1. sense-perception (indriyapratyakṣa)
2. yogic perception
3. self-awareness of cognitions (svasaṃvedana)
4. mānasapratyakṣa (used to access immediately preceding cognitive events)

For Nyāya epistemologists, it includes:

1. sense-perception (indriyapratyakṣa)
2. yogic perception
3. mānasapratyakṣa (used to access immediately preceding cognitive events) (including anuvyavasāya)

svasaṃvedana is refused, because cognitions are not transparent. Instead, they are perceptible through anuvyavasāya, which is a form of mānasapratyakṣa.

For Mīmāṃsā epistemologists, it includes:

1. sense-perception (indriyapratyakṣa)

Please notice that sense-perception includes, for all Sanskrit philosophers I am aware of, six senses, one of which is manas, which is meant to grasp internal events, typically sukha or duḥkha.

Now, where does Kumārila’s ahampratyaya ‘cognition of the I’ fall into? It cannot be a case of mānasapratyakṣa, because this one is not accepted as a separate way to accept cognitive events (for thorough refutations of it from a Mīmāṃsā point of view, one can check Śālikanātha’s Pramāṇapārāyaṇa, pratyakṣapariccheda or Vācaspati’s Nyāyakaṇikā, on VV chapter 8). It could be a case of indriyapratyakṣa, with the manas working as the sense faculty, but this is odd, given that manas as a sense faculty should grasp a sensory object, like sukha or duḥkha and it is unclear how the aham could qualify as one.

However, this rather generous account of perception comes with some serious and specific boundaries. Perception, to begin with, is only about the present. It cannot grasp the past nor the future. There is no yogic super-sensuous perception that would be able to grasp such features of reality.
Kumārila also denies that cognitions are self-aware (this self-awareness, or svasaṃvedana is considered to be a form of perception by Buddhist epistemologists) and rather claims that we become aware that a cognition has taken place only retrospectively, through arthāpatti. Thus, besides denying self-awareness he also denies the Naiyāyika anuvyavasāya or `apprehension of a previous cognition’, through which one becomes aware of a previous mental event. Why is anuvyavasāya not acceptable for Kumārila? Presumably because it is about something no longer present (this might be the main reason for his general denial of mānasapratyakṣa if it is about prior thoughts).
The only seeming exception is ahampratyaya `cognition of ourselves qua-I’, which grasps something other than an `external’ object. Kumārila still thinks that the I is not a construct, but something objectively real, but he claims that in that specific case we have direct access to it. How exactly is still under investigation (see my previous posts on the matter), but my current understanding is that ahampratyaya grasps the I-as-knower while it is knowing something. It cannot grasp a previous I, otherwise it would violate the boundaries of sense-perception discussed above.
Thus, as much as Kumārila is generous with regard to regular sense-perception, he is strict in denying any sort of perception beyond it.

Buddhist Epistemological School (Dharmakīrti): the self does not exist. The only thing that exists is a stream (santāna) of causally linked momentary cognitions. Cognitions are self-aware of themselves qua cognitions (svasaṃvedana). This is not contradictory, because each cognition has a perceiver and a perceived aspect (grāhaka and grāhya-ākāra respectively).
Nyāya: the self is known only through inference (Vātsyāyana, Jayanta); it is known also through perception (Uddyotakara, Udayana)*
Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā (Kumārila): we have direct access to our self through ahampratyaya `cognition of the I’. No need to infer it, since perception trumps inference and Mīmāṃsā authors require novelty as a criterion for knowledge, so that repeating what is already known through ahampratyaya would not count as knowledge.

The first Nyāya position might lead to problems if connected with the acceptance of yogic perception. Yogins can indeed perceive the self, according to all Naiyāyikas. Why not all other beings, given that perception requires a conjunction of self+manas+sense faculties, that the self is pervasive (vibhu) and that spatial limits are not needed for perception, as shown by the case of absence? Jayanta explains that the self is partless and that a partless thing cannot simultaneously be perceiver and perceived (cf. Kumārila’s argument against the Buddhist idea of cognitions’ having a perceiver and a perceived aspect and Kumārila’s claiming that this does not apply to the self, which is complex and not partless).

