we know after Kumārila. Why does Uddyotakara not elaborate thereon?
Probably because someone else (who?) in the tradition had mentioned this possibility and so readers would have understood what he meant by the mention of the sixth kind of contact.
Moreover, is Uddyotakara’s viśeṣaṇaviśeṣyabhāva the same as what will be later known as saṃyuktaviśeṣaṇatā ‘the fact of being an attribute of something being in contact [with the sense faculties]’?
Uddyotakara on absence as an instrument of knowledge: NS 2.2.1–12
What is the pre-Kumārila position of Nyāya authors on absence as an instrument of knowledge? There seem to have been several shifts, from inference to perception (and then again to inference in some cases after Kumārila).
At the end of an epistemological discussion in a Sanskrit text, it is standard to discuss the sources of knowledge (pramāṇa) you don’t accept. Long-term memory (smṛti) has most likely been already excluded at the beginning, while discussing the definition of pramāṇa, so that it is not mentioned among the specific candidates.
Within Mīmāṃsā, Kumārila excludes (at the end of the discussion on abhāva) sambhava (inclusion) and aitihya (tradition). Within Nyāya, Gautama excludes these two, as well as two sources accepted by Kumārila, i.e. arthāpatti (cogent evidence) and abhāva (absence).
The discussion starts in NS 2.2.1, where an opponent says: “There are not 4 sources of knowledge, because [also] tradition, inclusion, cogent evidence and absence as sources of knowledge”. The discussion then goes on for several pages. NS 2.2.2 says that aitihya is nothing but linguistic communication (śabda) and inclusion is inference (anumāna). This is what Kumārila also says. What is different is that Gautama says that also arthāpatti and abhāva are nothing but inference.
This is remarkable, because the classical position of Nyāya authors (e.g., Jayanta) about absence is that this is known through sense-perception (not inference!). Only after Kumārila’s objections and through Gaṅgeśa etc. they say that in some cases inference is indeed needed (e.g., when you infer now that a certain person was not in a place you visited earlier today).
NS 2.2.3ff focus on arthāpatti, which is now said to be inconclusive (anaikāntika). NS 2.2.7 focuses on abhāva, which is now said to be not a pramāṇa at all, because there is not a corresponding prameya. Please notice that early Nyāya does not accept abhāva as a separate category, whereas this will be later added as the seventh padārtha.
Uddyotakara explains: abhāva is not a source of knowledge, because there is no content for it. Uddyotakara also adds something which seems new, namely that there is indeed a pramāṇa at stake, but that this has as its content something existing (again, weird, given the status of abhāva as padārtha…).
NS 2.2.8 speaks again in favour of abhāva, insofar as it is used to cognise, among marked things, the ones which are not marked.
This seems to prove that abhāva is indeed a source of knowledge, as explained by Vātsyāyana and Uddyotakara. NS 2.2.9 goes back to the problem that there is no prameya for such a pramāṇa.
Uddyotakara on NS 2.2.12 explains that there are only two types of absence (prior and posterior absence). This is relevant, because Kumārila had discussed absence as being four-fold (thus, Uddyotakara clearly did not know this classification, since he does not even take notice of it). Interestingly, Vācaspati, commenting on Uddyotakara, feels the need to add that the fact that he mentions two does not mean that he refutes the others.
What does this all tell us about early Nyāya until Uddyotakara and absence?
- 1. that Uddyoataka only knows a 2-fold classification of abhāva as prameya.
- 2. that an early position saw abhāva as part of anumāna (this seems to be also Uddyotakara’s position at the end of his commentary on NS 2.2.2).
- 3. that abhāva is considered a useful epistemological category, e.g., to speak about things lacking a certain characteristic.
The above is based on the commentary on NS 2.2.1–12. I will come back to later passages of the NV.
Addendum: Jhā translates abhāva as “antithesis”. Don’t ask me why.
Śālikanātha on perception
May 2020 on this blog has mostly been dedicated to Śālikanātha. A short summary of the most important points we have seen in the last weeks:
How to define valid cognition if you are Śālikanātha (analysis of various criteria)?
Śālikanātha discusses the definition of a source of knowledge (pramāṇa) at the beginning of his Pramāṇapārāyaṇa and analyses various criteria.
First of all, he discusses the criterion of avisaṃvāditva ‘non deviation’ (used by Dharmakīrti and his school) and shows how this is not enough to exclude memory (smṛti). Dharmakīrti could exclude memory because it is conceptual, but this would exclude also inference (anumāna).