The Mīmāṃsā position requires the joint work of intrinsic validity and falsification: some I-cognitions are not about the ātman, since they are indeed falsified (e.g., “I am thin”, which only refers to the body).
Other I-cognitions are not, e.g., cognising ourselves qua knowers and recognising ourselves as the same knower who knew something in the past.

*I am grateful to Alex Watson for discussing the topic with me per email, on top of his decades of work on the topic!

—Śālikanātha (around the 9th c.), a thinker of the Prābhākara subschool of Mīmāṃsā, has been incredibly influential for almost all Sanskrit philosophy

—a typical methodology of Sanskrit philosophers for finding the truth is examining definitions and refining them by eliminating what is wrong or superfluous and trying to find the perfect definition (see here for Śālikanātha’s refutation of the Buddhist definitions)

—concerning the issue of knowledge, Śālikanātha’s perfect definition of it sounds pretty minimalist: knowledge is experience. This is enough, he thinks, because it excludes memory (which is not experience) and because there is no need to exclude doubt or error. In fact, doubt is not a single cognition but a sum of two correct cognitions. Erroneous cognitions, in turn, do not exist as such, but are only incomplete cognitions. For instance, we might believe that something shiny we see on the beach is silver, whereas it is in fact mother-of-pearl. This is not a real mistake, since the “this” part of the cognition “This is silver” is correct. The “silver” part is just a memory, since it corresponds to the silver we have seen elsewhere and we have been reminded of because of the equally shiny mother-of-pearl. Thus, experience are always correct and “knowledge is experience” is a sufficient definition of knowledge.

What we are going to see today:
Śālikanātha’s definition of sense-perception

Why should we care?
1. Because Śālikanātha is a great thinker, who influenced almost all later Sanskrit philosophers.
2. Because Śālikanātha is an elegant writer, a pleasure to read.
3. Because Śālikanātha has interesting arguments to offer on the topic at stake.

On 3: One might think that the definition of “sense-perception” is easy and that there is no need to discuss it at length. We would probably all agree that it depends on sense-faculties and much of the disagreement has already been dealt with under the heading of the definition of knowledge (such as the issue of infallibilism).
However, this is not the case. First of all, Śālikanātha needs to discuss the (wrong, in his opinion) definitions coming from Dharmakīrti’s school, Nyāya and Mīmāṃsā itself. Much of these definitions is wrong because of reasons already discussed in connection with the definition of pramāṇa.

Accordingly, his definition of sense-perception will be minimalist: A direct experience (sākṣātpratīti) generated from the connection of the sense-faculties with the knowable items, i.e., substances, universals and qualities, with or without concepts:

sākṣātpratītiḥ pratyakṣaṃ meyamātṛpramāsu sā |

meyeṣv indriyayogotthā dravyajātiguṇeṣu sā ||

savikalpāvikalpā ca pratyakṣā buddhir iṣyate |

(Amṛtakālā v. 4–5ab)

Since the definition needs to contain nothing redundant, let us analyse each element of it:

• sākṣātpratītiḥ (“it is a direct cognition”): to exclude inference etc. (agreed upon by all schools)
• meyamātṛpramāsu sā (“it is about object, knower and knowledge”): sense-perception can grasp, besides substances, also qualities and even universals (agreed upon by Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā, against Dharmakīrti’s school). Śālikanātha specifies on p. 142 of the pramāṇapārāyaṇa that if one were not to accept that, there would not be anything left to cognise via sense-perception, since one never grasps substances on their own.
• meyeṣu indriyayogotthā (“it is generated by a contact of the sense-faculties with the objects”): against the idea of intellectual intuition (agreed upon by Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā, against Dharmakīrti’s school and Nyāya)
• dravyajātiguṇeṣu sā (“it is about substances, universals or qualities”): sense-perception can grasp, besides substances, also qualities and even universals (agreed upon by Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā, against Dharmakīrti’s school). Śālikanātha specifies on p. 142 of the pramāṇapārāyaṇa that if one were not to accept that, there would not be anything left to cognise via sense-perception, since one never grasps substances on their own.
• savikalpāvikalpā (“it is conceptual or non-conceptual”): it can be conceptual and non-conceptual (agreed upon by Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā, against Dharmakīrti’s school)

Next, Śālikanātha has to define what counts as perception. Possible candidates are (according to Dharmakīrti’s school):
1. sense-perception
2. mental perception (mānasapratyakṣa)
3. self-awareness (svasaṃvedana)
4. intellectual intuition (yogipratyakṣa)

1. is clearly accepted.

2. is, surprisingly and against Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā, accepted (see the discussion about meyamātṛpramāsu sā above). All cognitions are therefore immediately accessible to self-awareness.

3. is refuted. This might be slightly complicated, since manas is not defined as in Nyāya and Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā, namely as the inner sense faculty, which can grasp pleasure and pain. Śālikanātha succintly defines mānasapratyakṣa as “produced by the cognition through the sense-faculties together with the instant immediately following the one the instant (kṣaṇa) which has been previously cognised (by the sense faculties)”. The commentator, Jayapuri Nārāyaṇa Bhaṭṭa, explains that it is therefore produced by the object and the cognition together. The terminology and the topic itself make Śālikanātha steer here in the direction of discussing Dharmakīrti’s school. He then later (p 142 of the pramāṇapārāyaṇa) refutes it, explaining that it is nothing different than continuous perceptions (dhārāvāhikajñāna), like the ones we have while staring for a long time the same object. By contrast, the so-called mental perception that continues also once the contact with the sense faculties has ceased, is just no longer a case of knowledge, Śālikanātha explains.
4 is refuted. Why? Because what we think to be grasping directly but without the senses (e.g., the four noble truths during deep meditation) is nothing but our memory presenting us with some content we were already acquainted with. There is nothing new that derives from meditation itself. Claiming the opposite is something you can do for religious reasons, not on epistemological bases.

What I would like you to remember of this series?
—Go check Śālikanātha’s extensive Prakaraṇapañcikā if you want to make a stroll in philosophical landscapes, almost all topics are covered, and always with interesting ideas.
—”Knowledge is experience”: there is no error.
—Intellectual intuition is nothing but memory.

Their (the ṛṣis’) teaching, by contrast, is of human origin, although it may come from the Veda (āgama). Therefore, the listeners [of such teaching] need to reflect on its root and once one eliminates that this teaching is based on a [supersensuous] perception originated out of the dharma’s energy, one needs to look for another pramāṇa for this dharma. And this is nothing but the Veda (itself) (śāstra).

tadupadeśasya tu āgamāyamānasyāpi pauruṣeyatayā śrotṝṇāṃ mūlaparāmarśasāpekṣatvena dharmavīryaprasūtapratyakṣamūlatvapariśeṣe tasmin dharme pramāṇāntaram anveṣaṇīyam. tac ca nānyat śāstrāt.

By contrast, we do not accept the inference said by Mīmāṃsakas, namely ”Each recitation of the Veda has been preceded by one’s teacher’s teaching one the recitation of the Veda, because it is a Vedic recitation, like the present ones”. We do not accept it, because there is an exception, since the probans is absent in the recitation performed by Brahmā of the [Vedic text] based on the Lord (who was Brahmā’s inner controller, so that Brahmā did not need to learn the Veda from a teacher) as well as in the present recitation of the Veda, when it is performed by an ascetic who has made it present (and therefore can see it without the need of a teacher).
And we also do not accept the syllogism because it contradicts the sacred texts speaking of creation and dissolution [of the entire world].

vedādhyayanaṃ sarvaṃ gurvadhyapanapūrvakam adhyayanatvād ity anumānaṃ tu mīmāṃsakoktaṃ necchāmaḥ. īśvaramūlacaturmukhakartṛkādhyayane sākṣātkāritapasvikārite ādyādhyayane ca sādhyābhāvāt vyabhicārāt (ad SM ad 1.1.29, 1971 edition p. 128).

It is easy to see how a Mīmāṃsaka could not have agreed less with Vīrarāghavācārya’s arguments. Mīmāṃsā authors in general believe in a beginningless time and think that the idea of creations and dissolutions is only an unwarranted assumption. Even more dangerous is the idea that an ascetic might see directly the Veda, since this could open the door to yogipratyakṣa and to autonomous religious experiences.