Next suggestion (again from Dharmakīrti’s school): using causal efficacy (arthakriyā) as criterion. But in this way memory should again be considered a source of knowledge, since it can be causally efficacious. One could say that, unlike in memory, in the case of inference there is a connection (though indirect) with the object. But this, again, applies to memory as well!
A new attempt is to say that a source of knowledge is identified insofar as it leads to know something unknown (aprāptaprāpaka), which is a criterion typical of Kumārila. A variant thereof is to say that it causes to act people who were previously inactive (pravartakatva), but this would lead to the fact that non-conceptual cognitions (nirvikalpa) would not be sources of knowledge, given that they cannot promote any action.
Why not using aprāptaprāpaka as criterion? Because this would not apply to the case of continuous cognitions (dhārāvāhikajñāna). These are cognitions like the ones originated out of continuously looking at the same object. These count, according to Śālikanātha, as sources of knowledge, but would not be such if the criterion of aprāptaprāmāṇaka were to be the defining one.
What about dṛḍha ‘sure’ as criterion, then?
Here Śālikanātha can give voice to the Prābhākara theory of knowledge. First of all, he asks, what would dṛḍha exclude? If it excludes doubt, then this is wrong, since there is no doubtful cognition. What we call ‘doubt’ is instead the sum of two distinct cognitions (readers might want to recall the fact that for the Nyāya school, doubt is a cognition in which two alternatives are exactly equally probably).
As for erroneous cognitions (bhrānti), these also don’t need to be excluded from the definition of knowledge, because there are no erroneous cognitions. What looks like an erroneous cognitions, is at most an incomplete one. For instance, mistaking mother-of-pearl for silver means rightly recognising a shining thing on the beach + remembering silver. The latter part is not knowledge, but just because it is memory. Śālikanātha similarly treats the case of jaundice and other perceptual errors.
His conclusion is a minimal definition of knowledge: pramāṇam anubhūtiḥ “knowledge is experience”.
(cross-posted on the Indian Philosophy blog, where you can also read some interesting comments)
How to define valid cognition (against Buddhists) if you are Śālikanātha? (Updated)
The beginning of Śālikanātha’s Pramāṇapārāyaṇa is dedicated to a discussion of how to define pramāṇa ‘instrument of valid cognition’. As it was custom since Dignāga’s innovation in the philosophical style, Śālikanātha quotes and refutes several positions.
The first ones are various Buddhist positions. Dharmakīrti’s definition connects the criterion of avisaṃvāditva literally ‘being non-controversial’ but more likely ‘being non-erroneous’ to that of arthakriyā ‘causal efficacy’. Śālikanātha refutes it on the ground of the fact that this does not exclude smṛti ‘memory’, which can also be avisaṃvādin. At this point, various Buddhist voices try to fix this possible flaw in the definition. It is not clear to me how many of them are historically attested and how many are concocted by Śālikanātha as logically possible responses. Some of them claim that smṛti is excluded because it is conceptual (vikalpa), but this is a dangerous move, since Śālikanātha can immediately reply that, based on that, also inference should be refuted, since also inference is conceptual.
A further possibility is to say that smṛti is not pramāṇa because it lacks arthakriyā. But is this really the case? One might say that the object of smṛti is always something past and that it therefore cannot lead you to attain any present object. However, this is also true, in some sense, for anumāna (remember that in the case of anumāna you usually infer the cause from its effect and that inferring the effect from the cause is not a valid anumāna). One might correct the previous point by suggesting that in anumāna the inferential reason is connected to the probandum, which can therefore be said to be attained. However, this, again, holds true also for smṛti, since also in the case of smṛti there is a connection with the object, via mnestic traces (saṃskāra). Why should this be so different from the case of anumāna?
The sequence of voices makes it difficult for one to identify the main speaker and the various uttarapakṣin, but the main thread remains clear, namely:
- Dharmakīrti’s definition is too broad, since it does not exclude smṛti
- Other Buddhist attempts to exclude smṛti are futile, since they would end up excluding also anumāna
So, how can smṛti be excluded? Only through the Mīmāṃsā definition of pramāṇa, namely aprāptaprāpaka ‘causing one to understand something which was not known before’.
(cross-posted on the Indian Philosophy Blog, where you can read also some interesting comments)
Various types of bādha (in epistemology, deontics, Śabara, Kumārila…)
As it is often the case for other terms (e.g., nitya or even pramāṇa), various terms which are used technically in the epistemological debates between, among others, Mīmāṃsā, Nyāya, and Buddhist epistemological school, also have a deontic-ritual background. This applies also to bādha, whose epistemological meaning is only the tip of the iceberg of its Mīmāṃsā use.