In all the above ways, the Sūkṣmārthaṭīkā‘s author also indirectly points out the gigantic effort Veṅkaṭanātha undertook, almost seven centuries before, when he tried to propose a synthesis of Pūrva Mīmāṃsā and Vedānta.

The range of omniscience
A problem (raised by Sudipta Munsi in a comment on this post) connected with the scope of omniscience regards the question of whether an omniscient being also knows all erroneous beliefs. At first sight it might seem that if she does not, she is not completely omniscient and that if she does, she shares also erroneous beliefs, which seems paradoxical. A possible way out consists in claiming that she knows all erroneous beliefs but she attributes them to us. In other words, she knows that I do not know about the place and year of birth of Kumārila, but still correctly knows where and when he was born. Is this solution satisfactorily? Possibly, although this kind of omniscience would lack the first person grasp on how it feels to not know that X or to hold a false belief.

A connected problem regards specifically God’s omniscience: Does God also knows what it is to be in pain? If He does not, He seems to be not omniscient. If He does, He is no longer untouched by sufferance (duḥkha), as claimed in Nyāya and Yoga. In other words, an Īśvara-like God (see below) cannot be said to have experience of duḥkha. His knowledge would nonetheless not be incomplete because duḥkha would be conceived as just a negative entity (the absence of pleasure), which does not need to be separately known. God would be omniscient insofar as He knows all states of affairs, without needing to know also their corresponding absences. By contrast, God as conceived in theistic Vedānta (see below the lines on Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta) can even be said to have experience of duḥkha, insofar as He is the inner controller of each conscious being and shares therefore their experience from within.

God’s omniscience
Nyāya authors accept the existence of a God, usually referred to as Īśvara, who can be proved to exist, and develop on this basis a rational theology which accepts His omniscience and omnipotence. They explain that Īśvara `Lord’ needs to be omniscient in order to deploy His functions, which include the re-arrangement of the world after each periodic destruction and the re-assignment of their karman to each living being. Accordingly, God’s omniscience needs to be understood in a robust sense as the knowledge of all present, past and future states of affairs and as completely actualised (against some Buddhist conceptions discussed above). This, however, entails some problem, insofar as the Lord’s knowledge needs to be at any time complete and is in this sense atemporal. But this seems to mean that (a) there is no space for human free will and (b) the Lord knows the world outside of time. He knows, in other words, all states of affairs simultaneously and independent of time. This mirror-like omniscience has been criticised by authors of the Buddhist epistemological school (see Moriyama 2014 and forthcoming).

Śaiva authors, especially of the Pratyabhijñā school, accept both omniscience of yogins and of the Lord/Īśvara. The first one is often referred to in discussions aiming at establishing the omnipresent nature of the Lord as the supreme subject. In fact, how could memory be possible, if there were not a single subjectivity connecting events from a subjective point of view? And how could knowledge be possible, if there were not a fundamental similarity of nature between knower and known things, which does betrays its partaking to the nature of the absolute subject? The Nyāya account of a plurality of subjectivity is rejected insofar as it clashes with cases like the yogins’ ability to access other minds. The yogin, explain Pratyabhijñā authors, knows other minds from within, as the subject of their thoughts, and does not take other minds as an object to be known, since this knowledge would not be a real knowledge of the other mind, which is intrinsically subjective and cannot be reduced to an object. This ability of the yogin depends on the fact that he has recognised his identity with the Lord and can therefore access any mind. The Lord, as the single all-pervading subject, is in fact de facto omniscient and liberation consists in recognising one’s identity with Him (see R. Torella’s studies on yogipratyakṣa in this school).

Vedāntic authors conceive of God as brahman, and therefore as the only absolute reality. In this sense, the brahman is not an additional entity in the world, and the latter only exists because of Him (Dvaita Vedānta), in Him (Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta) or does not exist ultimately (Advaita Vedānta). Knowledge is considered in Vedāntic school to be a substance. Advaita Vedāntins resolve the duality which would emerge out of the assumption of brahman and knowledge by stating that brahman consists of cit `consciousness’. This is unintentional, since any content would include duality.

Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta authors conceive of God as brahman and at the same time as a personal God. He is therefore the material cause of the world, which is conceived by Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedāntins to exist only as a specification of Him. Like in the case of Advaita Vedānta, knowledge is conceived as a substance. Unlike in Advaita, knowledge is intentional, and has as its content the whole world. The reality of the world is thus guaranteed by its being a specification of the brahman and by its being a content of His knowledge. At the same time, the brahman is conceived of as a personal God, which means that the two above mentioned ways of relating to the world are not mutually exclusive (as it happens to be the case in Spinoza’s pantheism). Rather, knowledge is connected to Him as His characteristic. It is not just one characteristic among many, nor is it connected to the Lord as a quality to its substrate. By contrast, Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta authors describe the relation between God and His knowledge as one of indissolubility. The two cannot be experienced the one without the other and, although knowledge is ultimately a substance, it behaves as a characteristic of Him (it is therefore called dharmabhūtajñāna `cognition [behaving] like a characteristic’).

Against omniscience
Basing on the same elements, the authors of the Mīmāṃsā elements altogether deny the possibility of omniscience. They explain that omniscience contradicts our experience, where knowledge always increases but never reaches on outmost limit. Against the argument of repeated exercise, they observe that exercise does not need to be able to reach whatever result. For instance, no matter how much one exercises, one will never be able to jump until the moon. Nor will one’s smell be able to perceive sounds, even after an intense training. Thus, there are intrinsic boundaries to each faculty, including one’s intellect, which cannot directly grasp things, without the mediation of perception, inference and the other instruments of knowledge.
Moreover, no one could judge the omniscience of someone else. Thus, claim the Mīmāṃsā authors, the accounts about the Buddha’s omniscience cannot be trustworthy, since no one but an omniscient can vouch for someone else’s omniscience.

Why do Mīmāṃsakas insist so much on the impossibility of omniscience? From an internal and argumentative perspective, because of their commitment to common experience, which should not be contradicted without a valid reason. From an external and socio-philosophical perspective, because their defence of the Veda depends on its uniqueness as instrument of knowledge for knowing dharma `duty’. It is clear that no other human instrument of knowledge could compete with the Veda, since all human instruments of knowledge can only grasp what there is and not what ought to be. However, if there were an omniscient human or divine being, then they could reasonably compete with the Veda and possibly even falsify it.

The Buddhist arguments against omniscience (see Moriyama 2014 and Moriyama forthcoming) are different, insofar as they object only against the Lord’s omniscience, but accept the Buddha’s one. The difference lies in the fact that the Buddha became omniscient, whereas the Lord is allegedly permanently omniscient. Hence, only in the case of the Lord’s omniscience one encounter paradoxes such as the ones seen above and regarding the incompatibility of temporality and omniscience.

Can God as the perfect omniscient knower guarantee the possibility of a reality disidentified from all local perspectives and thus independent of them, though remaining inherently intelligible (by God Himself)? It depends on how one understands God.

As discussed already here, Indian authors can mean at least four different things when they speak about “God”, namely:

1. —the devatās of mythology, like Indra and Zeus (during this workshop in Hawai’s, Andrew Nicholson has shown several examples of how philosophers make fun of this naive conception of Gods)
2. —the īśvara of rational theology. He is usually omniscient and omnipotent and mostly also benevolent. In Indian thought, He can be proven to exist and to be such through rational arguments (e.g., through an inference from the fact that mountains, being an effect, need a creator, like pots).
3. —the brahman of Advaita Vedānta is an impersonal Deity. In some forms of Vedānta it is interpreted pantheistically as tantamount to the universe.
4. —the bhagavat kind of God is the one one is linked to through a personal relationship. His or Her devotees might consider Him omniscient or omnipotent, but in fact their reasons for loving Him of Her are different and regard their being in relation with Him or Her.

Which God can help guaranteeing the world’s reality? The devatā kind of Gods are clearly irrelevant for this purpose, since they are not even omniscient and surely do not represent an impartial perspective. The brahman kind of God is omniscient only in a sense akin to the Buddha’s being omniscient, namely insofar as it does not lack any relevant information, but it does not at all guarantee the reality of the world of direct realism. In fact, the world is for Advaita Vedāntins an illusion.