In epistemology, it seems to mean `invalidation’, whereas in deontics, it means `suspension’ (which could be again brought back to use). Could the two be reconciled? Yes, if only one considers that within the svataḥ prāmāṇya framework any invalidation is necessarily temporary.
As for Śabara’s vs Kumārila’s use of bādha, the first thing one notices is that Śabara deals with bādha within the latter part of the PMS-Bhāṣya, namely within the discussion of vikṛti ‘ectype’ rituals. That is, Śabara primarily discusses bādha as the blocking mechanism in case something of the archetype ritual does not extend to the ectype one. Therefore, Kumārila has to invent a new space for bādha while commenting on the balābala-adhikaraṇa within the first group of books in the PMS-Bhāṣya. There, Kumārila treats bādha as a general device, not related to the prakṛti-to-vikṛti extension. This treatment is then adopted also by later Mīmāṃsā authors (MBP, MNS, Āpadevī etc.).
Jhā (1942, chapter XXIX) mixes the two understandings insofar as he calls bādha `exclusion’ and introduces it as part of the prakṛti-to-vikṛti extension of details (corresponding to its role in the ŚBh), but then moves on (from end of p. 342 onwards) and discusses it in the light of later sources, influenced by Kumārila’s approach.
Seeing absences through metacognitive feelings or dispositions
Anna Farennikova had claimed that absence must be perceptually known especially because the phenomenology of it shows that we know it immediately, not via a secondary reflection. This is basically Udayana’s point about absence being known via perception because of its being sākṣātkāra ‘making present (its object, namely absence)’. (I thank Jack Beaulieu for having discussed the topic with me).
Beside this main argument, two additional points again the idea that absence is obtained through a secondary reflection (what she calls the cognitive view) by AF are the following:
- 2. the “phenomenology of absence exhibits resilience to change of belief”. Suppose we find out that the keys are not missing from the table where they should be, it’s just a skilfully devised mirror illusion that makes us think that this is the case (example adapted from Martin and Dokic 2013). We would still perceive their absence. Hence, absence is not a judgement.
- 3. perceiving absence gives one an adaptive advantage (e.g., in the case of perceiving the absence of predators) and for this purpose it must happen quickly and without intermediation.
3. is, unless I am misunderstanding it, weak. For instance, some people claim they can feel when people are looking at them from behind. Others think that the first ones are not really perceiving other people’s looks, but rather inferring them out of the fact that the person behind them has not been moving for a while, etc. Having such a perceptual capacity would surely be an adaptive advantage, but would we want to claim that it is therefore perceptual?
1+2 are, by contrast, quite strong and any epistemology of absences will need to be able to account for them. (Are they, by the way, also strong arguments against Dharmakīrti’s theory of absences being only inferred? Not really, since Dharmakīrti wants to account for *knowledge*, not for illusory cognitions, like the ones hinted at in 2.)
Anna Farennikova’s work on absence as being perceptually known prompted an answer by Jean-Rémy Martin and Jerôme Dokic. Martin and Dokic agree with Farennikova against the “cognitive view” of the grasping of absences. But, they think that they can counter Farennikova’s claims 1+2 through what they call the “metacognitive view”. They start by saying that the grasping of absence is accompanied by a feeling of surprise, just like every time something unexpected occurs (including an unpredicted element in a sequence, not just its absence). Metacognitive feelings “reflect a specific kind of affective experience caused by subpersonal monitoring of (perceptual) processes” (p. 118).
The idea is really interesting, if only one accepts the existence of metacognitive feelings. Vaidya, Bilimoria and Shaw (2016) introduce further elements in the debate, namely:
- a. there can be experience of absence even without surprise. Suppose (the example is mine), I tell you “Come to see how my flat looks like now that I sold my grand piano. You come to my flat and grasp the absence of the grand piano, even if you are not surprised by it.
- b. the absence can be explained through the assumption of dispositions for the cognition of X.
“Seeing absence”
I am reading “Seeing absence” by Anna Farennikova (2013) on the epistemological experience of knowing that something is absent. The article (kindly suggested to me by Jack Beaulieu) deals with exactly the topic dealt with by Mīmāṃsā and Nyāya authors speaking of abhāva (absence) and seemingly in the same terms! (more…)