The īśvara kind of God seems the best candidate. But which kind of īśvara? Matthew Dasti‘s talk elaborated on the early history of īśvara in Nyāya, showing how the system’s basic premisses at least facilitated the elaboration of an īśvara concept. This evolution culminates in a full-fledged rational theology by Udayana. For Udayana, the īśvara he tries to prove rationally is not just any intelligent maker that can be inferred as the cause from the premise that the earth, mountains and plants sprouting from it are effects. That intelligent maker had to be:*

• A super-soul with eternal knowledge of everything, and especially of the past and future good and bad actions of all human beings that ever lived.
• One who has natural control or lordship over the material universe and other individual souls whose bodies he creates according to their beginninglessly earned merits and demerits.
• One who joins the eternal atoms in the beginning of each cosmic cycle according to a remembered blue-print giving rise to the two-ness in a dyad by his primordial act of counting.
• One who makes the otherwise unconscious “destiny” (unseen karmic traces, adṛṣṭa)) or law of moral retribution work.
• One who acts directly through his eternal will and agency without the mediation of a body, although all the “intelligent makers” one has ever encountered produce effects with a body of their own.
• One who composes the Vedas which tell human beings how to live a good life, through “do”s and “don’t”s, which would otherwise be devoid of the imperative force that they command.
• One who establishes the conventional connection between primitive words and their meant entities.
• One who, after creating the world, also sustains and in the fullness of time destroys it.
• Showers grace on humans and other creatures so that each soul can eventually attain their summum bonum—final liberation from all ensnaring karma and suffering.
• One who remains constantly and uniformly blissful through all these actions which do not touch his changeless essence and for which he has no “need”.

Such an īśvara has been discussed by Arindam Chakrabarti in his final talk on Vācaspati, insofar as He seems to be the only kind of God who can be said to be omniscient in the “hard” sense of possessing a complete knowledge of all states of affairs. However, He is vulnerable to objections to omniscience raised both in European and Indian philosophy. E.g.: How to delimit the range of “all” in “omniscience“? Can He really know also future events? If so, this seems to contradict our free will and even the possibility of non-necessary, contingent events. More in general, how can God know past and future events as such, though being Himself atemporal (this topic has been dealt with by Shinya Moriyama in his talk as well as in his 2014 book)? Not to speak of the pragmatic problems caused by omniscience, namely that it is altogether different from the way we usually experience knowledge to happen, i.e. in a processual way, and that one could never be sure that anyone (even God) is omniscient, since we are not omniscient and, therefore, could not test Him. Last, as outlined by Arindam (and by Patrick Grimm’s Cantorian argument against omniscience), God’s omniscience seems deemed to fail, since it cannot be proven to be logically conceivable.

The general problem appears to me to be that the īśvara is at the same time the knower of all and part of the system which He should know completely, so that He cannot escape the restrictions which apply to this world (in which knowledge is experienced to be processual, entities are not at the same time temporal and non-temporal, and one element cannot know the whole).

*The following points are all discussed by Udayana. For further details, see Chemparathy 1972. The present formulation of the list is largely indebted to Arindam Chakrabarti.

Shinya Moriyama also wrote a report about the same workshop, unfortunately (for me) in Japanese. Google translate was enough to understand that it is quite interesting and gives one a perceptive insight in the Philosophy Department in Hawai’i. You can read it here.

A non-intelligible entity cannot be conceived to exist. But, if the world needs to be known in order to exist, we need to postulate a non-partial perspective out of which it can be known. Since the perspectives of all human beings (as well as those of other animals, I would add) are necessarily partial and cannot be reconciled (how could one reconcile our perspective of the world with that of a bat?), this perspective needs to be God.

The above is my summary of Michael Dummett’s (somehow idealistic) position in God and the World, a position which prompted Arindam Chakrabarti to host a three-days workshop on “Realism/Anti-Realism, Omniscience, God/no-God”. During these three days, we discussed the nature of omniscience (in fact, a more complex context than one might think), of God (as above) and of whether they are needed for a realist position. The most striking feature of the workshop was the constant philosophical dialogue flowing through the various presentations and connecting them to the global enterprise of philosophy.

Let me now enter into some detail. First, omniscience. The workshop has shown that this concept is multi-faceted in Indian philosophy, possibly even more than in the history of European philosophy and in contemporary mainstream philosophy.
Sara McClintock started the workshop with a discussion, inspired by her 2007 book Omniscience and the Rhetoric of Reason, on the various ways to understand “omniscience” (sarvajñatva), ranging from “dharmic omniscience” to “total omniscience” —according to whether the “omni-” (sarva ‘all’) is understood as meaning ‘every single entity’ or ‘all that is relevant’ (for a certain purpose). This second meaning might seem less convincing, but please consider the same word in compounds such as “omni-vore”. One would not expect an “omnivore” to be eating all (including stones, shampoo, triangles and logical formulas), would one? In this sense, the Buddha can be said to be omniscient, although he does not need to know exactly all, but he knows the four noble truths and whatever is relevant for liberation. As for the general topic of the workshop, however, this kind of omniscience has no bearing as a guarantee of the world’s reality or of its being as it appears to human beings. In fact, one should also bear in mind that Madhyamaka and Yogācāra Buddhists think that the world as it appears to conscious beings is illusory. An accomplished Buddha would see that it is in fact devoid of substantiality.

Similarly, Andrew Nicholson elucidated the supernormal powers (vibhūtis) in the third chapter of the Yogasūtra by drawing on other first millennium texts, such as the Mokṣadharma Parvan of the Mahābhārata and Kauṇḍinya’s commentary on the Pāśupata Sūtras. Omniscience, he argued, is understood in these traditions as one among the supernormal powers, not as the highest (for instance, Kauṇḍinya suggests that a yogin who merely possesses omniscience without commensurate powers of action (kriyā-śaktis) would be like a lame man). Though Pāśupata and Pātañjala yogins are realists, omniscience is not presented by them as a guarantee of the world’s reality. One could argue in favour of direct realism due to the fact that the world needs to agree (saṃvāda) with the perception yogins have of it, but accomplished yogins seem to have remained rather an exceptional case and not the foundation of any school’s epistemology or ontology. A further interesting point is that for Patañjali, omniscience is not an indication that the yogin has achieved the highest state (as it is of God in some traditions—could one conceive a Christian God who is not omniscient?). A yogin should eventually go beyond the vibhūti of omniscience (sarvajñātṛtva, YS 3.49) to reach the vibhūti of final liberation (kaivalya, YS 3.50). In Arindam Chakrabarti’s words, omniscience is “the last temptation of the yogin”.

Arindam Chakrabarti, in his final talk, has highlighted ten types of omniscience. Apart from the three referred to above, he pointed out 1. the Buddhist idea of knowing all in the sense of knowing that all is insubstantial, 2. the (comparable) Advaita Vedānta idea of knowing all in the sense of knowing that all is brahman, 3. the Jaina idea of innate omniscience of all, which is only blocked by our karman, etc., 4. the Nyāya-based idea that by knowing universal generalities, one should be able to know all (just like one knows all starfish by having known the starfish-universal), and the (generally theist) concepts of 5. a God who needs to know the elements out of which He creates the world, 6. a God who is the maximum of what precedes Him, therefore also the maximum level of knowledge.*
Can any of these concepts help guraranteeing the world’s reality? 1 and 2 point to a world much different than how we perceive it. 3 could work —although I do not know whether any Jain author has argued in this way. 4, 5 and 6 might look more promising. One might imagine an author arguing that the world needs to be as we perceive it, because this is how God knows it as well. However, this depends on how one understands God. If He is nothing but one out of the many perspectives hinted at at the beginning of this post, there is no reason to think that His perspective could guarantee the world’s reality, since it is not a priviledged perspective, just like that of a bat or of a human being.

Thus, the discussion on omniscience leads one to an analysis of the schools’ concepts of God (see part 2 of these notes, here).

*Careful readers will have noticed that 6+3=9 and not 10. This is because I have not been able to understand what Arindam meant by his 9th concept of omniscience, described as sarvākārajñāna.
Even more careful readers might ask why I resumed posting about conferences. This is because (as in the case of this conference) organisers and participants of philosophpical conferences appear to be happy of me posting about them.

SMALL UPDATE: Many thanks are due to Andrew Nicholson and Sara McClintock for helping me improving the post.